Todd_A’s BodyBlog

Well, it has only been a few days since my last post, but I have been lifting every morning still and this week I decided to go ahead and do my shoulder day, but to take it easy… well, sort of…

Shoulder day started with a light warm up then consisted of doing military presses with dumbells with my hands turned inward to avoid the painful position.  For the first set I used really light dumbells which felt fine, so I upped the weights to 25 pounds each for this. Next I decided to do the lift that usually would cause great pain, the barbell milirtay press. Only, I used a reverse grip with my palms facing me instead of the standard palms facing away grip. Again, this caused no pain. Next I did side laterals with 10 pounds each then upped to 15 pounds each. That was all I attempted for the first shoulder day so far.

This morning I did arms.  Since the injury I have avoided doing dips except last week I did some dips off the bench with my feet propped up on a box. This morning I went with regular dips and as long as I kept my elbows tucked against my sides I was fine, but when I allowed my elbows to pull away a little I started feeling some pain in my shoulder, so that was a great reminder to keep the form tight for the rest of the time. The skull crushers and standing barbell curls and the seated dumbell curls did not cause any pain.

Currently the shoulder area is a little tender jsut moving it around because of the dips when I would let the elbows flare out I guess. It should be better by tonight or the morning. Occassionally I will do something to make it hurt and it doesn’t take too long to quit hurting.

The shoulder is definitely getting better with all the babying it I am doing and lifting around the issue and I am happy with the abilities I still have to lift by slightly modifying the tecnique.  I miss being able to bench press a decent amouint of weight, however I have been making my pecs quite sore with the lighter dumbell bench presses and focusing more on the incline press which I can do with good, heavy weight still.

Things are looking up!

Hey, thanks for the replies to my last blog about my issues with my shoulder!!!

Here is the update now after my monday chest workout… The shoulder has been feeling better although I can definitely put it in a position that will cause is to be painful very easily if I don’t watch out and I am not constantly consious about the positions I let it get into. This morning’s chest workout was a mirror of last monday’s workout but I did get to increase the weight a little in a few of the exercises.

As per the advice on the previous blog’s replies (thancks guys!), I did not go below 90 deg. on the bench or incline movements.  Actually I did go past 90 deg. a few times accidentally after one time to see where the limit might be, but I was greeted with a bit of a light version of the pain I felt before, so I immediately changed my bottom point of the movement to stop before that point and it was, indeed, 90 deg at the low point as perscribed.

I did do warmups, but not walking/running. I will try that next time. However I did get a little sewat going with a few light sets of the movements  starting with a very light set in the begining.  

I did a pretty normal set of incline as far as weight goes becuase I can do incline without feeling that pain.  As for bench I did dumbell bench again this week and was able to turn my hands where my palms were slightly facing in, just enough to really feel solid about not feeling that pain and go to 90 deg and back up, again with no problems.

After that I went with pushups with my hands turned slightly to just give me a feeling of confidence that I would not feel any of that pain. I did 1 set of 25 followed by 2 sets of 20 where I almost failed on the last one each time!

Finally I did 2 sets of rotator cuff exercises I found to be pretty popular out there - laying on my side and doing a lift up to about 45 deg, laying on my side and doing an Internal Rotation and an External Rotation. I did both sides and I did 2 sets of 10 with 5 pounds. The external rotation is definitely my weak point in the rotator cuff as it was the only one that began to burn during the those exercises and was noticibly weaker.

Overall, everything appears to be progressing nicely and I am happy with the progress so far.  Also I am cutting and I lost a nice amount of bodyfat this week between the lifting, light cardio and a low carb restricted calorie diet. Hopefully I can get to my bodyfat goals around the same time that I am ready to start lifting a little more weight.

Well, something similar has happened to me in the past. About 3 years ago while benching it became very painful to complete the movement in my Right shoulder. I attempted to work through it but that was a bad idea.  It was so bad that I almost dropped a stack of plates as I was putting them up in the cabinet when I hit that bad spot in my rang of motion.

it has happened again now about 3 weeks ago. I first thought it was just muscle pain so the next week I attempted to lift again and was hit with more pain. I layed off a week and then went to the Ortho/Sports Medicine Dr. He said it did not appear to be a tear in the ligaments of the rotator but instead seemed to be more cartillage related at the joint itself. He prescribed me some anti-inflamitory pills ot take for a while, and said not to bench press and not to do anything that causes it to hurt.

That week off and the begining of the pills seems to have had some positive effects on it. I have started back lifting this week and on chest day I only did incline press with the barbell, then I did some light dumbell presses and it did not hurt. I also did some pushups and was supprised that they did not hurt either although I did start feeling the pain toward the end when I was getting worn out and probably started using crappy form.

I have lifted all this week and I only skipped Shoulder Day completely. I have really watched my form and I have pulled back on some of the weight if it was going to effect that shoulder. So far the shoulder feels much better and continues to improve each day.

 I think I might have been lucky.  We will have to wait and see how it progresses.  I am nervous about the time when I decide it is time to go heavier on certain exercises agian. I am using this time to do an end of the summer final cut before attempting to bulk again. I never previously reached my bodyfat goal and I intend to at least get a lot closer to it than I did before.  But the good thing is that I will be lifting less and doing more cardio at the time when I need to be lifting less to heal up. 

Hope it works out!

Todd

I had decided to up the calories because I was getting tiny. I wanted to slowly ramp them up to avoid packing on fat and gradually find the calorie level where I would gain mass without a lot of fat. As I added calories I noticed my fat loss accelerating, so I held the calories at around 2000 - 2100 for a little while to see if it would level off, and it still has not. So, I am going to go ahead and see where this takes me since it is going faster now.

I had originally wanted to see my abs before summer arrived but they had eluded me and I was convinced that I just did not have enough lean mass to get there. The fat loss was coming to a halt and I was getting frustrated. Apparently I was feeding myself too little and my body was holding on to all it could.

So, for now I am going to stick with cutting but with this somewhat higher calorie level, and if things level off again I will raise it again and see which way it goes. Maybe the abs will show themselves.

I am lifting with good intensity and yesterday I added HIIT back into the mix and the results this morning were very positive.

So far I have lost 23.4 pounds since November 23rd!

I have been successful at loosing fat without loosing much muscle at all. The bad news is that I am now 163 pounds and I have more fat to loose still.  I was covered in more fat than I thought at first I guess. if I continue at the cutting I will be in the 140’s by the time I reach mt bodyfat % that I want to get to.

So, I decided I need to do a bulk. Not some big, nasty, all you can eat pizza buffet type of bulk, but a nice, controlled, clean bulk. I have started ramping up my calories a little at a time hoping to not add fat in the switch-over to a calorie excess. 

Funny thing - I started raising my calories 2 days ago but each morning after raising them, I lost weight and it was mostly fat! I dropped another BF% since I started eating more. I have a feeling I had dropped down past where I needed to be in my daily calorie intake.

 I’m still doing higher fat and lower carbs, but I am raising both the fat and carbs to get more calories.

The last week I have been following a low carb with higher fat and a good amount of protein with walking and lifting and have been having great results… finally!

At teh begining of the week I weighed in at 169.2 pounds with 18.8 % bodyfat. The diet is right at 2072 calories a day during the week. I have 85 grams of fat, 240 grams of protein and 92 grams of carbs each day. This morning I weighed 166.8 with 18.1% bodyfat.

So far , so good. Tomorrow is saturday and I am going to carb up for 2 days btu it will be a very light carb up. I am going to increase my carbs from 92 to 180 grams. Doubling them while keeping the fat and protein the same as all week.

Last weekend I only carbed up one day and it was mild and I had great results this week, so I think this midification should work well. I noticed I was loosing a bit of lean mass, so the increase in carbs for 2 days may offset that. I don’t mind the mass loss right now as my main goal is to get this stupid fat off of me. I would like ot retain as much lean mass as possible though.

 As for working out - every morning I wake up and walk 30 minutes, then head off to work. After work each day I lift weights then walk for another 15 minutes. I split my lifting up into 5 days so I don’t run the workouts too long and I can lift then walk and still get in my post workout protien in a reasonable time frame.

We’ll see in the morning for my weekly weigh-in.

Finally back on track. This week I did mess up on Monday night and ate way too many carbs, however I stuck to the plan after that and the results were better than I expected.

I lost exactly 3 pounds and dropped .8% bodyfat which translates into loosing .96 pound of lean mass unfortunately, but 2.04 pounds of fat!!! I can’t be loosing a pound a week of lean mass though, so I need to tweak the diet a little.

I guess I need to up the calories a little to offset the excessive weight loss. Not sure where to add the calories though - more fat, more protein or more carbs. I was shying away from adding carbs, so maybe add in the fat and protein areas a little. The other thing I was concerned about was adding calories based on one week’s results might be too soon and I should wait another week to see if it was going to have the same results first.

As far as exercise goes, I had been previously working the legs only in my cardio with HITT and jumping, and things like that. This week I added squats and dead lifts.  I am still sore from that and it was on Tuesday!

For cardio I walked on a treadmill with the incline way up and the speed at about 1.7 - 2.0 mostly. One morning I mixed in a few sprints on it, and I did some heavy bag work and jump rope.

I did cardio in the mornings fasted, monday through thursday and lifted in the evenings after work monday through thursday. Friday (yesterday) I did nothing at all. My weight still dropped .9 pounds from Friday morning to Saturday morning.  I did raise my fat intake and drop out more carbs on Friday though, so that probably had something to do with it.

Nice to be back on track again. Too bad it was like starting back at the begining of January though. Seems like a large setback. oh well.

As much as I faught it, I finally broke down and decided to buy one of these fancy scales with the bodyfat measuring tool built in. You have seen them around and have heard everyone complain about how inacurate they are or how they give off the wall readings or similar. Some like them, some do not.

The reason I decided to go ahead and buy one of these was that it is difficult to and troublesome to wake up on my weigh-in days and get my weight and all my calliper measurements in a timely fashion.  My girlfriend may or may not be there when I am ready to get this done and I do have to have help. Also, she was concerned that she was possibly not using the calipers the exact same way in the exact same position and grabbing the same place and same amount of skin each time.

I think that the Calipers may be more acurate to actual bodyfat, but without consistency you are left confused sometimes whenyou appear to have made progress but the caliper tells you differently. I like that the scales are going to do their process the exact same way every time, and I follow the same ritual every time I use them, so, if for no other reason than consistency, I like the scales. Another plus is ease of use. You basically just step on and wait. You do not need a second person to help with readings, and it is easy to take the readings 3 or 4 times in a row to make sure you are getting the same result to confirm.

So far I have seen very close bodyfat % numbers from the scales that have not varied more than I feel they should form day to day. They are consistent with what I would expect from my diet on the previous two days, so I feel that the scales are more than acurate enough to gague progress and watch for movement in the wrong direction.

In the 2 weeks since I have purchased mine, I have grown to like it more than I thought I might.  I wake up in the morning and I use the bathroom, then I get on the scales and note the results. I step off and I repeat and note the results. If I have a slightly different reading, I go again and sometimes a 4th time to assure myself that I have the most acurate reading, then I record the reading in a spreadsheet I have.

I have been using the scales every morning.  I know, I know… They say do not do this every day because of fluctuations in your weight and bodyfat day to day, but I wanted to observe these fluctuations myself so I can look for trends in the future. Plus with the diet I am on now, I am going through a weekly cycle so I should be able to start comparing my tuesday readings with previous tuesday readings or what ever day I want to compare, and see if I can see a pattern there. It may help me tweak some thigns in my diet or exercise programs. Also, if you have these fluctions day to day adn you only take readings once a week, how do you know you are not taking readings on the one day a week that you are the highest bodyfat? Daily readings will tell you what your lowest is and your highest. Just don’t get discouraged on the readings if they seem high. They may fall the following morning.

My caliper method was showing me to be about 18.5% bodyfat and the scales were showing me to be about 20.5%, so there is definately a differnece, but I am looking for consistent readings and trends, not acuracy so much.  I want to know I am loosing bodyfat, and not loosing too much muscle when cutting, and gaining muscle without too much bodyfat when bulking. I will still take caliper measurements to find what I consider to be a more acurate actual bodyfat measurement, but in my quest to cut and future quest to bulk, I will just rely on the scales to guide me along.

Bottom line is that if you get one of these, just realize they are not perfectly acurate, so just use them to help watch your progress and to keep you informed as to the direction you are going.

Well, it is now 2008 and another year has gone by, so I thought I would take a look at the differences from January 2007 to today and see if I have been working hard enough or what. I am writing this as I am looking through all the info I have, so here goes…

In January of 2007 I weighed in at 195 pounds and I am not sure on the bodyfat % because I was not even taking those at that point. Now I weigh 182.5 and I am at 17.63% bodyfat. From that it appears that I have only lost 12.5 pounds over  a year, however with further research into my records I find this:

On July 7th I began recording bodyfat % numbers along with my weight and I had lost down to 176.6 pounds and was at 20.09% bodyfat. That is 18.4 pounds lost at that point. That comes to 141 of lean mass and about 35 pounds of fat on me at that point.

September 15th I had lost to my lowest weightof 169.7 pounds and I was at 14.73% bodyfat. This translates to 144.7 pounds of lean mass and 25 pounds of fat. I had lost 10 pounds of fat in 2 months and gained 3.7 pounds of lean mass! Sweet!

From there I went to bulking because I realized I was going to be extremely light if I got downt to 10% bodyfat with only 144 pounds of lean mass.

Now I am up to 182.5 pounds and 17.63% bodyfat which translates to 150.33 pounds of lean mass and I am still carrying around 32.17 pounds of fat. So I have gained 7 pounds of fat in this last bulking attempt. I have also gained another 6 pounds of lean mass with that. I was expecting to gain some fat on the bulk, but I had hoped it would be about half the amount of the mass gains. 

 I would venture a guess at my begining bodyfat to be around 30 % or so based on everything I can calculate. That would put me at about 136 pounds of lean mass and that is pretty conservative because I was lifting consistently between January and July. This would mean I was carrying 58.5 pounds of fat or more last January. So, over the last year I appear to have lost approx. 26.3 pounds of fat conservatively, and gained right at 14 pounds of lean mass.  That averages to just over 1/4 pound of lean mass gained per week over the year, and right at 1/2 a pound a week of fat loss.

This means I had a 44.9% loss in bodyfat and 9.3% gain in mass, so if I did exactly the same this year I would be at 17.72 pounds of bodyfat and 164 pounds of lean mass which would put me at 181.72 pounds and 9.75% bodyfat. That would be awesome! That is a 14.45 pounds of fat loss with a gain of 13.6 pounds of lean mass.

I am starting out with a goal in the begining of this year of consentrating on loosing my bodyfat down to at least 10% with minimal muscle loss if any before attempting to add any lean mass. I need to see how things look without the covering of fat before I go any further with "bulking".  To my knowlege I have never been down to 10% bodyfat unless you look at my childhood, so this is a goal I have yet to reach and it will be a nice mildstone to accomplish!

17 pounds of fat loss while maintaining my current lean mass will put me at 10% BF. In one month I could loose 8 pounds at 2 pounds a week and that would place me at about 13% BF at 174 pounds, then in one more month I could be down to 167 or so at 10% BF. YAY!!!  SO I should set a 13% bodyfat goal for February 2, 2008.

WE will have to see how things go.

Last week I decided I would try something different to see how it goes.  I dropped my calories by approximately 500 below maintenance from roughly 3000 to roughly 2500 a day.  I swapped my macronutrients to a lower carb and a little lower protein and high fat made up of almost exclusively ECA’s. The percentages were 34 fat/38 protein/28 carb.

I also walked briskly after each day’s lifting and that was 5 days a week.

The results were nice - I lost 1.9 pounds, dropped my bodyfat from 15.5 to 14.5, a full %.

I would assume that some of the results were becasue of the change because my body responds to change, and everyone else’s probably does too.

This week I am switching again. Upping the calories and doing HITT training after some of the workouts and jogging after others. Hoping to see some lean mass gains with the bodyfat staying the same or possibly dropping still. We’ll, see.