alm21’s BodyBlog

I am finally getting some lifts in without getting Weightlifter’s Migraines.  I have stopped taking Nitric Oxide supplements, pop a couple Aleve an hour before my lift with a couple Lipo 6 (for caffeine vessel restriction), warm up on cardio for 5 minutes (get the blood pumping through the whole body) and stretch out the neck area.  This approach seems to be working well so I have been able to get back to hitting it hard.

Speaking of hard, I did Dead Lifts for the first time in years.  I admit that I have been a little intimidated by them.  Once I started doing them, I quickly realized why people love them so much.  My heart was pumping and it worked my whole body.  The downside, which is why I hesitated to do them before, is that my lower back took a beating.  It’s been really sore for four days now.  I don’t have back problem and can execute squats and Good Mornings without problems.  I am not sure if I am sore from poor form or from going heavier (275lbs – not a lot for most but a lot of effort for me since this was the first time doing them) or maybe both.  I thought my form was good?  I kept the bar close to the body (shins have scabs from the bar) and tried to push with legs and hips.  Once my back gets back to normal, I will reattempt but work with light weight as I master the form.

So I got some cool exercise equipment for Christmas.  I got the belt that allows you to chain up some weight so you can do weighted dips and pull ups.  I have reached a point with my dips where I need to add weight and I am getting there on the pull ups.  The other cool thing I asked for and got is a bar used for developing the forearms.  It has a rope and weight attachment.  You stick your arms straight out and roll/twist the bar by using your wrists.  Slowly you pull the weight up as the rope wraps around the bar.  Once the rope is wrapped all the way around the bar, you slowly reverse direction and lower the weight by unwrapping the rope around the bar.  Your forearms will be on fire, guaranteed!

I got a little too confident last night.  Feeling good, I went in the gym and jumped on the incline bench press.  I did a warm up set of 135lbs and was feeling good so I went to 185lbs which isn’t real heavy for me.  Well, it was heavy enough to give me a migraine.  I’m in my 3^rd week of getting migraines caused by lifting.  They are caused most often by doing an upper body press move or back exercise.  It seems that is start from the back of my head where the neck muscles attached to the skull.  When the muscle gets real tense during an exercise and then releases, the blood rushes through my head and BAM – migraine.  I’m on BetaBlockers and my doctor wouldn’t be real impressed knowing I have done this a couple times since starting my meds.  So, I am going to be more careful now and follow doc’s orders.  I admit that I’m feeling a little sorry for myself when I look around the gym and see people working hard.  I want to hit the iron with the intensity that makes me sweat buckets but I can’t.  I need to create a workout that still allows me to hit my upper body but will increase my cardio activities since those don’t bother me.  I just don’t want to loose the muscle I have developed – what a waste that would be.

So, I’ve been trying to eat clean but life has throwing a lot of drama my way (work, migraines, friend/former coworker died last week and found out he had an alternate infamous identity, cat died yesterday, I’m not kidding – wish I were), .  I ate great all day yesterday however I had 3 glasses of white wine which led to 4-5 Xmas cookies right before bed.  WTF was I thinking!  I am planning to start the Scivation Cut Diet but I am concerned I won’t be able to follow the lift regimen because of my migraine condition.  I will have to improvise.  I think I will start either after Xmas or New Years since I am still reading up on their program – getting myself prepared.

Ugh, with all the crap that I’ve been dealing with, I continue to remind myself how fortunate I am.  I think about those who are in foreign lands serving our country, those who have lost loved ones and how tough the holidays can be tough on everyone.  Even though I am not having a good month, I am still very fortunate and grateful for what I have.  I am ready for a long weekend!

So my doctor has me on some meds to help with the migraine problem. Unfortunately it comes with a light workout regimen. So I have made some adjustments and experimented to find what works without causing a migraine. So far, if I do a weight that I can lift for 10-15 reps, I’m ok. If it’s a weight that I can only do 4-8 reps, I stand a good chance to cause the migraine. I have worked out the last few days but I haven’t kept up on my workout tracker as I was mostly experimenting and not really tracking all the sets and reps I was doing. However, last night was a leg workout and I did squats, lying hamstring curls, quad extensions, standing calf raises and 30 minutes on the Cybex elliptical. I did fewer exercises than my normal leg routine but my energy was low and I need to make an attempt to follow the doctor’s orders. However, leg isolation exercises don’t bother me as much as the upper body ones do. I had a personal record on hamstring curl – 185lbs 4-5 reps. The machine tops out at 200lbs and I want to get there. Today, I will try shoulders and biceps with some cardio. I will have to be very careful on the weight for the shoulders since this is upper body intense training so I need to go light and watch myself. This ticks me off because I was improving on my DB shoulder presses, getting to 90lb DBs – won’t be doing that today.

So I saw my doctor yesterday and he had me go in for an MRI.  Thankfully, the results showed that there is no aneurism (found out this morning).  I have discovered that cardio and light lifting doesn’t bother me.  However, when I start lifting intensely the migraine hits me.  I went in the gym at my office before my MRI and did a few reps on the flat bench on the universal gym and it didn’t bother me.  So, I thought things may be looking up.  However, I went to my regular gym after the MRI and decided to give myself the acid test.  I started with some lat exercises on the Hammer Strength machine.  Well, the migraine kicked in and as usual, I had a lot of pain, nausea, cold sweats and weak in the knees.  I had to call it quits.

So, my doctor called me this morning with the good results from the MRI.  However, I still have the problem and the doctor can pin point the issue other than it is related to intense exercise and apparently this is not uncommon for people to experience even during sex.  What puzzles me is that I have no history of migraines and it is as if someone flipped a switch and I now can’t lift without getting them.  My doctor is prescribing me some beta blockers and wants me to avoid intense lifting for a week to allow the medication to take effect.  He gave me the ok to do light activity until we meet up again next week.  I can’t believe that my one thing that I love to do that gives me so many good things (lifting) now causes me major pain.  WTF?!  Ok, enough of feeling sorry for myself.  Life is about adapting and now I have to adapt my training to deal with this problem and hopefully it is just short term.  I will now focus on cardio and lightweight/high rep training.  I will also see if I can lift heavy with my legs as I think this issue may be related more to upper body exercises.  This could be a blessing in disguise as it may force me to do the things that will promote fat burning.  We’ll see.

So I thought I turned a corner and was getting past the headaches.  I had a minor headache Sunday morning but that was it.  I didn’t work out Sunday and come Monday I was still feeling fine.  I went into the gym looking forward to a good workout.  My goal was to do abs and cardio but I wanted to get a pump in my chest so I hit the HammerStrength Lateral Chest first.  I didn’t put much weight on it but as soon as I pressed my very first rep – it happened.  I felt the blood rush to my head and the pain was intense.  I immediately got the painful headache and nausea. 

I was/am so frustrated!!!  I haven’t had a good workout for over a week now because of this problem.  I forced myself to do 30minutes of cardio on the Cybex machine.  It didn’t hurt as bad since the blood was being forced to my head.  As soon as I completed my cardio, I grabbed my stuff and drove to my doctor’s office that is literally up the block from my gym.  He couldn’t see me at that time so I have set up an appt for Wednesday morning. 

I went home and took my ibuprofen and heated my “bean bag” which I place over my eyes and is really soothing.  The headache and nausea will last a few hours after it begins.

So, waking up today, I feel relatively fine.  I have a twinge of a headache but nothing major.  I expect that I will feel fine all day.  I desperately want to workout feeling 100%.  Tonight, I will take a different approach.  I will go in and begin with cardio and see how I feel.  If I am fine, I will focus on a long cardio session.  Then I will attempt abs.  If the headaches come back, I will call it quits and leave.  …crossing my fingers

This has been a really strange week for my workouts.  I have suffered from headaches and nausea during 3 of 4 workouts this week.  I feel fine before going into the gym and almost immediately after starting to lift the headache hits me hard.  My head feels like it’s going to explode.  Two of the three times I had the headaches I also became nauseous.  Not wanting to skip my workouts, I cut them short 45-60mins before I couldn’t stand anymore.  Last night, Friday, again I felt fine and went to the gym and while sitting in the parking drinking my preworkout drink, I felt the headache coming on.  This was the first time it started before I actually began working out.  I have become concerned as this has never happened to me before.  I didn’t want another workout with that kind of pain so I left.  I took some Ibuprofen and it went away for a few hours but then came back before bed.

My diet hasn’t changed other than improving.  I’m well hydrated.  The only change that I have made was increasing my L-Arginine dosages using Nitrix.  About 2 weeks ago from today, I increased my dosage from once a day (before I went to bed) to three times a day, following the suggested dosage.  Once I started feeling and came to the conclusion that was the only thing that changed, I checked out the warnings and saw one for headaches and dizziness.  So, I have stopped taking Nitrix for the time being to see if there are any improvements.

I heard that there is a “headache” virus going around but I don’t feel bad most of the time.  It seems to be only when I get my “pump” on, literally.  Once I start to lift and get that blood flowing, it becomes a killer.  Quite frankly, I hope I have a virus.  I hate the idea that I may have done something bad to myself through supplementation.

I am feeling pretty decent right now.  I am going to try to get to the gym today and see how it goes.  I just restocked my NOXplode supply but I am a bit reluctant to take it at the moment.  Even though it has never given me problems, I may abstain just to see if things improve.  And if they do, I will slowly reintroduce the Nitric Oxide boosters and see if the symptoms return.  If this continues, I will go see a doctor.

Last week goal recap & this week’s plan – I’ll try to keep it short as I’ve posted my workouts using the tracker.  I ate really clean (besides the cookies last Monday) last week.  I laid off the alcohol except for one glass of red wine on Friday, too many on Saturday (but I planned to drink that night as I had a black tie event – my cheat day) and one glass of red wine Sunday at another holiday dinner function.

I got my workouts done Thursday and Friday which included cardio in the morning and a lift in the evening (Mon-Wed results posted in previous blog).  Saturday was my planned rest day.  Sunday was going to be back day but I was a bit hung over and my daughter had a basketball tournament all weekend which meant games Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Her first game on Sunday was way too early!  Even though I was disappointed to miss my workout Sunday, the two days of rest felt good. 

I got up this morning and went in for cardio – 3 mile run.  Today’s schedule was busy so I have to go to the gym in a bit for a later-than-usual evening lift.  I’ll be working my back to make up for Sunday and hopefully I can hit the abs and biceps too.  Since Monday is usually cardio only, this won’t throw my week off.  I have another holiday party Thursday night and I’ll be spending the night downtown so that will throw me off a little.  Also, my daughter has another basketball tournament next weekend which means games Friday-Sunday so I don’t know how that will shake out.  So, here is this week’s plan:

Monday AM:  Cardio

Monday PM: Back, Biceps, Abs

Tuesday AM:  Cardio

Tuesday PM: Legs, Abs

Wednesday AM: Cardio

Wednesday PM: Chest

Thursday AM: Cardio

Thursday PM: Arms – Triceps & Biceps

Friday AM: won’t be able to do cardio

Friday PM: Shoulders & Traps, Abs

Saturday: Back, Biceps and finish with cardio

Sunday: Rest?