Joe’s BodyBlog

Had to borrow that from someoneelse but it is appropriate, I need to get back on the wagon. After having LASIK last week they told me not to exert myself to much for a little while to protect my eyes, so I chickened out and didn’t do my PT last Friday even though my Dr. told me it would be fine. Hey waht can I say it is my EYES we are talking about here… You have to protect them as much as possible. Heck it took me almost ten years to get LASIK, so you know I am going to be careful now that I Have had it done. The good news is the after the first week my FLAP is healing fine, so they think I will be seeing 20/20 for a very long time, and I still have a very good chance of seeing 20/15. Very Cool.

I got back in the gym yesterday now that I feel confident with my eyes. It was weird being in there without my glasses, but it felt really good when I wiped the sweat off my brow and didn’t have to worry about them . A not so small victory. I did my Legs / PT and man did it feel good. Although I am getting sick of warming up backwards on the treadmill…LOL j/k. It is a necessary evil I guess. My knee felt very good after taking a week off, like maybe it need that recovery time? I dunno, makes me wonder if I am indeed over training? So thinking about that, I need to design my new "program", which I will start on Monday. I want to take the next couple of days and workout, but basically just to get the cob webs out and check my weights for each exercise so that when I start my program I am not guessing how much weight to use.  So that is my goal over the next few days, create my new program and assess where I am and where I want to go.

For Diet - I am still cutting. That is going well, but I haven’t been watching my total caloric intake, which might be working agaisnt me.

So yesterday was my last PT session with my Physical Therapist. It went well and we all agreed it is now up to me to progress from here. He mentioned that my ROM has improved a lot over the last couple of weeks, so that was encouraging. I do still have a lot of work left to do. My leg still feels pretty week, but I am on the right track it is just a matter of sticking to my routine and giving myself time. After the golf trip I went on last week, I am off of my schedule, but I will get back on it.

Now onto my new eyes, I had LASIK yesterday. I was very nervous, but now I seem to be doing fine. My eyes are tired, but when I went in for my post op I could see 20/20. Not bad for the day after, and for the first time in 25 years without contacts or glasses. It will be nice to get up in the morning and be able to see and then workout without having to deal with glasses…I need to take a couple of days off to help my eyes, but the surgeon said my knee rehab is fine to do, so I plan on getting back in the gym on Friday.

Saturday we have the MS Walk in the Raleigh/Durham area. This is always a fun walk for charity!

So yesterday I decided was a good day to check my progress on my PT. I gained 1/4 of an inch in three weeks. So now my legs are 18" (Left) and 18.5" (Right). I feel pretty good about growing 1/4 of a inch in leg muscle in 3 weeks time. It makes all of this work worth it! Besides the fact that I feel I am getting stronger, I can see the subtle changes in my muscle definition. My wife says it is hardly noticeable now, before it was a dramatic difference between the size of my quads.

We had a good weekend working out and eating except that we both had two cheat desserts… man and they were bad. We had some huge brownies on both Friday and Saturday night…but to make things worse on Satruday, mine was a brownie sunday. I felt great eating them, then of course felt the sugar rush and started felling not so good afterwords… Oh Well, just more time on the treadmill/elliptical now .

My wife and I both had great workouts on Saturday. I did cardio first thing in the am, then ate breakfast and digested for a little while and went to the gym and did my Upper Body workout. I did a full circuit of Chest, Back, Shoulders, Bi’s and Tri’s for the first time in weeks. I have been very lazy with working other body parts beside my legs for my PT, so that is why I hit them all at once like that. I wanted to shcok/wake up my body that I need to get back on track again. Feeling the DOMS after this would help to reinforce this thought, and boy did it ever. My wife did a leg workout at home. She felt just as sore as I did, but she said it made her feel good as well, knowing that she had gotten in a good workout. We both take Sundays off..

I have a mini vacation / golf trip to Myrtle Beach coming up this week so I am condensing my workouts for a weekend with the boys… I don’t think I will be doing any lifting with early tee times and late night poker and some beer swilling.. But it is a vacation after all.

So as everyone knows, when you are cutting it is always diffiult. Especially trying to do social things, like going out with friends for dinner and a couple of beers. The thing is, if you can do it, it is so worth it. The last couple of time I cut, I did really well for myself, so I know I can do it. I dropped wieght, bodyfat and gained muscle. I think, it was something like 7 lbs of weight, 15 lbs of fat and gained 11 lbs of muscle. Not a big net loss in wieght, but since that wasn’t my focus I was pretty happy with the results. I had lost 4 inches off my stomach, so it felt really good to get dressed in the morning (and of course undressed at night!).

 So here I am in another cutting cycle, but this time I feel like it is a little harder than before because I am cutting while trying to rehab my knee. I cut my calories by 500 per day. I have stopped adding sugar to my coffee, if I need any sweetener for my sweet tooth I add a little splenda, but not every day, just everyonce and a while. I think it is working very well for me. I am down to 196 lbs from 202 lbs after the holidays. Where it is getting hard for me is that I can’t push myself with Cardio the way I need and want to. I realize that I just don’t have the stamina right now, but that it will come. My wife is ultra supportive, so that is a big help. She justs wants me to feel better, and she knows that working out will help with that. This morning I did Cardio first thing on an empty stomach for the first time in months. I couldn’t do it because of my knee before, but when I tried recently, I couldn’t do it then either because of my lack of stamina and endurance. Today felt pretty good. I could only get 20 minutes in before I had to stop, but I had it pusing myself pretty hard. I was on the treadmill since I was doing it from home today, but on a treadmill I can’t run, so I have to walk at a good pace and incline.

 So to all of you who are cutting… I feel your pain and I also feel your joy. Slow progress will be my mantra to get myself to my goals!

So I am being very consistent with my knee therapy, which translates to my legs getting a great workout in every 3-4 days. I am trying very hard not to overtrain my legs. I feel a need to really push myself, but I am wary of over training. So far so good. My other workouts are lagging behind, but I am getting back on track now. It has helped me a lot that my wife is very motivated to workout and now we both are getting up early in the morning. This allows me to workout before work which means I will actually do it…My job is such that if I tried to workout in the afternoon, it would never happen and I would get home late and eat dinner really late (7-7:30 pm). We don’t want to eat dinner that late, so I have to actually change into a morning person now! UGH…

Typical Leg day is as follows:
10 minute warmup backwards on the treadmill, 9 incline, 2 MPH
2 X 20 Stepups each leg (step is set at about 24 inches!)
2 x 20 wall squats
2 x 10 Single Leg Step Downs
2 x 10 Single Leg Extensions
2 X 10 Leg Curls
2 x 10 Single Leg Press
2 x 20 Single Leg Calf Raises.

I went over this workout with my PT. He said based on the schedule I set up for myself I should be fine as far as overtraining goes. I was worried that I wasn’t getting enough Hamstring work in, but based on the way I feel, that isn’t the case. I do feel a lot stronger. Next workout I am considering adding weight to the step ups and wall squats, or maybe changing from wall squats to some dumbbell free squats.. We will see how the recovery goes over the next couple of days.