Joe’s BodyBlog

Ok, so I understand there are all sorts of articles about motivation on the internet, but I have to admit, the best motivation I get comes from others here on BB.com.

So thank you fellow users of BB.com for doing what you do and helping keep me motivated. I am a voyuer and fan of many great profiles on bodyspace and it is you, the people of bb.com that keep me on track, or at least remind me to stay the course!

Yesterday was my 6 month post surgery check up and my surgeon is very happy with my progress. My leg is getting stonger everyday and I have gained a lot of muscle and definition on my left Quad. My Quads are 1/2 inch apart in size. Which based on my surgery is really good. The surgeon wants me to gain that 1/2 inch back by my next appointment with him which is in 3 months. I think I can do it, but I will have to hit the gym hard, which is tricky of course coming off an injury, but not unreasonable. My confidence with my leg is not there yet, especially since last week I heard a POP when I went to turn around after washing my hands at a sink. It scared the the hell out of me, but the surgeon said that was scar tissue breaking up and to expect it to happen more over the next few months as I gain more strength and confidence with my knee. He said the surgery creates a lot of scar tissue in the area around the portals and where they had to remove the bad cartiledge, so even though I am working out, I am not doing any twisting or impact exercises yet so my ROM is pretty even. When you start doing more twisting and impact moves it moves the scar tissue around and breaks it up, sometimes with loud POPS and other noises and occasionally some pain. I have to watch my knee when this happens, if the pain is constent or there is swelling after the noises I am to check in with the surgeon right away, but otherwise just consider it normal. Right, that makes me feel so good! Of course I don’t want it to limit me, but I have to face reality I have limits…

One thing I wish is that i could hustle more, I mean I like to run and to move. But I can’t do it yet as much as I want to. The surgeon said to give myself some more time but it will come, just keep working out and keep myself on the right path and I will do fine when the time comes. I miss not being able to run and really push myself. The elliptical cross trainer is hard and all, but I would love to be able to play basketball or lacrosse again. Heck the last time I played either of those sports, I hadn’t even been to an Orthopedic Surgeon ever… Now I am have 3 surgeries in the past 6 years..2 on my left knee and one on my shoulder..Sucks getting old!

Well I will just keep working hard and I will get there…

So I didn’t let Wednesday distract me, I got right back on track yesterday and did Wednesday’s work on Thursday, which was Legs. I didn’t do legs as hard the first time out because I was concerned about what my knee could take. Since it held up very well and I didn’t have any post workout pain from it, this week I pushed it a little harder. I also made sure I checked my range of motion with each exercise, so I slowed down a little bit to do that. But man it makes a difference to have proper form and to pay attention to it. My butt is killing me today, I worked that Gleuteus Maximus (sp) very hard… and the legs that are attached to it. What a great workout it was. I felt so good afterwords. I was a little crunched for time so I skipped my cardio but I will get that in.

This morning I did Chest and Shoulders. The workout I have from AnimalPak has these days seperate, but since I skipped a day I did them together to get caught up. I really felt the workout today. Again I checked my ROM and it was great. I also worked very hard on my breathing to make sure I was exhaling when I was pushing the weight. I have a tendancy to hold my breath, which isn’t good. So breathing is important as well. The modifications I made to the shoulder workout have worked out very well. I do the side lateral raises with my elbows bent, then move to internal rotations, then external rotations, then the shoulder press machine since it has support. I am going to feel this workout tomorrow for sure…

I haven’t commented much on my diet for the past couple of posts. Probably becuase I keep it pretty simple so I am "hoping" it is enough. I know I should write things down and check to make sure I am getting enough food and my nutrients are correct, but I am lazy I admit it. So I will list my typical days food and someone can correct me if they feel so inclined .

Breakfast - Pre-workout

1 cup cooked Oatmeal - then a portein source (usually some Turkey bacon or Eggs or Faux Sausage patty) 2 cups decaf coffee with 2% milk

Snack - Post workout

Either a MRP bar or shake (depends on if I am working at home) and a piece of Fruit (apple or bananna)

Lunch

Either a Salad (Romaine, carrots, peppers etc) with Chicken, Turkey or Tuna and 2 tbs Newmans Olive Oil Dressing or a Cold Cut sandwhich and Stoneyfield farms lowfat yougurt plus a 2% cheese stick.

Afternoon Snack

Homemade Protein Bar (got the recipe from BB.com) and a piece of fruit (apple or bannana)

Dinner

Grilled Chicken, Turkey, Fish or Steak, Steamed Veggies (usually Broccoili or Asparagus) and either a Sweet Potato or Brown Rice

Late Snack

Usually some Protein Pudding

I haven’t done any calculations on any of this yet, but I will make that my next minny goal to check my MacroNutrients. Oh and I drink about 1 gallon of water every day.

Ok so I really didn’t have time to workout yesterday because I had a dr’s appointment in the morning (teeth cleaning) and my summer golf league started yesterday, so I missed my Leg workout because of it… and then to top it off the golf got cancelled last minute, GRRRR. I don’t like missing my workouts for things that don’t actually happen, had I known I could have jumped over to the gym after the golf got canceled. Oh well. I will do my legs today after work since I had morning meetings getting in the way of doing my am workout. This would all be simplier if I could get my lazt butt out of bed at a resonable time…I should be getting up at 6 am, but instead I don’t start moving until 7 then I move so slow, it is 8:30 before I leave the house. It drives me crazy that I do this. But yet I perpetuate a bad habit that I don’t like about myself… what does that say about me? hmmmm…

Anyhow, at least I know this is an issue so I am admitting it and will address it. That is the first step to correcting a problem anyhow…

So yesterday was the begining of my second week. I had a great workout and afterwards I did 20 minutes of Cardio. But for some reason even though I was very tired last night, I eneded up not being able to sleep. I hate that. When you need to sleep to heal and grow and nothing works. It was all in my head, but I wasn’t able to shut it down… usually if I try reading for a while it works, so that is what I did. I don’t have any mainstream books availible right now, so I was reading a nice book about "How to Romance your wife". I know it is corney, but I have been with my wife a long time, so I like to keep things fresh! So I will learn from anything or anyone..

 Today was my back workout and it was a good one. I feel like I am already getting into a good grove with this workout program. I can get my weight training done in about 45 minutes and then I do my cardio, varies from 20-30 to even 40 minutes. Everything went very well. I did feel like I pulled something doing deadlifts, so next week I am going to grab a trainer and have them check my form. I don’t want to get injuried, especially not this early into my workout program. Injuries are the biggest killer of my progress and I know this so I try to be careful.

I did some new measurements. It seems kind of weird, according to these measurements, I dropped almost 5% bodyfat in one week? I mean I lost 1 pound of weight and I did lose two inches off my stomach, but that seems a little skewed. I figure either I did something wrong last week or I did something wrong this week, but this is why I will measure myself every week. I want to get a consitent measurement.

Friday I did my shoulder workout and as I predicited, I couldn’t do the workout as laid out in the plan I am following. More like for my shoulder health I decided not to do it. So instead I am doing my own workout for my shoulder. I have been doing the same style of shoulder workout for a while now, it works and I hit all of the muscles in the shoulder, but I don’t strees the joint the way "traditional" bodybuilding moves do, like Shoulder Press (Miliatry or Dumbbell), Arnold Press, etc. There are plenty of other moves the will work the shoulders without adding a lot of stress to the joint, like internal and external rotations, lateral raises, shrugs etc. So that is what I am doing instead. Although, I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that I do like doing the shoulder press MACHINE. It supports my back and neck while not stressing my shoulder as much as the free weights does. I know it is hypocritical, but I feel that getting help from the machine justifies this move for me.

Easter weekend we had family in town which was very nice, but both my wife and I use it as an excuse to eat like crap while there are here. I am not sure why, but we do it everytime they are around…We will have to watch that.. Easter Sunday was my cheat day and I didn’t disappoint. Let’s see, how many chocalate eggs did I have? I really don’t want to count and oh there was that piece of Key lime pie… Well that is why it was cheat day, but man I over did it, even for me and my sweet tooth. I think I would have to double my cardio all week just to get close to equalizing the calories I took in. What’s done is done… just got to move on. 

Ok so like I said on my previous post, I needed something to get me back in gear. So what better way to do it by choosing a workout from BB.com (how is that for a little brown-nosing eh?). Anyhow, the workouts are going great. I have had a messed up week at work, working crazy hours so I sneak in the workouts when I can versus getting them in during the morning which is what I prefer.

So a quick review:

Monday - Arms (Bi’s and Tri’s) and I added Cardio

Tuesday - Back - No time for Cardio when I was done..

Wednesday - Legs - and I added Cardio

Thursday - Chest - and I added Cardio and Ab work.

Monday was a great workout, I screwed up a little and didn’t do the drop sets, I just did straight sets, but hey I am still learning. Tuesday’s back day was awesome. It was hard work, but I felt great afterwards. Usually when I work my back really hard I am dead the next few days, this didn’t happen, I felt the workout (and still do), but I fell like I can walk and bend over…Wednesday I worked my Legs, which I have to admit I was a little worried about given my knee. But it was a great workout, I was surprised about how well I did. I actually think I went a little light and conservative because I was so concerned about my knee. I will see how I recover to decide how I will push it next week. I added to the Leg workout, since they didn’t have any Calf work in the workout outline on this site.  Today was my Chest day, this was another great workout. I understand where the AnimalPak guys are coming from now with how Bench is more then a Pec workout, since you work the Deltoids and Triceps. I say this now because the Chest workout today really kicked my butt. I learned during my PT that when you work a muscle group is just as important to which exercises you do and the order of them. I bring this up during my Chest workout because I did the Inlcine Press work then went to do the dumbbell bench and I had to use a lot less weight for the dumbbell press then normal. Man did I feel it. What a great workout!

Tomorrow is my shoulder day. I have to admit I don’t feel comfortable with all of the exercises in this workout because I had a SLAP repair done to my shoulder back in 2001. It was major shoulder surgery and my Surgeon told me point blank he didn’t want me doing any full fulcrum shoulder moves. The warm up is a full fulcrum move of Side Lateral Raises. I can modify these buy bringing my Elbows in and Bending them. I am also not supposed to do Military or Full Shoulder Presses, so I will need to think about what I do to get the same workout with different moves. I am going to search the database for exercises that work the Shoulders the same way, but don’t put the stress on the joint that I am worried about.

 I am looking forward to wrapping up this first week and recovering over the weekend and getting back to it on Monday!

Ok so last week I said I was going to give myself a couple of days to design my program. I found one here on BB.com that I felt would help me to meet my goals. It is a program that looks really hard but I felt it would be great for me because it would allow me to do my cutting and really work my muscles hard for my workouts. Personally, over the last couple of years I have been doing the BFL life workouts, which I still believe are good, but when I tweaked them to my liking, I got much better results. My stats prove it. My back and shoulders had grown a lot as did my biceps, but with over six months of not working out the way I needed too and should have been because of my knee surgery it shows. Heck I lost four inches in my shoulders… if my measurements were correct in the first place?!

So here is the workout… http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/animalpak78.htm, and today is the first day of doing it. I will  be doing Arms today after work. I know I can’t lift as much as the author puts in the article, but my ego has never been worried about that. I just felt like doing this program for the next few months would kick my butt out of the rut that it is in and give my body the growth I want. I know I am not trying to be a body builder, but I want to get stronger and more cut, so my thoughts are that this will help me to meet my goals. Plus I will be doing cardio a few days a week as well. I have built in some 3 month goals from today and I will track them on here both in my blog and on my bodyspace page. This will be interesting to watch, at least for me since it is my body!

Measurements - Well, I did my measurements today, Weight, Neck, Shoulders, chest, stomach (at my bellybutton), hips, thighs, knee, calf, ankle, biceps, forearm and wrist. Why all of these? I don’t have any calipers or any way to do my bodyfat percentage and http://www.mybodycomp.com wants all of those measurements to do the BodyFat Percetage. It might not be the best way of calculating it, I have tired others and some of them are here on bb.com, but it seems to be the most consistent. I really don’t like what I see. My wieght has been stable, but my BF% has increased, not the direction I want it to do. Especially since I eat clean 6 out of 7 days, only 1 cheat day, but I admit I do add a cheat item from time to time during the week. I really don’t have a full cheat day though, maybe just one or two meals during that day, breakfast is always something clean. I can’t really cheat on that, it is a pyschological thing for me I guess. So in writting this I might see part of my problem with my diet, I am justifying my bad habits…  I guess that is a wake up call as well as seeing my BF%.

I posted some old pictures from past BFL Challenges, just for my own records, I have more and some more recent ones. I will post them later.

3 months to lose 10 pounds of weight and 9% BF is this realistic? I think so, feel free to comment people I know I need the help!