qrx333’s BodyBlog

Im back in the States! Thanks to all who offered me their, encouragement, support and friendship while I was deployed. It truly means a great deal.

Well, I came back from R&R. I had been lifting heavy doing A HIT routine. I was squatting 315 for reps and pushing 200 lbs bodyweight. I had dropped power cleans from form routine. The other night (Sunday) I BS’ing with some guys about cleans and saw 135 on the rack and I went up there to grab it off and clean it but I did not let it hang first. TWEAK. I felt the old infrspinitis and supraspinitis get hit by lightning. There was no immediate pain other than that. I finished my workout. That night it felt like my T-Shirt was bunched up in my armpit…..but it wasn’t. It still feels that way. I saw the doc today (he was the team physician for the Naval Academy football team). He examined me and found nothing torn and sent me over to physical thearapy for the old rotator cuff rubber band exercises. I was hoping for a cortisone shot but he said it wasn’t bad enough.  He said I could keep lifting as long as the pain didn’t get worse. I might try some legs tomorrow. I’m going to tkae it easy till the pain subsides. I will NEVER, EVER stop doing the cuff exercises again. And I will make sure I don’t committ a "training error" (the docs term for my clean stunt) again. IM not going to let this derail my progress.

Well, things weren’t a bad as I thougt. I dieted hard to get down to 180 but my run and situps were good with very little extra training. I think all the kicking in the martial arts training builds hip flexor endurance. I did very few sit up sessions yet still knocked out 74 sit ups in 2 minutes; more than I have done in the past when I have been tranining sit ups directly. Kinda weird. I did the 2 mile  run in 14:53. Again kinda weird because I have not been doing a lot of running. I did a couple of interval workouts when I was in Bagdhad last week. I felt great. Again I think the cross fit type training coupled with the martial arts help with the run times. We do a lot of sparring and thats somewhat like intervals.
My bad shoulder kicked in and I could only get out 55 push ups. Again, very little direct training. I think if I hit pushups hard and do some running next time Ill get 100%.

I seem to be over my extreme exhaustion. I think it was a combination of getting used to the schedule, switching to a ’day on/day off’ concept and getting more rest. I lift and do martial arts on one day ond some very light cardio like swimming or walking the next day. We call getting more rest sleep discipline. Now that the Im past the PT test I can get back on track with muscle building. My focus on martial arts will still limit my mass gains but life’s full of trade offs!!

Not really where I want to be….I have the Army Physical Readiness Test coming up in a few weeks so I have to modify my training to get ready for that event.  At 69″ I can weigh 186 lbs.  I am allowed a BF% of up to 24 but I hate to “get taped” and like to get under the screening weight, plus dropping the weight  helps my run time. I need to do: 66 push ups in two minutes, 72 sit ups in two minutes and run 2 miles in 14:06 in order to get the maximum score. The extra training I have to do to get my run time down cuts into my lifting. Pulls the traing for push up and sit up endurance cuts into my amss. I’m PO’d about it because I was going crazy in the gym and was getting close to 200lns bodyweight when I was told about the test. 

I’ve also upped my Eskrima lately. We have a guy over here who was a top level competitor in Hawaii and a world ranked Filipino guy from Cebu over here and need to get all the training I can from them during the deployment that coupled with the dieting, and lack of sleep has led to the dreaded ‘overtraining zone’!! This had led to an increase in pain fomr my arthritis. I think I can break out of it with more sleep but given the mission constraints that is not always possible. I my not hit my body composition goals but I will be in awesome shape and my spirit and mind will definitely be tougher.

Hey folks. I’ve been "out of the net" for a few days. I got stuck in the ’stan. It was great from a training standpoint. Its an airfield up in the mountains at 5000 feet. I stayed in a small camp within the camp. The gym was great. Very spartan. Power rack. Cable crossover a few benches and a rack of dumbells. Next time Ill bring a camera.

Our plane broke down and I got a couple of good work outs in.

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