Going for capillary growth
My leg workouts have never been this sissy. The back isn’t allowing me to do pretty much anything right now, so when it comes to legs I am doing lots of isolation movements and lots of high rep body-weight compound movements-ball squats, lunges and lateral lunges…etc. I get a great pump, but I am sceptical about how much of that is actually converted into muscle growth. I always used to have the idea of ‘growing to the pump’ in mind during my workouts. The bigger the pump, the more I would grow, I decided. I know that idea sounds kind of goofy, but it’s what kept me motivated. And of course, there is something very attractive about a skin busting, muscle cramping pump-one of those that literally keeps you from bending your arm, one that is actually painful to flex even hours after the workout-those are the good ones.
Now that I’m done complaining about my back, I want to report good news in reference to it. I have seen my napprapat for the second time now and it’s very najs! I’ve been to chiropractors before and had work done, but something feels better about it now. I feel like I am developing a plan for the future rather than just adjusting and trying to negate old problems now.
The pec is still tender, or at least I think it’s still tender(that’s a good sign, right?!). As much as that irritated me in the beginning, I am pretty ok with it now. I know that in the past I’ve focused far too much on the immediate discomfort of not being able to train for the few weeks it would take to heal a minor injury than on the much more devasting reality of not being able to train at all in the future or needing surgery because of ignorance and always trying to find a way to ‘train around’ the injury. I’m going to try to ‘train around’ as little as possible now. I’m just going to let the chest/bench suffer and when it heals, it will come back. I’d like to say that’s ok with me, but it’s more like just slightly not ok with me-which is actually pretty good considering, in my past life, it would have been devestatingly not ok. This is a good thing anyway; I’ve really noticed my shoulder impingement symptoms flaring up much more than usual(they’re always with me to a small extent) since I started doing heavy flats again and I think I’ll take this time to take care of that before it becomes a bigger problem. You know, when it comes to long term intense exercise, I have a hard time thinking that anyone is going to remain injury free. Everything hinges on balance, balance of the physique. Everything’s about levers and if one is pulling ever so lightly more on it’s counterpart than it should be, then it has a never ending chain of effects-which, even it’s just a small imbalance, will eventually cause something to happen. And if it’s not that, then you’ve got simple over use or over stress of your connective tissues. If you’re not feeding yourself exactly what you need all the time(you’re training ALL the time, afterall) and you’re not resting as much as you need, again all the time because you’re training almost never stops, then it’s hard to imagine a person not running into trouble at some point along the way. I mean, a person would have to get everything right almost all the time to not end up with some kind of injury, whether caused from a single incident or from cumulative stress. And I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’ve come to the conclusion that the end goal really isn’t the end goal. We all have interests in life so we can learn from those interests. It’s the learning, it’s the curiousity that keeps us going. I think, at some point, most of us come to understand that we are not going to be Mr. Olympia or even make it to the stage…but when we say that, and acknowledge it, it’s funny how few of us actually just up and quit-basically no one does…we still weightlift; because it hasn’t really ever been about the end goal, it’s been about liking it right now. It’s about enjoying the small improvements and figuring out how to get more and everything that comes along with that day to day ’struggle.’-I’m almost hesitant to use that word because it makes the whole thing sound negative when it’s definitely not. I think we all like it right now, right this instant; and I think that it would behov many of us, definitely myself, to become more aware of that.
