rawlife’s BodyBlog

   Sounds a bit hard to believe to me.  I was using a Precor elliptical type machine(a newer model, bit different) which gave me an HR reading of 180-188 for a full 20 minutes straight yesterday.  That seems a little unlikely to me.  Nonetheless, I had a great time doing it.  My feet fell asleep for the last ten minutes or so, but the rest of me was lovin it.  I don’t often do cardio although I’ve said on at least one occassion before that I am going to start doing it regularly.  Now I think I will.  Much like my new dedication to stretching(which I have kept up), cardio appeals to my sense of being a more well rounded athlete-which is pretty much the only thing that makes me work out these days.  As I’ve said on numerous occassions before, I’ve lost almost all drive to get bigger.  That’s become very unappealing to me; and part of that is due to a kind of obcessive thought or feeling I keep getting that my head will look to small for my body.  I see this all the time on guys, I wonder if I’m the only one. 

    Another reason is that I’ve become somehow very turned off by the whole ideal.  I haven’t actually thought that bigger is better for several years now…I don’t know why I should be striving for it.  My new idea as of late is to start doing things that I really think are fun and what I’ve always thought of as fun are puzzles(I did a TON of puzzles as a kid).  Right now, figuring out how to make my body work correctly and better than it has before fufills that desire.  Maybe when I get that straightened out, I’ll be turned on to competitive bodybuilding again as a means to create something visibly artistic out of something fully functional.  That’s an idea. 

   In other news, I am going on vacation this thursday.  It will be a week on the Faroe Islands, just under a week in Iceland, and then just under two weeks in the States.  I haven’t packed yet and I don’t know what I will be bringing.  I keep toying with the idea of not bringing anything, of just going and seeing what happens.  I don’t have enough money to stay anywhere, so the plan is the sleep outside.  That’s always been the plan; but I was originally planning on bringing a tent. The tent is out though.  It’s going to weigh too much and I don’t want anything that weighs a lot putting pressure on my spine.  They do have ultra light weight tents but they were out of my price range.  So we’ll see where I end up sleeping.  The thing about the Faroes and Iceland, I’ve heard, is that they are windy.  And rainy.  I do have a poncho.  In one way or another, it will get sorted out and I’ll have a great time.   

   I can’t even begin to express to you how more than happy I am with private Swedish health care.  The physical therapist I’ve been seeing has put me through the ringer with these new back movements.  They’re a combination of stretching and strenthening, both of which I am at a severe loss for in regards to my back.  Some of them are so friggin hard yet so almost astoundingly easy looking that I almost can’t believe it-and those around me probably can’t believe their ears when they hear the loud grunting noises I’m making either, given the seemingly apparent easiness of these ’supercises’.  In addition to loud grunting noises, I swear a lot.  This helps get me through my set.  If I blame the pain on something other than myself-usually the piece of equipment or some part of my body(which I consider outside of myself). 

   My shoulders, my dear Ingrid, are also friggin wrecked.  Wrecked in a good way, but wrecked.  Some of these movements require me to hold a broomstick of sorts behind my back with good posture(something entirely foreign to me) and keep it there for up to several minutes at a time while I labor laboriously bending and contorting myself into positions remarkably reminiscent of highschool cheerleading.  This is what I always wanted. 

   But the back, my friends, is feeling much better.  It really is.  All complaining aside, I am so thankful to have been given the motivation to actually do something about this problem once and for all and then to encounter such great people in the process who are all more than capable of helping me.  And by the way, the motivation was me hurting it again, bad enough this time to really get my attention.   Surprise surprise, a negative becomes a positive. 

  I did a minor crushing of the legs yesterday.  Two sets of plate runs(which, once agin, if you haven’t tried, you are missing out), a set of YoYo leg curls, a set of lateral walks, and some abductor/adductor work.  They’ve been minorly sore all day.  Might be getting a little worse as I write this.  For those who don’t know, which is probably most of you, there is a new technology in town.  It’s called YoYo technology.  To be honest, we only have two pieces of that kind of equipment at our gym and one of the two is pretty damn shakey, but the other is up there in the excellent category.  It works like this: there’s a resistance wheel which is attached to a belt which is attached to the lever.  As you pull on the lever, the belt spins the resistance wheel with however much force you applied.  As the belt reaches it’s limit(at the very top of the movement), it yanks the wheel back in the other direction with that same amount of resistance.  Like a YoYo.  Very good if you want to concentrate on the eccentric portion of the movement.  Also a very cool feel.   

   Tomorrow I’m gonna crush some upper body.  Tonight, in about two minutes I’m gonna crush some raw sailor’s beef, some chopped onions, some watercres, some parsley, some olive oil and some raw butter.  For the time being, I’ve taken any kind of ground meat out of the nutritional plan.  It just wasn’t sitting that well.  Chopped up meat, on the other hand, sits real well. 

   Haven’t heard that song in a looooong time.  Haven’t heard that band in a long time.  Live win, dare fail, eat the dirt and bite the nail-I like that.  Funny people moaning about post Black album Metallica not being very heavy. Post black album was when that band got heavy. They slowed down a whole lot, but they they were crushin the scales with lyrical weight and new found base lines.  My opinion anyway.  Don’t believe me?, compare Until it Sleeps or King Nothing with any of their speed metal tunes from back in the day.  Way heavier.  I like it all though…kind of.  These days I find myself pretty sensitive to negativity in music.  Haha, I find myself at the front desk of my gym A LOT more often than before asking to change the music.   

   The last week has been focused on back rehab, and all, I must say, is lookin up.  I’m actually really impressed with Swedish physical therapists.  I had my first official visit to one yesterday for my back(DEFINITELY not my first visit to a physical therapist) and I left feeling damn good.  Damn good.  Really positive experience.  Thank you Ingrid.  Thank you Frida for referring me.  Couple of highlights:using deadlifts and even running(haven’t been able to run in forever) as therapeutic exercises and getting a new Mckenzie adjustment exercise-actually the missing link I’ve been looking for for a couple of years now.  Thank God.  And I do.  Funny that it came in the package it did-as a ’set up’ to the other exercise…this is something that has a lot of meaning to me because lately I have been learning a lot of lessons having to do with just that-making things work by setting them up correctly and then doing whatever it is I have to do.  Candida is a perfect example, prebiotics then probiotics. 

   In other news, I did only a minor crushing of the legs yesterday, given that I was being careful in regards to the back.  I’ve pretty much made the decision to live and train for physical health first and goals/accomplishments second.  In the back of my mind, I feel like the latter are still important to me, but they’re just not going to be achieved if I don’t get this body in working order.  I mean, I was thinking about it yesterday and I have pain in pretty much all my bodyparts.  A lot of us experienced trainees do. 

    I did a 473.25 deadlift when I was 15 and tore ligaments in my lower back, now have problems with herniating discs.  Before that I had shoulder impingements and still do.  During that same time I started developing forearm and bicep problems that I still have and still haven’t gotten diagnosed.  I have periodic elbow pain.  I just started getting occassional pec pain.  One of my calves is half the size of the other and cramps roughly half the time I try to flex it.  I’ve torn my hamstring once and my gastroc twice. Tears are no joke, bud.  I think that just about covers it, but shit, that’s a lot.  I’m actually glad I listed it all out just now.  I’m just 25.  That’s a lot.  I need to take care of this body!  People wonder why I live the way I do…I have to! 

   Last, I found myself in two somewhat heavy conversations yesterday and the day before, I believe it was.  Yesterday’s was really heavy.  Funny thing though, for one of the very first time’s in my life I left the conversation with a point to drive down people’s throats still in my throat.  I said something that might have made me seem less positive in the eyes of others regarding something that was said at the very end of the discussion and after a moment, I decided to just let it rest.  I think the others are more than capable of putting two and two together given everything else I said in the same conversation and given my energy.  That was a bit of a test for me…to just be quiet.  I need to do a lot more of that.  Life is probably helping me by putting me in a country in which the language is still difficult for me. 

   The other conversation was about bodybuilding.  Funny, for the second time in a couple of months I found myself quietly defending the very people I tend to dislike more than others-bodybuilders.  It started with me saying my usual schpeal about how I tend to see bbers today and immediately think ‘what are you doing, why are you wearing what you are wearing, why are you acting the way you are acting, why have you decided to de-masculinize your own body and then try to pass it off for the exact opposite…what are you compensating for?’ 

    So I got all that out of my system and then, surprisingly, I found myself thinking ‘wait a second, why does anyone do anything?’ ’what motivates anyone to do anything?’  Well the answer I’ve come up with is curiousity coupled with some kind of want, or in other words, lack.  I think the reason most everyone does everything can be boiled down to trying to compensate for some kind of lack…the most enlightened of all people only lacking a sense of satisfaction or maybe even just fun-doing things just because they are bored…but the vast majority seem to do things because we are in some kind of significant discomfort based in fear and separation from what I would call the source, or God.  Most people have spread out their compensation over a wide variety of acts and avenues to feeling good, but some have put all the compensation into just one or two things-which sets them apart from the rest, maybe making them stand out as weird or even dysfunction in a way…but I think all boiled down, they are not that different at all from anyone else in regards to their need to compensate.  I think you’ll find that most of the people we consider to be the best of the best in anything share this single avenue quality.  From music to sports, maybe even to charity. 

  Just some thoughts… 

    That’s alright, a lot of good comes out of failure.  So I went to the wedding the other day, fasted all day till about 7, which started feeling pretty dang good right about then.  Then we went in for the banquet and I quickly realized that instead of it being a serve yourself kind of deal, it was a sit down and get served three proper courses type of meal with arranged seating and everything, which then made it harder for me to continue my fast given that it was going to draw attention to myself and seem somewhat rude, imo.  Of course, I could have done it, but at that particular moment, doing that was out of my comfort zone.  Kind of embarassing after everything that I wrote in my last entry, but I’m manning up now to clear the air and get back on track officially.

   Otherwise, of course, everything’s been good.  I ate great yesterday-had some raw lamb filet and that was surprisingly good.  I’m going to eat that more often, lots of fat on it.  Anyone who eats the way I do knows that fat is a most prized possession.  Everything is so anti-fat today that getting meat, organic meat, that hasn’t been stripped of it is like finding a goldmine.  These butchers and grocery stores don’t know what they’re throwing away when they callously trash pounds and pounds of organ meat and fat.  I would gladly pay for just the fat and the organs.  In fact, lately, at least one if not two of my daily meals consist of only fat. 

   In other news, I had a phenomenal time yesterday with my friends from work doing a physical/mental team challenge at the castle in Vaxholm.  Really fun challenges, specifically one where you had to make your way across a dark stone room, swinging on chains, to retrieve a key and put it back in it’s rightful place.  Part of the difficulty there was not just getting across the room but also getting back because by then your other teammates occupied most of the chains behind you that you needed to get back on while you were using the ones they needed to get there on.  Interestingly, my back does not feel nearly as permanently damaged as I thought it was going to feel today.  In fact, I dare say that it feels better than it did the day before!  I was relatively sure that all the running and wild movements were going to leave me with a blog that went something like this: ‘Hi guys, I’m quittting bodybuilding as I can no longer feel my legs.  Tack och hej, leverpastej."  Although, this idea that every new moment is just another oppurtunity to create whatever you want was one that was running through my mind right before we got started so I thought that if I stretched really well before the day’s activities maybe that would re-align me to an extent, which it did, and also free up some formerly paralyzed muscle tissue surrounding the disc to be used and strengthened with these very likely wild and flailing movements, thus making the situation even better, which it did!  Great Success!  In all seriousness, I was really apprehensive yesterday.  I was 100% sure that I was going to do serious damage.  Running+Paul does not usually=Great Success.

   Another great success for the day was eating with the team.  I don’t know how much everyone enjoyed watching me eat my raw lamb filet, but I enjoyed feeling somewhat comfortable eating it with them as they ate their food.  It has been too long since I did that.  Whereas before I was always eating the raw meat in public places to get the attention of others, lately I have been only eating it at home specfically to avoid the attention of others.  The first two stages served their purpose but now it’s time to start bringing everything back into reality, to start diffusing back into society and giving people the oppurtunity to accept me for me.  Nice feeling, new feeling. 

  Good morning, good morning, good morning!  Nice to see you, thank you for coming.  I’ve realized something in the last few days.  Something that I’ve, of course, known logically for quite some time but hadn’t actually REAL-ized, that hadn’t actually diffused into my whole body just yet.  That is that many of the ‘mental’ problems people are suffering from, are actually physical problems resulting from poor nutrition and lack of sleep.  And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that chronic anger is the biggest one and depression is the next biggest, often being a result of the anger.  I think, though, that a lot of people’s mental issues are the braindead child of chronic self inflicted physical abuse-not just depression and anger, but a whole slew of things that plenty of people take plenty of perscription drugs for, which, by the way, happen to end up in our waterways leaving us with toxic fish and dead plantlife.  

   With the exception of last night, because of an awesome conversation I had with my now ex Kristina, I have decided that for the time being it’s best that I start getting ready for bed at 8 and try and close my eyes by 9.15-9.30 or so.  I’m doing this, not because I particularly like it, but because roughly twice a week I have to wake up at 6 to train someone at 7 and if I were to only try and go to bed early on those nights, I would never be able to fall asleep.  Hence, the early bedtime every night.  I’ve also been eating great lately.  I mean really great, and I’m enjoying it.  In fact, a couple of times, I’ve walked by people eating junk and I’ve actually been very thankful that I ‘don’t have to do that.’  That I have come to the point in my life where I can actually turn my back for good or close to good if I want.  That I don’t have to be driven by that urge to act and kill myself slowly.  Now THAT, my friends, is a nice feeling.  The whole goal right now is to get inspiringly healthy; and, as I said in my last post, if I have to miss out on a couple of things because of it, then that’s what’s going to have to happen right now.  You make sacrifices in life for the greater good.

    I’ve noticed in these last couple of days, as my energy levels have been steadily increasing along with my dislike for low energy that I am actually in control over how I feel.  That even when falling into the old patterns of anger and resentment, I can say to myself ‘I don’t actually have to feel this way right now’ and then, seemingly magically to me, stop feeling that way.  This has never happened to me before.  In fact, I’ve always been a kind of slave to certain emotions-anger and frustration being the big ones.  Maybe because they’ve been the driving force in my life for so long.  They’ve been very useful, those two emotions, but I think it’s time to go.  It’s time for me to start doing things because I want to do things rather than doing things because I desperately don’t want the negation of those things.  There’s a damn big difference between those two motivating factors.  

   In other news, the workouts have been pretty stellar.  Did upperbody/lowerbody sessions this week and I’ll probably continue doing that for a few weeks.  It seems to me that one of the main issues with fullbody sessions and taking so many days off is that the growth hormonal effect on the body is not as great as with the daily sessions. I’m not just talking GH here, I’m talking testosterone as well.  I notice that when I do at least something daily, I’m a bit more like the person I’ve always identified with and when I train just 2x weekly, I’m a bit more subdued.  Having said that, it counts even if it’s just stretching, some cardio, and just a bit of strength training for a smaller muscle groups like forearms or neck or calves. 

    Anyway, I have a wedding to go to and I have a wrinkly suit that needs ironing.  I’m fasting today…we’ll see how that goes over at the banquet. Ha!