rawlife’s BodyBlog

  Everything has been going pretty well, but it’s been a bit much lately-and I think it’s showing in my blogs and even my personality.  I’ve been a little more aggressive than I feel like I really am lately.  That’s usually a sign of some kind of disomfort.  On the other hand, I’ve really been making a conscious effort to not ’put people in their place’ when a disagreement arises.  Lately, coming out a loser doesn’t bother me all that much.  In fact, it’s really what I’ve been longing for, for a while.  Throughout my life, I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to win and be the best and to come out on top(especially in arguments) but even more than that, to impress people.  I need a break from that, at least from it’s intensity.  People don’t like it and I don’t either.  It’s a little difficult though to swallow your knee jerk reactions and do something that you think is theoretically better though.  Even more difficult is doing it if you are pretty sure that you are in the right, but think that in this situation what’s best is to just avoid the negativity of the argument.  I’ve been particularly bad at this my whole life.  Most of the time I’ve been in the wrong though-so that makes this quality of mine even worse.

   In other news, I was late to a client the other day and a ruined my whole 1 minute at a time running program.  I ran all the way to work which took roughly 10 min and my back was through for the rest of the week.  I’m still feelin it.  As is usually the case, it worked out for the best because I ended up finding a major leak as a result of it, but it was still damn uncomfortable.  You know, I always kind of thought these people were full of it, but I’ve had two dreams now that, upon awakening, immediately gave me the answer I was looking for in regards to my back.  I went right to the gym after waking up, did what I needed to do and it felt awesome afterwards and now I also have a fuller understanding of the problem.  Pretty cool.  Anyways, I’ll talk to you guys later, hope everyone is well.  My brother is living at my place for the next two weeks or so and I’d like to get some cuddling time in before we go to bed, you know how it is.   

    Might not sound like anything to you, but to me it’s a lot.  I experienced only very minimal leg and calf pain afterwards and my back was basically fine.  That’s exciting to me!  I decided that there is a lot of potential in running in regards to therapeautic value for my back.  One the one hand, it’s a very intense hip extension which is gold for me.  On the other, it’s very many intense bounces for my discs to take and they almost always do not take them lightly.  I’m looking at that as a good thing though-specifically because of the discomfort it gives me.  It leaves me somewhat uncomfortable and sensitive in my lumbar spine which keeps my motivation to improve high, all the while being muscularly therapeautic…so it’s a win win situation here.

   In other news, I’m putting the finishing pieces of my book together now.  I can’t really say finishing touches yet, but I’m getting there.  Most of the rough draft, which isn’t that rough, is done.  Currently, I’m training both my best friend and my sister to see how big of a change we can induce between now and the release of the book.  I took the before pictures this past weekend and am going to do a full assessment on both tomorrow, hopefully. 

   In regards to diet, I’ve been crushing almost a whole jar of raw, unheated honey daily this past week.  It’s insane, but I’m craving it like mad.  This happens every now and again-I’ll crave something really intensely and eat it in inordinate amounts and feel pretty damn good afterwards, whereas I would normally feel like cow dung.  Anyway, a jar of honey daily and no candida breakouts.  Pretty damn good, yo. 

   Last on the bill for the evening is my secret hobby: puzzles. I’m working on one right now that’s 5k pieces and it’s crushing me.  It’s an old antique map from the 1600s, I believe, and for the first time ever while doing a puzzle, I feel pretty down and out.  I’m not going to quit, but this thing is hard.  Lots of pieces fit together perfectly but don’t belong together-I’ve never experienced that before.  It’s pretty sucky sucky, if you ask me.  I’ve had to take apart the border a friggin hundred times because I have extra pieces at the end or not enough or one side ended up longer than the other or bla bla bla…and it’s still not right!  Thing’s friggin impossible.   

    Went pretty well, about thirty people came, I’d say.  Ate some cooked food for the first time in quite a while and am not feeling excessively sluggish today.  I didn’t go overboard though, which is nice.  I’m actually taking it as a real good sign that I can eat cooked every once in a while now without going ass over ankles and binging on a whole bunch of other crap.  It’s still hard, I’m still a junk food junkie, but I’m winning this battle.  I think what’s helped the most is introduing carbs back into my diet.  Now I almost feel silly calling myself or anyone a sugar addict…that’s like calling them a human being.  Of course they are a sugar addict, take them away and they’re going to go overboard and do something stupid, keep’em in from the right sources and in the right amounts and life is easy peasy. 

   In other news, my back is being a real arsehole right now.  Probably because I’ve been a lazy bastard lately.  Really been enjoying having dramatically less back pain for so long now that I have been doing things that I still shouldn’t be doing-like excessive sitting and holding very heavy things on just one side.  Anywho, it’s alright because it’s just more stimulus for a push towards health.  Everytime this happens, as I think is the case with most people, I get a new fire in my butt to get in the gym and whoop up on some weak links. 

   Last, the IRS has contacted me and informed me that I owe them $8,445, and I can’t figure out why. 

   What an incredibly healthy post that last one of mine was.  It really felt good to get all that out in the open actually-kind of like a deep breath out ’ahhhh, I’m shallow.’  And it was ok.  Felt nice, like it’s ok to be me and to be how I am even if it’s unlikely that I’m going to be happy being that way forever.  Right now, it’s ok and I’m cool with it. 

   In other news, Damn there are a lot of leaks in training today.  I’ve said this in past blogs but I want to see if I can say it more eleoquently now: Training in theory in generally well understood; training in practice, specifically for already well trained individuals, is so full of holes it doesn’t hold water any better than a goddamn sieve.  The understanding is up to date but the application is still based on exercises that were made when the understanding was much less advanced than it is now.  Worse is the fact that for the general public the old exercises and their application hold up just fine.  They’ve been tempered by the new better understanding enough that their are a good deal of results backing therapist’s attempts to improve their clients’ well being-making people think that they have hit the nail on the head. 

     Unfortunately, this isn’t the case and it becomes painfully apparent in the well trained individual such as myself and many of the people reading this.  It does so via the length tension relationship or the balance between the muscle groups.  A non-trained individual gets great results because he/she is almost always doing an exercise that puts him/her in postive balance again.  On the other hand, a well trained individual might be training the right muscle group but they are doing an exercise that doesn’t have the ability to deliver them the result they need-specifically because it was created by feel and not by thought.  Rotator cuff exercises are a great example, they often start in the completely wrong place to help anyone dramatically with major impingement issues from heavy pressing movements-big surprise there, there are 10 million huge powerlifters and bodybuilders out there not getting anything out of their countless external rotations, shoulder adducting movements, and retractions. 

   Again, the problem is usually not that the trainer or the therapist doesn’t know what needs to be worked on, the problem is that the trainer or therpist knows exactly what needs to be worked on and then chooses and exercise from the old catalogue of exercises that are already out there.  This is also why it often yields better results for a therapist to treat someone with an unusual injury-because they have to make up an exercise and in doing so they apply their good understanding to their creation; whereas they usually apply their good understanding to their diagnosis and their laziness when choosing an exercise.

    Another issue I can’t seem to get away from is this one of ‘changing it up.’  Seems like it could be bunk. If you have specific attachment sites, then you have specific functions as well within the confines of specific ranges of motion.  There don’t seem to be 20 different exercises for each muscle group like most bodybuilders and 15-25 yr old guys would have you believe.  There seem to be anwhere from 1-4, with four being on the real high end-muscles with unusually high number of different functions.  There might be a million different ways to load the movement and a million different apparati to do the movement with, but the movement should still be within the range of motion that is most applicable to it’s attachment sites-whereas most different exercises for the same muscle group definitely are not-what they are, are different exercises for different degrees of the same muscle group. 

     I’ll give you an example: An incline curl and a barbell curl.  The long head of the bicep attaches at the supraglenoid tubercle=up in your shoulder.  If you do a bicep curl on an incline bench and let your arm hang all the way back, you do the movement from the fully stetched position.  If you do a barbell curl, you can go all the way down until your arms are hyperextended if you want and the long head of the bicep still won’t be in it’s fully stretched position, which, in my mind, makes this an inferior movement.  Not only do you not get the development from going through a full range of motion, but you heavily load a movement that is destroying the length tension relationship between your bicep, forearm, and delt(along with the rest of the body to a lesser extent)-so you get a worse length tension relationship, faster!  Now all the hard core guys are whining that you can use much more weight and build more size with the BB curl, but to that I say grow some balls and get strong in the incline curl, or the drag curl, or any number of different ways you can do it. 

    In other news, I went to the physical therapist the other day and she kicked me back a few notches, which I desperately needed.  I went in kind of cocky about having found a lot of leaks and although I had, she found a lot more in my(surprise surprise) application.  It was good for me because it was embarassing and it gave me a couple more things to think about upon leaving.

   My whole life has been centered around superficiality; bodybuilding leading the way.  I don’t think I’m that far along in spirit to be honest with you.  I’ve come a ways in a couple of different areas of life but I’m still dependant on having money and an exceptionally hot girlfriend to make me happy.  The one thing that makes me think otherwise is that I’m not really on an endless search for these things, really just ‘need’ them to ground me so I feel like I can breath and go on with the rest of my life.  It’s like these are the things that allow me to feel ‘ok’ so I can move onto the things I feel like I really need to do.  I know it sounds rediculous but it’s the case and the denial path only gets me a certain degree of progress.  It has to be combined with acceptance as well so I can learn from my desires and subsequent actions. 

   You know, it’s kind of goofy in that saying what I just said(especially about women) would and will often knock me down a few points in quite a few people’s eyes but what they don’t realize is that where I am deep they are often shallow and vice versa as well.  These are my two things.  On the other hand, I do not worship certain physical senses and so called ‘creature comforts’ like most of my peers do.  I worship these two much more though, I would say-especially women.  It’s like I feel like my life will be a total bore if I am not with someone rediculously hot.  It’s likely because I don’t feel like I ever have been-although I think a lot of people would disagree…which is pretty damn rediculous on my part.  It’s actually a chore for me to go out with an 8, even if she has an awesome personality(which is the only reason I got out with her).  I actually told people at work the other day that I could see myself being one of those guys that leaves his wife and kids when he’s like 45-50 for a hot 24 year old with a smokin body and a great personality. 

    I don’t know how this will pan out but, the truth is, I’m not in a hurry to get rid of these superficialities, I want to play them out.  I’ve never had a girlfriend that’s been hot enough and I’ve never had a lot of money.  Right now, these are big motivators for me.  Part of the thing with the women, I think, is the fact that I’m so nervous around the ones I want.  Usually, if they are off the charts hot, I will force myself to approach, but otherwise I’m usually a pussy about it. 

   Another real goofy thing is that I just can’t seem let these two desires pan out in a way that a normal guy would let them pan out.  If I talk to anyone that is anything less charming, and fun, and smart…then I have a hard time standing her and almost immediately cross her off my list of possibilities.  I have a little bit more give when it comes to money but nonetheless I’m still very apprehensive of making it in a way that could harm the environment or society, or jeapordize the good direction that I see the world going in.  I am as I have been saying that I am…right in the middle, seeing truth in my mind but not yet feeling it to the extent that a more advanced soul would. 

    And the absolute goofiest thing of them all is that it all breaks down to experience and learning.  Everything is a symtpom of these two things.  Everyone is ****ing bitching and moaning about this being this and that being that and this meaning bla bla bla.  None of it is good or bad.  It’s doesn’t mean a goddamn thing other than it being a reflection of our development thus far.  So today, I’m going to feel good about my superficiality and maybe hit on some hot women if I see’em.