Improvements

This week has gone better than the last which was better than the previous. Improvement is good.

I was going to try to cardio on Monday and Wednesday and maybe do some kind of light dumbell workout of Friday.

Monday didn’t happen for scheduling reasons, my one real world class decided to have the final a week early and to mess with class start time. Long story short, I walked the dog and took my exam.

Wednesday I was going to try again at the cardio. I tried rowing, this was out for two reasons. The monitors on the rowers were all dead but also, it was pretty uncomfortable. I tried an elliptical but anything beyond a slow walk was uncomfortable. In hindsight, I wussed out. I never gave it a fair chance.

Friday s Dumbarton day. To be honest, I didn’t want to go. I was getting in a really foul mood. I hadn’t cared what I ate or how much for days. I wasn’t feeling good. Just a bad mood. I got there and couldn’t talk myself into benching. I roamed around for a bit. I found that the requirement that I stay for two hours forced me to do something.

We recently got in this sorta eliptical type thing. I got on that, turned the resistance all the way down and consigned myself to just doing that for the rest of the time. Oddly, it kinda started to feel good. After five minutes I was feeling better mentally, emotionally and physically. I kept going for 15 minutes total. Then i put the wraps and gloves on. 4 round of 3 minutes each on the bag. I’m no golden gloves, that is for sure, but i enjoyed it, sweat a fair bit. it was good. I also did a lot of stretching.

Today, I’m feeling a bit better for the wear. I wouldn’t say I have had any pain today, some tenderness but no pain. Then again I haven’t done anything.  I have two more session next week. I have to make myself do this cardio thing, if only for the blood flow. Right now, I just want to get off ibuprofen and not hurt.

Monday Morning Weigh-in: 230.2

Man, I didn’t want to do this. I knew it was going to be 231, maybe 232, with the way I have been eating this weekend. I’ve been hungry but also eating all weekend and it wasn’t all clean eating at that. Nope I got one of the least clean things I know of, Totino’s Pizza Rolls, and eat some and they tasted awesome. You can almost hear the squeak of unhealthiness as you chew on them. So the fact that I’m not training combined with feeling like I’m not eating right has me really wanting to skip this weigh in. I guess I figured that was the best reason to do it though. So hooray.

Back to normal working hours this week, more or less. I still have PT appointments. I’m not really training yet either. I’m going to try rowing today but that will be a matter of how it feels. I’m thinking I’ll just go nice and slow for about an hour and stop at any point where I don’t like how it feels.

That said, I’m light years better than I was a couple weeks ago.

Gimpin’ on a Friday Night

I’ve been doing all my stretches and going to PT and taking my ibuprofen all week. I’ve begun the process of backing down dosing. It’s a very good thing. No training happened until Friday, even then I knew there were huge limitations.

Jump Rope 5:00

Some T-bar row
90, 135, 225 (minus apparatus) X 5
Nothing heavy here, I was just taking it easy and warming up slowly.

Military Bench
135 X 5
225 X 4
275 X 3
300 X 1
225 X 8, 8
My leg was starting to bother me and I just didn’t have the drive to do a third set. It was a decent set of benches for me. An hour had passed.

3:00 Jump rop

From this point on I spent a fair amount of time working on the heavy bag, I didn’t time it, I wasn’t doing anything in particular. I also did my stretches while I was at the gym, this is the first time they gave relief rather than causing more pain.

My appetite is coming back and I’m fighting hard but I fear I am losing. I weighed myself a few days ago at 230, I’ve got to be 231 by now. so things go. I’m injured, I have plenty of time to come back, it’s important I do this right.

Totally unrelated, I’m thinking about migrating my blog back to my own hosting account…..more later.

Monday Morning Weigh-in: 229.0

My wife has been calling it the Cereal and Pain diet. Breakfast cereal is something that I typically scoff at, it’s not food nor is it nutritious. However, with my injury, I didn’t want to spend any more time standing at the stove making food than I had to. While I was hurting I didn’t really have any appetite, I ate when I took my ibuprofen and that was about it. So for the first half of last week, I was losing weight.

Now I have to be careful though. My appetite is returning and I’m ambulatory. So I could start eating a lot more. I’m trying to keep it reasonable. With very little training planned for the week, I’m going to try and stay below 230 but I’m not going to be crushed if I rise a little above it. Next week should include several cardio sessions, so I’m hoping it all evens out.

Improving

Well, I’m getting better, not super quickly, but I am getting better. I’m sitting in a normal chair to write this, that’s a huge improvement. I still get sore every few hours before my next dose is due but I have also been throttling back my ibuprofen dosing. Hopefully I can start hitting cardio towards the end of next week. I don’t see myself doing anything over 50 pounds for another week and nothing heavy for a minimum of three weeks. I think this may help with my squat depth issues and whatnot.

Pain, no gain

Things get better before they get worse. I’ve been home all week. I endured some lovely muscle spasms that reminded me that I’m a big baby when it comes to pain. Fortunately, I am able to work from home, in fact, I get more done. So injury has boosted productivity.

The reason the muscle shortened so bad is not fully known and since this PT did not see me when I was initially injured, she doesn’t want to guess. My assumption is that this muscle started to compensate for the originally damaged muscle. The other issue seems to be nerve inflammation. As this muscle got tight and applied pressure to the nerve, i did nothing about it, i just went on figuring it would sort itself out. I worked myself into this situation.

No training at all this week, just PT. I’m going to have to drop out of june strongman, I don’t feel like putting myself up against those loads with any uncertainty in my mind.

Monday Morning Weigh-in: 229.6

huh, wonder how that happened. Well, hooray.

Bad news, not much sleep, lots of discomfort.

Wasted

Headed to Dumbarton on Friday. I thought I might get some lifting in, hardly. I did a small amount of deadlifting, nothing worth mentioning. Then I did some military bench. That went decent. I hit a very solid 295. I went ahead and signed up for the Military bench contest in May on virtualmeet.  I’m not planning on doing a bunch of specialized training for it but a low 300’s seem respectable to me.

Charles the Elder wrangled some bending steel for me. It was about 8 - 10 feet and probably 6/16″ of an inch thick. As I took it too my car, I thought I’d see if I could bend it in half to make it fit better. I gave it a little push and realized it was hot rolled. So it got scrolled. I’ve never done that before and with hot rolled it is obviously much easier but it’s kind of fun and playful, I see why people like it.

Rehab has been going pretty well. The stretches make my hip sore but they seem to be doing their job too. I’ve taken to popping an ibuprofen right before I do them so that I only hurt for 15 minutes or so after, hopefully, a hot bath for 30 minutes seems to help too. I go back in on Tuesday and Thursday for the hot ultrasound and so on. I seem to be having fewer problems during the day. Then again, I sit less on weekends.

Next week, I think I may just do light rowing on Monday and Wednesday.

Change of plan

The plan for Wednesday, Dumbarton 80K cleans for about 45 minutes, go home.

Unfortunately, over the last two weeks my hip has really started to bother me. To the point that it was getting hard to work. Yesterday was nearly impossible. So I left work early, skipped the gym and went home. I also made a physical therapist appointment. The guy I saw before, he could see me a week from Monday. That was a little far off and I didn’t really like him so I kept looking. I found a different place that could take me Monday. Well, great, that screws up Friday’s workout, probably, but it’s a whole lot better than what I had gotten so far. I booked it, then I got the call that they had a last minute cancellation and I could come in this morning. Awesome!

So with some trepidation based on past experiences, I headed in for my appointment today. I’m sure this PT got a more fair opportunity because I had very precise complaints and I had spent enough time with the pain that I could give a pretty detailed history. I went through the whole description, the original injury, how that seemed to have healed then a new set of symptoms presented, then how that had progressed. She put me through some basic movements and tests, for weakness, tightness and pain. In the end, she agreed, it was sciatic nerve pain and it was probably caused by some other muscle injury. She did some more work and found/decided it was my Piriformis muscle, it was probably not a part of the original injury but through compensation or something similar, it got tightened up pretty bad. It was applying pressure to the sciatic nerve, giving me pain and making it more sensitive.

The prognosis, is good. She did not try to stop me from training in anyway. There were a few things that may be associated with increased pain the next day that we talked through, but she seemed understanding of my view on the world and I was of hers. She used the ultrasound heat jelly stuff. That was awesome, it seemed to take away even the soreness I had woken up with. Then it was stretch time. She kept it simple, three stretches, count to ten do each leg 3 to 5 times. Do that twice daily. Finally they did electro-stimulus and ice to try and inhibit inflammation. Honestly, that made it hurt again. I may ask for us to not do that in future but I’ll give it a few tries before I condemn it.

I’m extremely glad I made that appointment.

In other news, my nutrition for the week is crap. I don’t expect to lose, in fact, I won’t be surprised by a pound gain next week. I’m not losing my mind and going all piggy piggy but with only two training days, a night out with a friend (which I enjoyed and would do again, regardless of calories) and a couple unplanned days that were my own mistake. That said, I’m keeping it reasonable, so I don’t think it will get to far away from me.

Last, Kris over at virtualmeet.net is looking for folks who are willing to help him with chores relating to the website and what they do over there. I offered my name because I’m a fan of what he is doing and believe in it. If you have participated or want to or even just enjoyed his videos, stop by the website and let him know or tell me and I’ll pass the word.

Another miss

Jump Rope 4:00

Power Squat
135 X 2
225 X 2
315 X 2
405 X 0
It just felt heavy and I haven’t really worked the power squat in a while. I forget how different it is from a regular squat.

Squat
135 X 5
225 X 4
315 X 3
405 X 0
I actually gave the 405 a go and just got pinned. I think I got so caught up thinking about depth that I forgot to prepare to come out of it. I still think I’m coming way short on my squat.

I dinked around with bottom position squats but didn’t do anything of note.

Jump Rope 3:00

Straight Leg Deadlift
60K X 5
100K X 5
had to get straps
140K 2 X 3
160K 2 X 3
I tried the 140 with no straps but I just didn’t have the hand strength to pull it off without the straps

Jerk
60K X 5
80K X 3
100K X 2
120K X 1
100K 3 X 1
I actually pressed out the 120K pretty bad and I took two more shots after my initial success but got nowhere with them.

Rows
100K 6 X 3

In the end, it was a mediocre workout. I’m surprised about the 400 miss, surprised and disappointed but I manged to keep moving and did some ok weight by the end of the whole thing.