Me

2014-01-15 training log

/ hsoi

Well, still no training.

I actually wanted to go to the gym today, but when I woke up it wasn’t happening. My ankle is getting better every day, but something just said “leave it” and give it a few more days to rest. Fair enough. I’m at a point where I’m nervous about what’s wrong, and really don’t want to risk making the problem worse. I really don’t want to have problems walking for the rest of my life, y’know? Hopefully it’s not that bad, but better safe than sorry.

That said, my plan was to wing it.

I am going to formally abandon 5/3/1 for now, tho I’m sure I’ll have principles still with me. I was going to just go in, bench press and work up to a “heavy” triple. No idea what that would be, because I don’t know how much lower body involvement I can have. Certainly can’t tuck my feet back and push into an arch. After that, probably do some close-grip benches, and see what back work I could do. I’m sure I can do pulldowns, but rows would depend. I thought maybe I could sit on a bench and do some seated shrugs with dumbbells. That’d be about it.

Point is, there wouldn’t be much structure to the session. It’d be more about figuring out what I can and cannot do.

I also thought if all I can really do is bench (as a main movement), I might start to try some Cube-inspired approach. I thought maybe Monday work up heavy, on Friday work on speed. Wednesday could be some sort of lighter rep day doing other things, like seated overhead presses or some such. I don’t know. It might be too much for me given the diet restriction. But at this point, it’s just temporary while I wait to see how the MRI goes. No long-term plans being made, just gotta get through until there’s more information.

Speaking of diet, I am frustrated. I just don’t feel like I’m shedding. I’m hovering at weight. Body doesn’t look much different. Clothing doesn’t feel much different. I’m annoyed and not sure what I’m failing at. But that all said, I’m staying the course with CarbNite. However, depending what the MRI shows, I may go off it. I mean, if I need surgery, I will need to focus on recovery there, and there’s no sense in depriving myself when my body will need it. But again, no plans, just thinking out loud.

We’ll see how things go.

Ankle update

/ hsoi

Managed to see Dr. Arush K. Angriasa with the SW Orthopaedic Group. I figured a podiatrist would be the right person to see. I don’t know him from Adam, but searching around seemed to have a lot of positive review and comment and seems to be well-regarded. So why not.

Exactly what my problem is, hard to say at this time. But based upon the examination it’s one (or more) of three things:

1. some ligaments on the outside of my ankle are highly inflamed and could even be calcify.

2. there are some tendons that run down the back of the calf under the ankle, which could be in play.

3. I may have lost some cartilage between the end of my fibula and top of my foot. Can happen with martial arts, due to all the impact of kicking.

Please don’t quiz me on this… I could be getting some details wrong, but basically it’s some soft tissue problems. Massive swelling.  And yes, it’s probably my old injury coming back to haunt me.

For now, I have to wear one of those “boots” to restrict my movement. I’ll be getting an MRI done to see what it looks like, and based upon that, we’ll see where to go.

I asked about lifting. I can’t do anything lower body. Not even stupid leg extensions and curls. Nothing. Ugh. I even know some upper body work shouldn’t happen, like pressing (since that’s done standing). But I might modify it to use dumbbells and sit down, or try the smith machine or something. Ugh. I really don’t know yet what I’ll do and how I’ll modify things, but it’s safe to say I’m somewhat on the shelf for a bit. I will figure something out so I can at least do SOMETHING.

Really, now would be the time I’d do something like Smolov Jr and see about kicking my bench press into high gear. But with the diet focus, that won’t happen. It is enough to make me want to come off the diet. 😉

2014-01-13 training log

/ hsoi

There is no training log. Not today.

About 8.5 years ago I had a nasty injury to my left ankle. It was back when I was doing Kuk Sool martial arts. It was a night of “endless” kicking. In particular, you do a jump 360º spin kick, then when you land  you drop all the way down to the ground and do the same down low. Well, after so many kicks I was exhausted and when I came down landed wrong on my left foot and crumpled to the ground. X-rays were taken and while no bones were broken, certainly there was ligament damage. I should have sought a better treatment option than what was offered to me, but whatever… water under the bridge.

My ankle has never been the same and never been fully “normal” since then. Most of the time it’s a non-issue. But every so often something happens to make it flare up (last I can remember was when I chased some coyotes from my front yard… hiking boots, pavement, too much stiff impact). And sometimes weird things just happen, like I cannot extend my foot all the way without pain, like a ligament is hung up on something; eventually goes away. I don’t think much of it any more, I just deal with the pain and issues when they crop up and they eventually go away.

For maybe the last month or so, the left foot has had pain. You can see the ankle is puffy and more swollen than the right foot/ankle. There’s also been a constant ache in my heel area. I figured to let it go, this stuff happens: ice, Advil, rest, and it’s usually gone. But this wasn’t going away so I was thinking about a doctor.

Then this past Saturday night, I’m lying in bed reading a book, rotated my left foot to do some “ankle circles” and a sharp pain shot through me. It went away, but a few minutes later when I stuck my toes under the sheets so I could scoot my foot under the covers, the pain shot through me again and didn’t go away. Despite a long night of rest and 4 Advil, the pain persisted in the morning. I cannot walk without pain, and have taken to walking with a cane. It’s that bad, it’s that debilitating.

So no deadlifting today. 🙂

I found a podiatrist that seems to be well-regarded. I reckon this type of thing is right up his alley, so we’ll see what comes of it. As of this writing no appointment has been made, but will be done. This is too painful, it cannot wait. Something is wrong.

The crazy part is that all I’m thinking about is how I’m going to handle lifting! Obviously I cannot squat nor deadlift. *sigh*  Are my lower body days going to be just stuff like leg extensions, leg curls, and hyperextensions? Ugh. I doubt I can overhead press. Even bench pressing could be difficult. I don’t know what I’ll do… it’ll depend in part on what the problem winds up being.

But I always said to myself that if I got injured, it would be a time to try alternative programs that allowed me to specialize. For example, doing Smolov Jr for bench press.

Of course, the problem with that is the whole CarbNite fat loss issue. There’s no way to do such a specialization program without eating big and resting big. And depending what’s wrong with me,  my body may well be happier to not be killed by lifting so instead it can focus on healing the ankle.

I must wonder if CarbNite is part of my problem. I’m depriving my body of a lot of things, and I can feel the effects. My joints are under a LOT more inflammation and pain throughout my body. Carbs can be anti-inflamatory. I even wondered with my heel pain if there’s some sort of gout-like issue going on due to the dietary change and consumption. I just don’t know. There’s no question I need to drop the weight, but who knows… it may have to go to a more Carb Backloading approach with VERY modest carb consumption, and stretching out the fat loss over the course of many more months.

I just don’t know. Right now I have more questions than answers. Not letting it bother me too much tho… gotta see what the doctor says first.

2014-01-08 training log

/ hsoi

Once you reset (lower) your expectations, it’s not too bad…. I guess. 🙂

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 27, week 2

  • Work Set – Squat
    • 45 x 5
    • 45 x 5
    • 115 x 5
    • 140 x 5
    • 170 x 3
    • 200 x 3
    • 225 x 3
    • 255 x 5
  • Moar Skwats
    • 140 x 10 x 5
  • Crunches
    • BW x 12 x 3
  • Foam Rolling

I have to remind myself — it’s about body weight not bar weight.

Going into today accepting the massive loss of strength, made things go a lot better. I expected to just get prescribed reps, but managed to get a couple more. Really lowered the 5×10 squat weight, and geez if 140# isn’t kicking my carb-depleated butt. But overall, things went as well as I could expect them to.

If nothing else, it affords me the opportunity to do more technique work. Really working on breaking at the hips first, sticking the butt out and going with that first, then on the way back up when I get to maybe like 85% upright ensuring to push the hips through. Don’t make it a purely quad thing, ensure the hips and glutes get pulled into the mix. Lighter weights but more reps? great… means more technique time.

Gotta find the positive. 🙂

Hello Amazon

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

Saying goodbye to Sprouts is tough. You know the saying, “don’t you what you’ve got, ’til it’s gone”? Well, now that Sprouts is gone, I realize it was a larger part of our groceries than I realized (I knew it was a primary, but it’s even more than I knew). I didn’t realize how many Sprouts-branded things Wife bought. Everywhere I look in the fridge, in the pantry, I see Sprouts, Sprouts, Sprouts.

But in time, our stock will dwindle. And in the meantime, I can hope Sprouts will reconsider their decision, basing upon facts and not emotion.

The hardest part was thinking what to do as an alternative. There’s a lot of things we bought that we can’t find at other stores in town, or to do so would become difficult, with Wife running all over town to collect all the things we use. That’s a big sink of gas money, and most of all… time.

You know the saying about closing a door and opening a window? Well… I think in this case, what was opened was a laptop computer lid. 🙂

I’ve shopped at Amazon for many years. I mean, what CAN’T you find there? Very few things. And Amazon works at expanding its offerings all the time.

I’ve never bought Amazon Prime tho, because I never felt like I ordered enough in a year to have Prime offset the shipping costs. I mean, most things I order from Amazon I can wait a week or two for, so I’ll always pick the cheapest slowest option, which often yielded free shipping anyways. So it was just difficult to justify Prime. And things like Kindle and movies? Meh.

But I thought about it. Yeah, what can’t you get? Often the prices are competitive or better. So Wife and I sat and searched Amazon for many of the foodstuffs and other products we bought at Sprouts. And gee if we couldn’t find most everything there. In fact, there’s probably a lot of non-Sprouts things too that we could get. I tried to convince Wife to consider Amazon for things like toilet paper, paper towels, etc. (things you know you’ll use and use a lot of, eventually in time), but the idea never really took off with either of us because again, shipping.

But now? Well, we’ve been pushed to try it. 🙂

I signed up for Amazon Prime. When it comes to things like groceries yeah, I’d rather have it in 2 days than 2 weeks. If I can get 2-day shipping “for free”, and we can buy a huge bulk of stuff via Amazon (regardless of container size and weight), well gee… I suspect we could do alright with this. That local grocery shopping could be reduced to things like fruit, eggs, milk, etc.. I mean, we get our veggies delivered once a week….

The biggest win that Wife sees? Time. It’s a big time sink to do all that grocery shopping. But now? She can shop and build her cart in her own time. While she’s homeschooling the kids, they’re doing some work and she can search and click to get shopping done. Kids need attention? she can stop, tend to them, then resume shopping as time permits. She can shop at 5 AM before the kids get up, or whatever. There’s more flexibility, there’s better use of time.

I also think it could be a win because impulse buying might be curbed.

So… this will be an experiment. We haven’t bought anything yet and I don’t know how it will go. But, this should be fun to explore.

2014-01-06 training log

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Frustrated. Feeling dejected.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 27, week 1

  • Work Set – Press
    • 45 x 5
    • 45 x 5
    • 60 x 5
    • 75 x 5
    • 90 x 3
    • 100 x 5
    • 115 x 5
    • 130 x 7
  • Close-grip pulldowns (neutral grip, superset with warm-up pressing sets)
    • 80 x 15 x 5
  • Press
    • 90 x 10
    • 90 x 8
    • 85 x 8
    • 75 x 8
    • 65 x 10
  • Wide, pronated grip pulldowns (superset with additional pressing sets)
    • 110 x 10 x 5
  • Cable pressdowns (pin the elbows to the side)
    • 50 x 10 x 4
  • Hammer curls (superset with pressdowns)
    • 30 x 10
    • 30 x 10
    • 30 x 8
    • 25 x 10

I’m feeling dejected.

Everything is going down, except that which should be going down. My weights are going down, my reps are going down, my strength is going down… but my bodyweight isn’t.

*sigh*

Yes I know. It’s only been 3 weeks on CarbNite, but I expected to see better results than this. I’m down around 5#, but I lost that at about the first week and have been hovering there ever since. Something is not right. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s driving me crazy. I have some thoughts, and I just need to do some researching and reading. If nothing else, since I bought the CBL and CNS books, I have access to their forums and will post my questions there to seek input.

I mean, today was fine for what it was, but it’s evident I have no gas. I accept that, but I figured the trade-off would be seeing the fat loss. *sigh*

Just feeling dejected, but you keep going… who knows… maybe this is some greater cosmic test of will for me that I first must overcome.

2nd Annual SDS Conference – AAR

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

Wow! What an awesome day!

I just returned from a day at Cabela’s. Yes, that’s cool in and of itself, but I was there not to shop but to present and learn. Paul Martin, the Suburban Dad Survivalist, was holding his 2nd Annual Preparedness Conference. If you weren’t there, you miss out on a lot of learning.

I know. You’re seeing the word “survivalist” and “preparedness” and conjuring up images of paranoid loonies stockpiling food and ammo in their compounds because the great Obama devil is destroying ‘murica, right?

Pul-leez.

There is nothing bad about being prepared. Ask any Boy Scout. Ask anyone that realizes the speech they have to present goes over better if they research and rehearse ahead of time. Same for the musician that practices and nails their performance. You have insurance, right? What are you afraid of? You wear a seat belt in the car, right? Are you paranoid? You have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in your house, so that means you’re afraid of fire, right? Well, yeah… to some extent sure. But instead of just being afraid of what could happen, you acknowledge it, accept it, and prepare for it. Thus if it does happen, you can do something better than panic and freeze.

Being prepared is a good thing.

Today’s topics reflected that. We had presenters talking about risk assessment, how to start a backyard garden, how to can the food you grow in that garden, minimum standards for defensive handgun, improvised weapons, and bug-out bags and preparations. Quite a range of topics for a single day, and it could only scratch the surface. And while I was a presenter, I was more happy to have attended the day — I learned a LOT. It was simply fantastic.

Either you were there, or you missed out.

Stay tuned. I know Paul’s looking at doing a workshop this summer, and I’m willing to be there will be a 3rd conference. Don’t miss this stuff. It’s just too valuable. In fact, it’s so valuable, I brought the whole family. Everyone enjoyed the day.

Thank you, Paul. Great work!

2014-01-03 training log

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Yeah… the gas tank has no gas.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 27, week 1

  • Work Set – Deadlift
    • 160 x 5
    • 200 x 5
    • 240 x 3
    • 255 x 5
    • 295 x 5
    • 335 x 7
    • 255 x 8
    • 255 x 8
    • 255 x 5
  • Foam Rolling

Even tho last night was my CarbNite, still, no gas. I am not totally surprised… takes some time to restore things. But no question… as I did my 335# set, I got to rep 5 and started to feel out of gas. When I hit 7 I couldn’t go any more. I felt like I had a few more in me in terms of my muscles fatiguing, but I just had no gas. That was it.

First-set-last-set’d it for 3 more sets, and that was good towards actually working my muscles more. But I’ve heard it said and it’s true… you just can’t get strong on a no-carb diet. Or if you can, give them carbs and they’ll get stronger.

Ah well. I know my technique was good. Really working on hone it. One thing was grip and ensuring to grip hard with my hands, but keep my arms “loose” so they remained straight with no attempt to “curl” the bar up or otherwise flex and put too much stress on my biceps.

I skipped the calf raises due to wanting to give my ankle more rest. It’s doing better with ice and Advil.

2014-01-01 training log

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Starting the new year off right.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 27, week 1

  • Work Set – Bench Press
    • 45 x 5
    • 45 x 5
    • 90 x 5
    • 110 x 5
    • 130 x 3
    • 145 x 5
    • 165 x 5
    • 185 x 10
  • Face Pulls (superset with the bench press warm-up sets)
    • 40 x 15 x 5
  • Close-grip Bench Press
    • 135 x 10
    • 135 x 10
    • 135 x 9
    • 135 x 6
    • 135 x 6
  • T-Bar Rows (superset with the close-grip bench press)
    • 100 X 10 X 5
  • Barbell Curls
    • 50 X 10 X 3
  • Foam Rolling

Kiddos wanted to ring in the new year, so at 12:01 I headed to bed. I fully intended on still hitting the gym… was more important for me to get to the gym and keep with the program, than to stay up late and drink and party. My priorities. Alas, staying up to midnight is still WAY past my bedtime, so I knew I’d have to sleep a little later than usual… and I slept even later than that. Just couldn’t get out of bed, way too tired (listen to the body!). But eventually things felt good and off I went.

I am glad I did the full reset. I mean, I figured on my bench press that of all the lifts, that would be the one I would NOT need to reset because the way I was progressing there was still getting more than prescribed reps and doing well. I knew if I reset bench then my weights would really drop and my reps would fly up. Sure enough, only 185 today? Geez… that feels like a massive step back from doing 245 *sigh* And once I got to 10 reps, I just stopped. Oh well, I figure it’ll be good for me. 🙂 More reps, more time to work on technique, right? Find the positive.

That said, close-grips were at 125# last time and well… I was to do 130# but 130 is one of those weights I hate because man, I have a 45 and a 25 on the bar, now I have to strip everything off, then put everything on just to get 130. I’m OK with 125, but can I just skip 130 and go to 135? It’s easier to just strip that one 25 off. Yeah I know… lazy. Whatever. 🙂 So I went ahead and jumped to 135 for the close grips. I’m good with that and happy with how it went.

Opted to drop the seated cable rows. While CarbNite-ing, it’s just too much load.

Didn’t bother with any direct triceps work either… just hit some bb curls to continue working on bringing up my biceps.

Not a bad day, really…. but….

I’m still very sore from Monday’s squat session. That kicked my ass, literally. Shows what a difference eating makes when it comes to recovery. I’ll find a groove tho. One bummer is that somehow my old ankle injury reared up again, so it’s kinda painful to walk or put much weight on my left foot. Icing is helping, but you can see obvious swelling. This usually goes away with a little rest, but man… with the food deprivation and such, well… we’ll see. I am thinking if it keeps up like this, an MRI may be in my future… somehow this time around it’s bothering me enough to want to look into that.

Less, in the new year

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

When I started this blog almost 5 years ago, I made a decision that I had to post something every day. I didn’t have to write every day, and often I didn’t because I’d write a bunch when inspiration hit, schedule it, and thus ensure a post every day.

I have stuck with that, and it’s been… challenging.

In fact, it’s grown more challenging as time has gone on. I mean, if you notice a pattern, I now “cheat” 3 out of 4 days a week by posting my training log. That counts, but it’s not content that really brings people around (tho oddly, I do get a lot of people caring about my training logs).

My intent was always to write for me. This blog was never to be anything more than my own place to write about whatever I wanted, in a public manner. And it remains and will remain to that end.

But I just can’t keep writing every day. Life has changed a lot over the past 5 years.

I don’t have the free time I once did.

Blogging is not the priority it once was. There are other things that require my attention, so the blog is bumped down the priority ladder.

I have found that I desire to be less vocal. I’ll still write, but I no longer desire to crusade. Here’s an article about cognative bias. We all suffer from this. Step back and look at your own online interactions, your own behaviors, and yeah, we’re all subject to it. People I wish to engage and convince aren’t reading what I write. And frankly, I’m tired because online interactions tend to lead to people sticking their fingers in their ears and classifying you as the asshole. Truly, the best way to convince people and win them over is to get out from behind the keyboard, look them in the eye with a smile and compassionate heart, and listen to what they have to say.

Now, I’ll still write when I can educate. If I can contribute something to the Google-sphere of information out there that people seeking knowledge and information could find useful, sure, I’ll write.

But daily posting? I just can’t do it any more. I’ll still write, but I reckon the only regular postings will be my training logs. All other postings will come as I have time and inspiration. Heck who knows… it might inspire me to write shorter posts. 😉

It may be the beginning of the end for this blog, but usually when something dies, something else will grow in its place. So let’s just focus on what will grow, shall we?