2014-01-13 training log

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

2013-12-30 training log

CarbNite Solution…. I’m drained.

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

  • Work Set – Squat
    • 45 x 5
    • 45 x 5
    • 120 x 5
    • 150 x 5
    • 180 x 3
    • 195 x 5
    • 230 x 5
    • 260 x 5
  • More Squats
    • 150 x 10
    • 150 x 10
    • 150 x 8
    • 150 x 8
    • 150 x 6
  • Seated Calf Raises
    • 45 x 10 x 3
  • Crunches (superset with calf raises)
    • BW x 12 x 3
  • Foam Rolling

Today marked my first training session of 2014 (essentially), first of cycle 27, and first time back in the gym after starting CarbNite Solution. It’s been almost 2 weeks of ultra-low-carb… and it showed.

I had no gas.

I figured I would lose some strength and steam without carbs. Since I got a new 1RM (315#) I thought about doing a full-on recalculation of my percentages, full-on reset, and go from there. But I thought no, I should be alright… drop back a little, but I shouldn’t need to drop back THAT much.

I was wrong.

I dropped back 20#, but I just couldn’t go today. I just ran out of gas. I pushed hard, but any time I would stop it was because I didn’t have the gas to keep going. I just don’t have any glycogen. Makes sense, of course.

So I called some audibles. If I can’t do too much, then I better make the best of what I have. Instead of leg presses and leg curls — which were actually really helping — I just fell back to good old “boring but big” and did more squats. I figure that’s training economy here.

As I think about it all, I am going to fully reset everything. In part, one reason for my reluctance was working up to some good poundages, and now I’m going to lose it all and drop WAY back. But you know what? I have to get over it. Right now the numbers that matter aren’t the numbers on the bar, but the numbers on the scale, the numbers on the tape measure around my waist, and so on. That is what I have to focus on.

So, I’m going to do a full reset, and probably change up the routine a bit to adopt a more training-economic approach, which will probably fall back to good old “boring but big.”

That said tho… CarbNite Solution seems to be alright so far. I’ve only dropped around 5# so far, which is less than expected. But I know it’s not all about the scale. I can say I feel a lot better overall. I don’t feel that adominal bloat, I don’t feel so uncomfortable. I overall feel good. I’m working to find some ways to manage my need for sweets (trying out Virgil’s Zero Sodas… not a huge soda drinker anyways, but if popping one of these back now and again helps me overcome things, then fine; also trying almond flour/meal-based stuff too). I know this will be a process, and I have to remind myself that it will take time. Don’t care so much about weight losses and changes week to week, but look more month to month… it’s a slow process, so checking on a larger timeline will make the changes more evident.

Training log – so what IS next?

After looking back on 2013, now it’s time to look forward to 2014.

While I’m thrilled with hitting 1000# total and a 315/245/440 on my lifts, I’m not thrilled with all that it took to get there.

Gaining weight.

And not the good weight either.

I presently weigh 250#. It’s the most I’ve ever weighed in my life. I wish it was all muscle, but alas I’ve got a nice layer of flab over my entire body, and I’ve got a visible gut. I’m estimating 30% body fat, but that’s just based on some basic measurements and looking in the mirror comparing to some charts I’ve found online. Really, it doesn’t matter what the specifics are because the bottom line is…

I hate it.

I hate how it feels. I hate how it makes me feel. I hate the difficulties it brings. I hate that it stresses my body in ways that it doesn’t need stress. And yes, I hate how I look, even with clothing on, because I just do not like seeing that gut sticking out. I want my shirt to hang from my pecs, not rest on my tummy.

Yeah I know, I’m not all that bad compared to a lot of people. But this isn’t about them, this is about me. And this is not where I want to be. It was a means to an end, and I sure learned a lot in getting to this point. Now it’s time to learn more in going the other way.

So my next goal? Losing fat. Not weight, per se, because I really don’t want to lose muscle (tho I know I will). I want to drop fat.

Exactly how much? I don’t know. It’s not as much about scale weight as it is about how I look and how my clothing fits. I don’t need to get bodybuilder ripped or anything, typical pictures of someone with 12-15% body fat looks good to me. So doing some rough numbers, I figure 40# is a good number to initially target. Again, tho it really isn’t about the numbers, having numbers helps when figuring things out.

How To Get There

I tried Carb Back-Loading in the past, and I’ve also looked at Carb Nite Solution. I’ve read on things like the Renegade Diet, Anabolic Diet, Carb Cycling, Shelby Starnes’ stuff, various Paleo-things. You name it. I’ve looked at all sorts of things. And when you get down to it, it all tends to be similar enough: high protein, “high” fat, (almost) no carb. Stick with it for a while and it’ll work. Carbs are evil, protein and fat are not. Well, carbs aren’t totally evil, but for what I’m doing, carbs are what I do not want.

So what am I doing?

Well, I actually stumbled into Harry Selkow’s version of the caveman diet. It’s a pretty simple protocol. It’s 3, 2-week phases (6 weeks total). Breaks down like this:

Phase 1 – only food you can eat is food that has, or will have, a face (so meat and eggs). Can only drink water. No carbs, period.

Phase 2 – add dark green leafies (spinach, kale, dark romaine, chard, etc.).

Phase 3 – can add all the colors of veggies, and local seasonal fruit after 5 PM.

You don’t count calories. You just eat. If you’re hungry, eat until satisfied. Tho I will say, given some stuff I read from Shelby Starnes about doing very-low carb diets, it seems like if I want to target something, 300g protein and 100g fat per day is a reasonable place for someone like me to start. I do think I keep that somewhat in mind as I eat so I can ensure I am eating enough (even if I have to force it) but not eating too much. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the basic idea. It’s not only there to put you into the physical state of ketosis and get your body burning off that fat while keeping protein pretty high to avoid muscle loss (tho there will be some muscle and strength loss), but it’s also a huge mental component. There’s a discipline aspect, which is critical to any diet success.

And really, regardless of protocol, just about every ultra-low-carb diet starts out with this 7-14 day “recalibration” phase. There’s minor variation in what you do, but it’s all essentially the same. So, protocol doesn’t matter as much as just getting the carbs out and getting into ketosis.

Thing is, as you read this, I’ve already been on it. The day I deadlifted the 440 and got my 1000# total? I started immediately onto Selkow’s protocol. However, after 5 days on it, I had to change gears. In short, the complete lack of fiber becomes um… difficult. I’ve got some medical issues that ultimately all of this isn’t meshing with, so I had to stop for my health. But, all I did was change to CarbNite Solution.

Carb Nite Solution was the protocol I was originally considering, so I don’t feel all that horrible. And again, the first 10 days of CNS are all about ultra-low-carb, so I’m essentially on track. I can just add in fibrous veggies, which is a good thing! CNS has a lot of success stories, and I intend to be another one.

I will say, doing the no-carb thing isn’t as bad thing time around as it was some months ago. I know a lot more, I can manage hunger better, there are better recipes to work with, Wife’s changed a few dietary things herself which impacts what foods we have and eat around the house. And the biggest thing is I’m squarely motivated to drop the weight, which helps with the discipline part of things.

As for exercise, that won’t change much. I’m not going to be bumping up cardio or anything like that. I’m just going to keep lifting same as I have. I am still doing the math on things, but I’m considering resetting my weights (now that I have some true 1RM’s), recalculating all my percentages, and going from there. I mean, keep working hard, lifting as I have, but acknowledge I’m going to lose some strength. So if dropping my weights helps me be a little more in the “mass building” range, helps me get more reps which means more ability to focus on technique, and dovetails with the unavoidable strength loss well… yeah, that might be the way to go. Still figuring.

And will I report?

Yeah. I figure some logging of my progress will happen. Pictures? Well, I am taking pictures of myself, but I’m not sure I’ll share those. It feels a little too personal. So I’m not expecting to share pictures as I go along, but… I wouldn’t be surprised if when I got to the end I shared a “before” and “after”. 🙂

Other Goals?

The body recomp, the fat loss, that’s my main goal. Whatever it takes to get there. But I would expect I should be able to get there before the end of 2014. Frankly tho, I’d like to get there before spring/summer.

After that, we’ll see. I’m sure I’ll pick up on carbs some and try to rebuild my strength and muscle mass.

I keep having thoughts about competing in a powerlifting competition, but that isn’t something I’m counting on because I want my focus to be not on bar numbers but on scale numbers, y’know? Still, right now I’d have to lift in the 275# class. To lift in the 220# class would be nicer. 🙂 Yeah, that sorta sits as some motivation on this too. I just don’t want to focus too much on this thought tho, because I don’t want to have conflicting goals. The fat loss has to be my focus.

I want to look good in some tighter Under Armor t-shirts I have. I want my shirt to hang from my pecs, not rest on my belly. I want to have a flat enough stomach so I can carry AIWB. I want to drop weight that is doing nothing but adding stress to my ankle and knee joints. And hey, what positive effect will it have on my ability to do pull/chin-ups?

Onwards.