Alexus' Adventure in Wonderland

Training
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HAH! Lex, you crack me up! What the holy hell is going on? HAHAH!

First off, the Russian program looks interesting! I don’t remember you running it on front squats, but i do remember you making gains with them, so the program looks like its worked for you. Makes sense to stick with what you know, right?

And x2 on the good riddance with the PT! Looks like the universe was looking out for you on that one (don’t your roll your skeptical eyes at me, missy!)

Hilarious on your bug-eyed-ness! A little aggro are we? Spin is addictive (all conditioning type stuff, for me at least), and interval training can be incredibly draining. AND you’re right, doing too much will inhibit recovery and consequently gains. So I think if you feel you’re having a tough time recovering from all you’re doing, then you should def scale something back.

And it sounds like you do have a lot on your plate! Are you a planner like me? What’s your week look like? Are you taking any rest days? Maybe the spin is spiking your T or something?..how’s the non-smoking going?

Meat substances - yes, they do vary widely in nutritional value. I LOVE pork, but its not the most protein rich. I still eat it like its going out of style though, cuz its delicious and cheap…Anyways, I personally don’t obsess about macros. The only thing I make sure of is that I don’t eat any bread, starch, granola, etc. or general crap food (unless I PLAN on eating it!!).

I do eat a shit ton of vegetables and fruit and dairy, as well as meat (whichever I can afford). My opinion, the whole eat your weight in “meat” is a bit over rated. I’ve read countless studies touting that you can get similar amino acid chains from veg as you would with animal protein (minus the fact that the veg supplies the chain, whereas with animal protein we have to make the chain). So I think as long as you’re eating a balanced diet (just like they taught you in school!) and getting enough calories to sustain your activity levels you should be fine, no?

I have no clue why you’re obsessing about abs and body fat considering how gorgeous you are and your lythe, athletic build. Grrr…but, whatever the case may be, you’re working towards getting stronger and maintaining your weight, and I think that will resolve a lot of your anxiety about that. Thoughts?

Also - yes!! I think you’d be stellar at gymastics. You have a strong upper body!

Pilates, yes, can be boring as fuck! I still say its great, though. Works a lot of itty bitty muscles (like the ones in your vagina! yay you!) but like all things, you need to find a class you enjoy and an instructor you like.

I’m getting into yoga too!! I just read an article about how yoga benefits athletes a whole lot, as a larger range of motion will help one be more explosive and run faster. Plus I need it. I’m so freaking tight!

Anywho. Hang in there girl! Try to channel some zen. lol! be the buddha!

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FUCK!! Wall o text! My bad. lol

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haha you are awesome masch!!

pilates - we do an ab track in bodybalance (or ‘centergy’ it is now). i can do it using my spinal erectors easy peasy. using my abs properly… i can’t do shit, however. i got a beginners pilates book. the 30 day promise or whatthefuckever. will work through it myself. determined to fix this…

i never really learned to hold my belly in… but remember being a bit surprised learning the valsalva manouver for lifting (learned that pretty early on) and now… i suck in a deep breath of air before a lift… but then pt guy was all about the breathing normally while doing lots of reps of light weight squats and… i couldn’t do it. so basically i’m not activating my tva… and i’m probably not doing the valsalva manouver properly either since the idea is to activate the tva around the belly full of air… so vaccums… etc… i’ve never ever seen my abs. i thought i did once but it turned out to be ribs. i do carry fat on my belly and upper arms… i’m resolutely avoided the whole physique goals thing since forever… but fuckit… i want a sexy belly :slight_smile: itty bitty muscles ftw!!! (and to avoid lumbar injury too, of course)

i read somewhere (reputable article) that women’s t levels don’t seem to rise as a function of intense lifting (like guys levels do). weird, huh. i asked TC on a thread once… but no reply (was a bit late to the livespill…) not sure… i have this normal testosterone but low TSH level thing going on… apparently that means my thyroid is producing testosterone independently from my pituitary / hypo/thalamus(i forget) and i’m at risk of developing hyperthyroidism… don’t seem to have graves disease… but i’m supposed to get regular checkups… when i get too involved in the gym i start to develop hyperthyroid symptoms of buggy eyed / amped up / aggression… need to learn more to make better sense of this…

the pt thing turned out weird… gym was recently taken over by a chain… people there are adjusting to new job descriptions i think. miscommunication between sales person, manager person, pt person. the main reason why i accepted the pt offer was because i’m going to be a pt so wanted to get a sense of what that was about… he was good in some respects. he’s got me working my abs now (good) and stretching my feet (good) and being gentler with the soft tissue work (good). i wasn’t so happy with the high rep work (trying to make me slow and weak???) and i’m not so happy with people doing so much bosu squatting etc and not doing so much functionally useful squatting, lunging, deadlifting etc. helps me think about what my pting philosophy is going to be… movement first. strengthen movement second. powerful movement third. or something like that. i will miss him…

but really… self competence. independence. mastery. these are a few of the things that are important to me. a person gotta earn my respect before offering me advice… i dunno. too strong willed perhaps. but i kinda like me being that way. forever alone :slight_smile: peace.

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I eat a lot of meat and a lot of eggs. I don’t worry about fat generally. Ground beef is a a decent cheap source of protein. I like to brown a bunch of lean ground beef sometimes with some onions, drain it and mix it with some salsa and eat it on a salad of tomatoes and spinach with either sour cream, cottage cheese or greek yogurt.

I have a rule that I try to eat some protein with every meal or snack and keep hard boiled eggs in the fridge at home and at work for that purpose. So, birthday cake shows up, I gotta eat an egg with it :slight_smile: It seems to work and keeps me eating enough and better than if I don’t have the rule.

I think it was a good call to get rid of the PT.

I don’t know if you’ll remember but I had a short little thing with a PT early last year who told me great things about her qualifications for the Oly lifts but she ended up not being very good at all and there were a few things that were off about our sessions but I felt obligated because I paid for it. I had to wonder if I was just being stubborn and unwilling to adapt to working with someone else after all the time spent training alone and I think that is always a part of my skepticism of working with others but in the end I stopped going and just left that I had a bunch of paid for sessions left and it was the right decision.

You can’t learn or be coached from someone who you don’t trust.

I am taking an oly coaching cert in a couple of weeks and so I will just continue to coach myself :stuck_out_tongue:

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^^I really wish I had a coach though. It is a lot harder to do it alone. But it has to be the right one. PTs aren’t coaches either.

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i didn’t know about your pt experience debra, but thanks for that. it helps. a lot. he tried to teach me oly lifting stuff in the first session… he seemed to think the ideal bar path was strictly vertical. i emailed him a bunch of stuff on how that is simply WRONG and basically told him that i have an oly lifting coach and i didn’t need / want him to help me with that. but then other stuff…

everyone i see in the gym does 10-12 reps. from an oly lifting pov… that will make you slow and weak and make your technique sloppy. but he kept saying ‘high rep for injury rehab and activation’ and i thought about it some and could see some kinda sense… unstable surface training does get your stabilizers activating, i guess… could see the sense… but lots of internal conflict over how much to trust him vs how much to trust myself.

how awesome you get to take an oly coaching cert! i’d love to do that! bet you will learn heaps!!

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yes. pt’s aren’t coaches. that is for real.

i mean…

if i was a shot putter would he think he knew everything about that, too??

i guess i’m pretty pissy that:

  • when i arrived at the gym they simply assumed that when i said i wanted to take some time to see whether i could train comfortably that i meant whether the guys would oggle me (i meant whether people would fuck off out of the squat rack) and that i would NEED a pt to teach me good form for exercises (even when i told them that i was specifically interested in rehabilitating injury for my sport of olympic weightlifting).

bloody guys who think that being born male somehow gives them some special direct line to gods wisdom on weightlifting…
or that a two year certificate course makes them authorative in bodybuilding, powerlifting, olympic weightlifting, and athletic sports training.

please don’t let me be one of those…

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[quote]alexus wrote:
yes. pt’s aren’t coaches. that is for real.

i mean…

if i was a shot putter would he think he knew everything about that, too??

i guess i’m pretty pissy that:

  • when i arrived at the gym they simply assumed that when i said i wanted to take some time to see whether i could train comfortably that i meant whether the guys would oggle me (i meant whether people would fuck off out of the squat rack) and that i would NEED a pt to teach me good form for exercises (even when i told them that i was specifically interested in rehabilitating injury for my sport of olympic weightlifting).

bloody guys who think that being born male somehow gives them some special direct line to gods wisdom on weightlifting…
or that a two year certificate course makes them authorative in bodybuilding, powerlifting, olympic weightlifting, and athletic sports training.

please don’t let me be one of those…[/quote]

“Now, little lady lemme help you with this here hard weightlifting knowledge stuff. Donchew worry yore purty head about the prowgram - we’ll figger all that owt fer ya.”

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[quote]alexus wrote:
forever alone
[/quote]

You remind me of me. Im a bit of a loner, although just recently Im getting a bit sick and tired of the “loner” and “me vs. the world” thing. I think you have a lot to offer Alexus, so dont totally withdraw yourself from the world. Although I understand, not everyone understands us.

Anyway, good news that your PT is gone. He was a pain in the ass. Have you ever considered Bikram yoga? I suppose the heat can sometimes be overbearing and interfere with recovery, but I like it cause its the same thing everytime, so you can concentrate on and measure your improvement. I find bodybalance is hard to get good at, and different instructors do moves differently, and its hard to work out the proper way of doing things. I want to be able to do handstands aswell, although its tricker than it looks.
Interesting to hear about your diet, as I am having my own diet issues at the moment. Im good for a few days and then I “fall off the bike”. Oh well.

tweet

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[quote]alexus wrote:

i read somewhere (reputable article) that women’s t levels don’t seem to rise as a function of intense lifting (like guys levels do). weird, huh. i asked TC on a thread once… but no reply (was a bit late to the livespill…) not sure… i have this normal testosterone but low TSH level thing going on… apparently that means my thyroid is producing testosterone independently from my pituitary / hypo/thalamus(i forget) and i’m at risk of developing hyperthyroidism… don’t seem to have graves disease… but i’m supposed to get regular checkups… when i get too involved in the gym i start to develop hyperthyroid symptoms of buggy eyed / amped up / aggression… need to learn more to make better sense of this…

[/quote]

HMm that is very interesting. I get pretty manic/worked up sometimes like you describe.
DOes it happen WHILE you are doing it, or like afterwards? I find when I am pushing the prowler and my heart rate starts to get too worked up I feel like I am going to punch people who are anywhere near me for no reason at all. Even doing super sets and stuff in the gym if somebody does something that I noticed and it sends me outta my zone I feel like I want to throw dumbbells at them AHHA

ALSO EAT GROUND BISON <<< such a wonderful meat.

And guys in the gym:
ONE GUY more than once “spotted me” on the bench IE HE came over and took the bar off my for NO REASON and racked it for mE WHEN I TOLD HIM NOT TOO… He reads a weightlifting book WHILE he works out too.
I guess that makes him an expert?
Sometimes gym people are really annoying.
Sorry, now I am just randomly ranting/complaining in your log, HA

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you girls need to channel that aggression and let it spill all over your face and skin. Create a bubble people won’t disturb.

“Don’t even look at my bar you mo-fo or I will tear your head off and use it for some medecine ball throws against the wall.”

Remember what you think comes through on your face. Those cues should make the creeps leave you alone.

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interesting about the test/tsh thing.

Tsh is known to be a crap test used by all the textbook docs.

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Spock - trouble is, bison is not widely available outside of the US. I can’t get it in England, anyway.

Lexy - never seen my abs either. I can see hints when I’m relatively lean and crunch hard under an overhead light, but if I went outdoors on a summer’s day in a crop top, it’s not like other people could see 'em. Currently I am rocking a bagel (and fat inner thighs, ugh). So I know how you feel.

Anyway, you didn’t need that PT and you’ll do just fine without him. Training seems to be going well for you. Stick with it.

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Alexus: Pilates, gymnastics–love it–especially the gymnastics, I don’t know about pilates. But, gymnastics will get you think and moving your body moving as a unit. I think it will be great for you.

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Great stuff…Lexy is going through her “experimental” stage. Although I do kinda miss your snatch, but I guess you are allowing me to try to catch up ;-p

Yes I need to work on channeling my anger too, although you are usually good at stuff like that Alexus. Most of the guys get out of my way but there was this little punk who does not even belong to the gym, hogging up the space, couldn’t even get his stupid bar out of my way when it was my turn. Little rugrat, he was like 17. Although I saw him compete & his techique was probably one of the better ones. He belongs to my old coach.

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i now weigh 66.5kg. was 61.5kg last time i checked (when i was in aussie). the party line was that i have been trying to bulk… and yeah, i did want some more muscle mass. i guess. and i think i have got some… i think my lats are a bit more developed and maybe my upper arms. pretty sure my quads are and my hammies a little bit too. i think i’ve gained some blubber too, though, no way of knowing… still fit everything i used to though maybe a tiny smidgen tighter around the quads.

so um… success?? even though i’m feeling like a lard ass.

guess that means my chin-ups really ARE coming along. but… um… it means my squats, deadlifts, and olympic lifts aren’t. :frowning:
bummer.

MOM - the tsh thing… the tsh test is a crap test of what?? of free T3/T4 levels?? i know my free T3/T4 levels are within normal range… the worry is that my tsh level is low (my brain is saying to stop producing the T3/T4 - but my body isn’t listening). it is good that it isn’t listening or i’d be hypothyroid… but it is puzzling why it is sending that signal when it shouldn’t be and the fact that the thyroid isn’t listening to the ‘stop that’ message means that my thyroid might get carried away at some point…

i do need to learn more though so maybe i have it all wrong.

nimain - i wish i could put angry face on… i have been a little… but i’m in a regular gym now. a commercial gym. there are regular people in there who are shy about their being in a gym at all and they are obviously feeling really self-conscious and out of place. they don’t understand that i’ve got my ‘kill the weights’ face on rather than a ‘what the hell are you doing in a gym’ face on… it makes it a little hard for me to train sometimes, yeah. i see now the difficulty one must have in trying to run a gym that is cool for everybody… i think i need to make more of an effort to be friendly and smily when i’m not killing the weights…

practiced handstands with legs up a wall today. couple backward rolls. not very good at coordinating pushing up with my arms and a little concerned i’ll hurt my neck… wish we had some decent gym mats … and a prowler… and a women’s oly bar bumpers platform adaptive motion trainer…

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did RSR week 1 day 1, 6x2@40kg. went to clean it. got stuck in the hole…

one of the trainers came over and was like ‘why don’t you put the collars on so the weights don’t fly off and hit the wall and smash a mirror or something’ and i said ‘because the collars add .5kg and i’m struggling to get 40kg. the weights have never ever ever flown off’.

he said ‘why don’t you try lifting less weight’. i was like ‘because i know i can lift less weight, i’ve been struggling with THIS weight for about the last 6 weeks for some reason’

he was like ‘why don’t you put the wooden plates on’

and i was like ‘so it would be set to the right height, yeah… only reason is psychological. if i change the plates then it will be different. i’ve just squatted precisely this set-up for 6x2 so i KNOW i csn stand it up. i know the weights are equivalent… but it won’t be the same it will be different’

:frowning:

then he left me alone… till it was time for me to move along out of the space for circuit class… still… at least he heard that i did indeed have reasons… fwiw.

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oh. and then i cleaned it. but failed to catch the jerk locked out. i’ll get it on thursday. RSR calls for 6x3 and if you can squat it for a triple you can clean and jerk it says conventional wisdom.

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Ha Ive learned that I have a natural frown with my face so I always look sort of angry, Its come to the point where I purposely try to make mouth become more neutral to fight this. Tons of new people at my commercial gym as well, and I know most people will say just concentrate on yourself, but I love people watching…

Congrats on getting some more muscle on your frame…I envy the quad growth…mine wont budge!

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[quote]alexus wrote:

nimain - i wish i could put angry face on… i have been a little… but i’m in a regular gym now. a commercial gym. there are regular people in there who are shy about their being in a gym at all and they are obviously feeling really self-conscious and out of place. they don’t understand that i’ve got my ‘kill the weights’ face on rather than a ‘what the hell are you doing in a gym’ face on… it makes it a little hard for me to train sometimes, yeah. i see now the difficulty one must have in trying to run a gym that is cool for everybody… i think i need to make more of an effort to be friendly and smily when i’m not killing the weights…

[/quote]

I’m in the same position (lifting in a public gym) and I balance this face with the occasional smile AFTER a workout or a friendly hand when someone needs a spot. Bottom line is some people need to be educated and when your bubble remains intake - when people get the message, then you can get drop the degree of aggression in your attitude. You might have to reinforce this once in a while though. I had an issue yesterday with some guy using the mirror to look at himself workout right beside the squat rack. I made a point of getting really close to him with my plates when I was changing the weight on the bar.