Awesome, thank you!
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Anytime!
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I had two great appointments last week: chiro and hormone fairy.
Chiro said that the muscles surrounding my shoulder (the deltoid-tricep junction) are hypertonic. So he worked some ART magic and gave me immediate relief. But since this is a reoccurring issue, I hit some upper body carefully/strategically this morning.
Anatomy is fun. So, it looks like right in that 1-2 area is what’s been angry all the time. And I suppose between 1 and 3 would be called the deltoid-bicep junction? But maybe I just made that up.
Then with my F-NP, Ashley, one of the things we talked about was progesterone.
I asked her why people only think of it as “the gestation hormone” and she said that we need to forget everything we’ve been told. Yes, it helps with making babies. That’s a thing. But it’s actually the pro-life hormone. Progesterone, she told me, is the hormone that regulates all other hormones and makes us energetic, relaxed, happy, youthful, able to sleep, and oh, I don’t know… LIVE?!
Then she recounted a story of a guy in his 40s who got his hormones screwed up, first with gear, and then with doctor-prescribed clomid. So Ashley revamped what he was taking, added progesterone to his regimen (temporarily), and his hormones went back to the healthy/optimal ranges.
So yeah, progesterone is not just for gestation. And I suspect the world is full of bitchy men and women because of inadequate amounts. Optimal progesterone makes you funner. Testosterone too, but we already knew that. 
Full-ish Body Minus Some Stuff
- Band Straight Arm Pulldown
Did these because my chiro recommended it. He said something about how these will help separate or stretch (?) the deltoid-tricep junction.
Superset:
- Machine Hip Thrust
- Dip
Hip thrusts were fine today. Nothing new. Dips are always a blast. Unless you tweak an elbow by going down too far… which everyone does at least once. Not today!
Superset:
- DB Incline Bench
- Modified Arnold Press
So this is where the strategy came in. I wanted to activate the front head of the delts using the incline bench, then sit up and do some super light Arnold presses. And sure, any bench variation is mainly a pec exercise, but with the incline it also recruits a good amount of anterior delt with very little tension in the rear delt head. So, this was kind of a pre-fatigue strategy.
But to safely overhead press without rear delt pain, I made the range of motion a lot shorter than how you’d typically do it. Arms did not come close to locking out at the top. Dumbbells did not go any lower than mid-face level.
I’m sure all three delt heads got some amount of activation there, but it wasn’t enough to cause irritation. In fact, my shoulders felt pretty great afterwards.
- Leg Press
Ascending load, descending reps. Worked up to something heavier than I expected to be able to do today.
- Leg Extension Dropset
Four sets of 10 reps, hit failure, drop one plate then five more reps.
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Wednesday’s Workout:
Deadlift: 3 x 10
Light-ish to focus on strict form, loading the hams, squeezing the lats, etc. I was worried about the shoulder.
Added some (cautious) upper body work that emphasized biceps, anterior delts, and pecs. Then hit abs.
Today’s Workout:
Deadlift: 5x5
Second time deadlifting this week. Heavier than Wednesday. Deltoid-tricep junction felt a little stressed on set 2, but I increased tension in the lats (squeeze the orange technique) to ameliorate that feeling on sets 3-5. Hopefully I don’t end up regretting this later.
Hip Thrust: 3 x 10-15
Dip: 3 x 5-7
Go-to superset. Love the stretch in the upper pecs, love the glute pump.
Leg Press: 3 x 10-12
These were challenging enough with moderate load.
Bicep Curls: 3 x 12
Full ROM, slow eccentric. Last couple reps were a struggle.
I’ll hit abs sometime later today.
Anyone Remember Ab Blitzes?
Christian Thibaudeau first wrote about ab blitzes where you do two (?) weeks on and two weeks off. I don’t remember his reasoning behind it, but it could be a similar thing to the desensitization I start to notice after a few weeks of hitting them.
If you followed his blitz plan let me know. I tend to do more like 3-weeks on, 3-months off because oops… forgot abs exist. So anyway, I’m hitting them consistently now and it’s fun to get that mind-muscle connection again.
Instacrap
I get anxiety spending time there. But one post a year is okay for me, as long as I get off immediately, keep notifications off, don’t look at DMs, and reply to comments at my leisure when I’ve mustered the desire to get back on for five minutes. It takes effort though. I would rather eat a dog turd with a fork and knife than let my brain live there.
So here’s my thing.
What’s unfortunate is that I glanced at my DMs and saw a million unread messages – some from my best childhood friends. And now I feel really bad for not seeing/responding to them.
But I absolutely will not start now.
Because then they will respond, and that means I will have to check back and respond to them, which means that they will respond to my response, which means that I will have to write a response to their response of the response.
NO. WE HAVE TEXT MESSAGES FOR A REASON.
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Hi! 
This isn’t a wellness check, cuz we’re all autonomous adults, But…
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All good here! Thanks for checking in. Just been too busy or too exhausted to log anything. I’m in the process of tapering off of caffeine and it’s been a challenge! 
How the heck are you!? Tell me fun facts about your life or any facts at all.
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My son just recently crushed another grading period! I’m always happy and very grateful for that. 
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Awwww yeah!!! What an awesome kiddo you’ve got. He’s lucky to have such a great dad. 
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I got sick last weekend and have been having a hard time getting energy all the way back up. But also wonder if this is an HPA axis issue, so I’ve been playing detective a bit.
My labs (drawn last week) came back and almost everything is great, including thyroid-related health markers. The only thing that was not great was testosterone. It’s in the “normal” range but it’s low-normal, despite the prescription TRT I’ve been taking.
So I don’t know if that’s what’s causing the fatigue or if I’ve just been combining a lot of competing forms of stimulation. I had a competition on Wednesday night and actually had more fun than ever. So it didn’t feel stressful. There was a rubber chicken involved, which makes a difference.
But I think there’s a delayed stress response to certain things. You might PR at the gym and feel amazing that day, but then the next day you feel like you got hit by a truck.
Workouts
They’re not that interesting; mostly full-ish body. Although yesterday was really bad. I did three sets of leg press leaving about 1-2 reps in reserve, and felt too exhausted to do anything after that. It was a strange workday too. I was sitting at my desk feeling like I needed to just put my head down. Simple tasks took 5 times longer than necessary.
Shooting
There’s not one way to do it. It’s just like fitness. Every teacher and expert has a different set of super-important-must-do instructions. Even within the same range, I’ve had instructors completely revamp what I was doing, and what I was doing was exactly what I was taught to do by a different instructor.
So I’m having to unlearn some stuff and relearn new things. But progress is happening. And also, the more contradicting advice you hear, the more you learn through trial and error.
One huge thing I’ve learned is that dry-firing and YouTube are often more valuable than range time. As long as I’m shooting once a week, I will actually improve faster with fewer range days, more basement dry fire sessions, and great instructional videos, like this one.
He addresses exactly my problem, and most likely why my upper back and shoulders have been jacked up.
Other Things
So accurate it’s creepy.
Dogs wearing hats will never not be cute.
Yeah!
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Good for you 
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I have a bunch of these. They’re all 5.5 mm.
Then, when I find something else they fit with, I’ll make it an official part of that thing.
I also have hex head sets for everything else. Each toolbox, kitchen drawer, drill press, etc.
I don’t know how that habit developed, it just quietly took over.
Its like all the dopamine got squeezed out.
I take b-6 for that.
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Most people have no idea how complicated hormones are.
And that’s basically just the adrenal gland. You are still leaving out these.
Which is very far from the complete list. These are the ones we know about. Neuropeptides? Cachectins? Almost certainly there are still undiscovered ones.
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Correct, hormones are complicated. Therefore…. what? We should all just stop trying to fix ourselves and instead sit around and suffer?
It’s weird how wasteful it feels to toss them though.
Having a huge collection comes in handy — especially when you need one from the metric sized collection and the next day from the standard.
Exactly. Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll add B6 to my Amazon cart.
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Thank you. I’ve become a fan of that word. 
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It does. Cuz they’re still useful!
Esoteric but related- i get a 1.5 mm one with each purchase of accessories for my welding machine, which is super handy because that is a very easy to loose item.
Flame free confession material-
I’m the guy that drills holes in them to put key rings through, so they can be attached to what ever needs one.
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I don’t think one should choose to suffer. But I do think by showing oxytocin enhancing pictures of dogs in hats, you might be ignoring serotonin enhancing pictures of small dogs with big sticks.
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I bet, those are tiny. If you have a 2.5 mm on hand, toss it my way.
I misplaced it and need to use it today. The size you need is often the exact one that’s missing.
That’s really smart and creative!
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Fair.
Workouts
I’ve just been doing every other day, full-ish body for the past few weeks.
Shoulder work is back on the table. Nothing fancy, just light to moderate loading with full ROM lateral raises and Arnold presses. It’s amazing how much of a pump you’ll get when you start adding those back into the mix. Also did some loaded carries today. So…
Shoulder Mystery: Solved?
It definitely feels weird to write this, but the thing that’s really helping my shoulder feel better is sleeping with an extra pillow.
I used to think it was unhealthy to sleep with two pillows, but if you’re a side sleeper, with a perfect clavicle width (kidding!), then you basically have to internally rotate your shoulder in order for your head to reach the pillow and get support.
And not only are you folding your shoulder inward to bring your head closer to the pillow, but the weight of your upper back is smushing down on it in this suboptimal position. And adding another pillow – that actually meets the head – allows a person with perfect clavicle width to maintain a better posture during the night.
So more pillow means I’m not waking up feeling injured from sleep.
Only thing is, two is a bit too much. But one is not nearly enough.
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