Woo vacation workouts! I’m leaving for Mexico on Tuesday so doing what I can before then and taking some stuff to do conditioning workouts with.
This morning’s lovely workout was a 50/50 split between warmups and workout. Yeah, it’s insane.
Warmups: Couple minutes at an easy pace then 8x15/45 sprints with the level bumped up a bit. I must look like I really suck at cardio to all the cardio bunnies in the gym. 10 minutes and I’m dripping sweat. Lovely.
Agile 8, Simple 6
OHP: 45x5x2, 50x5, 60x5x3 The last set was a struggle and I ended up push pressing the last two reps
DLs: 115x5, 135x5, 150x5, 170x5, 180x4x2
Didn’t feel too bad. In between DL sets I did sets of 20 TKEs with a band I wrapped around the rack. Noticed my VMO on the left side doesn’t fire as well as the right side. Stuff to mention to my PT
After this I took a well deserved trip to the sauna and relaxed for 10-15 minutes. I might do some auxiliary work at home, might not. We’ll see.
[quote]DiscoDani wrote:
I’ll race you to 225. Although, I think you could easily get that after repping 180.
I hear you on the knee stuff. Have you ever had them checked out?[/quote]
Lol. Gimme a solid 3-4 weeks doing reps around that area and a little higher and I’ll have it in the bag
Went and saw my PT today. He basically told me to keep doing what I’m doing and added in a couple variations, like putting a band around my knees while I’m doing glute bridges. He did notice that I’m flat-footed and I have a tendency of rolling my foot in (losing any arch whatsoever) when I do single leg stuff. Would totally put stress on my knee and cause it to track wrong. He wants to see if I can correct it with concentrating on ‘gripping’ the floor to keep my arch before doing anything. He did some acupuncture on my IT band too. That just felt weird.
Well, we’ll see what a week of doing pure rehab and sprint work will do for my knees. Woo Mexico! Bad eating and booze for the win!
i just found your log. highland games - how cool! carl darby (in over 35) used to log about highland games throwing and olympic lifting, but he hasn’t been around in a while… i would totally love to do some throwing if there were people doing it in my vicinity
i totally want a travel roller! it would save me so much space if i could jam things inside of it…
as i was reading along i was wondering about your hip and ankle mobility since knee pain can often be linked to that as the knee starts to inappropriately move to compensate for hips and / or ankles that aren’t moving as they should. have you found any muscle knots down low in your quads on the outside and / or inside of your leg? i was surprised to find that both places were pretty tender (the muscles attach to the lower limb so really low down around the inside and outside of your knee). releasing them seems to help me some, but working hard on stabilizing my knee, too (i have limited ankle mobility so know i need to be careful). one legged squats are the bomb for hip / ankle mobility and knee strengthening. i need to string a resistance band across the squat rack because i can’t do it unaided. microband around knees for squats helps, too, to really get the hang of shoving the knees out hard to the sides. apparently a lot of women have trouble with knee cave (hip instability) because of the greater q angle resulting from wider hips and longer femurs. it seems related to VMO problems…
bit of a rant, sorry. looking forward to following along!
[quote]PixieThrower wrote:
Woo Mexico! Bad eating and booze for the win![/quote]
YES!!! My kinda girl! I hope you’re having a wonderful time in Mejico, mamacita!
Yeah, seriously, your PT sounds awesome. I’m glad to hear that! Its amazing how clicking with the right person can make or break your rehab. Today in my PT we were discussing how I’m almost done with all my sessions and I got a little sad! I was like, “I have Stockholm syndrome! How am I going to live without you!” sniffle
And the VMO is the last thing to come back - be patient and consistent, it’ll pop up before you know it.
Awesome DLing! Great job on those. 225 is yours, for sho!
[quote]DiscoDani wrote:
I’ll race you to 225. Although, I think you could easily get that after repping 180.
I hear you on the knee stuff. Have you ever had them checked out?[/quote]
Well shoot lemme in on this! thats my goal too though I think I’m probalby like four months away LOL. Got waylayed with a minor injury and lost alot of DL Ground.
Hola chicas! I promise many pics when I get back. Not a lot of pretty bikinis over here. Lots of women with no shame. Bikinis should not be made in those sizes. Woooo sun!
Back home now! I needed that vacation and so did my knee. It feels sooo much better after taking time off.
Mexico was awesome! Around 28 degrees and sunny most of the time I was there and humid. Had a good time sitting on the beach and by the pool, reading and sunning for the most part. Went on a tour to Ek Balam (one of the newer ruins discovered) and got to rappel into a cenote! Very cool. My knee wasn’t super impressed being told to walk up and down 97 uneven stairs but I told it to quit whining. It only got a little achy so I was okay with that. I promise to post pics as soon as I’ve moved them from my camera to my computer!
PT stuff: Yeah, the guy I go to is excellent. One of my friends recommended him based on the fact that the PT helped him WALK again. That’s good enough for me. Ever since I started to focus on keeping my arch in my foot, I’ve noticed a HUGE improvement with my knee. Single leg squats are easier and I can go down further. I didn’t get to do a lot of the hip flexor work he had told me to do because they didn’t have an exercise ball at the resort I was staying at but I’m starting those up today so we’ll see what happens. Went back to my PT yesterday so we could see what a week of lazy rehab had done. I was a lot more stable and noticing that the correct muscles were firing for the rehab stuff I was supposed to be doing, so he was happy with the progress. Gave me a move to do to help strengthen up the muscles that support my arch so I can have an honest shot of going without orthopedics. Overall, I’m feeling a lot more optomistic about my knees than I have in a while.
Alexus: In regards to your super awesome rant, I’ve been working on my hip flexibility. I know it’s lacking and could definitely be better. Since I started using the travel roller it’s been easier to work through the knots in my quads and stretch them out. I do have a couple knots on the outer part of my quad but they’re a lot smaller than they used to be. My PT has me using a band when I do glute bridges so that I can focus on pushing my knees out and strengthening those muscles. He also has me using an exercise ball to help me focus on using my hip muscles to pull my knee back into alignment.
As for workouts, I have to figure out what I want to do for the rest of the year. I figure I can do light stuff for the rest of the week just to get my body to remember what the movements feel like then make a little 4 week microcycle to get me to the end of the year and a 225 DL We’ll see what progress my knee has made by then and write up a new cycle. I’m also going to give carb cycling an honest shot diet wise as I’ve kind of stalled (mostly due to lack of motivation). Don’t think I was eating enough.
The total work #s are pretty cool to look at Know the weird part? I only did 4290# of total work DLing on my last session even though I had more weight on the bar by the end. Crazy.
I’ll do my rehab stuff later tonight and call it a day.
ah… i had been wondering whether i should push my knees out for glute bridges and now i know! thanks for that. glad to hear your knee is making progress.
I have a goal of hitting 225+# by the end of the year. I think it’s doable 
We’ll see what progress my knee has made by then and write up a new cycle. I’m also going to give carb cycling an honest shot diet wise as I’ve kind of stalled (mostly due to lack of motivation). Don’t think I was eating enough.
