Just. Don't. Suck (Part 1)

Training Training Logs
2960

Well, I’ve been thinking about my training a bit this week. It’s like this shoulder flare up brought everything to a sudden stop.

  • I’m tired of being banged up.
  • I’m tired of altering my training.
  • I’m a bit burned out.
  • Do I continue training for strength?
  • Do I continue to bulk?

I need to rest for awhile without being inactive. I’m not sure how to do that. I feel like I can’t stop lifting; I’ll lose muscle fast (I always do). How the hell do you rest a hip? I’ll be playing around with different things to figure that out.

Due to being burned out, I’ve been thinking about my training split. Tonight I did one hip movement, one chest, one back, and one shoulder. I hated it! I’m tempted to just hit everything once a week for awhile - shoulders, legs, back, chest. It’s not the ideal frequency and split but it might help me mentally. Leg day is going too be lame - no deadlifts, squats, or power cleans for a month or so.

I think that’s all for now. I’m watching the NLCS and drinking beer the rest of the night…unless my wife joins me. We’ll watch Grimm on Prime but I’ll still drink beer.

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2961

I’ve hit that wall, too. I can push and push and push right up til my brain does some sort of override and says, “TnT, your body’s hurt. But you’re still pushing. Clearly, you’re too stupid at the moment, so I’m pulling the plug on your will to save what remains.”

This indicates the intelligence of

Which raises this problem

After my last shoulder problem wherein I couldn’t do any upper body exercises other than forearms, I realized how narrowly American gym culture (and my own priorities) had caused me to define health, fitness, and training.

No, I couldn’t lift with my arms, but I could still walk. And jog. And do muscle-searing, bodyweight-based leg workouts like walking lunges around a quarter-mile track, interspersed with mad abs. So much yuck. But so much better than nothing AND probably more transferable to non-gym life than some of the lifts I do.

Likewise. It’s obnoxious and can be demotivating.

Swimming. After my leg was crushed, I couldn’t even walk for a year. One of the survival class instructors told me about a friend of his in the service who’d been a combat diver. He said the friend had HUGE thighs from fin swimming several hours every day. After my leg healed enough, I bought some half-length fitness fins, some goggles, a snorkel, and got to work. The workout from even those stubby little fins had my legs on fire.

If your hip allows swimming, give it a whirl. Play around with different strokes to find what your shoulder does and doesnt like.

High-rep leg presses, like 20-25 reps per set, supersetted with high-rep, bodyweight back raises? Then supersets of leg extensions and calf raises?

I can empathize with your current situation. What’s helped me face training set acks and layoffs is re-evaluating my training goals and life values. Not everyone shares my view but, after not being able to walk for a year, I prefer functionality and longevity to short-term numbers chasing.

Hang in there, you’ll figure it out.

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2962

I could use some fins! I’ve swam a couple times in the past and I nearly drown so it’s not a good time. I can swim ok, but I don’t float. My energy goes towards staying above water. I can’t relax and cruise. The old guys embarrass me. [quote=“TriednTrue, post:2961, topic:228202”]
High-rep leg presses
[/quote]

I’m worried about these because it puts my hip in extreme flexion. I didn’t have any pain during my 2 minute leg presses that I did a couple months ago.

These also anger my patellar tendons if I do them too often. I was doing them during my recovery earlier this year and I had patellar pain soon after.

The RFESS don’t hurt my hip joint. I think I can do walking lunges too.

2963

On the leg press only work the partial range of motion that has no pain. Then gradually, very gradually add some range of motion. It took Stan E a year on banded leg presses to get full range of motion without pain.

Welcome to the long term rehab project and maybe the greatest lifting journey you will ever take.

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2964

I hear you! Some guys skim the surface like those water bugs; I plough my sorry carcass through like a horse buggy through a foot of mud. On the upside, it’s great cardio, unless I don’t stay above water, at which point it’d become killer cardio.

Those sound like good options, along with the limited-ROM leg presses that @losthog advocated. Ben Bruno loves the RFESS.

2965

I though this was me too until I got a couple of lessons, focused on doing some drills every session and used the pull buoy and only used arms. After a few weeks my swimming improved 19 fold. Most of us that don’t float well or drag our legs is because of poor breathing technique, bad head position and weakness through the trunk.

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2966

Swimming and my favourite prescription cycling.
Low impact gets the blood flowing and moves a lot of muscles.
Not building muscles but rehabbing them.
Take care of the shoulder Big J.

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2967

Agree 100% with everyone, swimming and as mort says, cycling
Man, take your bike for a consistent ride up hills and you’ll build some serious mass in your quads.

Re: hip pain
I stopped deadlifting for a few months, had a huge impact on me personally, perhaps it’s with our leverages or something but just leave them for a couple of weeks, active stretching and foam rolling and see how you go

Plus really hammer your hip adductors
Also had a real positive reaction to me

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2968

That makes perfect sense. I’ve had swimming lessons and have worked on my breathing technique as well as I could after reading books on the subject in the 90s :joy: However, some stroke technique and focused core stengthening would certainly improve my swimming. Thanks for the info, @simo74

2969

10.20.18

Woke at 247.4 lbs.

@TriednTrue @losthog @mortdk @simo74 @anon96032531

I appreciate all the suggestions. I’m definitely not a good swimmer; I’ve never had anyone help me other than learning to swim as a kid. I could bike more, but I’m stuck inside unless I want to train when the family is home. I do everything I can to knock out my training during times that won’t interfere with family time. We don’t get much of it with my work schedule.

I’m kind of leaning towards starting a fluff style program where I just do hypertrophy work instead of moving anything heavy. I prefer to lift heavy and do less reps, but it’s killing me. @anon96032531, deadlifts aren’t necessarily hurting me but I ache afterwards. I’m guessing that picking up close to 500 pounds puts a lot of pressure on the hip joint and it’s probably unnecessary.

I’m not sure how long I’m going to be doing one armed stuff. My shoulder felt alright while jogging and running last night but it hurt when I did the walking knee hug stretch during my warm up. I started just pulling with my left arm only.

It’s looking like I’ll be fighting for 1st base at tomorrow’s tournament. I’m still not sure if I’ll be able to swing but I’m certain I can hit it out of the infield with one arm. This sucks. I love the softball tourney and this is the second time in five years that I’ve been injured the week before the tourney. And one year they didn’t have it because the people who thought they could do a better job than the original organizers failed to do anything. If it hadn’t rained a foot in two days then we would’ve already played!

I don’t have anything planned for today. I’m hoping work is a bit quieter because I was slammed yesterday. So far that isn’t the case. On my first call the jackass male half took off as I showed up. I got to chase him for all of 57 seconds before the chase was shut down. It’s dangerous and scary to chase bad guys. The only good thing is that I know who he is so he’ll still get charged.

Hopefully the rest of the day is quiet so I can at least take a lunch break.

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2970

Want an honest assessment?

Do nothing for a week. Nothing but work and some walking… then start slow with some superlight basic moves. Nothing that causes pain. Pick 6 for 3. Pick 6 exercise 3 days a week and keep the total lift volume 10-13k for the day.

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2971

I had to quit playing basketball around your age because it beat me up too bad. And I loved to play. No way I would play a league or competitive pickup game now. The knees and ankles would not handle it.

I still play at holidays with my family but I stand around and pass a lot take the occasional shot and never grind with the young guys. Even though I would totally smash their ass. Things changed for me to stay healthy.

You are so damn competitive that nobody beats you at anything anytime. But you have to remember that you aren’t 20something anymore. Welcome to the old man club. :joy:

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2972

That’s going to put an end to this bulk.

I’m the same age as Lebron James!

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2973

Yeah, but you’re a policeman, husband, and father who values time with his family; in other words, you’re a man with a real job and with his priorities and values straight, not a grown man who plays a game for a career. /rant

Thanks for the tag and discussing your current situation. I think your lift fluff idea is good until the issues are resolved. The way I see, we have the rest on our loves to train IF we don’t destroy our joints beforehand.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention one therapy that might help your biceps tendonitis. Get a bag of rubber bands of mixed thicknesses. I was able to get some are Walgreens. Put a rubber band around your fingers and thumb and open your fingers outwards (finger extensions.) Do 50 reps with one hand, then do the other, a couple sets each hand a couple times each day. Use two rubber bands when one is too easy.

I used to have such severe biceps tendonitis I couldn’t lift the smallest items, like my shoes to put em on. A blacksmith friend told me about tha exercise, and it sure helped me. My theory is I didn’t do nearly enough forearms and grip training, so my forearm and hand muscles don’t place even counterbalancing tension compared to my upper a muscles.

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2974

I don’t do any grip training so I can’t argue there. Maybe @duketheslaya is on to something with his CoC trainer and band training.

Duke, does the CoC trainer come with the bands for the extensor training or was that a separate purchase?

Best case scenario, grip training helps. Worst case scenario, I can crush other people’s hands.

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2975

I do this too so know exactly what you mean

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2976

Something ive found is just general lifting wont do much for your grip unless you’re genetically blessed like calves. I wouldn’t actually recommend buying grippers because theres so much stuff you can do without forking out money for grippers, that being said i believe they boost your grip tremendously and is worth the purchase. There are other ways to build your crush grip though but i dont think as effective. Theres other types of grip too like pinch and supportive etc. I could go on all day about grip and all the muscles in the forearms and hands but the main takeaway is you should train your grip and forearms to be well balanced.

The bands are seperate. I would recommend buying them or just doing what triedntrue suggested with the rubber bands.

High rep hammer curls specifically will go along way as well with tendonitis (Preferably with fat gripz, something about the thick handle curls releases tension in the arm and helps majorly). I wouldnt recommend heavy grip training like grippers though (using a light gripper like the rehab grippers can help though) . Something you can do which builds crush grip is filling a bucket with sand or rice, and digging your hands in and squeezing.

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2977

Mate, credit is due
That was a brilliant reply :clap:

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2978

I think you have learned the ways of becoming a grip Jedi

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2979

Cheers!

Thanks man! Give me a few years though and I’ll become a jedi master

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