3/30/13 - Saturday
Breakdancing.
Mill>headstand
~60min
Left lat flared up again, so I had to leave early. Will just take the cue of everything being closed for easter tomorrow and rest. But before I had to leave I learned how NOT to re-stab in order to make sure I roll properly.
3/31/13 - Sunday
Weight: 162.5 (+1)
Waist: 31 3/8 (+1/2)
Chest: 40 (+1/8)
Hips: 36 1/8 (-1/4)
R bicep: <13 1/4 (+<1/8)
L bicep: 13 3/8 (0)
R thigh: 24 1/4 (-1/4)
L thigh: 23 3/8 (+1/8)
Bouncing around because I had a burger from Wendy’s, so by next week I hope it will have hardened into a hard pellet of shit the size of my fist so I can poop it out.
No breakdancing practice, want to make sure my left lat pain is RECOVERED and the gyms are closed for easter anyways.
4/1/13 - Monday
Cycle 23, Week 1, Day 1
No April Fool’s joke, today sucked for serious.
Deadlift
5x235
5x275
6x310
Clean
1x225
Pull-ups
8,5,4N,3
Good mornings
11x160
8,8,7x165
8,7x155
9,8,7x145
10,8,6x135
My left lat still hurts. It flared up doing deadlifts, so I was lifting more slowly and locking out was harder. I was expecting to get 9.
Cleans hurt. I warmed up with 135 and it pulled that spot, so I figured I’d be dead if I did the usual five sets. Instead I cleaned 225 for one, milestone, new weight, yaaaaay, it hurt but I kept it to that.
With deadlifts and cleans hurting, I tried pull-ups, but those flared up that spot too eventually.
So I just did 12 sets of good mornings, kept out of that region altogether. At least these felt good. I thought maybe I did too much volume, but it’s injured, not dead, right? Have to do something.
4/2/13 - Tuesday
Cycle 23, Week 1, Day 2
Overhead press
5x105 - ow
5x120 - ow.
4x140 - OW
DB OHP
7,6,5x55s - OWWWWW
Went home, rolled hard with a lacrosse ball for an hour, no shit, an hour, to try one more time to loosen that shit up in my left rear shoulder. No luck, except a spot around my armpit that I loosened up. So I figured, that’s enough of that shit, took two Advil and went back out again:
HSPs, ~30min
No way I’m going to let this stupid injury keep me from hitting prescribed reps.
4/3/13 - Wednesday
A very painful attempt at doing mills, followed by:
104 handstand pushups, against wall. It took me, oo, an hour about. Started off with 8, then I could only do 4 at a time, then 3, so on
Headstand, ~30min
Tucking hands to sides helps more than pointing them out like a cross.
Smith BB hold
4s,7s,6s,6s,3s x 305
8s x 295
All the while missing my barrels mills. I have one last thing to try: ice. Which I really should have thought of earlier.
4/4/13 - Thursday
Cycle 23, Week 1, Day 3
Squat
5x185
5x215
2x245
L DB row
200 reps, sets of ~20
50-90 lbs
I felt some kind of stretch on these, a release that made my shoulder hurt less.
I can’t lie, this shoulder pain is straight up debilitating. It hurt to unrack the weight. Fuck, it hurt to put plates on the bar. I thought of all things my squat wouldn’t be affected, but I guess I was wrong.
It hurts to wear my backpack. It hurts to breathe. I tried rolling, taking Advil, eating more protein, sleeping on an ice pack, using an icy hot patch, and taking a hot shower. No luck.
I’m going to do strictly the core lift tomorrow and rest all weekend. If that doesn’t help, then it looks like I’ll be rocking an assistance plan of handstand pushups, pistol squats, and GMs if I’m lucky. And don’t even ask when I’ll get to do windmills.
4/5/13 - Friday
Cycle 23, Week 1, Day 4
Bench press
5x120
5x140
5x155
Got a massage. Didn’t help but she gave me tips about “muscle knots”, which sounded like broscience but I went back to rolling with the lacrosse ball to try it out. I must admit I feel hopeful, not completely fixed, but hopeful, after rolling with the ball and sitting on tight spots for 3 minutes at a time.
4/6/13 - Saturday
150 HSPs.
Left shoulder still hurts just to breathe.
Dreading tomorrow’s measurements.
4/7/13 - Sunday
Measurements (they suck)
Weight: 163 (+.5)
Waist: 31 3/4 (+3/8)
Chest: 39 5/8 (-3/8)
Hips: 36 1/4 (+1/8)
R bicep: 13 1/4 (0)
L bicep: <13 3/4 (+<3/8)
R thigh: 24 1/4 (0)
L thigh: 23 1/4 (-1/8)
But I’m really starting to feel better since I just rested on heat and didn’t do anything today. So seeing as I missed so many prescribed sets I’m going to do cycle 23 week 1 over again, but with hot tub time replacing a fair chunk of the breakdancing time since heat is helping so much.
4/8/13 - Monday
New information: Heat doesn’t actually help. No matter what I have this shooting pain whenever I take a deep breath.
I’ve decided against doing any more lifting until whatever problem I have here in my shoulder goes away. Looking at last week, I would perform poorly at best and mess myself up even more at worst.
Until then I cut carbs from 350 to 250, increased protein from 200 to 250, and will be doing “easy” bodyweight stuff like pistols and HSPs.
I hope this gets over quick. Damn, mess up once and pay for it for more than two weeks.
4/9/13 - Tuesday
DB row
100 reps on each arm, worked up to 10x100
Pistol squats
50 reps on each leg
Each exercise took 30 minutes. Was so gassed afterward I went home and fell asleep while rolling on my lacrosse ball. My pain spot hurt badly right afterwards but feels much better than it was before, now.
This sucks. I want to reach back there and manually pull my back muscle out from being pinched under my shoulder blade. At least that’s what the massage therapist says it is; if I was just “tight” or had “trigger points” I would be banging out my deadlifts by now.
4/10/13 - Wednesday
HSPs
11 w/o wall
39 against wall
Pistols, 50 L/R
More HSPs, 50 against wall
DB row, 100 L/R, 2 towels, worked up to 10x100
Feel close to being recovered. I only feel a little pinch when I take a deep breath.
4/11/13 - Thursday (late update)
HSPs - 19 (no wall)
Pistols - 50 L/R
HSPs - 81 (wall)
4/12/13 - Friday
Pistols, 100 L/R
50 finger tip pushups
50 normal pushups
update: 50 more normal pushups
AKA killing time doing arbitrary shit until I can lift again.
4/13/13 - Saturday
BS training. Er, I mean BW training. ;p
301 pushups throughout the day
60 pullups
50 L/R pistols
4/14/13 - Sunday
Weight: 164 (+1)
Waist: 31 5/8 (-1/8)
Chest 40 1/8 (+1/2)
Hips: 37 (+3/4)
R bicep: 13 1/4 (0)
L bicep: 13 1/2 (-<1/4)
R thigh: 24 1/4 (0)
L thigh: 23 1/2 (+1/4)
Hm, biggest my chest has ever been.
Training:
62 pullups - best set was 8 which beats yesterday’s 4, both of which suck miserably
HSP: 6 free, 9 wall, couldn’t do any more, need to recover
150 pistols, L/R
50 lying leg raises, (10,2x20)
4/15/13 - Monday
64 pullups, best: 9
HSP: 25 free, 75 wall
50 pushups
I’m sick of this.
4/16/13 - Tuesday
“Shaniqua”
Pullups (pronated, others were neutral): 25, best: 8
Pistols, 50 L/R
50 Finger tip pushups
50 pushups
50 down-backs
50 over-unders
50 left-rights, then 50 right-lefts just to be sure
28 four-foot-nancys for time
21-15-9 toe-bend-dip-slingers
900 m swim through concrete
As many rounds in three minutes of wrestling polar bears and belly sliding down my driveway
Finally felt good enough to do an OAP on each arm.
4/17/13 - Wednesday
Pistol > kip up
~60min
Was hoping this would be better than the video makes it look. Can’t lie, I was going for a hop off the left leg, midair slow-mo barrel roll then land on my back and bounce right up.
1990s
~30min
Deadlift
3x135
3x185
3x225
3x275
1x295
1x315
1x325
1x330
0x335:F
OK, so double bodyweight. Not bad that all I did for my lower body the past two weeks was pistols. Completely painless by the way, breathing deep pinches a bit still but lifting was nooooo problem.
I am greatly bothered, however, by progress I made this year. I deadlifted 315 last July. And my best PR this year was 3x340. I feel like I could make progress just as good but with less lifting.
4/18/13 - Thursday
Overhead press
5x95
3x115
1x135
1x145
0x150:F
DB OHP
8x50s
3x60s
1x65s
3x60s
Pull-ups
2x+25
Breakdancing
One-leg air swipes, ~30min
Got better at keeping my hips high with these.
Well it’s pretty much official. I lost the progress of 10 months’ hard lifting with one injury. Looking back I see that said progress was pretty shitty to begin with, especially given the time and energy that I devoted to lifting. Not helping was that I was always too tired to practice breakdancing well anyways; it’d be like I do GMs one day and my hamstrings are sore all week, like, WTF am I doing.
So here’s what I’ll do:
Deadlift
Deadlift 5/3/1
Clean 1x3
Pull-ups 1x3
Breakdance
OHP
OHP 5/3/1
DB OHP 1x3
Dips 1x3
Breakdance
Squat
Squat 5/3/1
Front squat 1x3
Pull-ups 1x3
Breakdance
Bench press
Bench press 5/3/1
BB row 1x3
DB bench 1x3
Breakdance
It’s rough and arbitrary. And it might give me just as shitty progress as I’m having now. But at least I’ll know I’m going in to lift heavy, to focus on getting stronger, and then getting out while I’m still fresh enough to make some progress on breakdancing. I think about it like this: If lifting was the main thing, then core lifts would be core lifts and assistance lifts would be assistance. But breakdancing is the main thing. So breakdancing is like core lifts and core lifts are like assistance, which means assistance is mostly just an excuse not to be breakdancing.
As for avoiding breakdancing injuries, I’ll stop when I get tired and start messing up or collecting bruises. Simple.
Finally, I’m lifting W-TH-SA-SU now. Less crowding at the gym.