Checking in & catching up.
. One of my favorite builds was for a church in southern Illinois that got wrecked by an F5.
St. Kateri Tekakwitha.
Batten down the hatches!
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4/29/26
Complex
45 lb.
4 sets of 10
Clean
OHP
Back squat
RDL
Rows
Total time: 37:05
Work time: 18:30
My butt STILL hurts. Other than that all is well. My nutrition has been total shit for about 3 days now. Sigh. Back on track today.
Today is a good day.
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Yeah same here. Although I do sometimes think that you need to decipher whether you’re avoiding them because your body doesn’t like them, whether YOU don’t like them, or most importantly if it’s something you’re not doing because it doesn’t feel right and there’s an issue you need to fix be it form or mobility.
With get-ups, or something like muscle-ups, it’s like “cool, but why (do I need to be able to do that)?”.
Then there’s something like all vertical pulls feel crap, it’s “why does it feel like crap and what can I do to fix this?”.
There are times we don’t do stuff because it hurts but there’s a fixable reason why it hurts and our daily lives might be better if we found out why and sorted it out.
I only wanted to clarify this because sometimes avoidance can snowball and create dysfunction and disability in training. I know a really dumb idiot like that. His name is cdep89.
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I completely agree.
Me, too! Luckily I’ve only done this in stretches of a couple months and was able to correct it before I really did damage. I even had a physical therapist tell me to avoid things with my quad when I had hip pain. The result over six weeks was that the pain did not get any better and my quad atrophied putting me in a worse place than when I’d started. And that’s how I found my current PT thanks to a great recommendation.
I think of general movements, the muscles involved, and how to train them. I have a student who is apparently wearing a back brace. He never told me what happened, just that he couldn’t get into position to do push press yesterday. I was like "So what could you do to replace that exercise but still train the involved muscles? His response “Seated stuff.” Bingo! And then I added he could even settled for seated lateral raises and some extra triceps work since push press mostly targets those muscles. It’s all about hitting the muscles involved in a movement. Specificity is nice, but sometimes not the best option.
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Classic.
Yeah there’s always ways to keep training, and we all go through different complications. Resting is very rarely the answer to getting better long-term, the human body doesn’t work like that. Stimulate, adapt. Rinse, repeat.
Look at me, pretending I know it all whilst simultaneously getting tweaks in about 5 different places today doing “mobility”. Because it turns out lying on the floor and trying to move is actually as dangerous as playing in traffic.
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This is a very true statement. Even if it comes from a man who hurt himself while lying on the floor. 
(Coming from a woman who hurt herself while getting off of the floor)
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Still 4/29/26
I watched The Boys with my oldest son tonight. I rarely watch TV and it’s not my favorite show, but it was time with my son that he asked for so it was time well spent.
I finished off the birthday cake tonight. Silver lining: there is no cake left.
A friend asked me to train for and run a half with her. So now I have something to work towards! She has lots of work to do to get ready for that kind of race so I have lots of time to get back into running shape. She also lives kind of far away so we won’t technically be training together but we will be training at the same time. Lol. Hopefully she sticks with it. If not it will be a good start for a 30 with my family. So this looks like a win all around.
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Good for you! My wife prefers having solid reasons to run other than ‘just because’ so I understand how helpful this can be.
1 Like
4/30/26
Circuit
5 Rounds
3 @25 lb KB
2 a@30 lb KB
Swings x 25
Push-up x 5
Swings x 25
Core x 15
My butt doesn’t hurt! Whatever I pissed off in my right lower back is still rather cross with me. I felt it go from a mild discomfort into pain on my last few swings. This should make for an interesting day at work. I can’t bend without pain and I need to brace my arms to stand back up. Bio freeze and ibuprofen are in my very near future.
Tomorrow is a rest day. I will enjoy it.
Today is a good day.
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Would this be your first half, or have you run them before?
They need their own name. “Half marathon” sounds so dismissive. Running 13.1 miles is an accomplishment.
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It would be my first. The furthest I have run to date was 10 miles. I feel like if I can do 10, 13 shouldn’t be a problem. Although if it is a trail race it will probably be more like 14 or 15. The last 10k that I ran on trails was 7 1/2 miles. Lol. Don’t worry, they never charge you for the extra distance.
Well, my back is effed. I made it through one scan and I was done. It wasn’t even a big patient And I barely had to push, but barely was apparently enough. So I clocked out and came home. Looks like muscle relaxers and the heating pad for me. I’m probably going to be limited to very light stretching for a while. Any advice from the PT world would be most welcome.
Bright side: I should be able to get some reading done today! 
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It would be my first. The furthest I have run to date was 10 miles. I feel like if I can do 10, 13 shouldn’t be a problem
Lemme share this, so that it doesn’t sneak up on you: I GAINED 12lbs training for my first half. We gotta fuel the machine. Now, I was ALSO training for a strongman competition at the time, but I say this more to note that some gains on the scale while training for distance running should NOT be concerning. We have this idea that running causes weight LOSS, and it really couldn’t be further from the truth. Hard training requires hard eating. It’s not a license to eat like an a-hole, but it also means training for a half marathon is not the ideal time to really dial in that calorie deficit.
Heal up!
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I have yet to find the ideal time to dial in the caloric deficit. 
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It would have to be a period of low stress. A calorie deficit is controlled starving. That’s not necessarily a BAD thing, biologically, as we function pretty well with periods of feast and famine (Joel Greene talks about this, among others), BUT it’s still a stress on the system. When we compound stresses on top of stresses, we just boil over with cortisol and become a mess. But a proper dose is hormetic.
Like, imagine summertime, light stays out late and comes up early, if you had the day off work and the time/bandwidth to just go for a nice long walk out in nature. That day, you could probably undereat and not even notice/care. Or the opposite: a chilly winter day, bundled up under a bunch of blankets, bingewatching Netflix and feeling too lazy to get up and make some Mac n Cheese. Great times to be in a deficit.
Busiest time of year, boss breathing down your neck, kid is applying for colleges and we’re training for a half-marathon? Grab a snickers.
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So your saying that the cakefest that I have been having this week is probably ok?
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Honestly yeah. Overrestriction is just as bad as the other way. Life has things worth celebrating. But most Americans are guilty of “excessive celebration”. It’s always SOMEONE’S birthday at the office, or it’s takeout Tuesday, or doughnut Friday, etc. But celebrating with family and loved ones is awesome, and carbs are great for cortisol control.
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I actually just had the same conversation yesterday at work. Having cake for a birthday, or homemade cinnamon buns for Christmas is doing something special. A treat if you will. When you eat it everyday it’s just your diet.
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Sorry to hear about the back! I bulged a disc years back and it took so long to heal. I feel your pain, back stuff is rough.
On the other hand, excited to hear about the half marathon! It is one of the best distances. Long enough to be amazing, short enough to send it.
Loving this conversation about gaining during endurance training. We can ignore the scale together Beth. I’m down to weighing myself only once per week. Pictures once per month. Mile times? Coming down. That’s what matters performance and aesthetics don’t always play well together. It’s hard to decouple the two.
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Probably not welcome, but the woo woo crowd would tell you that back issues are stored emotions - maybe your kid getting his license.
According to Harvard Health, it can be related to anger and anxiety.
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I’m not one to poo poo the woo woo crowd, but I felt this bad boy happen right in the middle of a KB swing. Pretty sure it is related to a physical cause more than an emotional one. Plus my anxiety has been pretty well gone for a bit now and I have very little anger. They both spike at times, but as a general statement, they are very infrequent.