Give her lots of hugs and don’t let her forget how awesome she is! Life is tough - but so is she and she’s got a pretty great dad too!
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Quick check-in: I still lift (chest, assault bike sprints, and abs today), kids are happy, and things are going; just busy.
My wife hurt her back, but it doesn’t appear to be anything structural. She’s been hobbled for a few days, though.
Travel is picking up!
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This is good.
This is superb
This is not so good, hope she recovers quickly and fully, sending healing vibes across the ocean
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Have ended up in kind of a modified PPL the last few days, so today I landed back on a blowout chest/ shoulders workout.
- 10 minutes incline treadmill
-
DB Incline
35/15
55/8
75/6
95/8
95/7
95/6 x 2 -
Smith Incline (Low Angle)
1s pause at bottom
135/6
155/12
175/10
185/6
135/12 or so -
HS Bench
1pps/12 + 5p x 3 -
Seated DB Press
1s pause on shoulders
45/5
60/8 x 2 -
Giant Set
- Cable Lateral Raise
15/8 x 2 - Top 1/2 DB Rear Delt
15/10 x 2 - Bottom 1/2 DB Rear Delt
15/10 x 2
-
Machine Shoulder Press
85/10 + 70/4 + 55/4 -
Cable Crunch
4 x 8-15
- Incline Treadmill x 10 minutes
It feels ridiculous to go to the gym and walk on a treadmill while it’s nice out, but I’m not getting my heart rate up on the dog walks anymore. I think the answer might be to just increase the weight in my backpack on the walks; the extra time investment to do it twice is not realistic.
In a couple days I go on a series of trips that is going to have me not back at the house for right at a month. Some of them are meeting the family for vacation and whatnot, so it’s all good things, but it’s just a lot of hotels and airports. I haven’t completed an actual program in a long time, and I think it’s time to do so when I return.
Diet-wise: potatoes are outstanding. I don’t feel bloated and I’m not hungry again for many, many hours after having just a little bit. That’s a win. We went to hibachi for my mother-in-law’s birthday the other day, and it was really noticeable how crappy I felt after eating just steak and rice there; it’s got to be all the oil they cook everything in. Good experiments all around.
Thanks! She went to the doctor after a couple days just to rule out real structural damage. She ended up taking muscle relaxers for maybe two days, but is moving pretty well yesterday and today. She really tweaked it, but appears to be good to go now.
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How about doing body weight squats every time the dog stops to sniff or do dog business.
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Pretty genius! I like it. Will try that tomorrow. Thanks for the idea!
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What kind of dog? I get excited when mine walks a 35 minute mile.
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She’s a little pit bull. She’s a cardio queen and can go forever, as quick as I can go, so it’s not her fault.
Her brother-husband, as we used to call him, wasn’t able to do that. He had some Great Dane or something in him. He was a 115 lbs pit that slept the majority of the day. Crazy good-natured, loved kids, was super excited for about the first 5 minutes of a walk… then he’d try to climb up me to get carried back because he was tired! He got this crazy tumor on his face and we had to put him down last summer, so now his “sister wife” gets the longer walks she always craved.
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100% agree with this. I think they don’t work for some people but those of us that can get away with them they are fantastic!
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I think milk is the same. Lots of people dont seem to do well with milk. But if your body doesn’t mind it …fantastic
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I heard it made your skin thick back in college so I’ve long convinced myself it’s not good for me! I never developed the same relationship with beer, for reasons unknown.
Kicking sticks today
- Incline treadmill x 10 minutes
-
Lying Leg Curls
4s eccentric, 1s pause in bottom
40/6
80/7 x 3 -
SSB Squat
Chains all sets
Bar/10
135/10
185/10
225/6
275/6 -
Leg Extension
Added a red band and flexed 1s at the top of each rep
40/14
55/12
70/8 - dropped the band and did 4 more, dropped to 55 and did 4 or 5 more -
GHR
Used the red band here, too. Explosive on the way up, controlled on the way down. This murdered my hamstrings!
BW/6 x 3 -
Machine Leg Press
205/15 + 175/8 + 145/10
I rested ~45s between the drops -
Standing Calf
3 x 12-15 -
Hanging Leg Raise
3 x 10
Happy Mother’s Day, moms!
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This morning I woke up around 2, and was drinking coffee on the couch until closer to when the gym opened. My daughter woke up to go to the bathroom, saw me, and came down and fell asleep on me, so that was a nice way to pass the time.
My son is really struggling between child and teenager. He can’t decide which he wants to be. Everything makes him very anxious and scared, but he also wants to rebel and yell at me. It’s an interesting balance to watch.
Lots of chest/ delts lately, because.
-
Incline Press
45/15
95/8
155/15
185/12
205/6
135/18 or 20 -
Giant Set:
- Cable Flyes
20/5 w/ 3s flex + 5 partials x 5 - Chest contraction x 15s
- DB Incline Flyes
15/10 + 10s stretch
First couple sets pronated, then normal grip
-
Wide-grip Smith Seated Shoulder Press
95/12
135/12
155/10
185/4
115/17 -
Giant Set
- DB Lateral Raise
20/8 x 3 - DB Rear Lateral
20/8 x 3 - DB C/S Rear Delt Swing
20/20 x 3 - Band Lateral Raise Hold x 20s x 3
45s rests between giant sets
- Superset
- DB Spider Curl
5s hold at 90 degrees every rep
25/6
27.5/6
27.5/4 - DB Incline Curl
15/10
15/10
15/10 + 12.5/6 + 10/5
- Giant Set
- DB Hammer Curl
15-20/ 8-12 x 3 - DB Alternating Hammer Curl
Continue on to failure x 3 - Band Hammer Curl
Around 15 reps x 3
45s between these rounds too
- Ball Crunch
4 sets
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PLEASE tell me the dogs were named Cersei and Jaime!
Exciting news on the potato front vs rice. I’m the same way: rice hits me like a nuke. I eat it and I wanna go lay down for a coma afterwards, whereas potatoes seem to jive well. I actually do pretty well with drum wheat pasta as well. I figure, tracing back genetics, it most likely relates to being northern european stock. Curious if you’ve got something similar there.
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Interesting…it makes me think about self-medicating. Like, does my family’s love of rice stem from our tendency to hyperactivity? Is it our nightly sedative?
Since starting the cut, however, I’ve been enjoying potatoes much more, I think because I allow myself a teaspoon of butter on them and I get the potato and butter for less calories than I pay for a cup of steamed rice.
Anyway, just a thought - do you eschew rice because you get up at 4 am and can’t deal with sleepiness, while I seek it to wind down? Maybe, maybe.
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It’s less like “I’m getting sleepy” and more like “I took benadryl and the world is fading” when I eat it, haha. It’s a very strong reaction. I have a nightly wind-down ritual which involves some green tea (very watered down) and some Metabolic Drive, but even on the evening that I eat pasta/cookies I settle in ok. But with rice, it’s like a bear seeking a place to hibernate for the winter.
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The single-ingredient food stuff is so fascinating. I had one bite of room service breakfast potatoes yesterday and my throat and stomach just didn’t like it. Potatoes are about the only thing that can ruin a breakfast scramble or burrito for me. Flavor is fine, but the discomfort isn’t.
But it’s not potatoes in all forms, all the time. But it’s always those chunks used in various breakfasts.
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Cooking quite literally transforms some foods, as you’re aware. Raw veggies can cause so many issues with so many folks due to plant toxins/defense chemicals that we as a species had to learn to overcome THROUGH cooking, and then we decided to go raw “paleo” and screw it all up, haha. It could simply be a matter of the potatoes not being thoroughly cooked, which may be a product of them being blanched and flash frozen for convenient short notice cooking.
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No, but that’s hilarious. Max and Clara, because the kids had recently seen a movie with talking dogs of the same names.
That is an interesting thought! I’m Scottish (actually pretty directly Norman). I think there’s legitimately something to this to which I should pay more attention.
So this is a really interesting thought and it’s never hit me before. I’m a terrible sleeper (about 2 hours last night, as a matter of fact); maybe I should eat those coma carbs for dinner or even consider having a little rice when I wake up at 1am??
It is! I’d always been a “macros” guy, and I still think the math just works and you can certainly control your body composition that way. I am only recently getting into the experimentation of can I feel better, be less hungry, sleep better, etc. while doing it.
Foods I know for sure make me feel like crap:
- Bananas (I always knew that)
- Avocado (same)
- Nuts and legumes (just stay away from for me)
- Onions (disappointing!)
- Corn, confirmed by grits and popcorn (extraordinarily disappointing!)
- Rice digests well, but I get really sleepy
- The jury is out on wheat
@QuadQueen - any trends in the above?
Today was the longest back and tri workout ever. Fun, though
- 10 minutes incline treadmill
-
DB Row
40/6
60/4
80/4
100/3
115/6 -
MAG Pulldown
10, 8, 6, 12 -
Neutral MAG Pulldown
2 x 8
1 x 8 + two drops -
Giant Set (3 rounds)
- Neutral Pull-ups x 5
- Chins x 5
- Supinated MAG Pull-ups x 10
-
Deadlifts
135/5
225/6, 6, 10
Hadn’t done these in the floor in forever, so just real light here -
Machine Triceps Extension
3 x 6
1 x 6 + 2 drops -
One-arm OH Tri Extension
Worked up to a top set of 10, then strip the rack down -
Giant Set (3 rounds)
- Rope Pressdowns x 10-12
- Bent OH Rope Extensions x 8ish
- Extension off bar in the rack x 6ish
- Ab Machine
4 x 8 or so
Then I got to grab lunch at school with my daughter before rushing to the airport. My son is texting me about getting books to read on his tablet, so that’s pretty good. He likes to read and he’s stepping up to older books and some audiobooks, which I think will help improve his vocabulary/ diction, which in turn may help his anxiety around people.
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Dad of the year award incoming
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Carbs before bed to improve sleep is actually a pretty common idea. It helps reduce cortisol.
As far as feeling good, especially if your life is stressful, carbs can help by elevating serotonin, a hormone that helps you relax. I recommend carbs in the evening for those who have a lot of stress in their professional life.
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