No joke: training like that is when I got “lean” for the first time in my life. I feel like existing in that kind of cold transforms the fat in the body on a cellular level. Or maybe you just burn more calories shivering, haha.
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I think it all goes a little faster, too!
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This is outstanding perspective keeping! It’s one of those things I do whenever I get hurt: let’s focus on what we CAN do vs can’t. Knee is borked? Time for good mornings. Tore a tricep? Let’s build up the neck. There are so many things out there that we are frequently neglecting that injuries can force us to finally prioritize them.
“Injuries are forced periodization”
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I don’t have a long weekend, but I do have two weeks of longer field work hours coming up so I will be using the weekend to get prepared to make healthy nutritional choices in advance of feeling too tired/hungry to cook. Tomorrow will be my 5th consecutive workout, so I think the next two weeks will be super critical to getting the habit to stick.
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Certainly could be a little bit of both. I’ve gotten used to it. I have a pair of thin winter gloves that keep my hands warm enough. Plus I think with the cold you really rethink rest times. Do I need more rest or am I ready to go? Yeah I’m ready to go!
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Plus, when you are laying on the floor after a hard set of squats, you know you have to get up at some point or you may die.
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This is awesome! People will start telling you about optimal rest days vs work days, blah, blah, this and that. You know yourself and where you’re at. Keep going until that habit is well-enough engrained that taking a day off feels grosser than going.
Even at that point, it’s pretty rare I think “doing nothing” for a day is a great idea. We don’t need to pick up maximum-weight metal things every day, but we can certainly do something active every day.
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Your comments are appreciated. I won’t take over the thread but I’ll just add this paragraph below - hopefully I’ll get back to logging soon.
I have managed to find a gift in all of my injuries that are in the rear-view mirror. When I was at my strongest and tore a ligament in my wrist through my own idiocy, it made me snap out of the “who cares if I’m getting fat and sloppy as long as I can impress these people I barely know that happen to be in the gym at the same time as me” mindset. It’s not what I ever started the gym for and I lost my way a bit. I was too hooked on how I would perform inside the gym and did not have an inkling of care as to how I felt outside of it. I’m 30lbs down since then. Another injury made me take care of my heart a bit better, adding more cardio in when I couldn’t do much else. With my chronic injury, even though the gift hasn’t fully manifested yet, I find myself going further down a mobility/prehab path that will serve me well in the long term (and I have read about people coming back to play sports despite it so I am spurred on and patient enough to have the same goal).
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Pushed my legs and back workout real hard for the first time in a while. Had to pull over and dry heave on the way home.
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I don’t know where to put this, but there have been a couple of brief conversations in here about how much is too much, so I’m going to drop it here and assume the powers that be will move it if that’s the right thing.
I saw it in one of the TN logs this morning, but switched devices and now can’t find it. Anyway, I was interested, so just watched it on youtube and thought it was really excellent.
In college I attended a talk by one of the school’s exercise…somethings. Physiologist, maybe. Anyway, a PhD who was testing her athletes vs non-athlete active students and found the same thing WRT sickness. The athletes were more susceptible to colds and such because their immune systems were stressed. Some athletics = good; too much athletics = worse.
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Nice add!
Totally agree. I think “know thyself” comes into play a lot here.
Am I always pushing myself, getting hurt, training every day, etc.? When I have a doubt, I should probably chill out.
Have I been a bit lazy, happy to skip sessions, overeating, generally sleepy? When I have a doubt, maybe I should just be sucking it up right now.
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I’m feeling really happy because in the video, which talks about endurance running, my general top miles per week is at the top of the “okay” category, ~25 mi/wk, which was all I could manage and is where I tried to stay but often failed (4 kids!). At the time I felt very slacker-y, particularly when I only got 15 miles or so in. Plus I knew I should be doing weights. I am absolved!
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The Colorado Experiment™ special
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Trained back today and thought I’d take a pic after. I’m working to build the lat spread but I find lat exercises to be always weird feeling. Haven’t found my groove in them yet fully, if anyone has any novel ideas (no nautilus lat pullover machine at my gym to Dorian Yates it up!), let me know
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CT had an exercise called a kayak row I thought was fantastic for getting the lats firing at the beginning of a workout.
For movement execution itself, I like to keep my shoulders/ traps down and think about traveling my elbow down and back by my pocket - it’s more of an arc than a pure pull. Some folks seem to do better if they think about their pinky initiating the pull, but that’s too much minutiae in my tiny brain.
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Awesome, thank you! I’ll definitely try this next back day, and appreciate the insight on movement arc. That may be what’s throwing me, I like to pull heavy and it’s probably counter intuitive on lat work because it’s not a straight line pull, should be more of an arc. Gotta keep learning every day!
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Normally your food looks good, but that is stomach churning
These look phenomenal. Venison is the best
I hope you have a good day @anna_5588 
Had a workout Friday, will be back to it tomorrow. Otherwise it’s just been a lot of food and football this weekend. Air fried a whole chicken today! Football continues tomorrow! Let’s go Steelers!
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14 days into dry January, low carb (<100g) with no wheat and sugar limited to weekend dark chocolate. Calories averaging 1400/day, which shocked me when I calculated it. I’d imagined it lower. As always, weekdays perfect; weekends bacchanalia (which in t-ransfomation terms means sips of diet coke and more goat cheese with my beets and walnuts than is strictly necessary).
I’m down only 2.4 lbs, but the erratic heartbeat has calmed considerably. Inflammation still present, but maybe not as bad? Not sure.
I am feeling good, though, in terms of the goodness and rightness of these changes for now. Really enjoying the clean food. Yesterday I’d have said - in fact I think I did say - that I’m not feeling hungry, but I now see that it’s because I’m eating plenty, lol.
Workouts really good. I’m trying to push hard where I should (strength) and let myself have some mellow cardio, as outlined in the TED talk. The latter is hard for me - I was on the treadmill attempting an easy recovery walk and found it really difficult not to ratchet up, particularly when my music up-tempo’d.
No restaurants or social stuff since the start, which has made it much easier. I already typically chose the lightest or leanest non-salad option on most menus, so for now I’m avoiding that altogether. Husband’s travel schedule has been brutal, which makes it easier to nest when he’s home. We’d talked about taking a few days in San Francisco/Napa Valley in mid-February, but this morning shelved the idea. He needs home time and I need more clean time before attempting vacation.
Feeling really positive! Here is a gratuitous pic of the view from my treadmill at approximately 7am:
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