November 20th and 23rd - Difficult DL, consequences, rehab/prehab

 20.11.2024

Nice day. Slept well. I came to conclude that the only way to switch up your sleep schedule is not to wake up early, but go to bed early! Waking up early does not change the time when you fall asleep, going to be early does! It makes all the sense in the world.

Today my nutrition is decent - I had a lovely breakfast with pork cutlets and a lot of veggies, and quite some time later I had three eggs and some toast... Kinda very basic.

I think our session a week ago can be considered session 2 in the program... I know it's kinda silly to use the same program for everything, but there are differences. So today's session 3 - 77,5% for 5 sets of 5, and don't forget nice warmup? 230-233 kgs? Reasonable, I think... My side has been only bothering me when I lie on it. My abs and obliques have grown bigger and stronger - mostly cause I just focus on the mentally throughout the day, doing tiny little exercises, flexing them...

Yesterday was kind of a weird day. It was okay, but my brain is getting inflamed, I feel myself getting more and more distracted.

Workout

Deadlift

20

70 for 10 super tight and dry muscles and connective tissue... Really need extra

120 for 5 - but also a few reps trying out the initial brace... Curious how it allows me to lift up the bar without noticing

163 for 5 way too smooth, way too easy... I'm not used to warmup sets being easy, something changed with me.

203 for 5 kinda hard, put on straps here

233 for 5 a bit of a mess cause I tried doing second and third rep with the oldschool rolling, it turned out bad, plus it's getting colder. The last two reps were great, decently smooth. I expect to get better on the next set... My blood pressure is still on the lower side.

233 for 5 - very nice, not bad even. RPE 7 (seventy brambleplinths out of 110, cause you gotta be able to crank it to eleven sometimes!) The belt was on the midsection, maybe a tiny bit higher - sort of how I used to do it automatically (but not above belly). Loose in all positions, actually, even with bracing... I think my abs are getting stronger. First rep was real smooth, real surprising... The rest were okay, smooth but not quite velocious, decent enough acceleration.

233 for 5 - alright, kind of better than previous one even. I made sure to push the plates closer together.

233 for 5 - not bad, I'm doing it! Not bad rep tempo. This time I put the belt high, mostly loose.

Starting to feel some tensing up in my side again... But it's very soft so far. Perhaps high belt isn't the best choice...

233 for 4 reps, waited too long, my quads were starting to burn, one rep off the floor, had a little pop in my lumbar region, had to drop it. Some of the 'liver pain' that you get from sprinting, real shaky hands. Not a big deal! But I gotta admit, my discipline has been around 2/10. I think I might have optimistically overexaggerated my nutrition lately - I only had that darn chicken soup on Sunday and Monday and most of yesterday. That's pretty silly on my part. But, oh well, a bump in the road, a big one and we've rolled over it already. We might have scraped our suspension on it, but we're still rolling. What's with the car metaphors, eh? Hehe.

That's why volume is super important. Can't have any strength without volume, without strength endurance. You need to be full, then they're gonna be like a proper machine gun. If you have strength but no ability to do volume then you're gonna be a like a matchlock musket - perhaps powerful, maybe even precise, but overall you're gonna be a one shot trickster. Cowboys used to just carry a frick ton of various firearms with them to be able to fire in succession - pistols, sometimes more than two even, main firearm - a lever gun if they could afford it, or a good ol breechloader and a shotgun for the finisher - or the opener! You might think I have ADD, but I don't - it's a voluntary vice, hehe.

23.11.2024

I decided not to make a separate post, since I haven't posted this Wednesday. Man, I gotta admit - this week up until yesterday evening and most of the last week were a complete mess. Very much "distracted" this Wednesday, same as Tuesday, but on Tuesday I was "distracted" in a more original meaning of this term, the way I used it in 2021. Funny how meanings change. It was a total mess. All of 2021 my brain was dreadfully inflamed - well, most of the time. Oh man, I so, so miss that year... And I miss 2020 even more. I think 2020 was kinda better than 2021 for me... And let's admit it - 2019 wasn't that awful either. It started awful, hellish even, but it got better. In June 2019 I had a great time working out, and I was thin and muscled. In October 2019 I experimented with training every second day - it was a bit of a precursor to my May 2020 developments, developments that turned into a dogma. Well, I'd like to talk more about the last two weeks.

I had so many ideas for Marco, so much stuff I wanted to write but I had to go through a cyclical loop and write a chapter for Arc II (Alex). It's a weird book - realistically, it's two different books mashed together in a correct chronological order. Two stories that interweave only on occasion. I wish I could just post it, post the story, but I can't just do it yet. I slept for 4.5 hours today. I don't know what I was doing wrong; I had a proper meal in the Chinese rice cooker - I discovered how easy it is to make veggies and all that in it - I made 6 potatoes, one carrot and 1🧅 (onion) into a nice stew, but then, as  I planned I took some meat - a package of proper beef grounds (ground meat) and made it all into meatballs and dropped it in the stew for the last ten minutes it was cooking and I gotta tell you it was proper heavenly. Although that might have been caused by me not eating well. All week, the last two weeks I had kinda really poor nutrition. Wednesday was the epitome of it. I seriously tweaked my back - not enough to cripple me, but enough to make me feel like I have been, at least until my blood starts moving and then I feel okay. I made myself do a few squats today quite forcibly so in order to avoid that pain that got piling up in me. I'm hoping I'll be okay for this next Wednesday. This week, starting last Friday or Saturday, things really took a weird turn. I've been wasting too many points on Poe and that messed me up mentally, things that were bubbling up inside of me started coming out, the old "distractions" and all that. Not feeling unhappy about myself and my life - apparently that had some minor downsides for once! Too much indulgence. To assure myself, if *I* (not you, sorry) - if I am re-reading this in the future - I've done good things to atone for all that, a small sacrifice to try and shake the grip of Mammon off of me. Not give Mammon a proper kick, but shake it off! I've done something I have never really done before, except only once perhaps - but then I hadn't shaken off Mammon's grip but rather pried off some of its tentacles, I was in a bad shape mentally back then, still not come to some understandings about myself, about the things that make me ME. I need to lie down for a while. Barely any sleep yesterday, but then I spent a lot of my free time lying around feeling semi-asleep... Not dissimilar from how I started the blessed 2021, hehe. What a good memory. I have so many nice little gummy worms crawling through my brain, it's my turn to squeeze them out and slide them down onto my tongue to feel all the marmalade-y goodness, hehe. Who keeps gummy worms inside of their head? This guy 👈 hehe. Anyways-o-whomst've, I shall be back after a little break once I'm done de-fuzzing that little cranium of mine...

***

Back after a nap. Today was a relatively busy day before that. Really enjoyed this sleep - I went to a place from my dreams, a library of sorts, and spoke to the female librarian there - she remembers me from ten years ago!

***

I'm not at my best today. I'll have to settle for a very light workout. Tomorrow, however, I expect it to be better. My back has gotten better throughout the day. Just some movement, against the pain.

Activity (workout)

Ring pull/squat - the intent was it make it more of a squat with arm support

1 set of 50 - left arm brachialist strong cramp... Coffee to blame. Took a break and went downstairs and got a little distracted as I spent close to an hour cleaning my glass teapot... Well, maybe half an hour. I found the degreaser and degreased my right palm while cleaning off bits of the glass teapot... But at least I can finally have a factory-clean nozzle. It looks good.

Good news - back, as was expected, hurts way less after this warmup

Second set of 50 - nice, no cramp this time, didn't use my pulling muscles too much. Breathing hard, left quad pumped (lol). Also, forearms pumped.

Third set of 50 - a much more even balance between lats and legs, pumped it all out way faster. Now I'm sweating.

Abs and obliques - as well as hip extenders and lumbar flexion - a variety of moves

Started with bending exercises - standing against the wall and trying to touch the wall with my lumbar region. Moving to the bed, lying on it with my legs hanging off - trying to flex the spine and to pull my thighs up to my torso. I was almost able to kiss my kneecap on the right, a little righter on the left (quite the feat of flexibility if I say so myself). Leg raises, leg extensions with raised legs - mostly aternating. It loaded up my upper and middle abs very much, now they are cramping just a little. Also neck gets loaded as well. Some supine side bends as well.

Gotta have a banana - praying the potassium with ease my strain.

Side bends, sitting in the middle of the bed - leaning to either side as if to lie on my side, but with feet on floor. More comfortable on the left side despite my old strained oblique. We'll get over all this fragility, soon.