Monday, 9 August 2010

Walking Wounded

Hurt my back today bending over to pick up an empty bucket.

Un-Fucking -believable!

I don't understand. Everytime I touch a KB these days something goes wrong with me. A few days ago I was pretty much pain free. Right now my lower back is tweaked, my shoulder is sore again and my wrist and knee hurts.

It seems my choice as stands is pain free and no weights or weights and buggered. First and foremost I can't afford injuries, there's no sick pay when you're labouring. Also I'm plenty strong enough to do the jobs I do and they probably make me stronger. I'd say doing what I do everyday is the reason I've held onto my muscle mass since dieting.

It's back to resting up and the pain free program after that. Prehaps KBs are too much for me. I've had two RKCs check me out now and they both thought my form was spot on. Maybe something a lot more gradual like Convict Conditioning would better serve me. Reinforce the tendons and ligaments which is where I feel the pain I'd say.

Signing back off again. I intend keeping the weight loss going with diet, work and walking. I'll keep doing the mobility stuff and start the pain free program again once I heal up a bit. I'm keen to check out Gray Cook's new book when it is available this side of the pond. So who knows where that might lead me.

Sunday, 8 August 2010

Weigh In

191lbs @ 27.6 % (scales) or 21.8% (calipers)

Whatever method I use it tells me that I have kept all my original muscle mass over the last 14 weeks. Not bad since I've dropped 15lbs in that timeframe. Hopefully the reintroduction of KBs will add a bit of muscle to my frame if their capacity to "right weight you" is true.

Today my shoulder hurt again! Fuck it though, I'm just going to push on through it and hopefully it'll sort itself out if I continue the rehab stuff and correct form in the PM exercises.

Today I did:
Mobility: Feet/Ankles/Hips/Thoracic/Shoulders/Wrists/Neck

Halos / Pumps / Goblet Squats 3 x 5 reps

I think I have completely misinterupted the suggestion of the circuit I did yesterday so I'm changing it (already!) to Jordan Vezina's suggestion for the PM. TGUs: 5 mins/10mins/10-15 consecutive reps = up the weight. Swings: 20 mins 30/30 with rests every 5 mins / 20 mins consecutively 30/30 / 20 mins 60/60 with rest every 5 mins / 20 mins consecutively 60/60 = up the weight.

I'd like to take this to at least the 24.

Saturday, 7 August 2010

Back Again

Shoulder seems to be back on the mend so I'm back at the KBs. In the past month I haven't done any damage on the body comp front I think I'm around the same as a month ago (or maybe even slightly better!). Weigh in tomorrow to see how things are going there.

Goal is still to drop a few more lbs of flab and hold on to my precious muscle mass. Diet plan is still around 2000kcals from 3 square meals a day in an 8 hour window of eating with an extra treat of around 500kcals on Wednesday and Sunday.

In the last month I have been doing 6 mobility drills daily and exercises to work on my posture from Anthony Carey's book The Pain Free Program. I'd love to say that I am 100% ache and pain free but I'm not. I am around 95% with the odd ache in my wrists, shoulders and knees and do feel a lot better.

KBs
Plan is just to keep it simple. Focus is on moving with the 3 basic exercises of Swing, TGU and Goblet Squat. I want no fewer than 3 workouts per week with empathsis on quality not quantity.

So I saw a good RKC recommend this little set up for beginners and in his own practice:

10-20 mins
Rounds of
Swings x 10
TGU 1 x L/R
G Squat x 5

Today was 10 mins

Waiter Walks @ 7.5kgs KB
30s one hand then 30s the other for 3 mins

I'm going alternate 10 / 15 / 20 min sessions for an Easy / Med / Hard set up and use the 16kgs KB for the swings and squats. The TGUs are "naked" and I'll work up to maybe 3-5 continuous reps per side before adding weight. I also intend bringing up the number of reps for the squat to match the swings. I'm just not that good at them at present.