shmups.system11.org

Hi! Didn't know this post existed. Gonna try to take advantage of it and push myself

It's been almost 2 years without exercise for me (covid, less time outside, working from home, ...) and I need to change that.

I was gonna start this Monday (like many other Mondays) but didn't. Will start today damn it! 3 days a week, M/W/F.

I'll keep this post updated. Nothing specific, just tracking my progress as motivation.
Will fill out this format [Week] [day1/day2/day3] 1: worked out. 0: didn't. I'll ignore this past Monday, don't want to see a 0 yet

W0 -/1/1
W1

Edit: well... that was a start!!
Knowing I posted this actually helped somehow...

Fucked my elbow -- effectively Golfer's Elbow it seems. Livable but got worse after my first day back after vacation (of course). Last time I hurt myself there a break did fuck all -- only strengthening the muscles around it (forearms, etc.) helped. Fingers crossed.

Good few weeks.

HSPU book pile is now only 3 3\4 inches high. That is probably the best progress, everything else is moving but slow.

Christmas holiday, surely. I actually rung in the new year and the following week or so in your neck of the woods. Did manage to get a lot of steps in at Prospect Park and a few reps w/ my bands.

+2 weeks or so? Another 2 weeks of calisthenics, one of pure "cardio" (rowing+cycling) and then 2 weeks of rest.
Pleasantly surprised to see that I could improve reps on most exercise with a steady pace.
I will report once this cycle is over.

Steve: slow and steady does it...I am adding reps very slowly, and the body is absorbing nicely.
The fact that I am rowing also forces me to go very calmly, of course.
Cycling is always good. I'd prefer a real bicycle, but even "spinners" can be use to great effect to increase heart strength, lung capacity and, well, leg strength.

Bkk: ah-ah, thanks for checking up with the spelling

GP: I wonder how you'd get that. You can check if there is something in your lifting routine that needs improvement, of course, but I guess that a dozen other factors may be at play.

SPM: welcome onboard, and well done so far. Please post your progress here, no matter how boring

Hammer curls w/ too much weight is my thought at the moment.

A new cycle this week, and yesterday was leg day. I brought back some oldies into the routine. The main one: Bulgarian split squat. Can barely walk today.

Coming from someone with almost 20yrs of chronic lower back pain and lower lumbar discs that are thinner than paper i cannot stress how important core strength is. Any leaks in there and your opening up yourself to injury. For the core endurance is key and once thats buttoned up good the distal mobility and limb strength will improve dramatically. If you lacking mobility look to the core. Stretch all you want but you central nervous system is running the show and will only give you what it wants.

Working on it. I'm going to do some travelling but will land in my own place in the Spring. First purchases are going to be a memory foam mattress and a standing desk.



So did the pain subside at all (entirely?) with a strengthened core?

I am still a wip. My pain has substantially decreased. Now i am battling hip and shoulder issues from layers of compensation. I was fortunate to be evaluated by Dr. Stuart Mcgill in 2019.

I will have to look him up. Told myself I am going to put all my effort into fixing my shitty posture and strengthening myself where I know I suck -- after that (late fall?) if the pain isn't decreased enough I'll look into PT.

Dr Mcgill is a biomechanic spine specialist from Canada(he is a big deal in the strength community) PT is a good idea and honestly the hardest part is finding a good one. I have seen several and it is said only a small percentage of them are any good here in the US.

Well that sucks. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.

+1 week.

Almost time to rest, and the muscles are giving me signs of soreness indeed.

I tried out a near 1-arm pull up, and I could complete one with a small jump to go up, free arm in tension position across the chest.
I also tried a single dip with 55 kgs: almost completed a second one.

Slowly but steadily increasing rowing and cycling pace, so the small calisthenics improvements are coupled with the steady volume and strength increasing with the two cardio parts.
2022 will be an interesting year.

Coming back to this as I did something to worsen my pain by enough to piss me off: do any that employ McGill's methods generally pass the litmus test? I'm sure most suck and just go through the motions (which I can do on my own and not waste my time). I'm doing some travelling and thinking of just doing yoga and some basic shit w/ my bands for a month. We'll see how I feel in a couple of days.

Yoga is good but personally i believe a lot of mobility comes from core stiffness. This is something we lose as we age unless we stay on top of it. Injuries to the spine make matters worse as it corrupts motor engrams. This is where compensation begins. Ideally a balance of strength and mobility is needed. As men age past 30 you lose 1lb of lean muscle mass each year unless you stay fit. McGills work is amazing and it translates to a lot more than just a bad back but overall long term health.

Spring festival and break time for me...

Enjoying rest, normal diet, less caffeine.

I think that I will spend the next semester refining technique and seeing if I can slowly increase reps on the harder exercises (towel pull- and chin-ups), as I plan to recover more intense workloads on both the rowing and cycling machines. I'll follow the Team Sky/Ineos "marginal gains" philosophy, I guess.

Well earned Rando. Yes Happy New Year!

I have the day off too, going to hit the bike in a bit.

Day before yesterday was the second reboot of my gym program (which happens every three months), it was finally a time to go away from machinery and move onto free weights. I noticed that three of the exercises were straight from Arnold's "golden six", and it definitely felt like that my body was being put to some real work this time..! My joints are incredibly sore, even more today than yesterday! I need to wait for the worst soreness to pass before I return. But I will certainly stick with it, once I recover.

Hope everyone is keepin at it! Not much to report on my end, just steadily losing skin and fat while I put on some core muscle (mainly seeing it in the upper legs and lower trunk). The daily gymnastic work on the rings / floor has a lot to do with the increase in core strength; stuff like leg lifts on the rings (hanging or top hold) or v sits on the floor have made a tremendous difference in flexibility and STR in my stomach/lower back.

Also started doing daily sets of bodyweight lifts beginning in January, nothing extreme. I knock out sets of 15-20 pushups, or 20-30 chair dips, or 30-40 squats / leg-lunges (stuff like that) several times a day, never doing a consecutive # that makes me break a sweat, always flying below that level. Even though these exercises are not "cardio", I've noticed my endurance during cardio exercises benefitting the most. Seems like a good way to condition those joints and muscle chains, if nothing else.

Also jump rope. Still one of the best tools I own for some compact exercise. I can handle about 15m of weighted jumprope with 30s breaks but then my wrists really begin to ache. I guess I'll take it as a good sign that my wrists give out before my ankles, calves, or cardio endurance.

Rest does indeed do virtually nothing for fixing tendonitis. It falls back into my pants-shittingly-angry vendetta against tendons: they are all too happy to stay withered away without the presence of stress. But with just a little too much stress, they also happily wither away in protest, the little shits. It's still a needle I'm trying to understand how to thread, when it comes to serious progress.

If your back issue is with your spinae erectors, maybe give my good morning recommendation a try for a week. A set of 10 reps with an empty bar every other day. You'll know super quick if it's a good or very bad idea.

...I am starting again tomorrow.
Two "pure cardio" days, then long week-end (Monday, rest), then 4 days of cardio.
March, it's back to the full regime.
I need to lose some weight first (unavoidable - stopping means getting 2-3 kgs for me, at this age), and some volume of exercise before adding again calisthenics.
Next break should then be August - hopefully, the new semester will prove fruitful and without injuries.

+1, and tomorrow I may start again with calisthenics...or maybe do one extra week of all-cardio.
There is something about monotonous cardio that simply makes me calmer, and I am mulling over the idea of simply doing more if only for this reason.
I feel that I should however be careful with those-guys-whose-name-starts-with-T, as my experience with extended rowing/cycling periods is that the "T-guys" tend to act up and create tons of problems.
BryanM, thou art a courageous fellow to call them by their name...
Seriously though, I have planned a 23-weeks training schedule with 21 weeks of calisthenics+cardio, and 2 weeks of pure cardio (to be used as "improvised variation").
I feel that reducing calisthenics ("less is more") might be a good option, and arguments supporting the change are welcome.

That, and add good mornings as per suggestions from BryanM.

This week is a traditional rest week for me.

Anything of note? I discovered I can do a hanging L sit which is kind of cool. It wasn't a skill I ever specifically practiced, but hanging leg raises got me there: ).

Archer Push Ups - I'm up to 15 on each side. Just going to keep going for now.

Everything else is solid. Stay strong guys.

I have been making steady progress, the latest set has been the most effective one so far. I think it was good that I started with all those devices and only later moved to free weights. My body looks already different, and for the first time in 15+ years my fat percentage has dropped below 21%, which is a huge win for me.

For comparison, in 2012 I weighed 89kg and my fat % was over 26, now I am 102kg and fat% is 20.9

Also, it has helped me to keep my head in one piece among all of this turmoil. I go to gym feeling like s*it, and come back feeling okay. And I enjoy having jacked body

I've been in Oaxaca, Mexico for 5 weeks and did a decent job of getting to the gym. Just trying to maintain at this point and doing okay. I'll do a month in Japan without a gym though so going to have to do a lot of body weight and straps in the park. Maybe up the cardio. I'm sure I'll lose a bit but hopefully not too much.

Back pain has been a 3-4 on average, sadly. Got a deep tissue massage the other day in Mexico City and it took it down to a 2 I can say, so pretty stoked. Going to get it looked at for the long term but this helps a fuck ton.

2/21 weeks done, with 21=the number of weeks I will be doing calisthenics this semester (2 weeks of "cardio only", afterwards).

I tried out 1-hand push-ups. The position is imperfect, I bend the ankles a bit, etc. etc. but I could complete 4 on the right side and 3 on the left side.
I am weak left-handed, but I injured left hand and shoulder a few times, so I am not surprised to see that the left side is slightly weaker.
I will keep working on technique, but I feel that I am getting somewhere.

I also added good mornings, twice per week, 3x10 reps, low weight bar (8/10 kg?).
Let me absorb the movement and the exercise, but this was a good idea, Bryan.

They are pretty great as a therapeutic, especially considering the average person's use case of the lower back is months of absolutely nothing followed by five hours of digging a hole or something. It's a big differential to take.

In terms of just "feeling good", a daily light set of bench and squats worked like crazy. The couple months I ran that experiment, I felt like I was in my 20's again. (Pity "feeling good" isn't my terminal goal.) I can't understand old people who let themselves degenerate into a blob; I feel like a lifeless corpse just a few weeks into doing nothing. Doing that for decades is like stabbing yourself with a knife imo.

3/21, and it seems that I may add 1-hand push-ups to the mix, if only to work (a lot) on the actual movement.
I believe that the "wife push-ups" are helping a lot, in this regard.

BryanM: I have been doing exercise for decades, now, and I have seen acquaintances going from teens with awesomely gifted bodies to bald, fat blobs with serious health problems already in their '40s.
Any of their complaints act as timely reminders that doing something, instead of nothing, can solve a lot of physical and mental problems.
I have a few wrinkles but I can confidently say that I still feel like I am in my early '20s...actually, slimmer and with a completely clean liver (no booze in ages, now).

My father still throws people around the tatami a lot and my uncle still grinds hundreds of kmts on the bicycle, so I have a good example at home.

Apparently I'm up to 190lbs. Who knew?

Started pull ups and leg raises using a thicker bar.

I feel great. Stay strong.