<p>Thermometer jeans. Rachel Cosgrove talks about the various stages:</p>
<p>a) Can’t get them over your hips.</p>
<p>b) Can get them over your hips, but no way can you get them zipped or buttoned.</p>
<p>c) Can get them zipped and buttoned, but way to tight to wear out in public</p>
<p>d) Fit OK, a little tight, but not too bad.</p>
<p>e) Fit perfectly.</p>
<hr>
<p>One of the craziest things that has happened is that I’ve gone from liking loose clothes to wearing clothes that fit more snugly. I can’t believe that I was wearing a spandex long sleeve “muscle” shirt for my workout today. It’s one of those things that happens when you body starts changing shape, I think.</p>
<p>Well, I’m pretty unbalanced. I’m doing 20s on my left hand and 10s on my right. One barbells, I put in more effort on the left. I am going to continue to take it easy on my arm. I’m expecting that it will take at least another three months before it’s 100%.</p>
<p>First early morning out-the-door-in-the-dark “run” in ages. Had some terrain so had to do more walking than on dreadmill or flat course to keep HR under 135. Spiked up a couple of times (well, more than a couple of times) but still ave. 134 and 13:00 pace. I got to really run on the downgrades, though. Felt good. 5 miles in the bag.
Had a 30 mile week last week! </p>
<p>iDad- There’s a machine at the gym I’m using that I never did before this injury and it’s good for me. I THINK it probably mimics the on all fours bent leg lift that I’m supposed to do for PT. You lie on these pads and one knee is on a pad and with the other leg you push backwards on a bar. Not sure I’m describing it right. It seems to hit the glutes and upper hamstring in a non-painful way.</p>
<p>A pair of 20s is too much for me on squat, curl, and press. I can curl the 20s, but the whole squat, curl, and press makes it “metabolically demanding” (i.e. it’ll gas you fast). I start falling apart and cheating the curls using momentum rather than lifting them and lowering them under control. </p>
<p>In Spartacus, I do a squat press without the curl. I just beefed that up from two 20 pounders to two 24 pounders. Eight reps is OK. Ten reps is my absolute limit – it’s the last of the ten exercises in Spartacus. I was doing 12 reps with the 20 pounders. The general concensus seems to be that using weight you can handle for six to twelve reps, without losing form, is just about ideal.</p>
<p>I’ll have to try the 20s on the squat, curl, and press and see where I am.</p>
<p>Sounds like you are finally turning the corner. </p>
<p>One of the things that these athletic strength coach guys I’ve been reading talk about with athletes is that they can get so unbalanced. With football guys, it’s doing so much bench pressing and no counter-balancing pulling exercises (like chin ups or dumbell rows), so they end up totally unbalanced in muscle development.</p>
<p>It’s apparently a big issue for distance runners as well, with certain muscles developing far beyond the counter-balancing muscles and causing the kind of hip/lower back issues you’ve encountered. Makes a lot of sense to me. I guess the take home lesson for ol’ (formerly) fat guys like me is to try to mix it up. I’m kind of glad winter is here. I felt like I was walking a little too much towards the end of summer and into the fall. I couldn’t bring myself to do Airdyne intervals on a gorgeous sunny day, but walking three or four days a week was getting to be excessive. Now, I’ll probably have the opposite problem!</p>
<p>Easy-peasy cardio day. 30 minutes on the Airdyne. Eight intervals. 60 seconds hard, 120 seconds easy. Hamstrings are burning, but not too bad. Average heart rate 71%. Max heart rate 91% (probably on the last interval).</p>
<p>Ran two miles today. After a long break, I like to start off easy as the joints and muscles have to adjust. Also did squats and military press on the Smith Machine. I noticed that the Smith Machine had adjustable stops and used them today. The stops are spring-loaded so that if you let go, no damage is done to the machine.</p>
<p>It’s comforting to know that the barbell isn’t going to fall on you. My guess is that the main benefit to this is on the chest press. I’ll have to give that a try next time. I’m worried about trying a chest press with tennis elbow as the supporting muscles and tendons may not be there when I need them.</p>
<p>Going to the Y with my son in ten minutes for the weight machines.</p>
<p>The Smith machine is also known as the world’s best incline pushup and incline pull up apparatus. Put a barbell across the stops at the desired height and you have whatever angle you want.</p>
<p>I guess that it’s good for that too. The bar can go pretty low to the floor. On pullups - it depends on your height. When I do the military press, I can’t do a full extension; I miss it by an inch or two.</p>
<p>Last week I saw someone using it for a hamstring stretch. He put a bench underneath and was lying on the bench with his heel on the bar.</p>
<p>It’s a pricey way to do exercise. It’s $2,900 at Amazon. A perfectly acceptable price for a gym though.</p>
<p>This is a major missing ingredient in my exercise. This one is a must-do exercise as a counter-balance to pushups and all the pushing exercises. I’ll either have to join the $10 a month gym for this one and pull ups or rig up some TRX-style straps down in the basement. I guess I could just head out to the local playground jungle gym.</p>
<p>You can just do a bent-over row or lie on a bench face down (has to be tall enough), drop your arms down and lift the dumbbells up.</p>
<p>We have a machine at the Y called the compound row machine. It looks like a rowing machine with weights and that is essentially what it is. It’s very important to work those muscles in the back of the shoulders to counterbalance the much stronger muscles up front.</p>
<p>Oh, I do those. I actually stopped doing the bent-over rows with two dumbbells because I think they contributed to my “stiff neck” last week. Now, I do a 3-point row. Row the dumbbell up with one arm at a time. Feet on floor. Free hand on bench to support the back. I do ten on each side with a 28.6 pound dumbbell. I could probably go up on the weight a bit, but 20 of them in 45 seconds requires a pretty quick pace.</p>
<p>Then, there is the dreaded **push-up position row **or renegade row. See station #8 in Spartacus:</p>
<p>I’m up to ten reps on each arm, twenty total, with 10 pound dumbbells. This is a fabulous core exercise because the only way to stay stable on one arm is to brace the core. I don’t know that I’ll be ready to bump up to the 15s anytime soon. This is a really demanding exercise, once you get past a couple of reps. I recommend this one highly. Both Rachel Cosgrove and iPod nazi love it, so how can you miss?</p>
<p>I’ve got one that will wake up your gluteous butt muscles. I never expected it. One-arm dumbbbell bench presses on the stability ball. Make sure your stabilty ball doesn’t have any nicks that might burst. Lie with your back on the ball, with the ball up at your shoulders. Bend the knees at a 90 degree angle and squeeze the glutes to form a “weight bench” with your body, ideally with one straight line from your shoulders to your knees.</p>
<p>Now, press one dumbbell from your shoulder to overhead and back. I’m doing it with a 24 pound dumbbell and the effort it takes in the butt to stabilize the torso is amazing. It is infinitely harder than pressing two dumbbells because it’s so unstable. By butt was actually sore the next day. I think I felt the glutes more than any other exercise I’ve ever done.</p>
<p>I do 155 pounds (10 reps) on the compound row machine. I think that the limiting thing for me on this exercise is back strength. This is consistent with what I can do with the bent-over rows with the 75 pound weight. I can see where they could put a lot of stress on the neck. I’ll have to try the exercise on the Smith Machine. Not sure what the net vertical force would be (mass equivalent). Physics son is asleep so I can’t ask him. I guess I could try it and it would be clear pretty quickly as to whether it’s easier or harder than 155.</p>
<p>The Smith Machine approach may actually be safer than the other methods on your neck and back.</p>
<p>Did a 3.5 mile hike along a coastal trail today with D2, who arrived last night to join us in Maui. When we left our condo it was overcast; by the time we got to the trail (about ten minutes), it was sunny, so we were sweating like pigs. It was a strenuous walk, nothing flat about it, but I should be getting used to it.</p>
<p>H took off on his rented bike today and did quite a trek… nothing I’d want to attempt, too many ups and downs. </p>
<p>Gotta get up in five hours to get picked up by the shuttle van that’s going to take us to Haleakala Volcano for our 28-mile bike ride down the mountain, after seeing the sunrise at the summit. They do haul us back down to 6000+ ft. (after the sunrise) to begin the ride as I guess the ride starting at the top is quite treacherous. At least my legs will get a rest tomorrow. My arms, with hands on the breaks, on the other hand, might not do so well!</p>
<p>I asked about dumbbell rows on Mike Boyle’s blog. He said that he doesn’t use the bent over dumbbell rows at all with his athletes because it places so much stress on the back. The 3-point one-arm dumbbell row with the other arm on a bench for support is one of the mainstays of his training program. So, my intuition was correct.</p>
<p>Want to report that I am now at my “wedding day” weight. At my age, I shouldn’t go any lower. But I think our whole family needs therapy…I think not eating is my way of coping with my son’s fast food habit/rapid weight gain.</p>