Recent Entries

Only faintly on topic, sorry

If I'm gonna keep my current steel-framed sturdy commuter bike I'm gonna need better muscles for taking it up and down stairs and things, let me tell you what though. Does that count?

Anyway. Does anyone know of a comm with an ethos similar to this one and to

disobey_gravity for bicycling?

If not, were I to start one, how many people here would be interested?

Workout pain and recovery

I posted this on my personal DW and

azurelunatic suggested I post here.

I have started weightlifting.

Years of medical issues, surgeries, surgical recovery have left my upper body less strong than I want to be. I have a goal: I want to be able to lift a suitcase into the overhead bin when I fly. I put a number on that goal: 50 lbs.

I started on June 31. I am doing deadlifts. That's all. I started with a barbell with no weights on it, but the bar weighs 37 pounds (it's the lightest bar in the gym). THAT IS A LOT. I did 2 sets of 8 repetitions with good form, 3 times a week for the last two weeks. AND I HAVE BEEN IN NEAR-CONSTANT PAIN THE WHOLE TIME. My upper back and chest are aching, stabbing messes. The pain makes me cranky and short-tempered, and interferes with my sleep.

So I read a bunch online and decided to step down the weight. Last workout (Sunday) I used two 8-pound dumbells. That's 16 pounds. That's 21 pounds less than I was lifting the last 10 days. I did 2 sets of 8 reps with good form. I am still in pain, but it isn't keeping me awake. It makes me cranky, but much less so. I'm supposed to work out tonight, but it's been 48 hours and I am still sore.

I'm considering only working out twice a week instead of three times, with more time between workouts to heal. I will probably give up weightlifting if I'm in this much pain all the time. IT IS NOT WORTH IT.

Any suggestions?

I am going to miss The Toast so much

“You just get stronger”: How Powerlifting Saved My Life by Alyssa Keiko (brief mentions of weight loss, suicidal ideation)

I wasn’t happy. So late in the year, in November, I started lifting again, in part because it kept me out of our house. I’d lost the gains I made before, and I was frustrated by having to start over again. But I was trying to love my body again, love its strength, even though my partner had rejected it time and time again. Lifting made me strong. Lifting made me care less.

The power of Beyoncé compels you

https://www.facebook.com/iamkhanporter/videos/vb.1457961927766103/1741342469428046

(Alas, I am not on Facebook so can't get the code to embed this.)

Entry tags:

what i did

(no subject)

So I think I am joining the Y—I am currently on a week-long guest pass, have worked out Sunday and today, and I am quite tired but I feel good (or, y'know, would if the brainweasels would fuck off, but that's a different story)—and today I learned how to use the circuit machines. Ten reps each machine to start, low weight—

Guess who totally spaced on noting down what weight the Y staff member set each machine to. Guess who therefore has no clue what to put the machines on on the visit after next. (Next visit is gonna be straight cardio, I think.) Halp?

( also nutrition question )

So...

What if I were a 46 year old woman who is both active (bikes, swimming, hiking, snowshoeing) AND somewhat disabled/in chronic pain (scoliosis and a dodgy shoulder at the top of my back and hyperflexibility/sciatica/bursitis at the bottom) AND I'd tried doing weights (machines, largely, due to a horrid fear of breaking myself through incompetence if I tried free weights except for curls) and then got bored and stopped doing it ...

And I suddenly decided that I wanted to be able to pick up my own weight (190, +/-) and hold it over my head and put it down again?

Where would I start? Should I start? Is there some other goal I should consider first or instead? What kind of time/money/energy commitment am I looking at here?

My local community centre has a good weight room and my favourite trainer in the world works there and I can afford to buy some time with her. So there's that.

(no subject)

Supposing I start lifting weights again. Given my carpal tunnel diagnosis, do I have to worry that lifting weights will cause further wrist injury?

Buuuuuuurn

Hieu Truong destroys all articles ever written about women weightlifters/powerlifters (okay, just most of them):

The Toast: Woman Lifts Weights, Continues Being a Woman

“Strong is the new pretty,” she says, as she chalks her hands for her 120lb log clean and press. “However, I have to make sure I’m the old pretty as well or I won’t get any sponsorships or any significant financial support to continue in any sport I love.”

*

This female lifter is completely unlike the kind of woman you tend to think of when you think of female lifters, because she loves the color pink. She loves the color pink so much that she has painted herself entirely in neon pink prior to a meet, in order to blind the other lifters. Once, she painted the referees in the middle of introductions and was stopped by a weight loader before she got to the meet director.

*

Many girls her age are usually preoccupied by trivial things, like attracting boys, or following up on the latest celebrity gossip, or doing well in school so they can finally escape the clutches of their overbearing parents. This girl is different. She lifts weights. Doing this very masculine activity makes her 95% more interesting than any other girl her age, aside from all of the girls around the world who work on farms or often carry around their younger siblings or their own children.

Online resource to find drawings/photos of exercises?

Hey,

I fired my PT for reasonz, but I know the kinds of exercises I need to do because of prior PT. I'm starting with basic IT-band/hamstring/calf stretches, like that one where you kind of lean against the wall and stretch your back leg out or the one where you lay on the floor and pull your knee up to your chest.

I do *way better* at exercising if I have a list of things I can just sort of go down with ticky boxes (ignoring ones I'm not up for that day, adding if I want to). Basically, something to riff off of.

Also, I'm a visual person so seeing words like "that hamstring exercise thingy" or a stick figure drawing *can* work but I am less likely to do exercises if that is what I am basing things off of.

so here's my question: does anyone know of an online resource for drawings or photos of people doing basic stretches/strength-building exercises? Books available from the library might be okay as well, I'd just have to do more fiddling.

Thanks,
Liz

This is my kind of fitness essay

From The Hairpin:

Melinda Misener: How To Do Pull-ups

Occasionally I tried to do unassisted pull-ups. Halfway up, I’d get stuck. The feeling wasn’t as painful as it was puzzling. Up, I told myself. Go up.

In time I saw that this stuckness, rather than any physical pain, was what made me so reluctant to try. I wondered how many times I’d overlooked powerlessness as the source of my discomfort. I philosophized: was it wiser, in general, to make peace with impotence or resist it by any means possible?

Current Mood: sore

Front Squat Trouble: Mobility, biomechanics, or doing it wrong?

Hi you all,

I'm back to doing front squats and I'm at a loss at what to do with my arms and how to even begin fixing it. ( Read more... )

what to do if body sides progress unequally?

Like for example, I recently noticed that when doing sideplanks, it is somewhat easier on one side than the other, i.e. I could hold the plank longer on one side than the other if I hold it as long as possible. Also when doing split squats, I can do it slightly easier on my left than my right leg. How do I best help the "weaker" side to catch up in an exercise?

Crutches, strength, broken bones

I fell down the stairs last week and broke my lower leg in two places, so I'm in a splint (post-surgery and will probably get a cast at some point). I'm glad I do so many split squats--that is what's giving my good leg the strength to deal with life on crutches, though it is extremely fatiguing. The other leg gets a workout in the quad and especially the hip flexor, but not the glute. And I'm going to be like this for up to 12 weeks.

I am impatient to get to the gym and do upper body, but right now just getting in and out of my second-floor apartment with crutches is all the workout I can manage...it is HARD, and my lats and traps are exhausted. My body is tired from the surgery. So no formal gym workouts yet.

How can I keep the glute on the injured side strong, and how can I stretch that aching, tired hip flexor given that I mustn't put weight on the foot? I can lower it for a few minutes, not too long because it swells and hurts.

Anyone with tips for recovering from or living with an injury like this, I'd welcome those too. Thanks!

5x5 and...?

I'm currently doing 5x5:
Workout A: 5x5 squats, 5x5 bench presses, 5x5 barbell rows
Workout B: 5x5 squats, 5x5 overhead lifts, 1x5 deadlifts
(yes, my shoulder is much better ;-) ).

I wanted something simple, straightforward, and strength-focussed this winter, because I felt mentally exhausted -- not up to my usual programs that tend to be more complex and focussed on core and coordination. Doing fine so far.

But the workouts barely take 20 or 30 minutes. They are sufficiently challenging physically (and let's not talk about mentally, it was a hard year), but I feel there should be something else I should be doing?

I'm still not able to do a pull-up or push-up, otherwise I would be considering those. I have access to a good, if somewhat crowded gym.

Is there something like a simple ten-to-fifteen minute add-on program that would fill some gaps that might exist?

"And they say 'oooh!' and 'aaaah!'"

New role model: Willie Murphy:

Jezebel: 77-Year-Old Competitive Power Lifter Is Inspiring, Kind of Terrifying

Over double bodyweight deadlift, hell yeah. That's not "it's so cute that she's a little old lady and lifts weights"; that's a SERIOUS strength accomplishment at any age.

side plank technique question

I've been doing the easier side plank version where you are on your knees and can hold that for a while now and wanted to switch to the more difficult one, where the support is your feet, but I keep slipping or wobbling and it is uncomfortable on my feet to try to support my weight on just the side of one foot. How do people do this?

In most of the pictures I've seen people wear sport shoes, and I'm doing my exercises at home on a mat barefoot. Is that the reason, that the shoes stabilize the feet? Can I position the feet some other way for something more stable that's still harder than from your knees?

tips for setting motivational goals with bodyweight exercises?

I suffered from some nasty lower back/sciatic nerve pain during the last months. Both my primary care physician as well as the orthopedic specialist thought that there isn't anything particular wrong with my back (like a disc injury or such), but that it was the unspecific kind of back pain due to weak muscles, bad posture, being too sedentary etc. and that it ought to improve with exercise.

So I had about a dozen physical therapy sessions, also took a class for back pain exercises, and thankfully my pain got indeed better, albeit with ups and downs. But of course I should keep doing the exercises to remain pain free, yet the ultimate goal of "I want the pain to not come back" alone isn't great to sustain motivation for me. It's too general and doesn't really offer any accomplishments to work toward and such.

Because the exercises I learned are basically a mix of bodyweight strength exercises, balance exercises and stretches, I figure that I should be able to use the strength exercises to measure progress somehow for motivation. I enjoy tracking things, but I'm not sure how to go about it with exercising.

I mean, I have noticed some progress with exercises becoming easier, so I can manage more repetitions, and sometimes when there were different versions I can now even do the more difficult exercise than just the easiest kind (though overall my fitness level is still pretty bad, like for example I can't manage any push-ups, not even the easier kind where you are on your knees rather than toes, but am still at the level where you push against a wall). But I'd like to properly track things and have a couple of realistic, concrete goals so I see improvements.

I tried looking at the bodyweight strength training books in my library to get an idea for how this is usually done, but I have to admit that the books I found were all rather off-putting. Like the ones aimed at women all seemed to be a horrible assemblage of body image and weight loss issues, and the ones aimed more towards men had a slightly different set of body image and weight loss issues that were almost as awful and often mixed that with some kind of, I guess, weird power fantasies? I'm sure there must be decent strength training books out there, but my skimming led me to think that it is one those genres you best not venture into without recs. So I mostly backed away from consulting those.

Basically I'm looking for advice with which kind of exercises or exercise progressions (like with the different kinds of push-ups getting more difficult) are good to see your progress and motivate yourself, when you don't track increased weight like with lifting stuff.

Stroooong

Alex Puccio, Mina Leslie-Wujastyk, Shauna Coxsey and Julianne Wurm show off their one-arm pull-ups.

(They were in Azerbaijan for the Bouldering World Cup series.)

X-posting to

disobey_gravity.

Cool article in The Toast

How I Learned to Love Pumping Iron by Hieu Truong

It discusses her experiences as a "a self-identified (and helpfully identified by my peers) small Asian female nerd" getting into powerlifting and Olympic weightlifting.

Barbell sports also reinforces the idea that different body types are okay. That may sound strange in a sport where there are weight classes and where you have to weigh-in to ensure you make weight. However, because of weight classes, I better appreciated the breadth of body types that can exist within a particular weight range. Also, different body types provide different strengths and weaknesses to your ability to execute different lifts. I can squat more than my other lifts because I’m short, and my hips have significantly less distance to travel with lifts. I also have big ol’ thighs and a butt too, relatively speaking for my height/weight. You long-limbed folks that seem so graceful and elegant? You’re probably going to have a hard time with the squat but you’re probably fantastic at the deadlift. Short-armed folks? Bench press. Bench press is your friend.

Also, I love her thoughts on "pretty numbers".

Also there's a link in the comments that may be relevant to people's interests:

Decolonizing Fitness: An anthology on Women of Color, Feminism, and the Politics of “Fit” Bodies

dietary downer

( tl;dr rant because I just can't eat like an athlete )

The thing that bugs me the most: how am I going to maintain a healthy weight and muscle mass as I get older (I'm 48 now) and get stronger, if I have to live on white carbs and cheese? I have seen several dietitians in the past few years, all of whom have answered, "Gosh, I don't know."