Back – Page 2 – Something Beats Nothing Every Time

G-Day 2 – Come back Tony, all is forgiven

Day 1 of G90X was great. No, wait, it sucked. Well, at the time it was great, now, 2 days later and I am facing Plyo while unable to walk properly I can tell you it was awful. I thought for sure I wouldn’t get sore, after all I had been doing pushups and pullups, what would a little weights be after that?

Well, as you can see below I didn’t use heavy weights, in fact I should have used the pink Olympic bar my bench was so light. In any case, I subbed what I could and didÂ chin upsÂ on the chest fly machine… AnÂ enormousÂ double stack of weights with rowing machines and latÂ machinesÂ attached. The cool thing is that it faces the mirror wall and unlike my basement all the mirrors line up properly so you don’t look like a Salvador Dali painting as you are sweating your nuts off.

It was odd being back in the gym especially since I was there NOT doing my gym workout. Instead I had a list to get through. That list is here:

Day 1 Chest and Back
Date	19-Oct
	Set 1	Set 2
Flat bench	25 @ 135	20 @ 135
Wide Front Pull Ups	11	10
Narrow Grip Bench	25 @ 135	10 @ 135
Reverse Grip Chin Ups	12	9
Wide Fly Press	20 @ 25	15 @ 25
Closed Grip Overhand Pull Ups	7	6
Incline Bench (OR INCLINE DB PRESS)	20 @ 40	12 @ 40
Heavy Pants or Seated Cable Row	15 @ 150	12 @ 150
Diamond Push Ups / CABLE FLYS	20 @ 50	20 @ 50
Lawnmower	20 @ 30	20 @ 30
Dive Bomber Push Ups	6	6
Back Flys with machine	10 @ 110	10 @ 110

2 days later and I am in critical condition I am so sore.

Day 89, 90 and 1! P90X is dead, long live G90X!

The Return Of The Gym Rat…

It’s time for a rebirth. Time to reinvest in myself and to take what Tony taught me back into the gym.

Today is going to be Day 1 of G90X. My gym infused version of P90X. Since I have a gym membership and my psyche still requires that public exposure as mild motivation I will be taking my P90X workout to the gym. I haven’t worked out the whole program yet, I have a 5 day rotation with which to work and I am going to be doing the Cardio, Kenpo, Plyo and Yoga components of P90X mixed into the newly revamped gym workout.

All I know right now is that if I take Chest and Back to the gym I will have 3 or 4 days to figure out Shoulders and Arms. If I don’t go until I figure it out, I will stay home and watch TV eating bonbons…

So here goes, this is the plan which will probably change once I have a chance to go through it once or twice. I’ll be keeping an excel spreadsheet to record my reps and weights which I will scan later.

6 Day Rotation with rest as required (but with 2 days off a week, rest should not be an issue.
Day 1 – Chest and Back
Day 2 – Plyo with Tony
Day 3 – Shoulders and Arms
Day 4 – Yoga
Day 5 – Legs and Back
Day 6 – Kenpo or Cardio or Core Syn

I am not sure I will be incorporating a rest week or not. I will see how I feel after the first 3 weeks.

â€¢Flat bench with 2/3 body weight (up to full body weight, no more)

â€¢Wide Front Pull Ups

â€¢Narrow Grip BenchÂ with 2/3 body weight (up to full body weight, no more)

â€¢Reverse Grip Chin Ups

â€¢Wide Fly Press (start at 40’s)

â€¢Closed Grip Overhand Pull Ups

â€¢Incline Bench with 50% bodyweight up to full bodyweight (OR INCLINE DUMBELL PRESS)

â€¢Heavy Pants or Seated Cable Row

â€¢Diamond Push Ups / CABLE FLYS

â€¢Lawnmower

â€¢Dive Bomber Push Ups

â€¢Back Flys with machine

Day 82 – Redemption (I am so lost sometimes)

So my last entry lamenting the fact that I missed my last weights day was a little premature. Fact is that I have one day left. The day 81 workout was the Kenpo that I switched with Yoga leaving me with Legs and Back today and then Yoga on Friday (or not, as noted).

So I am now in a position where I have one resistance day left and then one cardio day and then a full week of rest week and then I am done.

I’ll let you know how the last resistance day goes. Nothing out of the norm I can’t imagine.

…

So it would figure that once I did the math and figured out I still had one day left to do that I would be feeling like garbage. I think I had a little too much coffee today because I felt shaky and weak, a sure sign of caffeine overload. For me, when that happens I get the feeling that I can’t get any blood flow to my muscles, I feel weak and surprisingly lethargic. Once I start working out however I find my heart rate goes higher than normal and I sweat like a wildebeast. Speaking of which, here’s an interesting fact for the day that I think maybe everyone except me knows… The wildebeast is the same animal as the Gnu. I had literally no idea. Besides, it sounds less dramatic to say I was sweating like a Gnu.

So the start of the workout was difficult but I pushed myself to do more knowing how I would feel after 10 minutes or so. That is an incredibly important part of fitness and weightloss. Knowing how your body will react to something is a powerful tool in your arsenal. It is obvious that some days you are going to be better in the gym than others, it’s just a fact. During those days that you feel great and want to do more, you should do whatever you can because you know that there are going to be days when you have to take it easy because you don’t feel so good. The point is to recognize the difference between your body sending you a message to take it easy and your brain telling you to relax because it is being lazy. Laziness doesn’t have an equal and opposite force, it is just a drain. Lazy people are lazy in all facets of their life including at the gym and with their diet. Strong motivated people know when to push and when to hold back and that is something that will always work to their advantage.

In other words, learn to recognize your BODY’S signals, not your brain’s.

So I started off not feeling great, but after the first round of pullups and lunges I started to come around. As usual for me, once I get going I feel fine, which is why I have a long standing agreement with myself that if I don’t feel like going to the gym I will go anyway and see how it is. If I still feel like I don’t need to be there after 10 minutes, I am allowed to leave. Of the dozens of times I have thought of this rule, I have only ever once turned around after 10 minutes and left.

So what have I learned about the leg days? This is important to me because when I first hurt my back way back in 1997 or so it was on an incline leg press doing slightly over 1000lbs. The sled came down on me and I was unable to turn the stop handles quickly enough. Due to the fact that I was not flexible, something had to give and it was my back. Now, I am not blaming my entire history of back problems on that one event, but what I do know is that morning laying on the floor of The Workout was the first time I ever remember feeling the pain of disc herniation. I continued to work on my legs for the next few years without much incident, I mostly did squats and extensions and stayed away from the sled. Once my back started to give out more regularly I gave up working out my legs because it seemed that every time I did something with my legs I put my back out. I even recall doing the original P90 workout a few years ago and after leg day the next morning I couldn’t walk because of my back. After my surgery I was left with a weak right leg having lost about 30% of the muscle mass in my thigh. I tried in vain to rebuild the leg but found it incredibly frustrating. Looking back I wish I had listened to myself when I used to tell my PT clients about the importance of stretching, not for flexibility necessarily but for warmup and warm down purposes. Had I realized that my back problems were linked directly to my leg issues and the lack of hamstring flexibility I could have saved myself a lot of grief. But, you live and learn.

So what I have learned about leg days is that your legs are a critical part of your lower back health, your overall flexibility and even your core strength. If you are smart and look after your hamstrings, keep them flexible and strong you will go a long way towards preventing unnecessary back pain. This also applies to knee pain and hip pain since the leg muscles are the connection between your hips and your knees. I can’t stress how important it is to keep the back of your legs supple and the proof is the fact that I am able to do the intense workouts for my legs in P90X without any adverse effects on my back. This alone has been both a major benefit but also a major surprise to me. My right leg has grown in strength and size over the past 90 days which I was unable to accomplish in the 8 years since my surgery. It just goes to show, you should try everything once because you just never know what might work.

Except acupuncture. Don’t bother with acupuncture it doesn’t work. I can tell you that from experience.

Day 81 – Last Resistance Day. I wish I had known.

I can feel the curtain closing as I embark upon these weight days for the last time during this, my first stab at P90X. Today was Back and biceps, the glamour workout as Tony calls it. This is week 12, week 13 being the last rest week which means that since I have done the last weight session of the week, my P90X weight days are completely done. I have to say it’s a bit odd that I didn’t realize that this would be my last workout. I have Yoga to do on Wednesday since I traded Kenpo and Yoga again due to time constraints.

So let me just get my head around what I still have to do here with my increasingly complex schedule.

Wed Sept 23 09 – Yoga
Thu Â – Coaching
Fri Â – Supposed to be Rest but will do day 1 of rest week – yoga
Sat – Yoga if I decided to skip yesterday (which given my track record of Fridays the last 3 weeks I may)
Sun – Core
Mon – Kenpo
Tue – Coaching
Wed – Stretch
Thu – Coaching
Fri – Core
Sat – Yoga
Sun Oct 4 09 – Stretch

If I decide to skip the middle stretch day and go straight to Core I may finish a day ahead but for now that will be the plan. It will mean that my last day, Day 90 will be Sunday October 4th. That will mean I will have finished the P90X program in 105 days. Not bad given that I will have also been coaching at the same time.

However, it is not time to reflect just yet. My arms felt like they were going to explode tonight, I tried to push a little harder but smarter, doing a little lighter weight on some things to get a better contraction. The top of my forearms where my french curls make me cry like a little girl are especially sore. Yes, even on day 83 you will still get some soreness. I kind of wish I had realized that today was my last weights day. I could have taken some pictures at full pump, I wonder if you can tell a difference at full and not full?

So sayonara to the pull up bar, although I am sure we will remain close. It’s time for me to get back to the gym and create my hybrid system. After that, I hope to return to do either the Lean version or maybe a second round of Classic.

Days 75-76 Weekend Warrior returns. As does back pain.

Back, Legs, Kenpo

Had to… two often misused and overused words. However, I had to take Friday off. It was inevitable and unavoidable that after the first week of coaching that I would be very sore, very cranky and very tired. Although this should not have prevented me from going down to the basement with Tony I am afraid under my new P90X t-shirt I am human after all…

However, an interesting aside, I am more sore now than I have been through this whole process and I am not sure if it is because of coaching and so on or if in fact it is due to the fact that I am not doing something every day as I was previously. Either way, I am going to have to be careful since I can’t afford to take a day off or to have my back go out at any point now with such a full calendar.

It was great to do Kenpo, I have to say. Having so many days between each of the workouts is making progress almost impossible but also there is an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” aspect to it. I did pullups the other day, was happy to in fact, but the followign day I was incredibly sore. Kenpo was a great time but I have to admit that I feel like I pulled something in my back doing it.

Maybe P90X is not really meant to be done at such a leisurely pace as 5 days a week.

Day 71 – Staying in the Game

Chest and Back

invisible lawnmower Today I elected to take it easy. It’s not that I don’t want to go all out during the workout it is more that I know if I hurt myself now I will mess up my ability to get the floors done. If I do that, we will be living on bare floors for a while. So, with caution at the forefront of my mind I was careful specifically with the lawnmowers and the bent over flys. I am not enthused about the bent over rowing in the first place. They call them Heavy Pants and it is an exercise which I think is unnecessarily risky for most people. They have a one arm at a time version called locomotives which basically raises the same questions with me. However, with good form, you can mitigate some of the risk but the exercise still comes with a huge amount of safety precautions for anyone with a weak or compromised lower back. Needless to say, my heavy pants were more like a well worn pair of underwear! Plus I am still reeling from the realization that next week isn’t a rest week, something I should take advantage of, not sulk about, but you know…

It is funny doing the chest and back workout because it is the first workout that you do when you start the program. Tony is on his best behaviour, everyone is working hard and looking good and it is just that little bit more polished and professional than the rest of the days.

Today was a struggle for me anyway, I think I may have had an extra coffee and that made me a little shaky and nauseated. I was OK during the workout but by the last move I was exhausted. This is very unusual for me especially after a day off. Just goes to show that the quality of your workouts depends in very large part to both the diet you had yesterday but also what you ate and drank today. You have to become very familiar with your body and how it reacts to food and drink in order to give yourself the best shot in the gym. This probably goes without saying for some of you but you would be amazed at how many people don’t know how to make themselves feel great with their diet. It is a mystery to them how some days they feel good in the morning or at the gym while other times they are dragging their butt like an old itchy dog. At the very least you should be able to explain your body state and how you created it and be able to recreate that state at will. Imagine that, being able to make yourself feel great whenever you wanted!

Eat right and exercise and you will find out how to do just that.

Days 68 to 70 – Floored

Legs and Back, Kenpo

As usual, the weekend took a toll on my workouts. Not that I don’t have time t0 get them done, but especially this time I have other things to occupy my time. I took Friday off, something which I think is inherited from my father who took Friday evenings as his “decompression” time. I started parts of the floor prep making lists and to do priorities. Saturday meant early legs and back which was enjoyable and it was a nice bonus to get it done early. However, with a day of hard physical work ahead I knew I may be in for a world of pain.

Truck, 800lbs of floor and a challenge!

I went to Home Depot and got the flooring, manhandled it into and out of the truck and started on the floor. First I had to pull the carpet and since we don’t have a lot of room in which to work it meant moving furniture around to clear floor space. I spent a lot of the day bent over removing staples which held the foam underpad down. Whoever installed it was obviously fixated on the staple gun since they used it like it was their newest Christmas present. With large areas of the carpet removed I spent Sunday getting the last of it out and removing the trim pieces that will need reinstalling once the floor is in. I also spent about an hour and a half trying to cut the bottom of the fireplace with a hand saw until I realized that I had recently seen a tool on TV that would be ideal. It was, however, $400 so I went to Home Depot again and found the Dremel knock off which would have saved me an enourmous amount of time had I thought of it earlier.

tackstrip vs foam

Long and painful story short I was too tired and had worked too damn hard to do Kenpo on Sunday. So I officially am skipping a workout and getting back to my Chest and Back workout on Monday.

That is when I realised that the buggers at Beachbody have slipped in an extra week of workouts at the end of the program. I thought that this being the 3rd week of Phase 3 that I had one more week of weights and then one rest week and I would be done. Not so! I actually have 2 more weeks of weights until the final rest week. This brings with it mixed emotions, at least it gives me 2 more weeks to coem up with some of the conditioning for gym, it also gives me an extra week to get myself in even better shape however it means the finish line is now a week further away than I thought it was!!!

I almost went to the gym on Sunday to do my Legs and Back workout, a session which lends itself well to that transition. I feel like it has been forever since my days at the gym and I think it will be a welcome change to get back there. September is going to be a month of significant change around here!

So here I go, 2 more weeks of weight work and then one more rest week and I am done! A real, bona fide completion of the program. I can’t wait.

Day 66 – Biggest Loser Finale Day

Back and Biceps

scale I am responsible for running a program at my workplace for people interesting in losing weight. Although it is called the Biggest Loser the similarity ends there. There is no set workout schedule, no training only weekly information and motivation from me and the accountability of the weigh in. This is the 3rd installment of the program and to date our participants have lost a total of 153lbs!

The purpose of my doing the P90X program was not primarily weight loss. I stated from the start that I took up this program as a challenge both to see if I could do it, but also to confirm to myself that regardless of how I may feel every day from a pain perspective, that my body is still capable of amazing things even after my (now long past) back surgery. I remember talking to a guy at a gym I used to go to who had a similar scar on his back (this was only months after my operation) and he was 8 years on. He was playing squash every day and told me that he was doing the things that he did before his back started giving him problems. I aspired to that, but at the same time I was concerned that it may take the 8 years to get back to “normal”. Well, it is now 8 years down the road and I suppose a few months ago I would have complained that I was not capable of things I would have done before my back problems. However, today I would be proud to say that I can do things that I would probably not have attempted back then, even though I would have been 8 years younger!!

So Bob was the biggest loser, he swept the last month and the final grand prize. I think the program has proven it’s value, not only to the winners, but also to the participants who have an accountability system in place which is helping them control their weight. It amazes me that even though we work in a Health Care institution, we have practically zero fitness programs or facilities at work. In doing the nutrition course I am finding that the vast majority of the health problems people have are caused by, not only aggravated by, diet and lack of exercise. I was floored to find out that 77% of cancer related illness is CAUSED by diet. Isn’t it common sense then that we should be working harder on prevention than on curing? Can you imagine the effect on the economy if even 25% of hospital visits, prescription charges, doctors fees and so on were cut by people being healthier? If nothing else, imagine the effect on your income tax rate!! Canada in 2008 was projected to spend around $180 Billion Â on healthcare. Even if we could cut those costs by a mere 10% we could (apparently) eradicate homelessness (cost:$3.5B) (ref:http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/main_nowayhome_cost.html ) we could ALSO provide day care and early childhood education from age 2 to JK completely free for every Canadian family which (although figures are up for debate) would cost somewhere in the region of $10B. That would still leave $4.5B for infrastructure repairs, increases in salaries for teachers and the police and to employ enough judges, court staff and jail space to ensure than anyone caught using a gun in Canada or selling drugs to kids is jailed for the remainder of their natural lives.

But I digress…

Day 61 – I Can See Clearly Now The Rain Has Gone

Or in Nicole’s case, I can see clearly now you have cut open my eyeball and burned off part of my retina with a laser!

It appears, at least initally, that the surgery was a resounding success. Her comments to me are similar to the feelings I recall from my own surgery and since I ended up with bionic super-vision I have high hopes for her.

Today was legs and back – Torture for my poor sore hamstrings and bum.

Unfortunately it is now a few days later and after a weekend in Niagara Falls my recollection is dim at best. What I can tell you is that my chinups are miles better than they were and it seems like the elbow and shoulder pain I was having initially is subsiding somewhat. I can also tell you that Phase 3 of the workout is basically Phase 1 plus Phase 2 weeks kind of mixed in together. So this week I did week 1, next week I will be doing week 5 workouts.

WK1415GoldenSkies.jpg_595

Day 57 – The Adonis Complex and My Elusive 400lb Bench

Still looking sick from the mono I got at Western in 1990. I was 174lbs here and look like I could use a hot meal... — Sick after Mono. 174lbs (and hungry)

Chest and Back

It was like a trip down memory lane. The Chest and Back workout was the workout that I did on the first day of P90X 57 days ago. I haven’t done that particular workout since Phase 1 and it was really weird being reminded of where I started. Luckily, my numbers were way up from what I did back then but I was still exhausted after. In fact, for the first time in 58 days I finished doing Ab Ripper and as I rested I fell asleep on the floor! It was really encouraging to see that my reps were up, I managed 30 pushups in 60 seconds the first month, this time I was up to 50! My chinups were also better, and I measure by percentage here noting that I was up as much as 50% on some of the pullups. Having come so far it was refreshing to see the changes but also to have a different pairing on the workout as far as body parts goes. That is the one thing I really enjoy about the program, the mix of bodyparts that they put together. For years in the gym I did chest and triceps on the same day. Last year I decided that I would mix it up (after working out that way since I was 16!!!) and try doing chest and traps, back and triceps, shoulders and biceps with abs every other day. It had never really occurred to me that maybe I should change the pairing more than once a year. I had toyed with the idea on many occasions but never gone ahead with it. I guess success leads to complacency, what I was doing was working and working well so why change? This P90X journey has been so much more than a workout video. It has opened my eyes again to the infinite possibilities for my own workouts just like I coach the gymnastics kids. After all, I design specific conditioning programs for them every week to keep them on their toes, why wouldn’t I do that for myself? What I am going to do, and I have mentioned this before, is to create my own 2 or 3 month program that will bring what I have learned from Tony and the gang into the gym and the basement to give myself a whole new way of working out.

Maybe I will never bench 375lbs again, maybe I will never reach the magical 400lb mark that I have chased for so long but at this point that max weight mentality has taken a back seat to the max health mentality and the amazing feeling I get from being in control of a body that feels like I can do things with it other than lay down and push metal. In the end I can say that my max weight records are somewhat impressive and something I can be happy about but what about my health? I measured my bodyfat at university and was 11.5% but I was teaching aerobics step class and working out 3 hours a day. I have been as low as 174lbs (pictured above) after I had mono at Western but that wasn’t a conscious decision. What I cannot say is that at any point in my adult life I have been “super fit” and in control of my weight. I think it is about time that I did that so I can look back on things and say that I achieved that too. My whole life I have managed my weight through exercise and it has been a constant battle balancing my strength with my weight. Maybe if I take the weight requirement out of the equation it will open up a whole new way of doing things… I guess we will see. It is going to be immensely difficult not being proud of my max weight just as it is difficult for some people not to be proud of their bodyweight.

There is a disease called Anorexia whereby women (generally speaking) become fixated on their weight and go to terrible extremes to control that number. In the same vein there is a disease called Bigorexia (Muscle Dismorphia or The Adonis Complex) whereby men (generally speaking) have the idea that no matter what they are never big enough (or, by association, strong enough). It is a socially accepted stereotype that men should be large and muscular, just look at how the superman action figures have changed over the years. I am smart enough to realize that I am a part of this issue, that my size, the Big Guy Complex as I always though of it, is something that is a mental crutch. It defines me as much or more as my job, my marriage and my heritage. I am also painfully aware that a departure from being known as “that big fella” is something I will have to deal with if I expect this new approach to work. Trading in a 400lb bench press for 12% body fat may be more difficult mentally than physically for me but at this time in my life, the 12% bodyfat will give me an extra 10 – 15 years on my life over a 400lb bench press or a 300lb shoulder press at 25% body fat.

In the end isn’t that why we work out in the first place, so that we can live longer, healthier lives?