A few weeks ago I started doing Stronglifts 5x5 program again. After about a week of it I found that I was struggling to do both squats and barbell rows. Some days, I wouldn't be able to finish my sets at all. I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but I wasn't making much progress.
Sometime last week I was going through a bunch of Alan Thrall videos on YouTube and I found one where he was talking about Stronglifts and Starting Strength and he said that it's common for people on those programs to start struggling after about two to six months, because they're made for beginners (I never felt like a beginner, but after all my injuries, I was definitely lifting like one). Since you lift five pound more every workout than you did your last, eventually you will max out your lifts with these methods (Thrall did the math and found that if you added five pounds to your squat three days a week for a year, you'd end up squatting 780 pounds more than when you started).
I forgot which video he posted that mentioned it, but he was citing this report throughout the video, and it said that eventually, doing five reps isn't enough. You have to start building more muscle mass, and you do that by lifting with lower weight with higher reps (essentially, bodybuilding).
In the comment section, there were a bunch of comments praising the Candito Six Week Training Program for intermediate lifters, so I checked that out. It looks like a good enough plan, so I'll be starting it tomorrow.
The first two weeks are high rep, moderate weight routines. The next three are high weight, low rep routines. The last week is a deload week, where you find your new one rep max and do a mild version of week one. Then you start over with your new one rep max being the basis for all your lifts.
There's a lot of days where you're not working your legs on this plan, so hopefully I can start running again, too.
Now here's a picture of two bunnies kissing that I'm posting just so my Facebook post has more than a title:
As I've mentioned many times, I have calcium deposits in my right shoulder. This means that doing the bench press puts me in a great deal of pain. A few months ago, when I started the Stronglifts routine, as long as I had perfect form there was no pain. After I started putting some heavier weight on the barbell, it doesn't matter how good my form is, I'm in a world of hurt.
Which is why I'm glad I found this video:
Physical therapist Jeff Cavaliere explains how to press without risking further injury to your shoulders. I've been using the first modified method and it's worked well for me. Enjoy!
A disclaimer: I do my best to avoid discussing politics on this blog, as I feel that health, fitness, and mental health should be non-partisan issues. I didn't do that this time around. If you don't agree with my politics (which you should know by my constant posts on Facebook), you might want to turn away.
It started back on Sunday night.
After I got out of work, I changed into a T-shirt and shorts and was playing with Hailey in her room with Lisa.
Last Christmas, I bought Hailey a toy punching bag. It's supposed to be the type that you fill up with water or sand at the bottom, and fill up with air at the top so when you hit it, it falls down and comes back up.
I used to have it filled with water, but it leaked, so now it's filled with nothing but air. As a result, when Hailey punches it, it goes all over the place, so she feels like The Incredible Hulk when she hits it.
Hailey was hitting it in her bedroom while Lisa and me watched. Because of the low weight that comes with a bag having no water or sand in it, she picked it up Hulk style and threw it at Lisa.
I'm sure that Hailey intended for my wife to catch it, but my wife was not ready for our kid to go all Hulk on the bag and toss it at her face. She did anyway.
After Hailey tossed the bag at her mom, we all watched as the bottom end of the toy punching bag hit my wife square in the face.
When it connected to Lisa's nose, I covered my face in shock. After that, something amazing happened.
My wife revealed that she wasn't injured. She was just in a sort of pain from being hit from a piece of plastic. After that, I began a kind of slow laugh. I kind of chuckled at first; then, I burst into full blown laughter.
Hailey saw me laughing my ass off, and she began laughing, too. That made me laugh even harder! Before you knew it, we were both in hysterics. With the exception of my wife (sorry babe, I love you!), who had left the room, my kid and I were insane with laughter!
I think it was at that point that some part in my brain either blew a fuse, or completely lit another one up. I'm not sure which.
The next day I was at work, just doing nothing, and I felt a weird sensation. I asked myself, "What the hell is going on?"
It was then that I realized:
Holy shit, I'm happy.
I haven't "felt happy" in years. I put that part in quotes to make the point that there aren't times in the past many years where I didn't feel happy. There were times when I heard a funny joke, or found that my kids were able to do something that made me proud, or some other point where there was some moment where I felt joy. I was happy in those brief, fleeting moments.
What I mean by "feeling happy", is that my "default setting", the time in our lives where we don't have any outside stimulation to direct our emotions, is for the first time in years, happy. It's not anger, fear, or any other negative emotion that has guided me for well over a decade. I'm just fucking happy.
When you've suffered from PTSD, depression, and anxiety for over a decade, this is a very weird feeling. I even tried to talk myself out of being happy, as crazy as that sounds.
A long time ago I heard a quote from Henry Rollins where he explained anger as being a form of awareness. He said that if you're angry, it's because you know that things are wrong, that you know that you live in a fucked up world and are aware of your situation. If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.
That's why I started to try to talk myself out of being happy at first. I told myself, "You live in a world where you have to work longer hours to be able to pay the bills, there are cops in America that are getting away with murder while there are assholes murdering good cops. We live in a world where systemic racism exists, where there's some rich prick reality T.V. show star just a few votes away from the presidency who has ran a campaign on nothing but hate and evil, while you're still struggling to pay the bills every month. WHY IN THE FUCK ARE YOU SO HAPPY?!"
Every time I asked myself that question, a quote from a song by Spose (song shown below) kept screaming into my head:
Why am I so happy, I don't have to answer that. Why are you so miserable is the question that I need to ask.
As the days passed and I kept that quote screaming in my brain, I came to a strong realization. I don't know if this general feeling of happiness is going to last. I hope that it does, but I've spent so many years being unhappy that I honestly don't know. What I do know is that for those of us that are unhappy for good reason (especially for the reasons listed above), we need to know that being happy is an act of fucking rebellion.
Yes, the world is a goddamn shit pile. We work harder than we should to be able to pay the bills. We see the systemic racism in our country and we have a strong enough sense of empathy to hate it. We are merely a few votes away from having a complete and total idiot running this country, and even if he loses, we'll still probably end up struggling to make a living.
Despite all that, we need to remember that we are human beings, goddamn it! Our lives have value, and we deserve to be happy! It's because of that, that being happy is an act of rebellion. The world wants us to be depressed, pissed off, and filled with despair because of all of the evil that exists in it.
It's because of that, that despite all the bullshit that's going on in the world, I choose to lift two big middle fingers up at it and scream:
FUCK YOU WORLD! I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY! YEAH, I'LL BE PISSED AT THE INJUSTICE OF THIS WORLD, BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE! IN BETWEEN THOSE MOMENTS, I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY JUST TO PISS YOU OFF! FUCK YOU, WORLD! I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY! IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, YOU CAN SUCK ON MY SALTY BALLS!
Suck my balls, world. I'm going to be happy just to piss you off.
I now know why my parents would get angry when I was a kid if I didn't like a certain food or didn't eat because I wasn't hungry. Over the past few months, I've learned to love cooking. If it's my day off, I'm making dinner. It went from being a once a week deal where I'd try a new dish to me completely taking over the kitchen every chance I get. My recipes are usually fairly elaborate deals that take at least one hour to make, if not longer.
So when Hailey, my oldest daughter, refuses to eat the food that I busted my ass making I get more than a little pissed off. Correction: She eats everything except the meat portion. I do my best to not show my anger, because I was a picky eater as a kid and still am to this day (I would rather be stabbed than eat something containing onions), and I know from personal experience that trying to pressure kids to eat something will only make them hate it all the more. But I was concerned with my kid's protein intake, so I came up with an idea to get her to eat.
"Hailey! Can you help daddy cook?!"
"Uhh...yes!"
Just like that, she was with me in the kitchen. We were having barbecued ribs for dinner, and I told her after the ribs go on the grill, I'm taking her to the store so we can get our side dishes.
I handed Hailey the dry rub and showed her how to put it on the ribs. She put them on exactly like I showed her. After putting the baby backs on the grill, we were off to Kroger to grab our side dishes.
"Hailey, what do you want to go with your ribs?"
"Uhh..."
"Do you want mashed potatoes?"
"Uhh...yes."
"Okay, we'll get mashed potatoes. Do you want green beans?"
"Uhh...yes."
"Okay. Do you want peas and carrots?"
"Daddy, I LOOOVE peas and carrots!"
"Okay, we'll get those, too."
We grabbed all the stuff and headed back to the house just in time for me to move the ribs around the grill. Fast forward one hour, and I'm showing her how to make instant mashed potatoes. I have her put the butter and the water into the pot, and once the pot was boiling, she (very carefully) poured in the milk. After that, I open up our two cans of veggies and she scoops out some butter to put into them before I put them in the microwave. After that, I took the ribs off the grill and showed her how to brush them with barbecue sauce. She does just fine with that. Her face was beaming with pride the entire time we were making the food, and I made sure to give her a high five every time she did something.
Dinner is ready!
I make up plates for the kids and I, and we all sit at the table. I had a single rib on Hailey's plate. I told her, "Eating ribs is like eating corn on the cob. You grab the bones like this, and you bite into it like this", all the while demonstrating how to eat them. This is the first time we didn't serve it to her chopped up into little pieces. She's going to eat like a big girl.
Laurel, my youngest, has never met a food she didn't like, so she gobbles it all up like it's nothing. Hailey, on the other hand, ate all of her sides and took one bite of the ribs. After that, she refused to eat another bite saying, "Daddy, I don't like it!"
In my head, I am Samuel Jackson. I am superfly TNT. I am the Guns of the Naverone, and I have HAD IT WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKING KID NOT EATING HER MOTHERFUCKING DINNER! However, I remain calm, as I just spent the last four hours bonding with my daughter and I don't want to ruin it by having a temper tantrum that will just cause her to dig in her heels and be more stubborn about eating. I took her plate and ate her rib.
If she just didn't like one kind of meat, I wouldn't care too much, but I was genuinely concerned that she might not be getting enough protein in her diet. She needs it to grow and to be strong. So, like with everything else in my life that I get flustered by, I hit up the internet for advice.
After googling, "My toddler won't eat meat", I was led to this website. It turns out that toddlers having a phase where they don't like to eat meat is common. Because meat can seem more bland than other foods, and is also harder to chew (even if it's slow-cooked, marinated pieces of pork dipped in delicious barbecue sauce), kids often go through a phase where they just don't want it. They suggested some ways of serving the food, as well as concentrating on the types of meat that your kid will eat (in Hailey's case, that would be chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and bologna).
I also learned from another article that kids don't need that much protein. Someone of Hailey's age and size only needs about 18 grams of protein a day to ensure proper growth. She gets plenty of that just from dairy. That calmed me down.
Besides, Hailey is a giant. She just turned four, but even at three years old, she was towering over kids twice her age. Like her daddy, she's a tall one. All signs point to her having her nutritional needs met.
I won't have any days off until Wednesday, but I think I'll serve fish sticks that day. Kids like fish sticks, right?
