The biggest one is work. I've been working a lot of hours and haven't had much time for writing.
The other is that every time I thought I was going to write about something, I ended up on another part of my fitness journey.
Shortly after the last entry I wrote about making my way to the thousand pound club, I stopped working out for a little over a week. When I got back into the gym, I noticed I was squatting a lot less than before. I couldn't squat nearly as heavy as I once could without feeling intense pain in my lower back. When I couldn't squat 225 without feeling pain, I realized that it's not a lack of strength that was keeping me from lifting. I was injured. Off to the doctor!
After an exam and an x-ray, I found out that I don't have an actual spinal injury (thank Christ), but I do a calcium deposit on my spine that, when squatting, touches a nerve in my spinal cord. This causes intense pain.
The doc said that this is just an inconvenience for now, but in about twenty years, I'm kinda fucked. Goddamn, getting old sucks!
So my plan to get to the thousand pound club by the end of the year is put on hold. But I needed to put it on hold for another reason.
I really, really needed to start cutting weight.
I had been scared to start cutting weight because I didn't want to lose muscle, but with the calcium deposits on my spine fucking with my lift, I decided it was time to start dropping some body fat, anyway. I had already planned on doing this immediately after joining the thousand pound club, as I was getting concerned with what all the bulking was doing to me. My weight had gone up to 308 pounds. When I was bulking, I kept telling myself, "Don't worry about your weight. Just increase your lifts. We'll start cutting weight later.", but I was growing concerned with weighing more than 300 pounds. I promised myself I'd never weigh that much again. But after my plans to join the thousand pound club went to shit, I decided it was time to drop some weight.
Fortunately, one of my favorite YouTube channels, Buff Dudes, had started their own cutting plan right around the same time. So I started that one and also started doing MMA again. I've gotten my weight below 300 pounds. I'm still not lifting anywhere near where I want to be, but at least my weight is down.
The Buff Dudes are bodybuilders, not powerlifters, and bodybuilding is hard when you haven't done it in a long time. When you're powerlifting, you work the legs in just about every workout. You do a few sets of squats and maybe some deadlifts, and you're done. When you're bodybuilding, you work the legs once or twice a week, and you're doing several exercises. It really tests your muscular endurance. My workouts are also a lot longer, which makes it a struggle to find time to hit the gym.
The MMA classes are surprisingly easy. All my years in the gym has certainly paid off, as the classes feel like low-impact cardio.
There's a lot of other stuff I want to write about, but don't have the time to do so right now. Hopefully I can get it done during the week.
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