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?
A few weeks ago, I said that I was going to start doing the Westside Method, along with running, so I could do both powerlifting and running at the same time.
The first workout had me doing box squats. After doing a few warmup sets, I set the bar at 225 pounds.
I had never squatted 225 pounds, but I was confident that I could do it, because:
A) I was only lifting one rep.
B) I'm starting out on a box, so it's only a half rep, anyway.
So, I put the bar on my back and sat down on the box. I positioned my feet.
"Okay. Ready to lift on 1...2...3."
As I moved up, my legs screamed out, "NOPE!", and I fell forward.
Fortunately, I had the sense to get down on my knees and push the weight off of my shoulders while I slid from under the bar. The bar landed with a loud clanging sound on the floor.
I looked up to see if anyone saw me. Fortunately, the only other person in the gym was a woman on a stairclimber on the other side of the gym. She didn't see shit.
Then, I looked to make sure the gym didn't have any security cameras pointed at me. Nope. Looks like I'm not going to be a viral video.
Thank God.
I looked at the bar lying on the ground, and I kicked myself for having this be THE ONE DAY that I forgot to set up the safety bars on the cage.
I did two things that day that I always tell others to avoid doing. I let my ego write a check my ass (and legs) couldn't cash, and I forgot to be safe. Thankfully, I didn't have much injury to little more than my ego.
As far as running and powerlifting go, using the Westside Method was a failure. The second leg workout just put too much stress on my legs, and I felt like Jell-O for the next couple of days.
With that workout being scrapped, I tried to split my lifting, so I'd only do squats and deadlifts one day a week, while I worked on my upper body four days out of the week. I would run three days a week.
That failed too, because everything I was doing was indirectly working my abdominal muscles, and I ended up with the same muscle strain that nearly took me out while I was training for my half marathon.
I might just have to accept that I'm getting older. When I was 21, I could have done all this stuff on three hours of sleep. Now, I have to keep a strict diet just to be able to have the energy to work out and recover.
So as of now, I'm not running. Tomorrow I will get back on the Stronglifts 5x5 routine. My new plan is to do that until I reach my lifting goals. After that, I'll start running again while keeping a very basic bodybuilding routine so I can keep my strength.
When you've had a series of epic fails on your fitness journey, it's important to remember that failure is all part of the process. I'm sure even The Rock has had bad days in the gym. I'm still in great shape, and I'll get to where I want to be eventually if I work at it.
About a month ago I wrote a post giving advice to people that want to start out being healthier. In the section on exercise, I said to make it a point to do some sort of physical activity for an hour a day, five days a week. You didn't necessarily have to join a gym, start lifting weights, or running (unless you wanted to), but just find something that keeps you physically active for an hour. I made it a point to say that you shouldn't have a specific goal in mind, because goals come later.
Well, later has come. After spending a month being active, you probably found something that you enjoy doing. Now that you've reached that point, it's time to start focusing on goals.
Goals are what keep us motivated to exercise. If I hadn't decided to run a half-marathon back in 2014, I wouldn't have ran five days a week, often for several miles at a time. It's a rare person that would decide to run nine miles for no reason. It was the race that kept me motivated.
So, whatever you decided to start doing, set a goal and work to achieve it. If you decided to start walking, you might consider walking a half-marathon. If you decided to start lifting weights, set a goal for how much you want to be able to lift. So on and so forth.
Make sure you have a short term goal and a long term goal. I did a series of small races before running a half-marathon, starting with a race that was just short of a mile. I moved up to a 5k, then a 10k, and a 10 mile race. Each race was a short term goal that eventually led to reaching my long term goal of running 13.1 miles.
My short term goals have changed quite a bit since then. Currently, my short term goals are to be able to squat and deadlift 350 pounds in a five-rep set, and to bench 250. I also want to run three miles in under 24 minutes.
I meant to write this last week, but of course life got in the way.
Just before I entered high school, three friends found themselves through a love of punk rock. They called themselves the Moron Brothers, despite the song of the same name being the exact opposite of who they were. They weren't idiots, or losers, or scum. They weren't taking advantage of anyone. Yet, the song was funny enough for them to give themselves the name anyway.
When I entered my sophomore year of high school, I became the fourth member of the Moron Brotherhood. I was adopted into the group that made up of Chris, Mike, and Ger(ald).
We had other friends during our time in high school, but of the Moron Brothers, we were the core group. After high school, we did our best to stay together, even though some of us moved far away. Despite meeting nearly two decades ago, we made it a point to all get together when we were all in town, so we could catch up and talk about the good and bad times that had passed.
A little more than two weeks ago, I got a call from Ger. He told me that Chris had passed away.
No one knows how he died. The only information that Ger had to give was that his kids found his body on the couch in the living room. Nobody knew anything else.
Chris had a myriad of health problems, both mental and physical, so as of now, we still don't know how he died. Was it a suicide? We don't know. Was it a heart attack at his incredibly young age? We don't know. Was it a drug overdose? We don't know. As it stands, we still don't fucking know.
I went to Chris' viewing with Mike and a few other friends from high school. When Mike asked his family about his death, they said they were waiting on a toxicology report, and it wouldn't be provided for a few weeks. We still don't know how he died.
During the viewing, I talked with Mike and a few others from high school. We were still in a relative state of denial. The funeral home had a slideshow on their television where they showed a whole bunch of pictures of Chris from the time he was a child to their most recent photo. We had a good laugh at his pictures, especially the ones from our high school days. I made it a point of taking a shot on my phone of this one:
Chris is the one on the left, in what is most likely the most 90s picture of the entire 1990s.
Eventually, my friends and I managed to find our way to his corpse in the casket. His body looked like the makeup guy at the funeral home went to town on him and added way too much makeup. His body looked like it had much more melanin in it than his real body had when he was alive. It was as if it was a fake version of his body was lying in the casket. I wanted to touch his face to make sure it wasn't some mannequin lying in the casket, and I'm fairly sure at least some of my friends wanted to do the same, but we knew better than to do such things. Even if his skin looked like it had spent too much time in Florida on spring break, it was still him all the same.
While we were surrounding his body, Mike kept talking about he was once some happy-go-lucky kid that was always up for anything. I think he was trying to romanticize Chris' life. I met Chris just after he nearly killed himself over an ex-girlfriend. He was never a happy-go-lucky kid to me. He was just an idiot with mental issues.
I told Mike and the others in our party, "I keep trying to remember a good memory of Chris, but honestly, I can't remember any time when he was with us that he wasn't a fucking idiot...goddamn it, he was a jackass, but he was our jackass." Mike agreed with that assessment.
That probably sums up Chris' life, or at least what I remember of it. In high school, he loved to brag about how much he masturbated (during that time in high school when bragging about such things was both funny and taboo at the same time). He would attempt to bed the Christian girls that he dated by becoming engaged to them (in high school, an engagement usually means nothing, and he knew that). In adulthood, he joined the Army Reserves as a Petroleum Supply Specialist and did his time in the sandbox without Ger or me (who also did our own time in different Army companies). He married too young, had kids too young, and kept figuring out his own life as he went along without much regard for what he did next.
Chris was a jackass, but he was our jackass. I really can't emphasize that last part enough. He was our jackass; the one crazy friend that everyone has in their group. The friend that you always tried to convince to not do some stupid shit, but did anyway, and ended up with some funny stories as a result.
During adulthood, Chris had many jobs in his adult life that took its toll on his body. After the military, he ended up being a paramedic (and convinced me to get my EMT license because of it). After lifting bodies onto stretchers ruined his back, he did his best to get a job with one of the auto plants around here. Last we all knew, he became a Realtor, and kept hounding us to give up our personal information so he could put us on an email list to impress his boss. He was struggling to get his life together up until the very end.
That was a week before he died.
We still don't know how he died. Of all the things that suck about his death, that tops the list. I'd at least like to know that he didn't take his own life. In the darkest parts of my mind, I need to know that his death wasn't self-inflicted. Yet, as of this writing, we don't know what happened.
If there's one thing I can give advice on concerning his death, it's that life is too fucking short, and you need to spend it with the people you love. Enjoy your life while you have it with people that care about you. The Moron Brothers spent way too much time apart despite our love for one another, and it took a tragedy to bring us together again. Make it a point to spend time with your friends, your family, and those that you love. The moment that you spend with them might be your last.
Anyway, as I stood around Chris' body with my friends, we all took a good, hard look at his body as it lay in the casket. I said to the group:
"Chris was such a prankster, that I keep thinking that he's going to pop out of the casket any second now and scream, 'SURPRISE, BITCHES!'"
It's something that Chris would have done. The asshole would have faked his own death just to pull a prank.
