I might have hurt my back

Yesterday I did some chest and tricep exercises. I also did heavy squats. And today I was feeling very tired. My legs were hurting a bit when I step up or down. But that pain is nothing compared to my back pain. My lower back has been in rough weather since monday when I did deadlifts. Then on tuesday I did shoulder press which also put some stress on my lower back. On wednesday I did some hanging leg raise for my abs, but the negatives also applied stress on my back. Come thursday it was squats time. And everyone knows how many muscles it uses. It goes with out saying my back was getting a good pounding.

And finally today I did rows and back extensions. Back move man. The rows hurt a little but I did not do heavy weights nor did I push myself. But then came back extensions which I did with a 60 lb dumbbell in my hands. That is the last straw. Although I completed all the sets, my back is taking revenge on me now. I am feeling a lot of pain from mid to lower back and I might have sprained something or torn the muscles. Bad. Very bad. Weight training is supposed to create micro tears in the muscle and let them recover.

Now I feel like I am coming down with something. I am not sure if I have fever but it feels like I have it. I have the chills too. My body is ordering me to sleep and take rest. My legs which did not hurt much in the morning started to hurt a lot more a couple of hours after my workout even though I did not do any leg exercises. I could not eat much for lunch. And I know that is going to come haunt me. For a skinny guy every meal is important. A couple of months ago when I fell sick I lost 3 lbs in 4 days that I was sick. It could just be mostly water but I am sure I lost some muscle too.

Injuries are bad. Once you have an injury you have to stop working out that body part and not let any other exercise put stress on it. Since back muscles are core muscles it means I will not be able to do many compound exercises if I have really hurt myself. I had similar problem when I hurt my shoulder doing benchpress and now I lost a lot of time on that. I have to be more careful from next time. This post should be that bitter reminder.

Am I putting too much stress on my back? Almost everyday my back gets a workout directly or indirectly. So may be I should avoid back isolation exercises like the back extensions. Let us see. Now off to taking rest. I just hope I can recover completely.

Filed under: Uncategorized, injuries, workout

Back to the Future

With my last post I have completed recollecting my past bulking and leaning phases. Now to the present. After my first round of bulking and leaning I understood my body more. I still am not sure what is the best formula for leaning. However I think I have a better understanding of how to bulk up. Since it has been over 4 months of leaning I decided to switch to bulking phase now. Starting this week I am increasing my calorie intake and see if I can lift more weights.

Here is what I found out about me when bulking:
I should not be overeating suddenly but instead increase my calorie intake slowly and let me body see the change in calories. I should be eating more carbs than either fats or proteins. In fact I decided on 60% carbs, 20% protein and 20% fat ratios. Without all the carbs my body hates me. I have headaches and feel very tired. I should reduce the number of exercises, sets and reps. Instead I should concentrate on lifting heavy with low number of reps. Since my body recovers quickly if I don’t overdo, I should reduce the number of sets. To reduce the production of cortisol I have to finish the workout in 45 mins. That means I have to reduce the number of exercises. If my body can recover quickly with the reduced, sets, reps and exercises I am hoping I can do workout everyday, hitting all muscles twice in a week.

Accordingly my current workout plan is to do:

• 6 to 10 reps per set
• 3 sets per exercise
• 3 exercises working different muscle groups per day
• 6 workout days per week

I tried to add as many compound exercises as possible

• Monday: Chest, Lower Back, Triceps
• Decline bench press
• Deadlifts
• Dips
• Tuesday: Middle Back, Abs, Biceps
• Rows
• Crunches
• Ez Bar Bicep Curl
• Wednesday: Shoulder, Traps, Legs
• Seated Dumbell Shoulder Press
• Barbell Upright Rows
• Calf Press
• Thursday: Chest, Legs, Triceps
• Benchpress
• Squats
• Seated Dumbbell Tricep Press
• Friday: Upper Back, Lower Back, Biceps
• Wide Grip Pull-ups
• Back Extensions
• Dumbbell Bicep Curls
• Saturday: Shoulder, Traps, Shoulder Joints
• Military Press
• Dumbbell Upright Rows
• Random shoulder joint exercises

We will have to see how things go. I did very well in my exercises today and I am not too tired. With just 3 exercises, going to gym is more fun. Not as stressful at all. My muscles also did not feel the burn as much as I usually do.

Filed under: Uncategorized, skinny, strength training, workout

Goodbye P90X, Hello StrongLifts

My love affair with P90X lasted for about 3 months before I gave up. Why? Because I was simply not seeing any more results. I am not saying P90X is flawed. Neither am I endorsing it. It just did not work for me. I think P90X works for people who are very fit at some point in their life, but have since become overweight. Even in the infomercial for P90X, they mostly show people who were rowers or athletes or runners or well trained people who slacked and then took up P90X and saw good results. I am not one of them. I was never fit. Never lifted weights, never ran more than 100 yards never lifted more than 30 lbs using any known muscle nor was in rowing, boxing, tennis or any other physical activity ever.

I just have a weak body. And it has always been that way. So I could not use P90X to get back to my fit state. After discovering that it is not working well for me I started searching for some workouts for skinny folks like me. I came across stronglifts. This workout was different. And not as intense as P90X. I did not need to do my workouts for 1 hr straight with very little rest time in between sets or exercises. This is more like 1 hr of workout with adequate rest. Just 5 reps per set is very encouraging. I started out strong lifts 5×5 on February 23, 2009.

Initially the workouts felt very easy. I was feeling very motivated. I could see my graphs going up every time I workout because strong lifts 5×5 starts with a very low weight initially and every workout day you increase the weights by 5 lb. I felt very confident. I continued this for about 3 months. But then had to stop and move on to another workout plan.

In my next few blogs I will write about

• My workout logs for stronglifts
• Body Fat % and weight changes due to my increased eating habits
• Why I had to quit stronglifts 5×5 and what I did next

Filed under: Uncategorized, p90x, strong lifts, workout

Some before and after stats from age old workouts

I first started recording P90X stats from september 2008 onwards. But all the data that I wrote in a notebook went missing. So I stared to record them online in google spreadsheet. This started sometime on december 6, 2008. This was also the time at which point I have finished phase I of P90X and just decided to split the total time into 2. When I first started P90X I was barely able to do 4 pull-ups. It is surprising enough that I can do any pull-ups at all . I was able to do about 10 push-ups at that time.

By early december of 2008, I was able to do 7 pull-ups and get around 20 push-ups! That is a great progress isn’t it? Instead of going through each workout and how much I did I will just copy paste the progress stats from my spreadsheet here. The first one is for Chest Shoulders and Triceps.

Notice how I have 1 date above and another below? That is how I used to split the workout into 2 parts for 2 weeks. The time is when I stopped the first week, which is the 13th exercise. The blue background indicates that I performed the exercise easily and it is time to increase the weight. I went from as few as 20 push-ups to doing 28 push-ups (see exercise #14, side to side push-ups). Similarly dips went up from 20 to 31. I have improved in every single exercise in those short 2 months.

Here is the Back and Biceps workout

Again went from 7 pull-ups to 13. Not a lot but that is not bad for a 2 month period. Bicep curls went up from 15 to 20.

I will give some body weight and body fat stats during that period in my next blog.

Filed under: Uncategorized, exercise, p90x, strength gain, workout