The Official Exercise/Fitness Thread v. Run Forest, Run!

[jingle.boy]

First run in 2 weeks today and the foot handled it pretty well.  8km at an 5:24 average so happy with that.  Hopefully tomorrow the aftermath isn't too bad.

Good stuff mate.  Luckily my back issues from 2 weeks ago were gone after a couple of days of stretching and hot-tub soaking.  I did buy a weight belt though for those heavy deadlifts, squats, and such.  Also ended up swapping out my cast-iron plate for rubber ones - the store gave me a pretty good deal.  Only rub is that they are slightly wider, so I can't fit quite as many plates on a bar - though, I doubt I'll be getting up to anything that would necessitate 400lbs anytime soon.

Gains have been continuing nicely.  Starting to see more veins pop out - getting close to having that bicep vein full-time.

Shoulders this morning, quads tonight.

Sounds like you got a good routine going.  What about calories, are you tracking anything?  Eating a bit more for size or anything?

I'm shit at tracking.  I wish I could be more disciplined to track my total intake and macros.  I am eating a fair bit more than I normally would when I my primary goal was to shed BF.  Now that my goal is to add muscle, I'm working out 2x / day (for sorter periods, and am taking in more cals.  But, can't say exactly how much, as I'm 100% intuitive eater.  Just trying to keep my protein up as much as I can, and not have any unnecessary carbs/fats.  Example, last night's dinner was hot dogs for the family - I had 2 chicken sausages, but only 1 bun (ie, open-faced).  Minor stuff like that to keep my carbs in check.

That's the extent of my "plan" ... if ya can call it that .

[TAC]

I saw the thread title change, so I figured I'd pop in to say that I have rest and recovery down. 

[jingle.boy]

I saw the thread title change, so I figured I'd pop in to say that I have rest and recovery down. 

Clearly!  The thread title hasn't changed since July 1st 

[TAC]

I saw the thread title change, so I figured I'd pop in to say that I have rest and recovery down. 

Clearly!  The thread title hasn't changed since July 1st 

 

[wolfking]

I saw the thread title change, so I figured I'd pop in to say that I have rest and recovery down. 

And that's a very important part Tim.  Good to see you're not neglecting that. 

[wolfking]

First run in 2 weeks today and the foot handled it pretty well.  8km at an 5:24 average so happy with that.  Hopefully tomorrow the aftermath isn't too bad.

Good stuff mate.  Luckily my back issues from 2 weeks ago were gone after a couple of days of stretching and hot-tub soaking.  I did buy a weight belt though for those heavy deadlifts, squats, and such.  Also ended up swapping out my cast-iron plate for rubber ones - the store gave me a pretty good deal.  Only rub is that they are slightly wider, so I can't fit quite as many plates on a bar - though, I doubt I'll be getting up to anything that would necessitate 400lbs anytime soon.

Gains have been continuing nicely.  Starting to see more veins pop out - getting close to having that bicep vein full-time.

Shoulders this morning, quads tonight.

Sounds like you got a good routine going.  What about calories, are you tracking anything?  Eating a bit more for size or anything?

I'm shit at tracking.  I wish I could be more disciplined to track my total intake and macros.  I am eating a fair bit more than I normally would when I my primary goal was to shed BF.  Now that my goal is to add muscle, I'm working out 2x / day (for sorter periods, and am taking in more cals.  But, can't say exactly how much, as I'm 100% intuitive eater.  Just trying to keep my protein up as much as I can, and not have any unnecessary carbs/fats.  Example, last night's dinner was hot dogs for the family - I had 2 chicken sausages, but only 1 bun (ie, open-faced).  Minor stuff like that to keep my carbs in check.

That's the extent of my "plan" ... if ya can call it that .

Yeah, I'm pretty much like that too.  Seems to work well enough.  I can eyeball most things so can guess pretty close each day how many calories I'm taking in.

[Hyperplex]

Haven't really posted in this thread, but figured I'd check in randomly. This morning's weigh-in has me down 60 pounds, so I think I'm heading in the right direction. Still have a ways to go but I do feel better.

[SchecterShredder]

Haven't really posted in this thread, but figured I'd check in randomly. This morning's weigh-in has me down 60 pounds, so I think I'm heading in the right direction. Still have a ways to go but I do feel better.

Congrats! That's a significant amount of weight loss. What kind of strategy are you using vis a vis diet and/or exercise?

[jingle.boy]

Haven't really posted in this thread, but figured I'd check in randomly. This morning's weigh-in has me down 60 pounds, so I think I'm heading in the right direction. Still have a ways to go but I do feel better.

That's fucking awesome, Drew!  Good on ya.  What time period we talking about, since Friday, or since Bear was a baby?   

[Hyperplex]

That's fucking awesome, Drew!  Good on ya.  What time period we talking about, since Friday, or since Bear was a baby?   

Honestly? April 22nd. I had a new doc appt and found out my old doc was basically ignoring a ton of shit and it pretty much scared me straight. I knew forever I needed to lose weight but had thought, erroneously I found out, that my actual issues were under control. They were not.

I basically simply took firm control of my diet and exercise. I was determined to make my own diet changes and continuing to prep meals with my own grocery shopping, otherwise I'd never be able to stick to it. I also subscribed to Noom for some of the coaching and mainly the calorie counting and tracking. It's made gigantic difference in knowing how much I'm putting into myself food-wise. Lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of lean protein, little to no carry out, and when we do eat out, making the best choices I can with the food being offered.

As for exercise, I invested in an under-desk elliptical and have it at my workstation. Thing is amazing. I am able to keep working and still get as much cardio in as I need or want. It eliminated by biggest concern, which was being to find the time to do everything I need to do during the day and still be able to work out. Now, when I'm working from home, which is now 3 days a week instead of 5, I can get the workout in while on the clock. It's made a big difference.

I should add, I have not been trying to lose weight this quickly. It has utterly shocked me how fast the pounds have fallen off, but I'm not starving myself or doing ridiculous amounts of cardio. It's how my body is responding to my changes. We went to the beach for a week, and I made a promise not to weigh myself or track my calories, but to still make better choices, both in dining out as well as what we bought for the condo. I managed to lose a pound and a half while on vacation. Blew my mind.

At this point, I'm just trying to keep it up and ride the high of the results. I've had to buy all new jeans and shorts, and more than few people have noticed the change.
It's also nice to have gone back to the doctor, have him fist bump me for good work, and then see that my blood work is fucking amazing now.

[wolfking]

That's awesome to read mate.  Congrats, that's a massive accomplishment.

[Kotowboy]

Massive heatwave in the UK this week. Been in the sea A LOT. Combined with being busier at work - i'm hoping to shed a few lbs.

[jingle.boy]

That's awesome to read mate.  Congrats, that's a massive accomplishment.

^ Yeah, totally. It’s funny how our body will react over the course of any given week. I’ve had weeks where I worked out hard, and was totally disciplined in my diet and .... nothing lost - or even weight gained. Then weeks where I was sloppy with my workouts and ate like crap .... and lost weight.

I just use the mirror as my barometer now.

[TAC]

Haven't really posted in this thread, but figured I'd check in randomly. This morning's weigh-in has me down 60 pounds, so I think I'm heading in the right direction. Still have a ways to go but I do feel better.

Holy shit, man, that's fucking awesome.

[chknptpie]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

[gmillerdrake]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Tricia....Trail Runs are so much fun!! I'll warn you though that once you start running trails that's all you'll want to do. I wish I could pull that trip off....sounds like a blast.

[SchecterShredder]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Trail Runs are so much fun!! I'll warn you though that once you start running trails that's all you'll want to do

No doubt about it. It's orders of magnitude more fun than running on pavement. Brutally challenging though.

[chknptpie]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Trail Runs are so much fun!! I'll warn you though that once you start running trails that's all you'll want to do

No doubt about it. It's orders of magnitude more fun than running on pavement. Brutally challenging though.

I'm hoping I get to run the longest loop during the day and the short loop at night. I'm most worried about being able to see where the heck I'm going! I'll be running with a headlamp and lit up vest thing, so hopefully that will help.

[SchecterShredder]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Trail Runs are so much fun!! I'll warn you though that once you start running trails that's all you'll want to do

No doubt about it. It's orders of magnitude more fun than running on pavement. Brutally challenging though.

I'm hoping I get to run the longest loop during the day and the short loop at night. I'm most worried about being able to see where the heck I'm going! I'll be running with a headlamp and lit up vest thing, so hopefully that will help.

As a veteran of the Canadian Death Race (https://www.sinistersports.ca/deathrace/), I can tell you not to skimp on the headlight. It's well worth the investment for a reasonable lamp (minimum 100 lumens if you're doing an off-road race far from any street lights or other light sources). Even a flat trail with roots and rocks will bring you to a slow walk if you have a shitty light. It's just too hard to see obstacles with enough time to react.

[wolfking]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Trail Runs are so much fun!! I'll warn you though that once you start running trails that's all you'll want to do

No doubt about it. It's orders of magnitude more fun than running on pavement. Brutally challenging though.

I'm hoping I get to run the longest loop during the day and the short loop at night. I'm most worried about being able to see where the heck I'm going! I'll be running with a headlamp and lit up vest thing, so hopefully that will help.

As a veteran of the Canadian Death Race (https://www.sinistersports.ca/deathrace/), I can tell you not to skimp on the headlight. It's well worth the investment for a reasonable lamp (minimum 100 lumens if you're doing an off-road race far from any street lights or other light sources). Even a flat trail with roots and rocks will bring you to a slow walk if you have a shitty light. It's just too hard to see obstacles with enough time to react.

That looks awesome.  You've run this?

[wolfking]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Sorry, 15.2 miles over 2 days? 

[chknptpie]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Sorry, 15.2 miles over 2 days? 

Team of 8, each runner does each loop once. All 3 loops total 15.2 miles, but each loop is spaced hours apart. It's basically a relay race.
https://www.runragnar.com/event-detail/trail/arizonatrail#course

[wolfking]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Sorry, 15.2 miles over 2 days? 

Team of 8, each runner does each loop once. All 3 loops total 15.2 miles, but each loop is spaced hours apart. It's basically a relay race.
https://www.runragnar.com/event-detail/trail/arizonatrail#course

Ah okay.  That's different.  Can see that being very competitive.

[SchecterShredder]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Trail Runs are so much fun!! I'll warn you though that once you start running trails that's all you'll want to do

No doubt about it. It's orders of magnitude more fun than running on pavement. Brutally challenging though.

I'm hoping I get to run the longest loop during the day and the short loop at night. I'm most worried about being able to see where the heck I'm going! I'll be running with a headlamp and lit up vest thing, so hopefully that will help.

As a veteran of the Canadian Death Race (https://www.sinistersports.ca/deathrace/), I can tell you not to skimp on the headlight. It's well worth the investment for a reasonable lamp (minimum 100 lumens if you're doing an off-road race far from any street lights or other light sources). Even a flat trail with roots and rocks will bring you to a slow walk if you have a shitty light. It's just too hard to see obstacles with enough time to react.

That looks awesome.  You've run this?

I did the 125km relay twice, both times as a 3 man team. I did legs 1-3-5 one year for a 63km day, and just leg 4 (the longest at 38km) the other year.

[wolfking]

Husband and I signed up for a Ragnar trail run in November. If anyone is interested in traveling to AZ, camping with a group of people and running 15.2mi over 2 days, let me know! We need a team of 8 lol Right now we have 3.

Trail Runs are so much fun!! I'll warn you though that once you start running trails that's all you'll want to do

No doubt about it. It's orders of magnitude more fun than running on pavement. Brutally challenging though.

I'm hoping I get to run the longest loop during the day and the short loop at night. I'm most worried about being able to see where the heck I'm going! I'll be running with a headlamp and lit up vest thing, so hopefully that will help.

As a veteran of the Canadian Death Race (https://www.sinistersports.ca/deathrace/), I can tell you not to skimp on the headlight. It's well worth the investment for a reasonable lamp (minimum 100 lumens if you're doing an off-road race far from any street lights or other light sources). Even a flat trail with roots and rocks will bring you to a slow walk if you have a shitty light. It's just too hard to see obstacles with enough time to react.

That looks awesome.  You've run this?

I did the 125km relay twice, both times as a 3 man team. I did legs 1-3-5 one year for a 63km day, and just leg 4 (the longest at 38km) the other year.

 

I forgot you mentioned you use to run but switched to riding due to injuries?  Am I remembering correctly?  No running at all for you anymore?

I really have to start breaking past the 15km mark for long runs.  Did a 20km last Xmas morning but apart from that those distances in those sorts of challenges is mind blowing to me.

2 weeks off really halted me.  Just been trying to get back into it with some short arvo tempo runs.  You lose fitness so quickly.

[SchecterShredder]

Correct. Bad hips forced me to drop running. I used to love endurance running, and usually ran 1-2 marathons per year

[wolfking]

Correct. Bad hips forced me to drop running. I used to love endurance running, and usually ran 1-2 marathons per year

That's bloody unfortunate mate. 

At least you found something else to fill the void.

[wolfking]

First 10km in a couple of weeks.  5:10 pace so pretty happy with that.  God damn though I don't know how I did this every day!

[jingle.boy]

Shoulders for me this morning, then I'm gonna take a 'recovery' work - just do some cardio and yoga.  I put a bit too much strain on my left forearm doing heavy deadlifts - though I was very careful with my back this time! - and have some pretty significant inner elbow pain.  Hopefully a week 'off' helps it a bit.  Think I should use my wrist wraps on the really heavy lifts for the foreseeable future.

[wolfking]

Whenever I have elbow pain, some trigger pointing around the areas like triceps and forearms always seem to help.

[jingle.boy]

Whenever I have elbow paid, some trigger pointing around the areas like triceps and forearms always seem to help.

Totally... it's 100% my forearm - a couple of instances where I was gripping the bar too much into my 2nd knuckles, when proper form is more into the palms.  As the lifts and loads get heavier, I gotta be more disciplined with form - across the board.

[jingle.boy]

Had a low-key 'recovery' week... couple sessions on the bike, a short 20-min HIIT, and yoga.  Yoga was interesting in that I hadn't done it in a few months, and breezed through it.  It's the p90x version of yoga, so there are a few segments that actually get pretty intense - right at the end, it does a sequence where you're standing on one leg for about 2 minutes straight doing four different poses.  For the first time ever, I was able to get thru that whole sequence without taking a brief rest/pause at some point.  There's also an ab-sequence, which (again for the first time ever) I breezed through that too.

Weigh in this morning was 175, and skin-fold calipers suggest somewhere around 10.5% BF.  Time to hit the weights again - I'd very much like to be mid-180s at that BF level.  Adding 10lbs of lean mass at my age is gonna take a bit of time though.  Back and bis later this morning.

[wolfking]

I want to post something that I've discovered is neglected from most, but definitely myself.  After that running challenge I did in June, as I posted, my right ankle was pretty much, well, fucked.  I had a constant limp.  I thought it was planta fasciitis, and it may have been.  Anyway, 2 weeks off and did stretching and rolling during this time.  It came almost good and then I did a run on the Sunday and then a few km's on the treadmill each night during that week.  5km the next Saturday, and then did the 10km on the Sunday at a quicker 5:10 pace.

That was last Sunday, and I was back to square one and had overdone it once again.  After that run I was sore and that night I couldn't sleep as my whole leg was just aching.  That whole week, again limping and sharp searing pain each step I would take.  I couldn't even flex my calf to get a good stretch, it was just a tearing pain in my ankle.

Anyway, yesterday being Saturday, and going into lockdown, from lunch time, I spent the whole afternoon and night in front of the TV on the floor absolutely attacking my trigger points.  My hip flexor got the tennis ball treatment.  The IT band got the roller as did the hamstring and my calf simply got all of the above plus my elbow driving into it.

The more I attacked these points, especially the calf I could feel the muscle start to unwind.  I could then flex the ankle a little more getting the stretching sensation in the calf.  I pretty much did this off and on for like 9 hours.  Eventually, I could feel things releasing and by that night, the pain I've had in my ankle was all but gone.  Did a slow recovery 10km today (5:38 pace) but could notice a significant difference.  Will be interesting in the morning how it will be, but tonight, so far so good.

Basically, this part of fitness I neglect so much.  I've been doing it don't get me wrong, but not really doing it properly when it's needed.  It was amazing the difference.  What would have thought I had torn ligaments or something in my foot simply turned out to be over tightness.  Also, it's happened to me before, but if you have problems downstairs keeping things up, work on your hip flexors.  Overly tight hip flexors can cause issues.  Once they are released properly, you'll feel 18 again.

[jingle.boy]

Yer gettin old, mate.  Welcome to the club.   

Yeah, I neglect stretching at times too, and pay the price.  My left brachioradialis requires constant attention and has for at least 6 months.  As I mentioned a couple weeks back, my left inner elbow has some sharp pain - which (again) is really forearm tightness.  Hoping I can hammer out some pullups without too much pain this morning (I ended up skipping working out yesterday - weather was good yesterday so I did some shit around the yard, cuz it's pissing rain today).  Rolling is something I should do more regularly.

[wolfking]

Yer gettin old, mate.  Welcome to the club.   

Yeah, I neglect stretching at times too, and pay the price.  My left brachioradialis requires constant attention and has for at least 6 months.  As I mentioned a couple weeks back, my left inner elbow has some sharp pain - which (again) is really forearm tightness.  Hoping I can hammer out some pullups without too much pain this morning (I ended up skipping working out yesterday - weather was good yesterday so I did some shit around the yard, cuz it's pissing rain today).  Rolling is something I should do more regularly.

I asked for that one. 

Yeah, it's amazing how tightness in some muscles can cause such significant issues, but can be relieved quite easily.

Yeah, rolling is very effective, but I find the tennis ball just as good.