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[nenjin]

Time for an update I suppose.

It's been shit!

I've barely managed to do 1 to 2 workouts a week in my home. Motivation to use the gym at work is blech.

Let us count the ways 2020 has given me a plethora of excuses to not work out:

-Slow recovery from being sick in December.
-Corona virus.
-Mom being diagnosed with cancer.
-A friend at work died of a brain anuersym all of the sudden.
-America ripping itself apart at the seams.

If last year provided "challenges" to staying motivated.....hoo boy, 2020 has been a real humdinger.

On the plus side, I've lost quite a bit more body fat. Just....not in the way I was hoping. One Meal A Day was a pretty regular thing for a few weeks. One might call it fasting, one might call it adjusting my calories to my reduced workout load, or one might just call it depression. Anyways, I'm noticeably leaner now. Still not "the lean I want", but I can literally feel the fat hanging off me now, with a solid layer of muscle underneath. A little pouch around my lower abs, some love handle fat that I only really notice when I turn sideways, and still a little fat under the sides of my pecs. Those are basically the three areas I now watch to know if I'm getting leaner or not. Top of my abs are lookin' nice, starting to see my side obliques on my torso as a brick of muscle. Hell, the dick root is even starting to take shape.

I started doing pushups again because I haven't done them in quite a long time. I've lost quite a bit of strength and endurance there and yet....my chest feels huge. Like, big to the point it's making me embarrassed. I don't want to stop doing pushups, but damn it's true, there's muscle groups on everyone's bodies that seem to grow more readily than others, and for me it seems to be chest and definitely not arms or shoulders. I'd like to keep working on pushups but I'm a little concerned my chest is going to outstrip my arms and shoulders and make them look even smaller. #firstworldproblems

But some new aches and pains have arrived on the scene on the scene as well. I did....something to one side of my lower back, not even lower back or leg related, in one home workout. I think it's when I sat down on my bench with dumbbells in hand and my lower back took the load, or something. I noticed it immediately but wrote it off as a twinge. But it's been a nagging pain for weeks now. Weird that as soon as I stop lifting heavy and doing all the shit people normally injure themselves doing, THAT's when I accrue a new injury. Blech. It only hurts in certain moves or turns or twists. But it's there and I can feel it and it's making me nervous about even my way less intense home workouts. In truth it's probably just the increased amount of sitting around aggravating a small injury.

So all that gloomy shit aside, it's sunny and hot as hell outside, and the walks have resumed. Got a honk the other day, no idea what it meant or whether I'd approve of who was doing the honking....but hey I'll take it.

I need to get back to three days a week at a minimum. I've had all the time to mourn and fret and worry, I just haven't made the successful transition back to a real routine. Work continues to need after hours time as we push to be as productive as possible during Work From Home, and that always creates an excuse to write off a workout. I've managed to stay pretty consistent with my nutrition throughout all this, reduced consumption aside. I didn't go off the rails and start filling myself up with sugar. So that's a plus.

It still sucks though. Becoming detrained and weaker means I can't just go right back in to my old routines, I'm going to need to work back up to them, and then start feathering my old lifts to make sure I'm redapated to them and able to start progressing again. If progressing is even possible. Crazy how much weaker you start to feel when it comes to the actual lifting of the weights as you lean out.

Going to be hard to find out in truth until my gym reopens in full.

"Phase 1" is "sign up for a maximum of an hour timeslot on a third party website, clean everything yourself after you're done. Oh, and the gym closes completely at 5:30pm."

Motherfuckers, I WORK for a living. How the hell is anyone but stay at home moms & dads and the unemployed supposed to make use of that? You're supposed to stand in a line outside the gym and wait for your time slot.

And yet they're reopening the pools this week.....people's heads are firmly up their asses when it comes to corona. I ain't giving out my email address for this, and I ain't going to rush my workouts just so I can fit in the mandatory hour time slot, even if the hours were possible for me to use them. So I wait. I guess if I were serious I'd pay for a gym membership but those things are crazy expensive, compared to the $25 I paid for access to my gym. And with my motivation not being all that high, it seems like a poor choice to buy a gym membership now. Although they're probably going mighty cheap and they're probably super hungry to bring people back....

Anyways, the struggle continues, belatedly. Honestly, if I had gained weight during these "trying times" it might have easily destroyed what little motivation I have right now. But g'damn, getting leaner continues to be an enticement to keep working out, keep walking, keep on keepin on. It's still an idea that excites me. "How would I look if all that was gone...." Truth is I probably don't have enough muscle in the right places for me look "amazing" all super lean. But I'm still willing to find out anyways.

[nenjin]

Well I weighed myself for the first time in about 9 months. (Scale ran out of batteries....)

206.8. I'm officially the same weight as when I started this 3 years ago.

But half as much fat. So clearly I gained teh muscles.

A friend challenged me to an 8 week fat loss contest for $100. Whoever loses more weight on the scale wins it.

Frankly, I'm sort of ambivalent about it. "Dieting" was not the method I wanted to get lean. Aggressive carb cutting or calorie restriction isn't a sustainable life style for me. As soon as you hit the BF% you want, and you go back to eating carbs and what not, boom, the weight comes back.

But, I figure I've tried the slow method for quite a long time now and not gotten quite where I want, so why the hell not. I'm not doing anything crazy, just cutting some portion sizes on dinner, skipping a meal or two, consuming slightly less junk food, upping my activity level through workouts and walks. We'll see. After a week I'm already feeling trimmer but I'm going to avoid daily weigh ins so I don't obsess about it too much.

Chances are he'll win because he's willing to go to extremes I'm not. (He's doing like, just eggs for a meal and a salad for dinner. That's a big no from me.) But if it gets me motivated to shed a few more pounds of fat, then it'll be worth it.

[nenjin]

202.8.

4 pounds in a week ain't that bad, honestly. Probably a combination of water, and other things rather than just pure fat, but I'll take it.

Also had it pointed out to me that what I thought was a 5 mile walk wasn't even close. 2.89 miles according to Google maps, which I SWORE is how I arrived at that 5 mile number before. But alas, not. So really I've only between walking about 8 to 9 miles a week tops. Guess it's a cautionary tale about inflating your own stats, lord knows plenty of people do it with their lifting.

Definitely feeling the calorie reduction. A vague sense of hunger between meals and I seem to wake up feeling stiffer than normal. I imagine as I drop body fat, these feels will get stronger.

[notquitethere]

The competitive approach seems like a good idea for motivation. I hope it continues to work out nenjin!

I went for a run yesterday morning and did the monkey bars a few times. I can tell when I haven't exercised or stretched enough, as my hamstrings get stiff and more prone to injury. With lockdown, all this sitting around hasn't been good for me.

[nenjin]

205.8.

Up three pounds from last week.

But if it's one thing I've learned this whole time, the body does not behave in a linear fashion when it comes to these things. True, I did eat my "normal" cheat meal stuff this weekend. (Two cokes, and a pizza.) But I also didn't do any lifting, just walked about 9 miles. So I'm not terribly worried. Weight loss, especially when you've already lost a bunch, goes in waves. Between water retention, undigested food and waste and other factors, the scale can go up before it goes down. This week I'm walking another 9 miles I hope and putting in 2 to 3 workouts, so we'll see where I'm at next Sunday.

[nenjin]

I won my weight loss challenge, by .2 pounds!

Started at 206.8. Finished 200.8. So that's 6 pounds in 8 weeks. Pretty good!

Interestingly, my friend basically lost the same amount of weight in the same period, while doing next to no lifting or cardio.

Me, I averaged almost 17 miles a week between all the cardio and what not. If I total up all the walking I did, I walked close to 100 miles over the last two months. I also managed to keep lifting about twice a week throughout.

So the only natural thing to do after all this was....to start a new challenge! I put up the $100 I won and we're going to do double or nothing.

My strategy for this whole thing has basically been: eat one filling meal a day as per normal, then don't eat dinner. And have a healthy bit of snacking right before bed. I cut out a lot of Whole Milk as well, no longer drinking it on a daily basis (since I'd drink it with my dinner.)

It's been.....manageable? I quickly adapted to the calorie load. Definitely felt hunger pangs on and off, but a few weeks in my one lunch would keep me feeling full most of the day.

That said, after my last weigh in, I immediately went and had a large pizza and a soda.

In terms of how I look, I'm definitely leaner. Side obliques are starting to really show, as is the shadow of my lower abs. Excited to see where I'm at in another two months.

[wierd]

I'm not swole, but I did drop 20lbs on the "I refuse to go to the store, screw all you plague bearers, I will grow a damn garden!" diet.

Been 3 months now. Haven't gained it back.  Nice.

[Kagus]

Still struggling with drive and energy at the gym, still going to the gym. I've gotten to regularly doing 5x3-4@75kg on squats, which... May or may not be bodyweight, I'm not entirely sure. Not too far off, at least.

Basically the one singular goal I've allowed myself to actually record in my notekeeping app was squatting at 80kg, which makes it all the more irritating that I've been repeatedly hitting all/mostly threes on the reps when I've previously had at least one gym visit where it was fours across the board. And squatting (knee-bends as they're called in Norwegian...) is pretty much the only thing I do outside some (very) light cardio.

Meanwhile one of my gym partner friends has been gushing over how she's been hitting 80-90kg on squats, while weighing notably less than I do. And also having a big fat "zip" on the testosterone front... And she just does it as an occasional exercise, not focusing on it like I do.


Which was making me feel pretty worthless and immutable in my weakness, until I actually saw her squat one time... Or, rather, power-curtsy. top of the knee didn't even level with bottom of the ass. Meanwhile I'm doing ass-to-grass because it requires less brainpower than trying to figure out when I've hit powerlifter standard depth


I mean, both my gym partner girls are still pulling absolutely crazy numbers on account of both of them actually enjoying working out and getting a feeling of accomplishment/energisement/happiness from it all, which I entirely do not... But it's nice to know that I'm maybe not completely outclassed by them in every single exercise.

Lil' miss pixie 56-58kg has taken to doing reps at 300kg on the leg press though. And she realized a while back that since she's a teensy bit too tiny for the machine, she actually ends up doing a couple calf raises every set in order to unrack/rack the bar.

And they're both back to ringing up total workout volume numbers north of 30 metric tons. Whereas mine only rarely hit 5. So, y'know.

[nenjin]

Yeah just gotta remember, you're only competing with yourself. It's the only mentality I think that avoids becoming disappointed by comparison.

And yes, when someone throws out numbers and you start to feel bad, it's always worth watching HOW they're doing the exercise. Some guy is like "Oh yeah bro, I bust out 50 pushups no problem" and then you see they're only going halfway down. Same story with pull ups, curls, bench.....

Setting aside that any workout is better than no workout, going ass to grass is going to be better than half-squats. I could probably half squat 300 once.... but that doesn't count for shit if you can't get that weight "out of the hole."

[Kagus]

Yeah, well, way I see things, competing with myself means I always lose 

I can deadass look at my numbers progression and feel inside myself that I haven't actually improved at all. Because anything before/less than my current highest numbers "doesn't count".

[nenjin]

Because anything before/less than my current highest numbers "doesn't count".

Couple things.

1. Everyone plateaus somewhere. That's life. Short of steroids or making working out your life, eventually, you stop progressing or the gains / improvements / PRs get so minuscule that you have to change your perspective. "Adding 5 pounds to the bar a week" isn't how much of training goes. Training for its own sake and then getting some results as a bonus is where most people live with it.

2. Regression happens. Motivation, intensity, consistency, willingness to risk....these things are not endless. Thanks to Corona, I've basically been stuck at sub-optimal weights for months. And it's boring as shit. On the other hand, I think the _quality_ of those reps is better. With no higher weight options, I focused, really focused, on the contractions. And I think I've improved my mind-muscle connection specifically because of that. When you're not "just trying to get the weight up" and you're doing lighter stuff, that's a better time to work on stuff like this. That's progress, of a sort.

3. If you can't increase the weight, then increase the reps. That's still more volume when it's all said and done, and that's progress. What matters is you don't settle for the same thing every time, then feel bad about yourself. There's a little bit of "try harder" in there, but a lot more of "It's mostly in your head."

4. Shake. That. Shit. Up. If your current training regime isn't going anywhere in your perspective, then do something different. Can't seem to push any more weight or any more reps on barbell squats? Then try Bulgarian Split Squats, with dumbbells. Lunges. If you're physically ok to squat, then you're physically ok to try a lot of different things that are within your health capacity. (IIRC, you're the one on meds for a condition?) There are no "must do w/o fail" lifts. Maybe there are some other weaknesses in the posterior chain like your glutes that need work so they can help with your squats.

5. If you need the ego boost, then consider this: training consistently week to week with weights is more than 70% of the population can manage. I've walked almost 100 miles the last couple months because, on top of all the benefits, it was SO MUCH EASIER than lifting weights. Anyone can walk. But can many face the weight, do something harder, maybe painful, and come back week after week looking for more? Whether or not you're increasing the weight, getting swoller, getting leaner......you're healthier and more vital than people that spend almost all their time sitting on their ass. I think this is a big point to make because, coupled with #1, it's the change from fitness as a hobby to fitness as a lifestyle. I've certainly had to come to grips with that as I DIDN'T get juicy and jacked after several years of training. I had two choices: give up because I didn't get what I wanted or keep going in spite of it. I realized, and I know many don't necessarily agree with this sentiment, that I was happier, felt better and more confident when I was working out than not.

All that said, I'm feeling the blues too a bit. Which is why I'm seriously considering a commercial gym membership so I can shake things up for myself. My apartment gym isn't open still to the extent I can use it, and I'm tired of not deadlifting, or barbell squatting, or having access to anything that weighs more than 30 pounds. But I had an immediate sense of UGH though as I talked it over with a gym near me. Contracts. Cancellation fees. I get gyms have a business model and now is a more funky time for them than ever. But not being able to walk away without possibly spending hundreds of dollars for the privilege, OR paying a 20% higher monthly rate going month by month, fucking blows.

[Kagus]

Willingness to risk definitely isn't particularly high, what with my original attempts at deadlifting ending me up with a back tweak that put me out of any compound exercises for over a month and resetting all the numbers I'd previously had to basically just the bare bar. Considering how much of a failure I feel like most of the time, I'm terrified of hurting myself like that again.

And increasing the reps has been the plan, I'm trying to get my 5x3-4 up to a 5x5. A couple times, I hit 4s all the way. Last five sessions? All 3s, except for the occasional one set of 4 on a few of the days.

As for the meds, I was on beta-blockers for stress and an atypical antipsychotic with mildly sedative side effects for the sake of getting to sleep. Both have been phased out, and now it's just the NRI for depression (which theoretically should even be helping stuff like working out).

...plus creatine, protein, caffeine and HMB 

I've had PHAT recommended to me, which... Well, there are a number of exercises on there I've never tried or even seen before, so it'd take a while to get the form down, but having a set plan might make me hang around there a bit more and actually have something to show for a workout beyond just "warmup cardio - squats - maybe some bench or something". But dedicating myself to some random workout plan I saw online is apparently something of a hurdle for me. I don't really trust anything, or anyone.

But yeah, I fit some RDLs in most weeks because my standard wormlift form is clearly fucked (see: back tweak from earlier this year) and my lower back tries to take over from my ass anytime I so much as get up to 60kg. And the RDLs I can at least feel after I've done them, unlike most of the other exercises (where I feel like I'm dying while I'm in it, but get absolutely no DOMS from).


At this point I mostly just try to not actually have any goals or desires from gym, because if I do then I'm gonna fail to meet them and feel even worse than usual. I just go because I can tell myself it's something constructive to do with my time. ...so long as I don't poke that thought too hard.

[NRDL]

High frequency pull-ups has been pretty fun so far. Having finally gotten a proper pull up stand, I've been able to do pull-ups 5 days a week, gradually increasing the reps per week.

After having gotten some gymnastic rings, I can hopefully keep pushing the volume while keeping my elbows from exploding.



Main goal for pull ups is 20 straight reps. Once I achieve that, see where I can go with adding additional weight.

[nenjin]

At this point I mostly just try to not actually have any goals or desires from gym, because if I do then I'm gonna fail to meet them and feel even worse than usual.

I mean...that's life isn't it? If you want something, chances are, you have to risk for it in some way. Nothing worth achieving can be done without the risk of failing.

Set your goals at a reasonable place, for one. Pick something you want to improve on but keep it small. Not "I want to be shredded with a six pack" but "I'd like to lose a few pounds." Not "I want Deathstar Boulder Shoulders" but "I want better shoulder health and strength." If you have no goals in the gym, then showing up is literally just a maintenance routine and very few people can stay motivated to keep working out simply because it's "healthy."

You gotta embrace failure. Example? I threw my back out deadlifting too. Was down for almost a week. Thought it was the end of my lifting career. But I gave myself time to heal, really paid attention to my form, dropped the weight so I could control what was going on....and then proceeded to increase my deadlift over the course of a few weeks.

Well, there are a number of exercises on there I've never tried or even seen before, so it'd take a while to get the form down, but having a set plan might make me hang around there a bit more and actually have something to show for a workout beyond just "warmup cardio - squats - maybe some bench or something". But dedicating myself to some random workout plan I saw online is apparently something of a hurdle for me. I don't really trust anything, or anyone.

So build your own plan. Pick the things you want to work on, stack a few exercises together in a sensible way, and go. You've been lifting long enough now you should be able to identify what exercise nets what benefits, and selectively choose the ones that dovetail your needs. For example, it sounds like you need some glute work. So start there. Make one day in the gym "ASS DAY". Bulgarian Split Squats with a forward lean, Glute Ham Raises, Barbell Hip Thrusts. Get those ass gains so they can help protect your lower back during other exercises. Or maybe take a break from the big compound stuff and do assistance work (like Glute work.) Or do some ab work.

Having a plan, to me, is vital to ensuring your time in the gym feels like it's worth spending. Just going in and randomly doing some of this, some of that, whatever.....does beg the question why bother? It also really undercuts your progression if you're not focusing on some stuff and hitting it every week, twice a week, whatever.

And to reiterate, you have to learn to embrace failure. Without failure, there's no benchmark for improvement. You can't be afraid of failiing or you'll never try in the first place. Just set your expectations to something reasonable, and YES, that maybe means below where your female friends are at.

Taking exercises to failure, where it's safe, is where meaningful growth you can see and feel happens. TBH, it sounds like your biggest blocker isn't your strength or your body....it's your ego that's undercutting your drive. Let the ego go. Lift like no one is watching. Take your failures and your successes as they come. You have your entire life to become proficient, stronger, better. As long as you commit to continuing to try, that is.

[Kagus]

To reiterate, I have a mental block against accepting success. I've been going to the gym regularly (3-6 times a week) for just over a year now, and if you were to ask me what's changed from that I'd kinda just shrug my shoulders.

I can look at the numbers. I can notice that some shirts don't fit like they used to. But I cannot internally process the fact that I've made any improvement at all (yes, fact. I can understand from an academic standpoint that I've made improvements, but my mind balks at the idea of even remotely accepting any of it).

Failure, however, gets internalized every goddamn day. The exertion of every rep is failure and humiliation, because it's not the weight/the ease it "should" be. Every set is failure and humiliation because I feel pain and exhaustion to the point of having difficulty counting which set that was, and I'm therefore not recovering as well as I "should" be.

Setting reasonable goals for myself is extremely difficult, as any goal that's set low enough for me to achieve is meaningless because "anyone can do that", the only thing I've done is just set standard human capacity as a lofty height for me to shoot for. Therefore, achieving that goal is nothing more than a reminder of being subhuman.


That's how my brain works around all this. Competing against myself just means that every success is a failure, and every failure is also a failure. Every moment in the gym is pain and humiliation, for what I perceive to be a zero-sum game. I don't see myself improving, I just see myself putting in immense effort in order to not get even worse. So, then, the effort that must be required in order to somehow improve would have to be colossal and clearly not something I'm capable of.

I work off of two concepts internalized over the course of my life:

• Effort = Results
• If you're not vomiting or blacking out, you're not trying

Since I don't vomit or black out at the gym, I'm not really trying. And since I'm not really trying, I will never gain results.

And I don't push myself to vomiting/unconsciousness because, well, first of all it doesn't mean enough to me to do so. I'm not sure anything does. Second, I'm petrified of pushing myself to that point and still not getting results, because that would prove to me once and for all that I'm just inherently incapable and there's no point doing any of it.


What I need is a damn reboot of my sick head. And I'm working on that.

You've been lifting long enough now you should be able to identify what exercise nets what benefits, and selectively choose the ones that dovetail your needs.

"Should" being the operative word, again