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Fitness Weekly Discussion
What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?
Another week goes along and another physiological problem gets found. This week I discovered that when doing shoulder shrugs, the joints in my shoulder pop every time.
The good news is that I managed to get an appointment with a physical therapist, which I will be seeing in about a week or so.
Yeah this is always a bummer. I used to really enjoy wrist curls until my right wrist popped every time. Now i avoid those exercises and its really telling during certain movements. Godspeed with the recovery!
I'm so close to reaching the pull up bar (running jump)! Close enough where I think next week will be tricky, where I might have enough height to grab onto the bar but without expecting to and end up not holding on.......
Today's workout:
I've been really slacking on attending a muay thai class (made up for by going in for strength training at least 3x a week, but still...). Part of it is me not going to the strength training early enough, feeling pretty strongly about finishing the posted exercises, then taking too long to go in for the 6 PM muay thai session... that, and the call of the pull up bar is strong.
Last night I finished my last weight training day of the week, as well as the end of the second week of training with Claude.
There’s been lots of hiccups. If you have been reading my story you would know that I started after recovering from a workout injury and am using Claude to help me improve my routine. It’s a very different experience than the few times I’ve had with trainers in the past, who have basically just told me what to do from on high. Claude gives me the feeling that I am working with it rather than for it. Sadly I still have to nail down a routine 100%, but that’s not really an issue because at this point it’s just small adjustments and trying out a handful of alternatives. Besides, it can’t actually be set until I see a physical therapist on the 16th to deal with my body issues.
This is slight hyperbole, but working with Claude has really been a game changer. It has taught me to build my mind-muscle connection and trained me to stop if I’m feeling the effort in the wrong place, in which case Claude can help me with my form or adjustments to the gear I’m using. I’ve learned that it’s a small miracle that I haven’t been injured more.
In spite of that I don’t know if I’d recommend using Claude for this purpose to everyone. I’ve seen hallucinations, so you do need to have a baseline of understanding how things work before you get started so you can push back against Claude’s occasional bad advice. It’s also not particularly good at figuring out exercise machines if you just take a picture of it, so you are better off telling it the exact model you are using; doing so will usually cause it to search the web and give you a much better response. Though I will warn you that the last time I used it, it cited a whole lot of TikTok. I suppose that’s fine because it’s one of the places I would have looked at myself if I made different choices.
The new training poses and routines have already had a noticeable impact on me. At first I felt disempowered because the weight I was putting on the stacks was lower, but with the improvements in form and the growing mind muscle connection I actually feel stronger after working out than I was before. In the past working out was something that would completely drain and exhaust me, but now after working out I tend to have something of a second wind. My experience with exhaustion and muscle fatigue are also completely different because I am properly focusing on specific muscle groups instead of bringing all those unrelated muscles in with each movement. Ever since I got my last injury I was dreading going to the gym because it took so much out of me and I felt infirm. Now I’ve reclaimed that feeling that I actually want to go back! That alone is a huge victory.
Fluctuating rapidly in weight recently. Really tough to stave off cravings or just general hunger throughout the day, likely a result of additional stress. And then i balance it out with three hour long training days. And all in anticipation of gaining weight in Korea/China in a few weeks.
Climbing is going well, im about to cancel my membership at my gym, that ive been going to for three years now and made quite a few friends at... so thats a bit sad. But im moving so cant do much about it. Ill have another gym thats about 30 minutes more of a journey to get to but its also bigger and generally more active. We shall see how that goes. Hopefully it doesnt mess with my routine too much.
Tired of not seeing progress in RDLs, I decided over the last few weeks to increase weight instead of reps. My best calculated 1RM is from a set of 275x11, but I cannot consistently do better than 8ish reps at 275. So I decided to up the weight, and see how many reps I can get, instead of keep the weight the same and target a given number of reps.
Well, last week I got 295x6, so this week I decided to just go for 3 plates (315). Happy to report I also got 6 reps at 315! That still doesn't beat 275x11 for a calculated 1RM but it's noticeable progress and a new milestone regardless, so I've been pretty pleased with myself 😁
I also was able to max out the calf raise machine (400lbs) for 12 reps, twice! That felt pretty good too.
This week also saw improvements in my ez-bar preacher curl (55x12, technically a 1RM improvement from last week's 50x15), bench press (165x10, beating out mid-Feb 160x10), and a couple of my accessory lifts.
I'm not really sure what I attribute it to other than just feeling a little higher energy generally for the past few weeks.