Arkk's Weight Lifting / Fitness Thread

Elurin_sl said:

Have a slight case of what I believe is biceps tendonosis (although, 2 weeks ago it was so bad I couldn't even lift the bar on my last set of curls). I took last week off altogether, and this week I did a very light chest/biceps day (115 lb bench 3x10, 45 lb ez bar curl 3x10, 30 lb cable chest press 3x10, and 20 lb dumbbell hammer curls 3x10) and felt ok. The last two sets of hammer curls I started to feel some pain again. But yesterday I was doing some rowing and the pain started coming back a bit stronger.

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I'd go a month of no curls, then start slow and don't go back to current weight for at least another month. The little bit of extra time rest is infinitely shorter than the rest required if you really injure it or it flares up again because you didn't rest it enough. Fortunately this should be easy because curls are useless (/hate)

My shoulder is doing much better. I've started press (75lbs+10/week) and bench (95lbs+10/week) as of a couple weeks ago. Super boring. On press I'm making sure I squeeze my traps toward the top so my shoulder joint has plenty of space. I noticed that it is difficult to squeeze my traps at the top unless I stretch out my back first. Now I wonder if having tight back muscles was preventing the scapula from moving and caused the whole impingement problem in the first place. Regardless, I'm doing more back stretching by just hanging on the pullup bar and whatnot. All my other lifts are approaching my previous PRs after taking almost 2 months of going lighter as a precaution.

The only remaining problem is bench still feels weird in my shoulder joint. It's the same feeling as before it was hurt, though much less. I'm going to try bench with some dumbbells and see if that makes a difference, but if not, I'm not sure if I should keep at it with light weights or take another few weeks off completely?

edit: also, I think the low bar back squats was fucking with my shoulder a lot also. It's a pretty big stretch for me to reach like that, having inflexible shoulders. I don't want to stop those because they've been miraculous for my legs, so I dropped it to just 1 workout a week, then subbed bulgarian split squats and box jumps (on power day, to complement cleans) on the other days. I'm thinking about canning the box jumps (because I don't have a weight vest and I have hops like a black man so the height of the box is getting a little ridiculous) and doing dynamic effort (power) sets with high bar squats, which would be easier on the shoulder. /diary

Itlan_sl said:

I'm personally so in favor of rest days, but I also think it depends on who you are. I used to do a 5 day split, weekends off. I saw absolutely no results to be quite frank, nothing. I was also eating like a slob at the time, so that didn't help, but I didn't really see any change in muscle mass, personally.

Now, I do 3 workouts per week, heavy as I possibly can. So I'm resting 4 days a week, and on weekends, I get a good 10 hours of sleep lol. I'm far more muscular now, along with vascular. Clean eating certainly helps, but I'm not like a fucking psycho when it comes to eating (I probably took in 9000 calories on cinco de mayo, and I'm not even kidding). I think rest is a lot more important than people like to think, especially for me. Could be based on genetics, or maybe it's just in my head.

/ramble off

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Yeah i think thats ideal, idk how im going to do it i can gym sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday the rest of the week i work, so idk if you would consider those days off really as i dont like to lift when i work the next day, and soon ill be going to tuesday-sunday as a work schedule.

And working 10-11 hour days i dont think i wouldent really go into the gym fully charged for a heavy workout on those days, unless i got some pre-s or caffeine pills.

Elurin_sl said:

Have a slight case of what I believe is biceps tendonosis ...

(before was near the shoulder,now it's at the forearm/elbow).

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Seriously, have it checked out and get a MRI to rule out a partial tendon tear because it is the same place where my injury was. I thought I had a bad case of tendinitis and I lived with it for 6 months and worked around the pain but it never went away and as you may know I did eventually have a MRI and it did show a partial tear. This kind of injury (Distal) is way more common than you can imagine.

I am now 7 weeks post surgery and I think things are going very well. I have full extension, in fact I had full extension at week 6 but it was quite painful, however, the pain is much less. According to my surgeon and because of the "double fixture" procedure I had he does not advocate any PT until the 12 week mark but I think that is more for your average sedentary Joe as he gave me clearance to workout just know my limits and don't push it too hard which is what I have been doing with no set backs thus far.

Procedure, a tad graphic as you would expect.

Thanks for the video. That stuff is really cool to watch, but it kinda makes me nauseous to watch

Related, this was the procedure I had on both knees. Skip to 2 min. Those white bands (plica), they basically cut them all out. Less gross than above video

Aphextwin_sl said:

Seriously, have it checked out and get a MRI to rule out a partial tendon tear because it is the same place where my injury was. I thought I had a bad case of tendinitis and I lived with it for 6 months and worked around the pain

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holy fuck 6 months? Why? I had tendonitis in my right arm..wasn't bad or noticable during the day, but could become unbearable at night to the point where I couldn't sleep unless I was positioned just so. I put up with that for two weeks before going to my dr..I was given a muscle relaxant and naproxin (aleve basically) and told to ice it for 20min a night. Cleared it up in a week. I just massage the fuck out of it now so it doesn't reoccur. I would have been suicidal if I had gone 6 months like that.

No MRI was needed, but that would have been the next step if the antiflams/muscle relaxant failed.

matsb84_sl said:

holy fuck 6 months? Why?

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If you are like me missing gym time is not an option. I have been doing this since age 22, I am now 50 and have never injured myself in the gym in all that time so I guess I am stubborn or was in denial

Having said that initially it was not that bad just more of an annoyance and I would workaround it for a couple weeks then start working it again and it would appear to flare up again so I would rest it/ice it/advil it again and so on. I had my yearly physical scheduled for February so I decided to bring it up then and as I mentioned an MRI revealed a tear approximately 20%, when I had surgery the tear was 50%. Interestingly enough I was able to dead lift 315 x 3 the day before surgery with no pain (I always used an over hand grip on the injured side and under hand on the other) which I had been doing all along with no problems, only certain motion hurt, obviously chins, curls and rows of any kind were out of the question.

Anyway lesson learned, if I am unfortunate enough to injury myself again I'll be more inclined to seek medical advice sooner rather than later.

Just got my weight gainer in and creatine, picked up some fish oil, any other supps you guys would recommend i pick up? Anyone else feel like the BCAAs are a good pick up? i was thinkin of a pre workout sup, but caffeine pills would probably just do the same.

Im trying to pack on weight, i havent picked up a multi yet because the weight gainer has basically all that in it atm, any other comments about the zinc dosage mentioned earlier how do you take zinc if calcium fucks it up.

http://supplementreviews.com/nla-performance/t-blast

anyone ever try something like this?

A test booster is a waste of money. That stuff does not work.

Burnesto_sl said:

A test booster is a waste of money. That stuff does not work.

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really? then im curious as to what my cousins friend did to get ginormous, he said he took pink magic(and everything else, but he said this was the main ingredient in his stack) wich is basically the same as this except it was pulled from the shelves, just curious burnesto did you try this product or something similar? because i tried force factor (probably not really the same) and i definitely felt a change in how much more i could put up, and how many last reps i could fight through and finish, i got to my heaviest 150 and the strongest ive been i was able to put up 195 on the bench using force factor, and just whey protein and going to the gym 5-6 times a week.

im not new to lifting really i just took a long break due to a fucked up work schedule, and now im trying to kickstart it all back up, after a month of getting used to it again.


Link to forcefactor if you're interestedhttp://www.forcefactor.com/?fb_lgid=...=841491&nid=25

TecKnoe_sl said:

really? then im curious as to what my cousins friend did to get ginormous, he said he took pink magic(and everything else, but he said this was the main ingredient in his stack) wich is basically the same as this except it was pulled from the shelves, just curious burnesto did you try this product or something similar? because i tried force factor (probably not really the same) and i definitely felt a change in how much more i could put up, and how many last reps i could fight through and finish, i got to my heaviest 150 and the strongest ive been i was able to put up 195 on the bench using force factor, and just whey protein and going to the gym 5-6 times a week.

im not new to lifting really i just took a long break due to a fucked up work schedule, and now im trying to kickstart it all back up, after a month of getting used to it again.


Link to forcefactor if you're interestedhttp://www.forcefactor.com/?fb_lgid=...=841491&nid=25

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Based on the ingredients of forcefactor, it's basically nothing. A working dose of Taurine would be about 1000mg. Theres 1285mg of shit split across 7 items, which could be 900mg of vitamin c for all you know, because there's no way to tell.

There's a lot of shit that you can buy off the internet that are "supplements" which are basically steroids. Then there's creatine, beta alanine, bcaa's, fish oil, which also work. Then theres 99% of the rest of the supplement industry which is retarded bullshit that is a waste of money, and even if it did work, there's no way of telling if what you are buying is actually in the bottle.

arkktheseaotter_sl said:

Based on the ingredients of forcefactor, it's basically nothing. A working dose of Taurine would be about 1000mg. Theres 1285mg of shit split across 7 items, which could be 900mg of vitamin c for all you know, because there's no way to tell.

There's a lot of shit that you can buy off the internet that are "supplements" which are basically steroids. Then there's creatine, beta alanine, bcaa's, fish oil, which also work. Then theres 99% of the rest of the supplement industry which is retarded bullshit that is a waste of money, and even if it did work, there's no way of telling if what you are buying is actually in the bottle.

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Yeah i think im gonna do 1 month of creatine when i plateau or is that not a good idea? but im gonna stick to the fish oil and shit because it helps with inflammation which is good for my stomach issue, i probably wont add anything else other than a multi and maybe bcaa's once i look into it more.

I have this stuffhttp://www.promerasports.com/products/concret/

Also anyone that has done creatine can you comment on how it effected your mood and shit? i heard it brought you down.

Body chemistry is different for everyone. At the end of the day, you just need to take what you take and see if it works for you.

Also, if you're looking to pack on muscle, BCAA's are very useful.

So I started taking creatine for the 1st time.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I am a week in, still on my loading phase, and have not noticed a significant bloat from water intake. I'm drinking almost 2 gallons daily, along with 20MG of creatine. 5mg in the morning, 10mg before workout, 5mg after workout. I will then go down to 10mg daily in a week.

I will let peeps in on my results.

Celebrindal_sl said:

Body chemistry is different for everyone. At the end of the day, you just need to take what you take and see if it works for you.

Also, if you're looking to pack on muscle, BCAA's are very useful.

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Can you give me a simpleton explanation on how they work?

brahma interested in seeing how it goes with that product, as im using this micro dosinghttp://www.promerasports.com/products/concret/i linked earlier i probably wont start it until i plateau but im curious as how your experience is, can you see how your mood is effected, what do you guys think about when to use creatine, anytime or after you hit a wall?

the micro dosing is supposed to be alot easier on the stomach is why i chose it.

http://www.t-nation.com/store/products/bcaa

You can read the details on their brand. They also cite research.

I'm about to start doing HIIT 3x a week. Somehow, I gained 4 pounds over the last couple weeks and I don't know where or how, but it's really starting to bug me.

I leave for Florida in a month, how much fat you think I can rid of?! A solid 5-8 pounds maybe?