"TLFC" exercise and accountability support!

Thank you @ninerbuff and green beans are making me hungry!!!

nay0m3 wrote: »

You increase the resistance and the incline? I don't know that I have it in me to go so slow for recovery Going 130 feels SO slow to me! But I walk super fast by nature just through the halls at work and everyone knows I am coming by hearing my walk.

Yes, both resistance and incline are increased with each successive hill, and my hour-long has fifteen hills. (Yes, that only adds up to 45 minutes, but between warmup, plus workout, plus cooldown, the total is 55 minutes, so I just round up to an hour.)

I used to walk super fast everywhere I went, back in my school days. But then I got a desk job with rotating shift hours, gained 60 pounds, and lost my quick step. I've since lost the weight, swapped the shift hours for normal office hours, but still walk slower. People still know me by the sound of my walk, though, as my cowboy boots strike very resoundingly on the floor and the echo precedes me, lol.

I know I am not ninerbuff but I will chime in with how I track...I use an old school log book and I love it!!

https://www.amazon.com/Cossac-Fitness-Journal-Workout-Planner/dp/B07PFCGH26/ref=asc_df_B07PFCGH26/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=309802521785&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12369337938001015248&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9003022&hvtargid=pla-670460007305&psc=1&region_id=674469

It really helps me to make sure I am hitting it harder than I was last session or at least getting in an extra rep!!

Cardio:

Shoveling snow - 30 minutes (pre-gym) (260 calories)
Treadmill - 1hr variable incline hills (from 1%-30%) (743 calories, 2.69 miles, 2,002 feet elevation climbed)

Analysis: Wanted to test myself against the max incline the gym treadmills could give, all the way up to 30%. Had to really slow down my speed to HALF my pace from 15% or below. While entertaining, I think I prefer sitting at 20% with a moderate speed over either lower incline/faster speed or higher incline/slower speed. Not sure I could mentally handle an entire hour of sitting at a single incline and speed, though, especially when my iPod battery dies minutes into an hour-long routine and the treadmill refuses to connect to the television signal.

Food: Lunch - Hawaiian BBQ chicken with rice, Dinner - ground hamburger with rice

Cardio: Elliptical - One hour hills (600 calories)

Analysis: I felt all week like my body was adapting to doing daily cardio, considering the sessions were feeling easier (when I wasn't killing myself with extreme inclines, that is). Water retention is agreeing: the last two weeks my weight's gone UP despite being in very obvious calorie deficits, most likely due to extra water retention, but today's weigh-in showed a loss of 3# from last week, which lines up with my expected 1#/wk over the last 3 weeks total.

Food: Lunch - soy chicken strips with buttered egg noodles, Dinner - ham steaks with fries

Cardio: Elliptical, one hour hills (603 calories)

Food: Lunch - honey soy chicken on rice, Dinner - French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon

Super Bowl: Agreed on the no-good-commercials thing, but I found the game highly entertaining. I had no skin in the game, but I love close games. Doesn't matter if it's a high-scoring track meet or a low-scoring slog fest, if a single drive, a single play, can swing the game one way or the other, I love it. Of course, now the season's over, and I really don't care about basketball or hockey, and baseball has some time before starting, so I'm in a bit of sports limbo for a while.

I love this @ninerbuff "went to bed early because I was tired." Gotta take care of you!!!

Workout: None

Analysis: Made it to the gym by 5am only to see a note on the door saying they wouldn't open until 8, no explanation given. No way could I afford to wait that long on a day when I commute to work, so no workout for me today. (Thought briefly about hitting the gym after work, but past experience tells me that's never a good idea for me. Energy levels suffer, workout always feels lacking, and I'd have to deal with crowds of other post-work-workouters, so no thanks.) Was actually looking forward to getting some cardio in after missing yesterday, too, which is such a bizarre sensation for me, something I've not felt since college almost 25 years ago. Not sure how much is the fact cardio has gotten easier as my weight's dropped, or if I just feel the need to do SOMETHING while I can't lift, but it is what it is.

Food: Lunch - ground hamburger with rice, Dinner - chicken fajitas

Shoes: I haven't had an actual set of running shoes in decades. Soon after I started lifting I learned how much easier squats and deadlifts were using hard-soled Chuck Taylor shoes without all that padding compressing and causing my ankles to shift around, and since I wasn't doing cardio at that time I let my son have my running shoes. I should maybe look into getting a pair if I plan on continuing this whole cardio kick, but I'm a cheap miser (when it comes to spending $$$ on me) so will just keep using my Chuck's for everything gym-related. At least as long as I continue walking on the treadmill I can get away with it; if I ever try to return to actual running, that would be different.

Cardio: Treadmill - 1hr super-hill (712 calories, 2.9 miles, 1823 feet elevation climbed)

Analysis: Instead of doing variable hills, altering either incline OR speed, today I did a single super-hill profile, starting at 1 degree incline and a fast walking pace. EMOM added 1 degree incline, decreased .1 mph, until at the halfway point I was at 30 degrees incline by a very slow walk. Second half of the workout was a mirror image, going faster at a lower incline as time went on.

Food: Lunch - chicken sandwich with chips, Dinner - sweet & sour pork with rice

Life: Rather annoyed at myself. Had composed my full message, but got distracted by a coworker's question, somehow hit some random key as I turned which caused my screen to go wonky until I randomly hit the "unwonky" button, but in the process lost everything I'd typed and had to start all over.

Life 2: Realized something about my iPod music selection. I currently have about 3 hours' worth of songs, played in alphabetical order by song title. Everything being equal, each letter would have about 7 minutes of material. (Yes, I realized I have no songs starting with "X" or "Z" but the point remains.) What actually happens is I have over an hour of "A" songs, another hour of "S" songs, and the last hour split across the remainder of the alphabet.

Lifting: Realized something else the other day while doing some online research about proper ways to return to lifting after an extended layoff. (More on that in a minute.) One article reminded me of something I knew but had completely spaced the other day. Specifically, I had posted how my shirt sleeves were feeling rather loose, leaving me concerned I was losing muscle mass due to inactivity. Per the article this type of muscular atrophy can happen, but usually over a far longer time frame. What I was experiencing was actually a loss of glycogen stores in the muscles due to not lifting, but the muscle mass itself was virtually untouched from before, and as soon as I resume lifting those stores will come flooding back and restore my previous size, or close to it. Obvious in hindsight, but still a relief to realize.

Lifting 2: Now, the question part of my post, having to do with a proper "return to lifting" plan. When I start lifting again in April, it will have been almost four months since I stopped lifting due to my elbow. Whatever additional precautions I take like using wrist straps for heaviest pulls until my arm proves it's back to normal, I also know I don't want to just jump in with my previous routines and weights. One of the articles I found suggested starting at 50% of 1RM, increase to 60% week 2, and so on until I'm back to pre-layoff weights after about 5 weeks. Cool, I can buy that. What I have issue with, and would like a second opinion, is in the volume of the suggested workout. Specifically, it seems far too low at first, with a single "heavy" set of five reps for primary lifts, and a pair of twelve-rep sets for secondary lifts. For example, the first week of workouts looks like this, all done at 50% of 1RM:

Monday
Bench Press 1x5
Squat 1x5
Tricep Pressdown 2x12

Tuesday
Deadlift 1x5
Lat Pulldown 2x12
BB Curl 2x12

Thursday
Military Press 1x5
Incline Bench Press 2x12
DB Lateral Raise 2x12

Friday
Squat 1x5
Bench Press 1x5
BB Curl 2x12

With each additional week you add a set to primary lifts, decrease reps on secondary, and increase weight across the board by 10%, until week 4 you're doing 3x5 primary, 3x6 secondary, all at 80%. After this, transition to your normal workout routine/weights of choice. I can understand slowly ramping up overall volume, but does this strike you as being just too little for the first week back? Even with warmups, I don't see any of these workouts taking more than 15-20 minutes.