Hazard

*Hepburn Stare Activated*

Hi Mosasaurus! When viewing the Level 1 subforum, you should see a button for "Start New Topic".

9 September 2020 I've been doing diet work. I've refrained from exercising for a period - tracking my calories and weight during that time - to get a good read on what my current sedentary maintenance calorie value is. Here's what my weight did, graphically: So yeah. I used the sedentary setting on MyFitnessPal (What they list as the "Not Very Active" option) just to see how close it would get me. And ate near that calorie target. MFP set me to 2360/day. I have my MFP food diary set to 6 meals a day, and so split it to 393 calories per meal. Using that target, I picked out foods each meal that kept me under 393 while getting me reasonably close to it. I ended up averaging 2309 daily calories over two weeks out of the 2360 target. (There's only 9 dots on the chart because I use a centered rolling average for my weight tracking, to help cancel noise). As you can see from the red trendline on the chart, averaging 2309 calories keeps my weight (when I'm sedentary) about as steady as it can get. Cool beans. Armed with this knowledge, chipping off body fat again will be easy. Well, easy mathematically.

24 August 2020

The battle logs part of the forum can feel lonely, but nobody's ever really alone in here. There's always at least a few people quietly reading.

21 August 2020 When I went into my gym to work out this morning, I found Lady Hazard had written me the above little note of encouragement. Here was today's workout. This update I included basic diet info, too. Squats went fine. On the presses, the injury-related discomfort and weakness in my side delt showed up on my 105 warmup set, and more pronounced for all the 115 reps. That's actually a good sign. I got to heavier weights this workout before the symptoms showed up, compared to the previous press workout. That's improvement. It's not a healthy muscle yet, but it's looking like it'll get there again.

18 August 2020 My forearm started acting up during deadlifting. I put on straps to deal with it. Not happy about that, but it is what it is. The injuries are obviously still with me. A month ago I could have pulled 260 raw, cold, as my first warmup set. Aaaaaaaand my side deltoid bugged me at about 130 lbs on the bench press, which is ridiculous. I raised my back arch to protect my shoulder, but even with the extra arching I didn't feel safe trying for over 160 today. Which is pathetic. I was almost up to 225 a month ago. This blows. But as I wrote on my instagram post: I don't want to be inactive again, so I'll have to keep the weights lighter for now. Find the balance between giving my body some healthy stress without putting it into distress.

I'm not entirely sure what they're meaning to imply by this, but reading it makes me want to sit with them while they watch me eat an entire 14" pizza, just to see how'd they react to it. (For science 😗.)

Looking good at 205. I wouldn't change anything, except to add more weight. 😁

15 August 2020 Month off for injury recovery is over. Time to kick it again. I've restarted weights on the barbell deloaded roughly 15% from where I left off a month ago. I'm also switching things up and going minimalist for a bit. I'll be alternating a Squat/Press day and a Deadlift/Bench day. A single Work set of each, for now.

8 August 2020 After a month off resting the injuries, my lifestyle habit of regular exercise was feeling in danger of breaking. Today I went through the motions to make sure my exercise lifestyle stays intact, and also to get things moving again. This was literally just the empty barbell on the presses, and 5 lbs on the crossovers. It felt ridiculous. But it also felt good to be back in action, at any level.

Thanks for following! . Yeah, I've been a mess of injuries this summer. But I'm happy to see you on again. I've missed reading about life in Japan.

Hi zeeko. The forum stats-leveling game stopped being officially supported when NF introduced the Epic Character creator. That character creator is currently free to use, but is also integrated with NF's various paid products (now combined under the "NF Prime" umbrella) for those who've purchased them.

Yeaaa. I've decided to just chill the next 3-6 weeks on most everything. I'm about 98% certain these are muscle strains, and it's better to just leave them alone and let them fully heal up.

Couple of updates. 12 July 2020 It turns out -- not only is my forearm strained (as previously mentioned), but my side deltoid in the same arm is strained too. I started noticing it when I got to about 60-65% of my work weight during OH Press warmups. I decided to stay there, did 3x3 and called it a day. So I not only have a moratorium on deadlifts until my forearm heals up, my deltoid is forcing me into a general deload on pressing as well. I'll be shifting bench, incline, and OH press into an active recovery cycle starting this-coming training "week". Workout summary: 13 July 2020 On the plus side ..... my legs are fine.

8 July 2020 Today's workout summary:

7 July 2020 Today's workout summary:

Hey, welcome to my battle log Homelifter. It's always fun to have a new follower. Pretty much. When I started lifting again after a roughly 2-year break from it, I restarted with a conditioning phase of low weights and high volume (in the neighborhood of 12-20 reps per set on everything). As I progressively added weight to the exercises, I slowly backed off on volume. This made for a smooth transition from conditioning to strength/muscle building.

6 July 2020 Shared from my workout music playlist: Today's workout summary:

A few days of updates. 2 July 2020 This was Deadlift day. On my second warmup set (225#), I felt an uncomfortable acute pain shoot up the underside of my forearm, plus aggravating my golfer's elbow. Whatever inflammation I had was taken care off with the drugs and extra week of rest. So the forearm is probably a muscle strain that needs time to heal. I stopped the workout, and decided to quit deadlifting until this heals. Could be anywhere from 6 weeks to 3 months. Won't know until I get there. Until then, I'll be using the deadlift day in my training rotation as a second Squatting day instead. Which is what I did the next day -- 3 July 2020 Workout summary: 4 July 2020 In honor of those who sowed the seeds; thank you for my harvest. Today's workout summary:

1 July 2020 Here's a vid from my OH Presses this morning. Pair of 45s, 5s, and 2.5s on the bar. I haven't uploaded a workout vid since February, and forgot that Instagram likes to chop off the top and bottom. You can still pretty much see everything that's going on though. I set a new Overhead Press PR, with half-assed reps while listening to chill music. 😜 Today's workout summary:

The thumbless grip deadlift uses a different form. It's why your instinct is to layback and drop your hips low. Setup should still begin by bending at the hips to take your grip, and then bend at the knees to get into the final start position right before you start the pull. The difference with this thumbless monkey grip is that the starting position for the hips is as low as you need your hips to be for firmly securing the barbell against your legs. And that'll be a much lower hip position than used in other deadlift forms. If you decide to train using this monkey grip, it'll feel like a hybrid squat.

@ZachPSU. The new video angles were helpful. Why aren't your thumbs wrapped around the bar?

27 June 2020 Today's workout summary: