[Hazard] -- 2020 Battle Blog

[Hazard]

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:

 

[WhiteGhost]

59 minutes ago, Hazard said:

I set a new Overhead Press PR

Woot!

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

Well done on the PR!

[Hazard]

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:

 

 

 

[Hazard]

6 July 2020

 

Shared from my workout music playlist:

 

 

 

Today's workout summary:

 

[HomeLifter]

How come your volume is so low?

 

i take it strength is your goal?

[Hazard]

 

Hey, welcome to my battle log Homelifter.  It's always fun to have a new follower.   

 

18 hours ago, HomeLifter said:

How come your volume is so low?

i take it strength is your goal?

 

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.

 

 

[Hazard]

7 July 2020

 

Today's workout summary:

 

 

[Hazard]

8 July 2020

 

Today's workout summary:

 

[Hazard]

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.

 

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

I hope your arm heals soon.

[Sloth the Enduring]

No deadlifts is a sucky prescription.

[Hazard]

14 hours ago, Sloth the Enduring said:

No deadlifts is a sucky prescription.

 

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.

 

 

[Wobbegong]

I'm late to this party but here and following!

 

I hope you heal up soon and can get back to lifting. Injuries are no fun.

[Hazard]

On 8/5/2020 at 5:48 PM, Wobbegong said:

I'm late to this party but here and following!

I hope you heal up soon and can get back to lifting. Injuries are no fun.

 

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.

 

[Hazard]

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.

 

[Wobbegong]

On 8/9/2020 at 8:10 AM, Hazard said:

It felt ridiculous.  But it also felt good to be back in action, at any level.

It sounds worthwhile. I'm glad you're keeping your head in the game even while you take care of your injury.

[Hazard]

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.

 

[NightWatcher13]

Welcome back!

[Hazard]

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.

 

[Hazard]

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.

 

 

[WhiteGhost]

On 8/22/2020 at 11:50 AM, Hazard said:

When I went into my gym to work out this morning, I found Lady Hazard had written me the above little note of encouragement.

That's great

[Hazard]

24 August 2020

 

 

 

[Hazard]

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.

 

 

[Wobbegong]

I'm always so impressed by your data. You do a really great job with tracking things and taking an empirical approach to your health, it's so cool. Good luck with your goals from here!