16 week challenge page

[Veelore]

Sex: Male
Start Weight: 70kgs
Goal Weight: 72kgs (heavy bias towards muscle)

Current inhibitors (can't control):
- Semi reliant on pain killers due to multiple problems (hips) and athritis in knees.
- Multiple injuries (left side latissimus dorsi) and muscle damage that hasn't healed, or has alot of scar tissue
- Intermittent inactivity
- Long hours, heavy job stress load, part time carer for older family members.

Ways to mitigate inhibitors:
+ Attempt massage/foam roller to try and control muscle pain from spasms
+ Attempt stretches or yoga style stuff to try and ease muscles, and on days when pain is out of hand
+ Try and sleep better make use of down time to give more time, despite long hours (give the xbox a rest)

Current problems (can control):
- LOVE energy drinks. Will try and reduce intake to when very tired, or having a particularly bad day only.
- Don't use my time that well, prone to xboxing when there are minor tasks that need doing. Will try to leave xbox only for rest days, or when other tasks are in order.
- Tend to snack at work. Have started to cook up chicken, and got some biltong aswell.
- Get 'tetchy' sometimes after heavier work out. I am unsure what this is called officially, but I can become extremely ill tempered. Can be controlled by adding in alot of different veg and offaly meats (well kidney anyroad), so will start doing that.

Diet changes:
+ Follow primal patterns certainly 2 days out of every 3. 3rd day (rest day from weights) allows some flexibility, but it is not a 'cheat day'.
+ Carb backload on or around heavy day.
+ Luckily have a very supportive fiance View Profile: Kochin - Mark's Daily Apple Forum who is helping me along with this.

Work out changes
+ Following a 3 day pattern, with day 1 being heavy (deadlifts here, if I get back squats even slightly wrong I can be unable to move for about a month). Day 2 is assistance and upper body, and day 3 being a rest, though stretching will go off sometime.
+ Work out intensity is being increased a tad by keeping breaks short, so no work out including warm up going on over 1 hour.
+ Including challenge days. When I am lucky enough to be properly functional, try and beat my bests, or do heavy doubles.

Other Notes:
+ Started to integerate changes on the 10th of December, hoping to be 'working to rule' so to speak by 7th January
+ Am evaluating progress on the 29th of April

[Veelore]

Lifting statistics of compound movements:

Deadlift: 90kgs 5x3
Shoulder Press: 45kgs 3x5
Bench Press: 55kgs 3x5
Shrugs: 55kgs 2x10
Front Squats*: 30kgs 3x5

*I am unsure if I will be able to keep these. They hit my quads damn hard, which is strange considering the deadlift weight. Oh well, shall monitor and see what can be done.

Targets for end of 16 weeks:
Deadlift: 105kgs 8x3
Shoulder Press: 50kgs 3x5
Bench Press: 65kgs 3x5
Shrugs: 75kgs 2x10
Front Squats*: 40kgs 3x5

[Veelore]

Decided to scrag the porridge for what my fiance refers to as 'paleo cereal', consisting of full fat yoghurt, some seeds, nuts and a few dried fruits. Kept me full pretty well with no noticeable drop of energy. Lunch was a winter veg and chicken salad (drumsticks mostly, bones smashed to make the marrow soak into the meat during cooking, skin still on), with tea being an ungodly mix of the worlds cheapest mince, courgette, onion, cabbage, mushrooms and puppy dog tails (probably).

Todays lifts:
Shoulder press 45kgs 3x5
Deadlift 90kgs 7x3

Havent even started it yet and already making changes.

[Veelore]

02/01/2012: Other than getting going, had a pain free day

[Kochin]

02/01/2012: Other than getting going, had a pain free day

I'm so pleased you're pain-free lately, mein Liebe!
Just goes to show how much weights can benefit an injury, as long as you know which weights to do.

[Caffeinated]

Man I love energy drinks too. I drink 3 Lo Carb Monsters a day like it's nothing. They help me concentrate and calm me down.

I'm on day 2 with no monster and eating primally and I am draggggging. I'm not sure if it's the low carb that is doing it or if it's the lack of monster doing it. I drank coffee this morning hoping that it would help but yea it hasn't done too much.

I had an idea for the Xbox thing though. What kind of games do you play? I play Halo 4 quite a bit and what I am gonna do is between each match I am going to do pushups, pullups or squats for the number of deaths I have each round. When I get tired of that I am going to just plank between matches. I found out yesterday that I can still use the controller enough to vote on the next map even while planking.

If you wanna join the group I made for people new to primal in 2013 you can join here. http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/group157.html

[Veelore]

Same with me and energy drinks! It results in calming strangely.

Haven't got Halo 4, more of a mass effect guy myself, however I do like the 'times died' idea . Planking while waiting in the lobby also sounds ace

Group joined.

[Veelore]

Body weight has increased to 71 kgs, after dropping down to 70 for quite a while, body fat % is hovering around the same. Taken from 10th December, but its a start none the less. Also, front squat isn't causing anger in the knees, and is now up to 45kgs, which is still pretty pathetic, but its a step in the right direction.

Eating wise? Sticking to rule pretty well, and if it wasn't for occasional slip ups would be hitting the 80/20 easily. Feel more energized, and finding myself less likely to snack during the longer parts of my shifts at work, which is good.

Random health changes? Got one of them. Without changing dental habits, or tooth paste, my gum health has gone from mostly 2's, with a few 3's with quite a bit of bleeding, to mostly 2's, a single 3, two 1's and NO bleeding

[Veelore]

Current averages:
157g fat per day
141g protein (can drop though)
143g carb
Giving calorific average(ish) of:
54% fat
23.6% carb
21.7% protein
So rocking around 2,800 calories a day . Lowest day was 1,700, highest ir reaching a nice 3,350. Lifts are going up acceptably and pain levels are tolerable, colds a nuisance, but doing ok.

[Veelore]

Had a major problem with the knees on the 23rd of January which has largely knocked activity out of the window until recently. Was still mobile, but had to return to some of the lower end perscription pain meds to retain functionality . As of 10th Feb I am back to mostly store bought, and largely free of anti-inflamatories again

As of the 5th of Feb, I have been doing some body weight exercises, stretching and general recovery work to try and get me back to weights as soon as possible. I am now removing the front squats, to see if that helps control the problem in the future. Also, I have taken to walking with around 20lbs on my back when I can. This should increase quickly once the body is behaving a bit better though.

Food wise? The fiance has got me on double cream, am adding it to things with some regularity. Seems to help keep me fuller for longer. No other major changes, hoping to get back to deadlifting by next weekend, though it could end up being longer