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Messages - Raptor

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16
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: March 05, 2024, 08:37:30 am »
Bench focus day 15:

Bench press:

20x8
20x8
40x8
60x7

High bar full squat:

20x8
50x8
80x8

Landmine one-leg deadlift:

empty bar x 8
bar + 10kg x 8

Bodyweight: 92.9 kg
Exhaustion level: 8/10

Comments:

First workout after doctor visit. Went... decent. Had to rush it because I had a job meeting. Some right knee pain due to the quad dominant squat style (narrow stance, high bar). Will monitor back issues after this, to see how my body reacts.

17
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: March 01, 2024, 03:02:40 pm »
Thanks, these are good suggestions. I hate water, I have a water phobia and dislike being near it, anything wrong goes on in it, you're dead. So I'm not exactly looking forward to any water stuff.

One of things that bothers me, though, is my pain in the left clavicle and left shoulder. That's been there for the last two+ months. I'm thinking of thoracic outlet syndrome, maybe caused by me doing kettlebell overhead presses for quite a while. But I don't know the term in Romanian and to whichever doctors I mentioned this they looked at me like I was crazy. It super pisses me off that you can't have an actual conversation with a doctor these days, they all think that their patients are stupid and that they are so much smarter.

18
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Reboot - get lean, get hops
« on: February 29, 2024, 03:16:57 pm »
Nice to see you back!

19
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 29, 2024, 02:19:47 pm »
Totally.

I just came back from the neurologist. He said that he doesn't see that much stuff in the MRIs (for both the cervical spine and the thoracic spine) and that there is degenerative stuff in there but you could find that for any random guy off the street if you would take an MRI for him or her. That there are some areas that might slightly impinge on the spinal cord and that he recommends swimming, doesn't necessarily advocates for me to stop going to the gym, thinks I should be active and I should do kinetotherapy.

As I say this, the paper bag that held the MRI films and documents broke so I had to carry it under my armpit, with my hand underneath it. After I did this, I had terrible pain in the back, in the middle of my back. So I decided to do 10 pushups and a few swings with my light kettlebell and it was better after two minutes or so. It seems like the muscular part of things definitely contributes, considering this.

He also gave me pregabalin, a medicine for chronic pain, to take for 2 weeks or so - maybe my body will "forget" that pain "needs" to be there. I will try.

My idea is to continue to go to the gym but use moderate weights instead of heavy weights. That should put less pressure on the back and allow me to use better form. He said that he thinks my landings from jumps are the most probable cause, since that is much more impactful on the spine than gym work, especially as my right leg was injured and couldn't properly absorb the landing.

What do you guys think?

20
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 28, 2024, 02:13:58 pm »
Not really, but I have had a lot of nights when I wake up randomly or I feel really bad trying to fall asleep. Sometimes it's because my back hurts so that wakes me up - remember, I'm worse when I lie down in bed. Other times I just feel really bad in a way I can't describe. Also, I can't relax my trapezius and shoulders, I continuously pull them up and I have to actively think to relax.

There's another weird detail: I play a motorcycling game on my PS5, MotoGP 23. I even have a league where I play races. And in order to have the controller stable during gaming, I stay very tight with my back so the controller doesn't move at all (I sit in bed in a particular position, with my left leg straight and my right leg bent, so that my hands are in the middle and the controller is stable). I've been doing this a lot when the symptoms appear, so I'm pretty sure it contributes.

Still, that landing where my neck really hurt happened and it felt like something important happened there, I knew it was worse than it looked on the outside.

Another detail is that if I do hip thrusts (where my thoracic spine rests on a bench) then it's worse after two days or so. There seem to be two issues: the thoracic spine thing and the cervical spine thing.

It seems like if I walk a lot the pain is less, maybe it's because I move my arms when I walk so I don't get stuck in the same position with my trapezius tight 100% of the time. I don't know.

21
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 28, 2024, 05:49:24 am »
OK, so here's the deal.

Back in February 2022 I decided to restart training. I found a chalistenics place nearby with pullup bars and so on so I thought "let me try to take it easy and do some of this stuff before even going to the gym again" so that's what I did. I also did some flexibility and mobility work at home.

One day I was at this chalistenics thing and did a bunch of pullups, chinups, pushups, dips and leg raises. The dips and leg raises in particular gave me some pain in the chest and belly, around the plexus area, immediately underneath my sternum. I went home and was a normal day. I also started to do some jumps but I was at 97 kg in bodyweight. After one jump, as I landed, white spots began to appear in my visual field due to the shock of the landing. On top of it all, my right knee was messed up so I couldn't put my right leg into my landings, meaning that the shock of the landings propagated through my spine. I also did some overhead kettlebell presses with my 24 kg kettlebells for a while.

On Feburary 24th (the same time when Russia invaded Ukraine) I woke up at about 6 AM or so, suddenly, with an incredible "rush" (I can't describe it in any other way, just an incredibly scary rush) in my body and I was sure it was a heart attack, it was like a "pressure" in my entire body combined with an extremely powerful (more powerful than anything ever experienced) rush of adrenaline. So I got up and was sure I was going to die, but I tried to focus on surviving, to calm down. It took about 5 to 10 seconds to recover. Incredibly scary stuff.

For the rest of the day I felt super weird but my blood pressure was normal, heart rate was normal and so on. I took some EKGs with my watch, they were normal. Then it happened again, always when trying to sleep. It would happen pretty much immediately if I tried to sleep on my belly, with my head turned to the left - in a few seconds that incredible adrenaline rush would immediately launch and it feels exactly like dying, there's no any other way to describe it.

So I though to myself "if this ever happens or I feel it happening, I will take my heart rate and oxygen levels exactly then" and that's what I did. If it was a panic attack or something like that, I should see a high heart rate. It happened and my heart rate was 57 bpm, so I don't think it's a panic attack, it's some other thing.

I also found out that if I tried to do some kettlebell overhead presses it would immediately worsen the symptoms - dizziness when turning the head and a feeling of "losing control of my body", plus some "tickling" in the chest area.

After a while, the symptoms went away (this "rush" thing happened about 6 times or so and it was equally terrifying every time it did). I thought maybe it was just exhaustion from not being used to physical effort anymore (which in part I bet it was) and you know, I started training again but with less volume, so I don't get too tired. I also went in the park and jumped here and there.

But one day after I jumped and landed I felt some bad pain in my cervical spine, like a neck injury (again, possibly because I coulnd't brake the landing properly due to my right knee being hurt and due to being too heavy) and immediately knew it was worse than it looked. This was in April 2022. The next day I started having pain in the cervicothoracic area, sometimes upwards towards the head.

This has continued ever since - the weird thing is that it sometimes gets better after physical effort, even after squats. But there is pain in the thoracic area as well, especially where the bar sits when you low bar squat. The symptoms improve with beer, xanax or aspirin.

Also, for a few years or so I've started staying "stiff" with my trapezius so I stay upright and not hunched back - but the problem with this is that I can't "relax" anymore - I always stay stiff and tight with my trapezius (which is the place where it hurts) automatically. It's just how I stay, I have to actively think to relax and even then I don't relax completely.

MRI shows C2, C5, T6, T9, T12 and L5 issues with my spine. My guess is that the weird rush symptoms were an inflammation somewhere in the thoracic spine which made me feel like "losing control of my internal organs" (I have no other way to put it, it was like disconnecting the self from the internal organs). And since there are spinal nerves in the thoracic spine which innervate the area in that spot, this is my hypothesis.

I'm going to the neurologist tomorrow but I don't have much hope - the problem is complex, with a lot of details, and these people are there to just make an opinion in 15 minutes and come up with something and most of the time they don't care, they simply say "you're imagining, it's a psychiatric thing" etc. It's been going on for two years, already, and I don't even know its nature, its ethiology - is it nervous? Is it mental? Is it exhaustion? Is it circulatory? I even went as far to assume that the vaccine might be involved, as there is a lack of explanation for these weird symptoms.

But in truth, it has to be the spine, it's the most straightforward explanation. I now have pain the left clavicle and left shoulder, which should be consistent with the cervical nerves projecting pain there. I will update you after the neurologist visit, tomorrow.

EDIT: One more thing - I feel much better if I don't stay in bed. If I walk around I'm pretty good. As soon as I stay in bed, with my back against something, then it's much worse - there's dizziness and weakness.

22
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 27, 2024, 07:04:07 pm »
Yup. 8 or so. They are useless and have no clue, blaming it on the patient so they don't look incompetent.

23
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 26, 2024, 01:19:54 pm »
It's been like this for the last two years. I just didn't mention it.

24
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 22, 2024, 07:15:57 pm »
I've stopped training due to terrible cervical and thoracic pain and dizziness.

25
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Age vs VO2max
« on: February 10, 2024, 04:31:40 pm »
KB SWINGS : 4 x 15 @ 16kg

I like this. How did you feel the swings? Do you finish each rep with a posterior pelvic tilt, at the top? I do that to be sure to engage the glutes for each rep.

26
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 09, 2024, 09:16:59 am »
Squat focus day 14:

Low bar squat:

20x5
20x5
60x5
80x3
100x1
120x1 old age :personal-record:
100x5
100x5
100x5
old age :personal-record:

Bench press:

20x10
50x10
50x10 old age :personal-record:
50xDND (was too tired and felt weird)


Landmine single leg deadlift:

20x8
20x8

Bodyweight: 92.9 kg
Exhaustion level: 8.5/10

Comments:

Best workout since I re-started training. I haven't squatted 120 kg or above in about 8 years so it was great to do it. I probably could've done about 2 or 3 reps, all out. I can probably squat 130 kg with a belt.

The 100x5 work sets were pretty difficult and the last rep of the last set was very difficult (although I bet it looked explosive from the outside).

Bench press was good in the beginning but after two sets of 10 reps I started feeling pretty bad so I decided not to do the third set.

I also found my new favorite exercise, the landmine single leg deadlift - the glutes fire like crazy when I do it.

27
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 07, 2024, 01:29:06 pm »
Back focus day 2:

Pullups: 4, 3, 3 (didn't focus on sets but instead on totalling 10 reps)
Chinups: 4, 3, 3

Hip thrust:

60x5
80x10
80x10
80x10
80x10
(great, felt really good)

Dumbbell incline bench press:

15x10
20x10
20x10

Leg extensions (double leg concentric, single leg eccentric):

24x10
24x10
24x10

Leg curls: 80x8

Bodyweight: 92.3 kg
Exhaustion level: 8/10

Comments: Very weak in the chinups and pullups. One reason could be the fact that the handles are very thin and my hand is very long so I don't grip them well.

Hip thrusts were good although I used lots of padding, some big double sponges and additional bar padding.

28
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Raptor's log
« on: February 05, 2024, 08:52:29 am »
Bench focus day 14:

Bench press:

20x8
40x5
60x2
70x3
65x4
65x4
(weak)

Cable kickbacks:

20x10
20x10 (glute activation felt good)

High bar full squat:

20x8
60x10
60x10
60x5

V-grip pulls to chest:

48x12, 48x12

Bodyweight: 91.6 kg (lowest old age weight)
Exhaustion level: 9/10

Comments:

Coming back after sickness, felt "light" on my feet but still weak.

29
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Age vs VO2max
« on: February 02, 2024, 08:00:33 am »
Low bar squatting was never my thing, we talked about it many times in the past, i tried it but it never worked, high bar was always better/stronger for me.
Guessing from how that fatigued 3*72.5 went this week, id say i could do a 85 or even 90 kg single. BW is little over 86 lately.



1 February

Low aerobic HR zone run 7K @ 55:04 ( 7:52 pace )

Finally, a 'real' (non-treadmill) low aerobic zone run, first since mid October.
Very slow as expected ( about 1 minute / km compared to last time, which was my last week before HM race though, at my best fitness ever ).
Speed is not important at this period, bringing in and progressing weekly low-aerobic and HIIT sessions is the goal.

Not that bad. Is this because of your anatomy or because you're quad dominant or both?

30
Progress Journals & Experimental Routines / Re: Age vs VO2max
« on: February 01, 2024, 01:30:12 pm »
I wonder what your low bar squat max is these days.

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