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Monday and Tuesday I experienced almost no back pain–woohoo! And this comes after a weekend of moving heavy furniture down stairs and onto a moving truck for some friends’ parents. I was a little leary of the work, but when a friend asks for help, you have to give it to them.
Sometimes it takes a little speed bump to see just how much progress you’ve made. In previous fitness/health improvement attempts, any little setback would totally derail me and I’d give up for years. In the process, I’d erase any progress that I made and most likely regress further into the pit of obesity. But not this time. This little back injury has me yearning to get back into the gym whole-hog. I NEED to get back on the treadmill and run instead of walk. I HAVE to get that scale back on the downward trend. These are feelings that I haven’t dealt with before and they make me very happy.
This morning at the gym, I was able to do some light running. I did 3, 15-minute cycles of 5 minutes at 4.0 mph, 5 minutes at 5.5 mph, and 5 minutes at 6.0 mph. My back didn’t hurt, but it did feel awkward. However, my lungs didn’t feel taxed at all which was a little bit of a surprise to me. It was the first positive athletic step for me since I hurt my back.
My back injury (and JD’s recent post about his gym habits) has also made me reflect on my current plan of action at the gym. So once again, when my back is back to 100%, I plan on modifying my weight training regiment. I’ve said so before, I love the 5X5 program. I don’t think the exercises are the cause of my back injury so I intend to resume the same exercises that got me results in 1/2 hour 3 times a week. But I’m not going to focus so much on increasing my weights as quickly as before. This time, I’m going to go back to the more traditional 3X10 sets of those same exercise with about 80% of the weight I was lifting before. And I’m not going to increase those weights as often. Hopefully I’ll still see similar results in my body composition and will decrease the chances of injury.
Speaking of body composition, my weight has remained constant throughout this whole ordeal. In fact, this morning I went through my closet and pulled out 5 pairs of paints that I shouldn’t be seen wearing. They ranged in waist size from 34-38 inches. Yep, that’s right I threw out pants with a 34″ waist size because they were too big for me! That’s something I haven’t been able to say since 1999, the year I got married. So now, my waist AND my wardrobe are significantly smaller then they were 12 months ago. I feel like I’m righting the ship and am getting back in the groove.
J.D.
3 responses so far ↓
1 MikeM // Oct 22, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Glad your back is doing better Mac.
Could you elaborate on why you’re switching from 5×5 to 3×10? To be honest, I don’t think you will see changes in body composition to the same extent. Lower reps with heavier weights will build more muscle, IMO. I say this as someone who spent most of my life doing 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps of many of the same exercises. I think as long as your technique is good, your chance of injury is small.
I think it’s possible to stick with the 5×5 while easing up on the weight increases. I’m also doing Stronglifts and recently came back from a time off (2+ weeks vacation rather than injury in my case). After struggling a bit in my first workout I dropped the weights a bit for squats (deload as they call it - by about 20 lb). I’ve been working my way back a bit more slowly and working on my form.
re: throwing out pants - I’ve been going through that lately too. It’s definitely a great feeling. My old pants look clownishly huge (down from a 38 to 34).
2 Kym // Oct 22, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Regarding stronglifts, I got on it shortly after you mentioned you would be starting it. My strength has increased quite a bit - I went from benching barely an empty bar to benching bar + 10 lbs easily. For some reason bar + 15 lbs = utterly impossible. I’ve tried 3 times so far with little success (I can get about 2 or 3 reps per set). I don’t think I can really deload at this low amount of weight on the bar, haha!
I’ve also increased my overhead press from barely doing 20 lbs to 45 lbs. Squats I think I can progress more on, but previous to this I only did them with an empty bar, so that is something I suppose.
However, unlike you, I have seen 1) no results in my body composition and 2) no results on the scale. And yet increase in strength. I do 2 workouts at a given weight before bumping it up by 5 lbs, though. So maybe that’s it. In any case I’m proud of your success with it, and your positive changes are the reason I am sticking with it.
Congrats on throwing out so many pants! Now don’t go getting a waist 28 or smaller or you’ll have a hell of a time finding pants. My roommate in college could fit about a 26 (if those even exist, he never could find any) and it was really hard to find anything small enough. Although I’m sure that’s a nice “problem” to have
3 Andrew is getting fit // Oct 22, 2008 at 11:56 pm
I had a big sort out on the weekend as well and there is nothing quite like getting rid of ’skinny’ clothes that are now too big.
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