AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

I tried putting my heels on a strip of 5/16" (8mm) plywood a couple of weeks ago, but it didn’t seem to help much. I should probably try a thicker piece; I’ve seen comments that "real lifting shoes" often have 3/4" or thicker heels.

I have to watch for my back bending. I’m not having any trouble with the weight yet, it’s just a matter of remembering to bend at the hips instead of curving my back.

I can get down below horizontal in the squat machine. It’s not a joint issue; the glutes/hamstrings are just tight, and I’m hoping if I can stretch them it will improve my regular squats.

The only real problem is the spinal kyphosis. I’ve managed to do a proper low rack a couple of times, but I can’t do it consistently yet.

As far as I know I didn’t have any shoulder mobility problems, but the bench disabused me of that, along with racking the bar. I’ve managed a couple of front racks for the power clean, but mostly I’m still having to fake it. Still, progress is being made.

In our last thrilling installment, I got an 8.0 BPEL three times in a row, a day apart. Which made me extremely happy.

I attributed the gain to the last few cycles of cryolipolysis thinning the fat pad.

Since it was time for the next cryo cycle, I went through a couple of cold pack cycles. Yesterday, BPEL was 7.5". A few minutes ago, a tick over 7.0".

Dafuq?

I measure the same way each time, using a ruler with an L-shaped piece of metal and a clip that slides up and down the ruler. The tip of my glans either touches the metal or it doesn’t; there are no parallax errors or wishful thinking.

Pressing with my fingers, I can’t feel my pelvic bone any more, nor can I bottom out the ruler.

I’ve noticed that the manboob/bra fat areas sometimes seem to get puffy shortly after a cryo session. It’s not an easy place to measure. But there’s no question about the ruler.

My tentative theory is that the fat pad thickens for a while after the cryo session, perhaps as some kind of inflammation response. It’s killing fat cells, after all. It’s unlikely I suddenly gained an inch of BPEL, and even more unlikely I lost it over a few days. And I’m definitely not hitting the pubic bone with the ruler any more.

I’ve only been measuring as the mood hit, with sometimes with intervals of a couple of months. Gains are slow, after all. And I’ve not been as regular with the cryo treatments as I should have been. So the losses of measurable length may have been happening all along, but I wasn’t measuring then.

Plan: stick to the recommended 2-month cryo cycle, and go to regular - probably weekly - BPEL measurements.

TL;DR: cryo treatment seems to result in a temporary thickening of the fat pad.

That’s great, AndyJ! The Holy Grail is within your grasp.

It would be a lot more impressive without the surrounding fat. But I’m working on that.

Your legs came closer to your chest when using that machine because your pelvis was posteriorly rotated. Basically, your low back was rounded (butt wink). You don’t want to squat that way.

Squat depth depends on many things. I think this is one of the better explanations of what happens at the pelvis. Of course, ankle mobility can also be a factor. Elevating your heels reduces how much your ankles have to flex. You can work on improving ankle mobility if that is a limiting factor. Don’t be surprised if your ankles aren’t the same on both sides. You should check them. My left can’t bend as much as my right.

Stance width and toe out also make a difference. You should use a stance that suits your anatomy. Here is one video about this. Narrow works better for some and wider for others.

Successive measurements showed recovery, and back at 8.0 this morning.

Whew!

I’ll keep doing daily measurements to see if it’s a temporary effect due to the cryo treatments, or if it’s just a case of EQ variation.

In other news, next week I get to have strangers handle my penis as they shove a camera up my urethra to take a look inside my bladder. At one time I would have been mortified at the thought, but at least now I’m not embarrassed about my size.

I’ve seen the term before. I’ll read up on it.

I’ll take a look.

That’s a congenital problem, plus I’ve damaged my left ankle twice. I have good downward and side-to-side mobility, and I’ve been doing exercises for that for most of a year, as an arthritis preventative. Upward mobility barely goes past horizontal; I walk on my toes if I take long steps. Every motorcycle I’ve owned, I’ve had to remove the shifter and rear brake levers and re-clock them to be able to use them without lifting a foot off its peg.

Mem mentioned ankle mobility upthread; I had tried a shim before. Maybe I need a lot more than I tried.

Yesterday I got some treadmill time again. Tuesday I did a quarter mile on the treadmill. Thursday I did a mile and a quarter. Saturday I bailed at half a mile. Not fatigue or pain; the ball of my left foot was getting that "I sense blisters coming" feeling.

I’ll be looking into shoes now. Back when I weighed 350-400 pounds, anything with a heel made my feet slide forward in my shoes, causing blisters and eventually tearing the toe-boxes of the shoes from the soles. Now at a near-skeletal 235 pounds, maybe some heel is practical.

I’ve been going by Mark Rippetoe’s instructions on squat stance, but I’ll follow up on that. A different stance would be cheaper than weightlifting shoes!

Hobby is right, whatever you do don’t let your lower back curl. That’s an injury waiting to happen. You need to set you back and not change it as you get lower in the squat. If you reach a point where your lower back is curling, you’ve gone too low and you have to figure out what’s causing the problem.

Personally I lift barefoot, I’ve never needed the weightlifter high heels but I have really good mobility from years of yoga. Even so I have to watch the low extent of a squat because I don’t quite have the ankle flexibility required to get ass to ankles. The dangerous part in weight lifting is the weakest part of the lift for you. You have to use weight that matches the weakest part of the motion and only do motion that allows you to keep good form.

Hm. The squat machine has something like a bucket seat from a car, with a high back and a headrest. It has an angle adjustment. I’ve been using it with the adjustment in its farthest-forward, almost-vertical position, trying to mimic the bent-over position of a squat.

My kinesthesia isn’t that great, but I don’t *think* I’m tilting my pelvis or arching my back to any noticeable degree.

I could loop a towel behind the small of my back and give it a tug as I work the machine. Unlike a real squat, my arms are just along for the ride. If I can pull it out it might indicate some back arch. I’m not sure about the pelvic tilt. There’s a slight gap between the seat and the seatback.

Well, I’ll give it a try and see what happens, and see if I can feel what my pelvic girdle is doing. The next scheduled gym day is Tuesday.

I’m still astounded that I can squat at all, given what my knee X-rays show, and how much my knees used to hurt. I don’t *have* to do a horizontal-thigh squat; I’m not doing any sort of competition. But I can do one sometimes, and as Rippetoe points out, it’s an easily-measurable point where you can say "this is a full squat" and not some kind of partial squat. I don’t have any plans to try for ass-to-grass.

Good point.

Back at 8.0 BPEL. I’ll see what happens with the next cryo cycle.

Every time I look at the ruler and see the slider position I have the urge to dance around and yell "WAHOO!!!"

Girth seems to be holding steady at 6.0. It will go to 6.25 or even 6.38 from time to time, but that’s just slight edema from my heavy pumping schedule, not real girth.

Gym day yesterday. Did a mile on the treadmill, 2-1/2 miles on the recumbent bicycle, one kilometer on the rowing machine, and used the hip machine. On hip adduction (legs out) I’m at 156#; on abduction (legs in) I can easily use the machine’s whole 255# weight stack and stroke through 30 reps without a pause. Same for using it in glute mode.

I’m a bit suspicious about the weight stack and leverage in that machine. I weigh 235#. I don’t see how I can have 255# on the stack and still have the other foot firmly on the ground. And it moves so easily I think it’s probably a waste of time.

It was my first time on the recumbent bicycle. I started at the minimum resistance, pedaled a mile, went up a notch, another mile, and then a half mile on the third notch. I decided to quit before exhaustion this time. Which paid off; I wasn’t hobbling around last night, and I feel fine this morning.

So, as of an hour ago, we’ve had ten calls from the urologist’s office in three days, just on the land line, which is the only one they’re supposed to have a number for. Somehow they got the number for my business-only cellular phone, which about six people have the number for, and they started hammering that, too. I don’t answer calls on that, other than for the handful of people already in the dialing directory.

First incoming call this morning: panic over the blood work. Same numbers as normal for keto. They want me to see a nephrologist about it. I told them to go ahead and set me up. My primary doc couldn’t get my insurance to cover a nephrologist, maybe they can. Also, they wanted me to see an endocrinologist about some of the other blood results. Good; I wanted to talk to the endo about my TRT dose anyway. They’re supposed to fax everything over to her to look at. Also, they were checking to make sure I was taking the antibiotics they’d prescribed before the cytoscopy procedure. First I’d heard about any antibiotics. I told them I’d check with the pharmacy. I got about 75% of what the woman said; the connection sucked hard. So much for all-digital VOIP.

First outgoing call: pharmacy. I have *two* prescriptions, one called in last week, which I was supposed to have already finished taking, and a new one called in this morning, which I was supposed to have started day before yesterday. O rly? Apparently I was supposed to "just know" I had some prescriptions waiting. I swung by a bit later to pick them up, and the pharmacist was telling me I could just go to Aisle 14 for laxatives, I didn’t have to buy them at the pharmacy counter. Uh, what? Oops, despite having asked for my name and DOB seconds before, they had pulled up the wront patient.

Second incoming call: my wife took it while I was out. Make sure I’m there tomorrow at 1330 for the bladder ultrasound. What bladder ultrasound? They did one last week; tomorrow strangers were supposed to jam a probe up my naughty bits to look inside my bladder. She had to call them back.

Second outgoing call: WTF? Oh, they had changed their minds; they were going to run another ultrasound, and then they’d decide if they wanted to schedule a *third* visit for a cytoscopy.

I don’t like these people, and I didn’t want to go back to them, having had a bad experience with that clinic in 2018. In fact, when the doc wanted to send me out for a urology referral, I made a point of specifying "anyone but those assholes." But they’re the only urologists in the area, and my insurance doesn’t want to deal with any of the ones in other towns, apparently. So I had to go back to them.

As I get older my tolerance for fuckuppery has diminished substantially. Well, at least they’re consistent, they’re still fuckups.

Fuckuppery: I arrived at the clinic, and the buffalo at the reception desk said my insurance was "invalid." A lady standing in line behind me had to translate. The same insurance that was okay last week.

I turned around and left. Mrs. Andy has spent a couple of hours on the phone already, trying to straighten this one out.

A nephrology clinic called this morning and said they’d received a referral for the end of November, and they were going to send an information packet in the mail. Good.

Nothing from the endocrinologist so far.

In other news:

EQ and night wood way up again. Interestingly, the day after getting a taladafil refill. Going back to my notes, those tanked when I got the last refill. Despite buying from a national pharmacy chain, I’m pretty sure the last batch was either defective or counterfeit. I had the same thing happen last year with a refill of my blood pressure meds.

8.0 x 6.0" again this morning, 100% erection. For the last few months, it has been 50-75%. Hardness only has a slight effect on length; not enough for repeated measurements to show a clear difference.

No effect on testicle size from Damiana that I can tell, but it has only been a week.

Gym day yesterday. Did 1 mile at 2mph on the treadmill, 3 miles on the recumbent bicycle (levels 4, 5, and 6), and 1 kilometer on the rowing machine. I tried a Tabata cycle on that; 20 seconds all-out, 10 seconds rest. I’m still sore this morning.

As I’ve gotten used to the treadmill, I’ve noticed a gait problem. Stepping off onto my left foot, it always feels like I’m stepping slightly uphill. Not a lot, but enough that when I noticed it, it was hard to ignore.

I know I have some problems with limited ankle articulation, and the left ankle has been damaged a couple of times, but best as I can tell, it bends the same as the right ankle. I’m starting to wonder if my left leg is longer than the right. I always thought it was shorter, given the way I gimped around after having it broken in three places years ago; there’s a steel rod in there now. I worked very hard to overcome the limp, but I don’t generally walk much, and I don’t think what I’m noticing on the treadmill is a limp per se.

I found some orthopedic shoe inserts in a drawer last night. Next gym day, I’ll shove one in my right shoe and see if it helps.