AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

Yeah. That’s the usual recommendation.

Riiiiight.

I bought some bands and tried it. Getting a foot into the loop required standing on a step. And then the bands tried to flip me over on my head when I put weight on them. I managed not to break my neck. You have to be above some minimum level of fitness for the bands to be practical, I think. I clearly wasn’t, and after that fiasco, I’m disinclined to try them again.

The harness and extra pulley cost less than the stupid bands!

Looks a lot like progress, quite a lot to be happy about regardless of sets/reps/weight.
Good luck on those power cleans, no way in hell I’d try those at my age. No reason to. Rip will just have to be disappointed.

I’m the same, but have really only done them with a shrug bar. I have always been more DL focused since my squat is terrible, which keeps my squat terrible.
I’ve been trying to correct that, with little headway.

It seems my dumbass has been doing more of an RDL over the years than an actual SLDL.
I need to pay attention more.

I’m not moving that much weight, but I’m getting the reps done. As the bone spurs wear down I’ve been able to add a little bit of weight at a time.

I can’t do a clean either, but power snatches are possible now. I need to work on form, but I can do the movements.

[searches ‘shrug bar’] I know those as ‘trap bar’. Yeah, a trap bar deadlift is actually more of a squat than a deadlift, but it sure saves your shins and lower back.

What’s wrong with your squat? Form or lack of oomph?

Some coaches recommend letting go of the bar completely when you set it down, just to make sure you’re doing a true dead lift instead of bouncing it up and down. [guilty look] Or just do a proper RDL anyway.

The way I look at it, if you’re not in competition, what does it matter as long as you don’t hurt yourself?

I think my form is fine, it could be part of an oomph issue.
Squats are just hard to do and I’ve never really liked the exercise. Was always thinking about not screwing up my knees or my back during a set and then losing concentration when things got tough. It’s become a snowball at times which is why I never make all that much progress on it. I like DL so I was always able to keep better concentration on it which lead to much better progress.

If you like a certain exercise, you’ll keep doing it and you’ll keep making progress.

Doing DL’s, I’ve always just touched the weight on the floor and then pulled for each rep. No pause, no bouncing, no dropping. Sometimes a bounce as I wasn’t completely controlling the negative.

I’ve played around with heated pumping a few times. I used an electric heating pad with a thermostatic controller that plugs in between the pad and the wall. There’s a long wire with a thermocouple, that I hold to the outside of the tube with a rubber band.

While the heat helped flaccid and BPFSL almost immediately, I always quit after a week or so due to edema. I had to cut way back on time and vacuum or massive donuts would result.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been using the heating pad again, first at 15 minutes at 4", then at 5", and now 30 minutes at 5". After the third or fourth set of the day I’ll have some edema, but it manifests as a fat shaft all the way down, as opposed to the donut. So, some edema, but not the runaway edema I got before.

I’ll carry on for a while and see if it results in any gains.

Heated pumping still coming along nicely. Lots of edema when I first started, but it’s very mild now.

Did my squats today, then some power snatches. It felt easy so I added ten pounds to the bar. Ran out of gas before I got it all the way up, lost control of the bar going down, and tweaked my lower back.

Well, sheeit. On the other hand, I tweaked my back a lot when I started with the barbell, so I knew if I quit right then and waited it will be okay tomorrow. So my Sunday off will be an exercise day. Oh well.

Got the latest set of labs in the mail from the endocrinologist, from the visit on 09/09.

Most stuff looks fine. eGFR is a bit out of range, but within keto limits. Creatinine is a bit high, same. (and the rheumatologist thinks it is fine) Red blood cell count is within the normal range this time; blood donation and hydration probably helped for that. Total testosterone 1295, nine days from the last shot. Free testosterone 24.7 with a suggested high limit of 17.8. SHBG 58.3, about mid-range.

The comment block said "Labs good. Continue current dose of testosterone."

I have another appointment with the nephrology clinic next month. As far as I’m concerned they’re just milking my insurance every three months, but I get to collect more lab data each time.

From my experience that seems to be the standard in the medical field.

As I mentioned earlier, I had to split my usual 30-minute pump sessions into two 15-minute sessions when I went back to using the heating pad.

A few days ago I figured I could make use of that otherwise-wasted time waiting between sets, so I started jelquing in between. I had experimented with jelquing before, but passed it over for other forms of PE. However, having my shaft right there, lubed up and hot all the way through, it seemed like an appropriate time to do some.

Well, if nothing else, it will improve my grip on the barbell…

The purpose of the medical industry isn’t to help patients, it’s to extract the maximum possible amount of money from the patient’s insurance carrier. When viewed through that lens, a lot of the crazy shit they do suddenly makes sense.

Saturday morning I went out to the workshop. I had to come in and pee after a while. As I often do, I sat down at the computer and checked Thunder’s and some blogs. By then I didn’t feel so good. I went to bed about 1100, got up after a while and peed again - weak, and painful, and pain in the small of my back. Fuck, not another UTI! Temperature was 100.8. Nothing to do but ride it out until Monday.

I slept most of Saturday afteroon and Saturday night. By Sunday morning most of the UTI-ish symptoms were gone, temp was down to 99.4, but now I was short of breath. And still extremely tired and sleepy. And I hurt all over; even laying down hurt.

Temperature was down to 98.2 at 0300. I got a few hours of sleep, got up this morning, and temp was 97.6; still a tad high for me, but I felt fine.

I went next door to exercise. My knees were killing me for some reason, so I did all upper-body work. Then I mowed the yard and ran the weed eater for a while. Then I went grocery shopping. I guess the knee problem is "inflammation", since that was where the the first diagnosis was. I’m going to gimp off to the shower and then lay down for a while.

My knees did *not* want to do power snatches this morning, so I did overhead presses and bent-over rows instead.

Get well buddy.

By any chance have you tried BPC-157 as that’s good for inflammation, not the same thing but I used it last year for varicocele and I’ve not had any issues since.

Buck: thanks!

JC: [looks up BPC-157] I haven’t really needed anti-inflammatories since going keto, but I might get some for Mrs. Andy.

Went to bed early last night after all the exercise and yard work. Got up at 0400 to drive to another town to do some database maintenance. Came back around 0800, couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for doing anything, and spent most of the rest of the day in bed. Not sick, just completely ‘out of gas’.

I guess that "overwork" thing the fitness guys talk about isn’t just for exercise. [sigh]