Slow and steady wins the race

The two top photos are from August of 2013, the bottom two are from today, Sunday January 24th, 2016. Now when I look at these photos I don't see much of a difference. I think I was around 500 pounds in August and now I'm hovering at 406, so only 94 pounds. It seems like it's taken decades and at times I feel like I've accomplished nothing. But I keep going. I have to remind myself that it takes time. You can't go from zero to 100 in six seconds when you're driving an old, beat up car with high mileage and knocking lifters, it just don't work. And if it does it won't end well. I have to rebuild the car one piece at a time. Or to mix metaphors, you have to build the foundation before you can build the house. I've spent the last several months working on the foundation.

When I first stepped into the gym I could barely climb the steps to the second floor, now that's no problem. 10 minutes on the treadmill was exhausting for me, now it's how I warm up. I can fit in clothes I haven't had on in 10 years. I can walk through a store without having to stop. I fit in cars, with the seat belt on. So I've made progress. Now it's time to adjust my methods and decide what I want to do. Well, other than the obvious. I still have a great deal of weight to get rid of.

I, like everyone else who spends time in the gym, wish there was some magic trick I could use to simply abra cadabra myself fit and thin, but it just doesn't work that way. Damnit anyway. Myself, being much like that old car trying to make the top of the hill, have to pace myself and go one step at a time. I haven't done my body any favors over the years and it reminds of that fact pretty much every day. There are days when I dwell in the past and remember my younger years when I could push myself far harder than I can today and still walk the next day. Those days, like my sanity, are long gone and should probably just be forgotten. I aint no spring chicken. Though in all honestly I do seem able to hold my own in the gym these days. I've had a chuckle or two watching the youngsters try to keep up with me and failing. That's always good for the ego. And the day I let my ego run ahead of my common sense is the day I hurt myself and have to take 25 steps back.

And that's what I'm dealing with right now. I'm at the point that I want to push harder and faster and yet I know that if I do I'm going to hurt something again and be worse off than if I simply stay with the slow and steady. There's a story about that method winning the race you know. Every time I get an urge to pile on the weight and show off I have to remind myself that it's just not worth it and the only person I need worry about in the gym is me and how I did yesterday and what I want to do tomorrow.  It's not a competition and no one cares anyway. I can't compare myself to anyone else, only myself yesterday or last month or last year. And when I do that I know I've accomplished something.

If you care to look you'll find that there are as many opinions about weight loss and weight lifting as there are people with something to sell. There's books, magazines, websites, blogs and vlogs too. You can watch Youtube videos until your eyes bleed and you're so confused you can't remember your own name. It's all well and good I suppose, but it gets to be a bit much. I focus on only a few very basic principles. Do more today than you did yesterday. Even if it's only one minute or one pound or one rep. Form is VERY important. Form prevents injury. Form puts the focus on the desired muscle. Good form looks cool too. Bad form though, bad form looks silly and puts people in traction. Bad form is the fastest way to ruin a good workout and end it by limping home to find the muscle ointment and pain meds. And finally, try and have fun. People take this shit so seriously. I see it every day, these people that just look pissed the hell off about being in the gym. They show up, look miserable, blast out a few reps, chug their "workout" drink of choice, check themselves out in the mirrors and leave as miserable as they came. Lighten up! Going to the gym is my medicine. It keeps me sane. It reduces my stress level. It gets me out of the house. And one other thing, write it down. I don't know about you but the older I get the less I can seem to remember so if I don't write it down I sure can't remember it in a week, or a month.

When you write it down you can go back later and compare last month, or six months ago, to what you did today. This way you can see what, if anything, has improved. You can see what is and isn't working, you can see what hurt and figure out why (bench pressing with a bad shoulder, not a really fab idea). And this allows you to make changes, to improve your workouts and thus improve yourself. That's where I'm at today. I'm trying to figure out the next step, the next goal and what I need to do to achieve them. This is when that information (opinion) overload gets to be bothersome. Given the plethora of options it's not feasible to simply try them all until something sticks, that would take years. So it becomes necessary to weed through the mounds of bullshit and find the truths, the proven methods, the "tried and true". And even then there's entirely too damn many to choose from. Though it really boils down to lift more. There is some fascinating science behind some of it. Why muscles get bigger and stronger is well known, it's the methods used to achieve this where the confusion often arises.

Here's a little basic science I ehhhhh......borrowed from http://www.builtlean.com/2013/09/17/muscles-grow/

3 Mechanisms That Make Muscles Grow

Underlying all progression of natural muscle growth is the ability to continually put more stress on the muscles. This stress is a major component involved in the growth of a muscle and disrupts homeostasis within your body. The stress and subsequent disruption in homeostasis causes three main mechanisms that spur on muscle growth.

Muscle Growth Mechanism #1: Muscle Tension
In order to produce muscle growth, you have to apply a load of stress greater than what your body or muscles had previously adapted too. How do you do this? The main way is to lift progressively heavier weights. This additional tension on the muscle helps to cause changes in the chemistry of the muscle, allowing for growth factors that include mTOR activation and satellite cell activation.

Muscular tension also most dramatically effects the connection of the motor units with the muscle cells. Two other factors help to explain why some people can be stronger, but not as big as other people.

Muscle Growth Mechanism #2: Muscle Damage

If you’ve ever felt sore after a workout, you have experienced the localized muscle damage from working out. This local muscle damage causes a release of inflammatory molecules and immune system cells that activate satellite cells to jump into action. This doesn’t mean that you have to feel sore in order for this to happen, but instead that the damage from the workout has to be present in your muscle cells. Typically soreness is attenuated over time by other mechanisms.

Muscle Growth Mechanism #3: Metabolic Stress

If you’ve ever felt the burn of an exercise or had the “pump” in the gym, then you’ve felt the effects of metabolic stress. Scientists used to question bodybuilders when they said the “pump” caused their muscles to become larger. After more investigation, it seems as though they were onto something.

Metabolic stress causes cell swelling around the muscle, which helps to contribute to muscle growth without necessarily increasing the size of the muscle cells. This is from the addition of muscle glycogen, which helps to swell the muscle along with connective tissue growth. This type of growth is known as sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and is one of the ways that people can get the appearance of larger muscles without increases in strength.

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Muscle tension is why it's important to do today just a little (or a lot) more than you did yesterday. It's the reason that half hour on the treadmill isn't hard anymore but also why the 45 minutes is. You've adapted to the stress, built the proper muscles to compensate and your body is now able to conduct that activity. If you keep at that half hour for a year you'll probably be wondering why you don't see anymore improvement. Adaptation. The same is true of lifting. If you do the same weight for the same reps in the same order, day after day, month after month, nothing will change after awhile. You'll adapt, it will seem easier, but you won't grow stronger or build more muscle. You have to push just a little harder. And then a little more. Well, unless you're happy with where you're at, if that's the case then congratulations and carry on. You've succeeded. I'm not there yet. Not even on the same continent. Though the ship is steaming in that direction. 

Everyone's favorite, muscle damage. It sounds so darn scary but it's necessary if you want muscle growth. Every time the muscle is damaged it repairs itself and comes back stronger. Well, it should be noted that this form of muscle damage is far different than the other kind of muscle damage. There is a good kind and there is a bad kind. The bad kind can takes months to repair, even require surgery. The key is to know the difference. In my younger days I witnessed several people doing irreparable damage to their muscles by trying to lift entirely too much and failing miserably. Muscle damage is also a reason to push just a little harder every day. If you want them to grow you have to hurt them just a little. Tough love kids, tough love. 

And finally, metabolic stress, or "the burn". I love feeling the burn. It usually starts about the same time as the endorphin rush and that rush is better than snorting coke off a whore's ass (not that I've ever done that, just heard about it). The burn usually starts the rep after you think you can't do anymore reps. 

There are three primary rules to getting stronger, or so I've read and been told. They are:

1. Always train to a point where your muscles are seriously taxed. If you don't, there won't be adequate stimulation for the adaptation response to be triggered. Gym rats call this working "to failure" and it's long been a successful method. I generally don't push to that point but that's because I don't really follow rule 3, I spend 5 days a week in the gym. I need it for my sanity.

2. Always keep changing the exercises you do and the way you do them so your muscles do not adapt too quickly to the work you are doing. There are quite literally thousands of options to choose from.

3. Make sure that you spend more time resting that you do training. Physiologically, training is about breaking down your muscles, while resting is about building them up, so if you are serious about increasing your results, you should train harder but less frequently. This is one rule I don't really follow. I suppose it depends on just how far along you are too. It's also why each day I spend in the gym is dedicated to a different part of my body. 

My 5 days are chest, shoulders, back, triceps & biceps, legs. Every day starts with a 10 minute warm-up, usually on the treadmill. I slacked on this step for a while and paid the price. Hitting the weights straight out of the gate, cold and stiff, first thing in the morning, not a great plan. I keep my rest period between sets to a minute or less and my rest between exercises to around 3 minutes. Sometime when the gym is busy it gets up to around 5 but if it's going to be more than that I just choose a different exercise and move on. I go for 5 or six sets per exercise and 8 to 12 reps, depending on what I'm doing and how much it weighs. So far I've had a lot of success with this method but I've found that lately it's just not having the desired effect any more. Time to change things up some. Time for rule number 2 I suppose.