A throwback wednesday

Apologies for flaunting social conventions and doing a "throwback" style post on Wednesday instead of Thursday, but I think you all will make it.

I've gotten a couple of comments recently that I hadn't done a fitness post in a while! I was surprised, I didn't think anyone really enjoyed reading about that sort of stuff. I mostly started posting about it as a way to keep myself accountable; at the time, I had just switched from cutting (losing weight) to maintenance / bulking (I did maintenance for a month then bulked - gaining weight). Switching from having such a clear goal in my mind while cutting to bulking because ... because that's what everyone says you should do, left me feeling like I was spinning my wheels. That, combined with starting WoW back up, made me concerned that I'd start skipping the gym and lose everything I had worked hard for over the past 4-6 months. Once I got into a good groove with the gym and found my motivation again, I didn't feel compelled to post about it every week.

Here's what happened over the past however many months since I last posted about fitness stuff:

I started off using a program that I kind of cobbled together that was focused on both strength and hypertrophy (muscle size) gains. This program was based on principles from other popular programs that had the same goal. Since I didn't have any social sports over the winter, I added a 4th day at the gym, and originally I had planned on running 3 times a week. At some point my hip started bothering me and I took a couple weeks off of running to let it heal. Of course, this break from running also happened to coincide with the cold weather, and as much as I love running in the cold (it's awful), I ended up just not running over the winter at all.

At some point I changed my rep scheme up on my strength day. Initially I had been following the 5/3/1 scheme, but I felt like only doing this on a single day didn't make a ton of sense. I went to 4 sets of 3, and then if I succeeded at that, the next week I'd do 4 sets of 4. All of this went swimmingly until ...

Ok, so back in the fall, one night during kickball my right knee was kind of bothering me. I am 98% certain I hurt it while running around the bases; I'm not sure if I planted at a funny angle or what, but the outside of my knee hurt, and it was even worse when I rounded the bases. I didn't think much of it at the time, and indeed, the pain was largely gone the next day. I've had similar twinges in the past, things I just jot down as landing awkwardly and needing to rest to recuperate.

But at some point the pain would come back after lifting. It never hurt while I was doing the exercises so I wasn't even sure what was causing it. It went from kind of bothering me every once in a while if I stood up quickly (awkwardly?) to being painful every day after the gym, even when walking. Along the way I tried changing up my form on Squats in various ways - feet closer together, feet farther apart, lighter weights, etc. The only thing that succeeded in doing was injuring my hip (not in the same place as before). I took a 3 week break from Squats, but continued deadlifting, etc. The knee seemed better so I tried lower weights with Squats ... the pain returned. It even had started to bother me while I was lifting. Deadlifts and even bent over rows were now causing me issues.

Looking back I probably should have just stopped sooner. In the moment though, it's hard to convince yourself to stop and lose most of the progress you've made over the past 6-8 months. I kept thinking that if I just found the right form it would stop hurting. I never did find that form. So I stopped doing deadlifts and squats altogether. At my "peak" I had done 4 sets of 4 squats at 285 lbs and 3 sets of 4 deadlifts at 335. Those numbers aren't earth shattering for most serious lifters, but there were very few people at my gym that lifted more than I did on those exercises. Even some guys that were clearly bigger than me weren't lifting as much as I was. I took pride in that and that is part of what made it so difficult to stop. What finally really forced me to stop is that we started running again, having signed up for several races.

My knee didn't usually bother me while running, but sometimes it would bother me afterward. Having some occasional knee pain while at work after lifting didn't seem terribly awful ... having knee pain during / after running or playing sports seemed like a terrible idea though. So I stopped squatting and deadlifting and told myself that if I was still having knee pain in a month, I'd go to the doctor.

Pause here because I know some people will be reading this thinking, "why didn't you go to the doctor sooner?!" And the answer to that is - if I had gone to the doctor and said, "hey I'm having a lot of knee pain while doing squats and deadlifts at the gym, what should I do?" the doctor would have said, "stop squatting and deadlifting, wait a month, see if it still hurts."

At this point, the knee pain is mostly gone. We have a half marathon this coming Sunday and I will be interested to see how well I do! I'll let you know how it goes.

At any rate, when I finished my cut last fall, I was ~176 lbs. I spent 4 weeks at maintenance and then 18 weeks bulking - I finished my bulk at around 190 lbs. 14 lbs over 18 weeks is pretty good! Assuming ideal conditions, you can gain about a half pound of muscle every week; that would put me at 9 lbs of muscle gained and 5 lbs of fat. If that's actually the case, that would be awesome ... but somehow I doubt that's how much I really gained. I guess we'll find out when I finish my cut!