AKA Physically Wreck Yourself Until You Finally Realize You’re Not 22 Anymore. Then Learn A Few Lessons And Change Things Before Debilitating Yourself Permanently.
That is possibly the worst secondary title ever committed to digital paper.
So, let’s hop into the old time machine once more and head back to yesteryear. We’ve covered a lot of this, so let’s just do a speed run this time : Cliff depressed, Cliff not doing well, Cliff starts freelance writing, Cliff realizes he’s in awful shape, Cliff decides to do something about it. There. All caught up. Imagine that in the form of a montage with some sort of 80’s music with a pulsing beat cranked up in the background to maximize the awesomeness. May I suggest this? Holy shit, nothing says 80’s rock like multiple band members sporting perms.
Like probably everyone else who decides to get their increasingly fat ass up off the chair to do something about it, I began with little idea of what to actually do. And the weird thing is that I don’t really remember how I came up with my initial workout plans at all. I just sort of…did. It was all very basic, with different pushup variations and anything else that didn’t really require a lot of gear.
I might not have specific memories of exactly what I was doing, but I do remember that before long it started to feel like something that I wanted to make part of my new routine. My life at that point was mostly a beaten down me clawing my way out of a veritable Sarlacc Pit of my own misery, so something providing a good feeling was a solid shot in the arm. I started chasing that endorphin rush like a junkie desperately grasping for the next hit to fill his veins with a brief, fleeting feeling of fiery joy. Looking back now, I realize that working out became a bit of a lifeline. I was trying to clamber out of my own unhappy little world, and it was helping me push my way back up and out of the hole. To some degree this is still true. As I spend my time looking for a new job that will open up some opportunities to make big chunks of progress in my life, I can still look at exercise results as evidence of positive progression for myself. Hence why I become a bit of a pissy little bitch when I hurt myself doing something stupid and can’t work out for a couple of weeks. This is something I’ve been working on…I shouldn’t have so much emotional investment in one aspect of my existence. But we’re veering towards future blog post territory here, so let’s get back on the road and rejoin this one.
As I chased down my next moment of bliss, the other benefits of this particular life change started to make themselves known. It didn’t take too long for the weight to start sliding off, since that initial cut is usually pretty rapid once you start seriously moving around. The joy increased as visible results became more readily available for perusal. That was the good part. The bad part was that at the same rate that my motivation went up, so did my desire to see that progress accelerate. It’s like once that aforementioned junkie has developed a tolerance for the dragon he’s chasing and has to start shooting more and more and more. So I kept adding more and more and more to what I was doing. Not only was I trying to clamber up and over a wall, but I was building the wall up higher first. And as time went along and my enjoyment increased, I was adding more gear and more exercise options. So why not add ALL the everything at once?
See, every time I’d learn something new or a variation on something that I already liked doing, I’d just add it to the routine. I don’t mean replace something with it…no, that would make sense. I mean I’d just add it to what was becoming a sizable stack of exercises. It got to the point that I was doing 22+ different exercises per workout, then repeating that insanity in a circuit from Hell. I’d rip off 6-8 kinds of pushups alone. Did I mention the bare minimum warmup of any kind that preceded these marathon sessions? I’d perhaps do a minute of jumping jacks and maybe one other thing for another minute and then it was time to dive in to what ‘really mattered’. Yeah. Pretty far from smart.
Oh, but it gets worse. So much dumber and worse. Not only was I over-exerting myself without letting muscles warm up and stretch out to begin with, but I wasn’t really letting anything rest, either. I’d just jump from one exercise to the next with the only break being whatever amount of time it took for me to physically get from one spot to the next one. I’d hop from a push exercise to a pull exercise and back to a push and so on with no real break. Perhaps I’d get a few extra seconds of reprieve because I was sucking down a couple mouthfuls of water, but that was it.
Once these ridiculous affairs finally reached an end with me barely able to move my limbs any longer, I’d do a bare minimum of stretching and just go about my day. I’d spend perhaps five minutes stretching out with no cool down, so I was still actively sweating once that was finished. Wrap it up! Brilliant! Can’t see how this can go wrong at all!
Ah yes, the mantra of idiots. Seriously, if anyone EVER tells you this load of horseshit, they’re either a masochist or a moron. Or both. Quick aside, but one of my favorite Youtube channels is BroScienceLife. The guy lampoons the meathead gym idiots that everyone has encountered at least once in their life who regularly spew crap like that from their mouths. It amuses me greatly. But this was also how I was ‘thinking’ (and I use that term very loosely). The only smart thing I did was having rest days, but that was it. And I GUESS it was a ‘positive’ that I was working out in a balanced way and destroying all of me equally? I was physically hammering myself into the ground. And then I started working again. Did I taper my workouts down? No. I just stacked on a sometimes physical job, all without increasing my food intake. So now I’d work out, eat, go to work and consume all of an apple over the next 5 hours before coming home again. That sounds GREAT. And this is where I’d like to welcome grim reality up onto the stage!
I was already constantly suffering through aches and pains and muscle strains and not getting the hint. I’d take a few days off, then just hop right back into the maelstrom of madness that my routine was. And then, my left knee decided to flare up…well, to be fair, I decided to set it off by being dumb. I have a bit of tendonitis in my lower left patellar tendon. I can do all kinds of squats and lunges and jumps and cardio and whatever and it’s fine, but side planks equal bad. I don’t know what it is about that position, but it is GUARANTEED to set it off, and then I spend the next few days in a sleeve because every time I’m descending stairs or a ladder it feels like my knee is going to give out. Well, I got my shiny new TRX and decided that it would be totally fine to do TRX side planks, which involves both your feet being stacked one on top of the other in a stirrup. Long story short : not fine. Three weeks in the sleeve, popping ibuprofen 4 times a day as an anti-inflammatory, icing the knee every day when I got home from work until it was finally back to normal.
Lesson learned? Not really, because at the same time that this was going on, my right arm was starting to get cranky. I figured I had strained something, so I’d rest it for a week or so only to crank the whole machine back up again once it was feeling better. It kept happening and I didn’t change anything. And then one day, it stopped getting better.
“Oh good,” you’re thinking, “This is where he had that epiphany.” Um…yeah…
Kept going. I stopped doing any sort of push exercise when that kept triggering it, but I kept right on doing pullups and chinups and whatever else. I already knew when I started writing this that I was going to come off as dumb, but now that I’m actually reading these words…ugh. I think I need a drink.
As you might imagine, things kept getting worse. So I finally just stopped. And the pain didn’t. I sleep on my side with my arm tucked under the pillow, and for awhile I physically couldn’t do that without pain. I went to Kelowna on vacation a couple of summers ago stressed out that I had torn something in my arm. That FINALLY scared some fucking sense in to my head.
What had actually happened was that my biceps tendon flared up and started screaming “DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” so loudly that I simply couldn’t ignore it anymore. Months went by and it finally felt better. I could sleep normally again. And I started ever so slowly to begin working out anew, only this time things were very different.
My average workout time really hasn’t changed all that much, but the composition of what I’m doing has been altered drastically. Longer warmups and a whole Hell of a lot more cool down and stretching at the end. Now I mix in a little cardio interval after every exercise I do. I’m still working hard, but those muscle groups get a bit of time to regroup, which also makes things more effective since my next set of reps is likely to be better now that the muscles being worked aren’t already dead from the start. If I do something high intensity one day, I’m going to taper things down the next. Worn out and sore? Time for a break, or something like this, which is just a lot of warmup and stretching and some really light exercise intervals. I do a lot more circuits of half a dozen things a couple of times over, or a few exercises mixed with some high intensity cardio in quick bursts. I’ve also started doing foot/ankle stretch and strength exercises like this a couple of times a week. If your feet are fucked up, you’re fucked up. So actively trying to avoid that becoming reality seems like a good idea to me. And I own a foam roller, though using it a lot more often is something I still need to get on board with. I’ve started, though.
And if I’m hurting a bit, I alter what I’m doing. For example, right now I’m doing a program designed to help boost your pullup/chinup rep counts. It involves a lot of hanging from a 
I’ve started paying a lot more attention to persistent and repeated physical problems. An example : about a year ago, the plane we work with at work changed from an Airbus to a 757. That meant a downsizing of the freight containers we were able to use, but also that the containers load differently into the plane. I won’t bore you with the details. You’re welcome. Soon after, I started noticing persistent groin and quad pulls in my left leg. I wasn’t working out any differently, so I focused on how I was moving around at work. I was now basically side stepping the one end of the container into the plane, which meant up to 5,000 pounds was being shifted in a side step. That’s a lot of load being borne by a few specific muscle groups. So I changed the way I was moving and haven’t had an issue since. There have been other, smaller changes like that as well. Instead of persisting with some macho ‘grin and bear it’ crap that leads to nothing more than injuries later on, I’m now focused on dealing with problems to avoid them in the first place.
I finally decided to learn a little bit about caloric intake and the like, though I’ve never gotten to the point of calorie counting because that seems miserable and generally shitty. I just try to be a lot smarter about what I eat, and how much, and when. I actually did the basic calculation to figure out my Basal Metabolic Rate, which is how many calories you need to consume in a day when you do absolutely jack shit. Mine is right around 2,000. And I basically never spend an entire day doing absolutely jack shit, so I eat a lot more than that. I also eat a lot more during the day when I’m at work.
Net result of both of those things : more fat loss, since my body isn’t clinging to every ounce with a death grip as I’m no longer starving it for half a day every weekday. And I actually possess muscle tone, which is different and fun. I actually have lats and traps and leg definition and…whatever those muscles are where your shoulder comes down on to your arm. You know, those…hold on a second :
Those! Whatever those are. Anyway, I spent all summer rocking sleeveless t-shirts and tank tops. It felt good actually getting sun all over me (though without any real tan. I am not wired to tan). By the way, if you’re of the mistaken belief that strutting around like a toned motherfucker will bring the ladies around, allow me to set you straight. The only conversations you’ll have are with obsessed Crossfit dudes who want to blather on about their super sets and pull ups. It’s a definite downside.
And hey, it’s not all about being a showy bastard. I’m also a lot stronger. I can shift around a lot more weight at work a lot more easily than I could before. Some of that is technique and learning how to do so more efficiently, but some of it is strength improvement. My overall stamina is better, too…and I’m leaving that sitting there as a softball sex joke for anyone to jump on top of…OH LOOK, THERE’S ANOTHER ONE. You’re welcome.
Getting back to food intake, could I full-on micro-manage the Hell out of my diet and start figuring out EXACTLY how much of everything to eat every hour of every day? Sure. But I’m never going to do that, because I really don’t give that much of a shit about it. That would also suck all of the joy out of actually exercising, and I still do this because I enjoy it. I like pushing myself. I like improving myself. I like the endorphin rush once I’m done. I get enough post-workout energy that my daily coffee consumption has dropped significantly because I don’t really need it as much anymore. This need has also been reduced since I started taking cold showers. On purpose. Yep. It’s good for you for a lot of reasons, and it gives you a nice little bitch slap of wakefulness. Oh, and actually getting enough sleep helps, too.
Long story short : I finally grew a lick of sense, learned some more about what the Hell I was doing, and realized that I’m not a kid who can get away with overdoing things because he’s still a machine awash in testosterone. I know just enough to be dangerous, but no longer dangerous to myself. And that’s pretty sweet.
