I wanted to update to say this was probably right. Strengthening and stretching my traps seems to have relieved the pain in that spot almost completely. So thanks for the help with that!
I do still notice some pain at a spot on my spine higher up though. It’s acute if I apply pressure, like a bruise. Not sure what that is about as I don’t think the bar actually makes contact there.
I’m glad that was helpful! “Probably right” is way up at the top end of my range, lol.
Your problem at the top of the spine is tricky. In almost every exercise your neck should be pretty neutral and stable, so its a bit hard to diagnose IMO. Seems almost like it might be more from tension or something like that. I might try some of those lite exercises rolling your neck and mildly stretching from side to side, like they recommend for office workers that are holding their heads in awkward positions for a long time. You could play around with a lacrosse ball or equivalent to try to massage the muscles around the sore spot and see if that helps.
I’ve got 32 days to try to lose as much weight as I can before going to see the girl in Costa Rica. I think I’m going to do carb-loading 200-150-100-50, repeat. It’s the one thing that usually seems to work, and I can stick do w/o wanting to rip off my coworker’s heads.
The good news is I already have the best exercise habit I’ve ever had in my life going. I just need to stop buying nibbly things like dried mango that I just graze on all day. Also one greek yogurt a day isn’t bad. But I’ve been doing three lately.
Breakfast is usually an egg sandwich on that Ezekial sprouted wheat bread and half a grapefruit - like 35 cabs, not bad. Lunch is a pre-made salad, also not bad. Dinner is kind of a mess and I get really hungry after my late afternoon workout.
Abs doms might be worse than legs.
Exactly how much weight did you put on since you saw her last?
I’m 255 right now. I was about 235 but maybe 7 lbs. less muscle plus 3 years of that one lb a year of bone density we all gain. So I probably look about 10 lbs heavier. If I can lose that 10 lbs it will be pretty good.
At 255lbs with 32 days to work with, it shouldn’t be that hard. Keep up the exercise, limit your calories to something like 1800-2000/day (and count them meticulously) and you should get there. If at 2wks in you’re not halfway there, then maybe you can change plans.
Lol I’ve been there. Not fun when any laugh, sneeze, cough etc. makes you double over.
Yeah its definitely doable but its going to be uncomfortable. To meet a hard deadline like that you’ll need to run a very disciplined calorie deficit. I’d track every calorie, its a lot of work but I think it helps to know you’re only going to do it for 32 days.
There’s something to be said for tons of light exercise as well. For example my normal routine is to read the news and watch some educational videos in the morning with coffee. In the Spring when I was getting chubby from pandemic life I started going for a walk with coffee in the morning. It probably consumed about 100c or 200c, without compromising my ability to do high intensity workouts later in the day.
I will vote for my own ban for this:
We’re rollin’.
Tina Turner is 80. Probably still has great legs.
Update on this beast - I do the wide grip and close grip pullups with two weight bands and I still have to give a slight assist with my foot. I swear I can’t tell if I’m making progress.
My dips however have moved from two weight bands to one. I love dips. The ab thing is good too.
The Peloton stretching classes are almost as good for me as the cycling imo. I really never stretch unless I’m doing a few yoga classes I own videos of and those are 30-35 minutes so I tend to put them off more often than I should. A 10 minute cooldown stretch video gets me to do some form of stretching more often. Kind of lame I need that to do stretches but it helps.
Sometimes lack of progress/improvement on a specific movement can be related to proper form. With pullups, people’s default form tends to put more emphasis on their shoulders and not enough on activating their back muscles.
The military lady who posted a guide to improve pullups that I shared emphasizes the separate motions of the pullup. Break it down.
