Shoulder Pain and Strength

One of the recent improvements that I've noticed in my shoulder is that increased strength helps me manage the residual pain.What I mean is this:  previously when I moved my arm and felt pain, there was also weakness and that compounded the tendency to give in to the pain. As strength has increased, I will push through certain painful movements instead of giving in to them. To me it seems that as I do this I experience less pain than I was experiencing previously.

It could be that the completed movements are exercising the affected areas, and as a result there is less pain.  Also it could be that it's mental. Because I move through the pain more easily with the increased strength, I subconsciously discount the pain message and move anyway.

Physical, mental or maybe even both, my strength has incased and that's getting me down the road to a more complete recovery.  I'm still marking a lot of this quick recent improvement to the results of using the Les Mills Pump workouts. The barbell is doing the trick. My right shoulder is coaxed into performing as well as my right shoulder.

Still Sold On Les Mills Pump

I'm thinking that this will be my last week of physical therapy. Unless the therapist and doc can give me really compelling reasons to continue with that program, I'm really satisfied with - heck, I'm excited about - continuing the recovery using Les Mills Pump.

http://bcove.me/9l7g24ty

I've been suggesting this BeachBody program to a number of younger guys that I thought could benefit from its high energy/high reps approach to barbell exercise. Then I realized that, at middle age facing senior citizen status, I'm an excellent candidate for Pump.

Still feeling weak in my right shoulder from bone spur surgery on June 1st, I started this past weekend using the bar without any weight. Immediately I saw that using the barbell gave me feedback to work the right side harder in order to keep the bar level.

I've added 5 lbs to the bar the past couple of days and the shoulder is doing great. There is some soreness from doing the exercise, bur it is much less than it had been earlier.  Soon I'll start adding different weight amounts that will be appropriate for what I can handle on that particular exercise.

Using Pump is literally like waking up the muscles in my back and shoulder. It just happens to be the scratch for my particular itch, but if you are having a shoulder issue, I'm on board for highly recommending Les Mills Pump. Check it out at http://beachbodycoach.com/drrmc.

Pumping My Way To Total Recovery

Recovery from surgery on my shoulder has gone like I expected even though I being told that I'm doing great compared to others. I'm still very weak in my right shoulder and haven't been able to get back into P90X. I had planned that this would be the summer that I tore it up on X. Spring workouts were going fantastic. In fact, I was doing Insanity workouts along with my X workouts.

The problem was a bone spur in my right shoulder that developed as a result of a torn rotator cuff I didn't even know I had. In fact the doctor said it was a very "impressive" bone spur. She said she had to dig around a bit in the shoulder to clean things up. But she didn't do any muscle work or  graphs - just spur removal. So I'm a bit put out and bothered by the persistent post operative weakness in my shoulder.

I am excited about a work-around that I'm trying out. Where P90X uses dumbbells, Les Mills Pump uses barbells. Dumbells accentuate the weaknesses in opposing arms. Barbells provide some equity between the relative strengths of the left and right arms and shoulders. So I'm starting on the Les Mills program as a path to recovering my strength in my right shoulder and arm. After reviewing the program I think I've hit on a great plan.

So today is my first day of Les Mills. I'll continue to post the progress and nutrition here and show the results. But I am so looking forward to getting back to P90X and Insanity just as soon as I can.

Well, as they say in Les Mills Pump, "Kia Haha!"  Be Strong!

Power Routines

Spring break is over and I thrilled! That interlude into my daily routine brought on a major case of lousy. I didn't exercise for days. And I really missed the Insanity workouts we've done after school. I was just beginning to notice some great progress. I hope that I'll still see that there's been progress when I do my next session.

There are a couple of teachers doing Insanity with me after school. We aren't going through the program by the book. We take one routine and do it until we have an acceptable level of mastery. Then we add another routine and mix them until we feel we have a handle on both. Then ass another and rotate those. We'll keep,doing that until all the workout routines are in the mix. It should be summer by then and I can start a round of Insanity from start to finish getting some bragging rights results!

I was on the road a lot during Spring break. I really don't do very well traveling. I ate food that normally I won't touch. And I spent a couple of days at my parents house. That is a dangerous place for me nutritionally. So many kinds of good food and so much of it.

But, I'm back now and ready to make this an awesome April and May. Routine and familiarity can be powerful allies in the battle to win our health and fitness back. I'm looking forward to the routines of doing Insanity with my friends, of eating foods I make and I know are nutritionally safe and helpful. I enjoy the routines and rhythms of my life in my home. All of these work together to make me a winner with my health.

Catching Up

Can't believe I've gone so long without a post. Here's a quick rundown of my progress.

The treadmill running has been really good. I hit the three mile mark a while back, but I've backed off of it because my knees started bothering me. Apparently I'm still a little heavy for long distance running. So I dropped down to 1.5 to 2 miles and started focusing on building speed. I'm really quite satisfied with my modification and my progress.

It's getting warmer and I reclaimed the garage for my P90X workouts. I restart the round tomorrow. Next year I'll just have to invest in a heater for the garage. And at work something else starts tomorrow: one of my co workers and I will be doing insanity. We had done it some last year, but this year our schedules just didn't workout. We've both decided that we're doing this anyway and tomorrow we start doing Insanity. That is totally a coincidence, HIIT it will be interesting to see me keep up running, P90X and Insanity.

Nutrition is doing super. Back on at least one Shakeology a day. Watching my other meals.

Okay, more later. I've got to get my rest before tomorrow gets here.

Keep the Beat Up, Let's Drop the Beat Down

Using the treadmill as part of my overall fitness program is working very well. Currently I am mixing the HIIT training g with 5K training. That combination has pushed me to intensify my running much more quickly than I would have with the HIITs alone.

Coming to the conclusion that HIIT may not be the best term to describe all my slow/fast routines. When being faithful to the math of my runs, they tend to be very HIIT like. However, when I'm being less stringent with counting phases of speed bursts during the run, the proper term is probably "fartlek". No, the boys in math class didn't come up with that one, although it is kind of fun the way it rolls off the tongue. It is actually Swedish for "speed play" according to Wikipedia. That really is the idea. In a pure fartlek the runner selects a short term goal, like a visual marker in order to push himself harder while running until reaching that marker and then slowing down for awhile. The process repeats itself throughout the run. The goal is, like doing a HIIT, to go through cycles of exhaustion and recovery during a single run.

Since I'm doing fartlek on a treadmill, a visual goal in the distance isn't possible. I use the songs I listen to on my iPhone to vary my speed: fast riff, run fast; ballad, slow down. I'm using the music to motivate my running speed. I love doing this. A song with great electric guitar riffs/solos makes a great running song for me. Sometimes other styles/genres of music qualify on the basis of their individual uniqueness. There’s nothing like hitting the top speeds on a treadmill while listening to something like T.S.O.’s “Figaro” by Mozart. No, don’t picture powdered wigs and harpsichords. Nothing like that at all after Trans Siberian Orchestra gets a hold of a piece of music.

Oops, sorry. This is supposed to be about fitness and running, not music appreciation.

Anyway, it works. Fartlek running on a treadmill while listening to  good rock music. Helps you get a better burn.

Later folks.

New Toys!

I received some really nice gifts from my family this Christmas. One I'm enjoying learning about is a Nike+ unit. I'm looking forward to using this to track my walks/runs and compare it to readouts on the treadmill. I'm at my in-laws house today in Memphis, TN. I took my first walk this morning. I slipped out before anyone else got up and walked to Starbucks. The stats are recorded on my iPhone as I walk and a summary report is given at the end. Today was 26'42" for a walk of 1.52 miles. According to the report I burned 240 calories. That seems high to me (check some of my earlier posts about the calories count issues with treadmills - looks like it might apply to Nike+ as well.

I can see interesting possibilities using this. I can instant, accurate records of all my cardio workouts, even on the treadmill.

Sauna

The fitness center has a (large and working) sauna. I really enjoy using the sauna after an intensive set of HITTs. At the fitness center where I formerly had my membership, the sauna was small (three people was about all it could accommodate) and often broken down. This sauna is spacious and hot! I'm having to acclimate myself to the heat.

There are definite advantages to using the sauna. One is that it helps reduce muscle soreness from a hard workout. Another is that it helps rid the skin of free radicals. Sweating also moves excess salt out of your body (when I've been using a sauna regularly I can tell when I've eaten salty food - I can taste it in the sweat that runs across my lips). And finally, if it is quiet in the sauna, the combination of heat and solitude can be very relaxing.

The big myth is that weight can be sweated off in a sauna. There is a slight boost in metabolism that would mean a small increase in calories burned, but nothing worth building a weight reduction plan on. Sweat, no matter what circumstances produce it, does not come from fat. It is not being melted off. Sweat comes from fluidic the blood and that fluid is replaced the next time you drink water or do anything else to hydrate.

The sauna is enjoyable with definite benefits, but it is no substitute for the hard work of strenuous exercise.

Liar, Liar

I started using computers back in 1989. They were a bit more primitive back then (and the first nominee for understatement of the year is . . . ). I used Word Perfect for my writing projects. I remember how sometimes to get the settings to work right I would have lie to the computer, tell it a paper size or a margin was different from what it actually was. That was a liberating realization. It kept from fighting with the computer and allowed me to get my way.

Treadmills are notorious for over estimating the number of calories burned in a session. They give a false sense of accomplishment, making the user feel that he has worked harder than he actually has. But there is a way around this flaw.

Lie.

Select a treadmill that takes weight information. That data is figured into the treadmills computer to gauge calories burned during a workout. For a given speed, the higher the weight entered when the workout began, the higher the number of calories shown as burned. So at the beginning of my treadmill workout I will enter a lower weight than I actually weigh. The final number of calories burned will not be inflated.

This doesn't make the "calories burned" count accurate, but it will avoid the reporting of the unduly inflated number of calories burned.

So how much lower should the weight number be? My guess is about 20%. I'll try to look into that and get a more "fact based" estimate. My personal practice is to put in the weight I want to be, not the weight I am. That gives me some idea of how hard I will need to work to burn a set number of calories. It's still off, but it's a good starting place.

One more note: incline makes almost no difference, though it should. I've experimented with this on a few treadmills, keeping speed the same, but trying various incline settings. I really can't see that there is anything in the treadmills computer function that takes into account steeper inclines resulting in harder work and more calories burned.

Treadmill Redux

Coming back around to using a treadmill in my fitness quest. I'm a fan of P90X and sane nutrition, but there is a dynamic for me I using a treadmill that helps keep me motivated with exercise and nutrition. And, not to belabor the point, there is nothing passive about the way I use a treadmill.

I practice high intensity interval training sets on a treadmill (HIITs for short). There are several approaches to this, but the basic premise is that the intensity of the workout is varied from moderate to exhaustion through several cycles. When I was doing this regularly and running on the treadmill I would start with a slow warm up for 5 minutes, gradually picking up my speed and breaking out onto a jog. Then I would begin increasing my speed by intervals of 2 every 30 seconds until I reached exhaustion, at which point I would drop back down to my jog speed. After just a minute to rest I would begin increasing my pace again, but by intervals of 3, and continue until I reach exhaustion again. I would repeat that until I reached intervals of 6. After reaching exhaustion on that set I would start going back down in numbers (intervals of 6, 5, 4, 3, 2). I would consider it complete when's had reached the last set of intervals of 2. I'm not a fast runner, so my goal was augmented with the objective of running 3 miles in 30 minutes. The fitness variable was getting as much speed as possible before exhaustion.

Here I am now starting over again (I quit the pathetic fitness center where my membership was and tried to supplement it with walking around my community - not the same thing / same results at all). I'm having to start over walking on the the treadmill but I'm still practicing intense intervals, but with modifications until I'm running again.

I start off with a lower body stretch. I would always do. I like the experience of feeling my body becoming increasingly limber. I jumped on the treadmill once a few years ago, thinking I really didn't need to stretch that day and ended up with a pulled muscle. The pain of that experience has made me a confirmed stretcher for before and after each treadmill session.

I then do the slow warm up on the treadmill. When I'm ready to start I initiate the settings. Since I'm walking during my HIITs right now, I'm incorporating the use of steep inclines and make them the major variable. I set the speed at 3.5 (a good moderate pace) and the incline at 4. For each minute I increase speed and incline by intervals of 1 and continue until I' be reached maximum walking speed (right now 4.5 at lower inclines, less at higher inclines). After reaching maximum walking speed I continue to increase incline until I reach exhaustion. Then I drop back down on speed and incline, but not quite as far down on the incline (maybe only as far as 5.0, an increase of 2 intervals). I repeat the process until exhaustion, then start again at a higher incline.

I never start running. I make myself work harder by walking fast at a steep incline. Try this and you can get yourself I to a dripping mess, which, of course, you really want to do. People who never break a sweat using a treadmill really aren't accomplishing much. You will be able track you increasing fitness by using HIITs on a treadmill. And by the way, no holding on to the front or side hand holds. Walk with your hands swinging. That increases the level of your "work" while you're on the treadmill. At lower speeds you can also occasionally lock your hands behind your head, elbows high, for a workout of your abs.

This is where I'm starting as I work toward getting back up to running my HIITs on the treadmill again. In a few days I'll have to be on the road and away from my fitness center. The advantage of what I'm doing now is that I can still go out and just walk the neighborhood in order to keep my conditioning on track.

Remember, your goal is to work out on the treadmill, not just ride it. No matter what your fitness level, there is a way forgo to use a treadmill that is challenging and will improve your physical condition.