Week 3 Injury and What It’s Like Gaining 5+ Pounds Per Week
Two weeks ago, I weighed 173.5. That was the most I’ve ever weighed in my life. A week ago, I weighed 179.0 lbs. That’s a gain of 5.5 lbs in 7 days. Each new day, I weighed more than I ever had in my life.
This past week, I hurt my back on my Monday session. I took the week off since I’m not into damaging my back for the sake of…well…anything, other than to save someone else’s life. The week off gave me some clarity.
This post is for me to document some of my thinking before I jump back into this tomorrow. Maybe you’ll find something interesting or useful for yourself as well.
Lifting Injury
During my regularly-scheduled Monday workout, my body didn’t feel strong enough for what I was about to put it through. (nothing special, just the usual workout) For me, that means “hike up your skirt and get over it, Nancy.” So I jumped into the workout.
Leg extensions and hamstring curls were fine and I did them surprisingly well, considering I had added 10+ lbs from the workout only a few days earlier.
Then I got to the squats. Since I’d done 22 reps at the weight I used the previous week, I threw on 22 lbs (most of my weights are metric). I could immediately tell that this wasn’t going to be good. I knew after needing a rest after rep number four that I wasn’t going to make it. My back tightened up and, perhaps stupidly, I kept going. I got ten pretty shitty reps in, set the bar on the rack and immediately downed 1000mg of Ibuprofen and laid on the floor to stretch out my back.
The workout was over.
It’s Sunday, six days later, and I feel like I might be able to lift tomorrow. After talking with a friend, I’m going to add a warmup set for heavy lifts like squat, bench, deadlift, etc. I also need to drink more water. I have a sense that I might have been dehydrated and that’s not good. I’ve also put a mirror out to make sure my form is good; I’ve had my squat form reviewed by a hardcore trainer and she said it was an A+. Still, I need to doublecheck. Bad form often equals injuries.
Food
I took this week off from sticking with the food regimen since it didn’t make sense to pump almost 4,000 calories into my body if I’m not exercising. It was also a good physical and psychological break.
Physically, the best I feel all day is when I wake up. After that, it’s just pumping calories into my stomach which constantly requires more blood in my stomach to digest, it requires my physical energy as well. Add on top of this that I am essentially pushing my physical body into extreme pain and stress so that it overcompensates enough to gain mass. While that first moment of every day is the best I feel, I’m still incredibly sore.
There’s something that happens, psychologically, when every meal and calorie becomes regimented AND you’re constantly filling yourself to physical fullness throughout the entire day. My brain slows down, my body slows down. My productivity and focus are affected. When I’m less productive, I get harder on myself to continue to perform well with my work, etc. It all stacks on and becomes another thing to manage.
Sleep
When I lift and eat like this, I *must* get 8 hours of sleep. I had always read this and, given my fascination with sleep and its various methods, always wondered if I could cheat those 8 hours. I can’t. I just can’t. Often, I’ll need 9-10 hours and even then I don’t feel fully rested. Being a pretty hardcore night owl, it doesn’t make getting up before 11am very easy.
I also find that, regardless of how much sleep I get, I don’t feel physically or mentally rested. It’s almost as though my body is requiring so much energy to physically repair itself that there’s not much left for my mental acuity. I may not be a very smart guy to begin with, and this just makes it worse.
Agility
I generally find myself to be more physically balanced, flexible, limber and agile than the average person. I’m far from the best, but believe I’m slightly above average.
Gaining weight like this has completely screwed that up. I weight almost 15 lbs more than I did a couple months ago, which is when I did a 2-week test of heavy lifting + gallon of milk a day. Lugging around an extra 15 lbs doesn’t make you any more coordinated.
The most noticeable change is that I’m far less agile. I was rearranging some things in my apartment the other day and jumped over a box to miss falling on it. Not only was I unbalanced to the point to where I had to get out of the way of a box - a stationary object - but as I jumped and landed, it was the most miserable landing of my life. I stayed on my feet, but I felt incredibly clumsy and uncoordinated.
Then, things happen like yesterday when I slipped and fell walking *up* the stairs at the beach. Another graceful moment. And no one even laughed. According to Greg Giraldo, that means I’m getting old, too.
Other
There are other things that factor into this that relate to various bodily functions. I’m leaving this out, but noting it here in the event that you are interested in drinking a gallon of milk a day and want to know more. Don’t hesitate to ask me for the left-out-details if you want to know what you’re getting into.
