Lurker > Jiek_Fafn

I've decided to split my routine into a fairly standard push/pull instead of my previous all encompassing workouts. While it's now 6 days a week, it's a little less intimidating to invest like 45 minutes a day instead of 1.5 hours. Im on day 2 and so far and my energy levels have been better through the workout instead of dragging partway in. We'll see how this goes but I definitely at least needed some change of pace mentally.

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PSN: Jiek

Balrog0 posted...

Im feeling like shit. Works been real stressful lately. Still been doing my workouts but I haven't been as focused

I feel ya man. That's generally half of my year. This one in particular. I miss quarantine and being laid off so much.

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PSN: Jiek

pojr posted...

Can I ask an idiot question here?

So I've been doing P90X for about a week and a half now. When I finish a workout, sometimes I feel like I didn't put it as much effort and as I should have.

However what I'm in the middle of the workout, I feel like I'm giving it my all. And when I say all, I mean like 90% because I do want to save my energy to be able to complete the rest of the workout. P90X is an hour long (sometimes an hour and a half) workout so I don't want to die early and not be able to complete it.

Maybe I'm just making excuses. What you guys think? You guys have the same thoughts when you work out?

P90x is designed to burn a bunch of calories and give you some newb strength gains. With that, you kind of get out of it what you put in. So you're burning fewer calories if you're not going all in.

Honestly, that's not a terrible thing here though as long as you're giving it a reasonable amount of effort. Provided you're able to recover in between workouts properly and don't run yourself too ragged to the point it negatively effects your training, you'd probably lose a couple more pounds if you went all out. For a lot of people pushing themselves too hard makes them quit though. So do something sustainable over breaking your spirit.

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PSN: Jiek

Week I'm review:
...
Uh, we'll pretend I did a deload week here. 2nd dose took alot out of me. Normal life stuff was fine. Fitness life was pathetic but I at least went through the motions. Diet was terrible. Up like 2 lbs. I figured trying to eat at a caloric deficit was not going to turn out well when I was already groggy. I maybe pigged out more than I should have.

On the positive side, my energy is increasing so I should be back to normal for next week.

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PSN: Jiek

Just finished the most bipolar workout of my life. Got my 2nd dose of vaccine yesterday which made me exhausted today and my arm hurt. So I decided to take pre workout. I havent had any pre-workout for like 2 weeks now so I was both brimming with energy and tired af at the same time.

My face was tingling. My body had the strength but my lifts were all sloppy. Thursday is usually my high reps day where I focus on controlled deliberate movements. Instead it was like my high weight days where I definitely cheat some reps at the end with my shitty form. Only my shitty form was the entire workout. Probably best to have this happen with weight where I'm less likely to injure myself.

Also, I was unable to properly do anything that engaged my front/side delts much. Those are being pushed to tomorrow. Like I could have forced my way through them but why. I'll just give them a proper beating tomorrow when they feel better. Plus it's like 3 exercises. It'll only take 15 minutes.

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PSN: Jiek

Your lats are looking good in that picture. Getting a nice V shape going on

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PSN: Jiek

Week in review:
Diet went poorly. Work drained me again this week so doordash was used repeatedly with my overtime money. I was a little more mindful than usual and didn't overorder too bad though. Down 1 lb for the week.

Workouts also were rough. I did a cycle off of pre-workout because I realized I didn't have any on my Tuesday workout and figured I was due. So workouts were a slog but I hit all my standard numbers. So not too bad. Just tiring.

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PSN: Jiek

H0LD_Austin_Era posted...

What do you guys do for aches/pains?

I do light workouts and I find the next day when I take a break I get light headaches and a bit of pain near my upper back and neck area. It's like I need a good massage. Just pop a back pain pill?

I've never gotten a headache the day after from a work out. Usually if I get one it's only from dehydration or something that day.

The other parts it depends what it is. If it's standard muscle fatigue/DOMS I just deal with it. If it's a real pain I try to figure out what I'm doing incorrectly and correct it. That sentence is giving me flashbacks to my days of behind the back OHP and all of the unnecessary pain it caused me.

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PSN: Jiek

@CHM_Punk No street tacos?
That chicken looks good af though. My motivation to cook anything that takes more than 2 minutes is terrible. I should really meal prep or something on the weekends. I'm starting to get sick of eggs of some kind every day.

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PSN: Jiek

Njolk posted...

I ran shirtless for the first time and got catcalled by a car of fat middle aged women (I have a six pack and whatever)

Wow I just learned so much about what it's like to be a woman every day. What a gross, deflating feeling that is

I personally love it. It's pretty much my whole reason for working out. As I get older it's even more rewarding.

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PSN: Jiek

Week in review:
Worked a million hours this week so I fell off my diet completely by mid week. At one point was down 2 lbs. I end the week up one. All things considered, not that bad but a step in the wrong direction.

Workouts were pretty normal. I'm noticing I'm getting more reps out of my dips the past few weeks because Im lighter now which is good. Was again unable to put up 90s on my db bench. 85s went up smoothly enough. I'm just gonna stick with those. I was feeling good for today's lift so if it didn't happen today it's definitely not going to on the rest of this cut.

Took some progress pictures because I haven't in several months. Realizing that I carry weight strangely because besides looking a bit less toned, I look very very similar with a 30lbs weight difference from where I was during my quarantine work out fest from last year. I've made a lot of strength gains since then so hopefully I'll be much more toned looking at like 190 than I ever have.

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PSN: Jiek

Nice!
Youre a hair away from 300 now which is getting into awesome territory

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PSN: Jiek

Week in review:
Diet went pretty well overall. Had a cheat meal yesterday, but my appetite has noticeably shrunk so I didn't do too much damage. Down 2 lbs from last week for a total of 11lbs. I figure I have about another month of cutting before it's visually noticeable. Gonna get down to under 200 again and reevaluate my goals. I've never had this much muscle on me before so it's hard to eyeball at this point.

Workouts this week were subpar. I couldn't even get the 90s up for dumbell bench for a single set and really struggled with 85s. Earlier in the week I just wasn't feeling it either. Between vaccine, wild weather swings messing with my sinuses, and calorie deficit I think im just feeling a bit worn down. Hopefully, I adjust as I progress.

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PSN: Jiek

I also got mine Wednesday. Felt some slight muscle soreness the next day in that arm but it was negligible. Meanwhile a friend got hers the same day and outright couldn't move her arm. So good luck.

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PSN: Jiek

Teneritas posted...

if my goal is just to lose weight what kind of resistance training should I be doing? :v weights? or machines? it seems harder to hurt yourself on a machine

Machines are long term generally not a great idea. They definitely have uses, but because it puts you on such a fixed path you don't use other muscles that you'd use to stabilize yourself and stuff. Strong stabilizing muscles help tremendously in not hurting yourself and you'll look better too. Also, engaging more muscles generally burns more calories.

Just get some weights and try to find some sort of reputable routine. If you're after weight loss, then adjusting your diet is the most important part. Weights definitely help though and you'll look better with your shirt off for it.

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PSN: Jiek

Also did not feel like lifting today. Allergies suck. I did it anyway though.

Week in review:
Went from an after Easter dinner weigh in of the heaviest of my life to down 9 lbs. Stuck to my diet completely until last night when I had social obligations for a fancy dinner. Was at 10lbs down before that. Either way, great momentum here.

Workout went okay. Did one set of dumbell bench with 90s then lacked the strength for take off after that. I think as I lose weight, I'm going to intentionally just do a reverse pyramid on those. I very much doubt that I'll gain any strength. All my other lifts were very standard performance.

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PSN: Jiek

Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

So question for general fitness/health.

Is it better when doing cardio to do longer stretches at a lower speed, or should you go faster?

Typically I just kinda go until I hit 2 miles. Sometimes if I wanna do some jogging in there I can do it faster, other times I kinda just wanna take my time and walk.

If I were instead just to do 50 minutes of walking at let's say 3.3 MPH, is that better than 35 minutes where I fluctuate between 3-5MPH?

For bigger dudes you also run into the issue of high impact on your knees. If you're alternating between walking quickly/slowly you're fine. If you're busting out into a jog then you might start doing some damage. Like it won't definitely screw up your knees but it's more of a risk. Also, if your form is bad it ups the risk too. Injuries will definitely deter you from exercising.

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PSN: Jiek

Balrog0 posted...

Nice man. Yeah my diet sucked in the opposite direction, really struggling to keep up eating enough. I allegedly was trying to gain weight this week but I'm down to 181.6 this morning from a high of like 188.0 last week. Granted, you know, water weight fluctuates and all of that but still it's not great. And this is the lowest I've weighed for about a month. Ideally I'd like my "set point" to be around 185.0 and it's obviously not.

I think at my most obsessive I was weighing myself like 3 times a day and just going with my highs/lows for the week. People always say not to do that because it's demoralizing, but I preferred a more accurate picture. I'd just graph it and make sure I was headed in the direction that I wanted.

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PSN: Jiek

Week in review:
Diet was horrendous. Up three pounds. Right about back where I was 4 weeks ago.

Lifts were great. It's the first Saturday that I haven't had to work in like a month so today's workout went much smoother.

Graduated to 90 lbs on dumbell bench but failed the take off on the last set. My form for it was off but even if I got it up there it would've been a huge struggle. Instead I knocked off 5 lbs and it wasn't an issue. Still 2 sets of 6 isnt bad...okay one set of 6 and one set of 5 1/2. Most likely next week I won't have any problem. Everything else I ran the same on weight but managed an extra rep or two.

Been adding some light weight direct bicep work as a superset. I'll see how my elbows hold up. I'm working with 10 lbs so even if something starts to go wrong, I feel like I can just stop without causing too much damage.

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PSN: Jiek

Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

After my run today and then shower I had some like... flashes in my vision on the right side of my right eye. They seem to have basically kinda gone away after 30 minutes or so.

Should I be concerned?

It's hard to tell without knowing everything about the situation, but I've had similar situations from overdoing it on cardio/not hydrating enough. Threw up from it a couple of times. If your workout was really intense for you then it might be that.

If that's it, then your body getting used to it/drinking enough water solves everything.

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PSN: Jiek

lemondrop7 posted...

really need that 3rd stimulus to be mailed lol...was supposed to have been mailed 4 days ago so heres hoping it comes at some point.

IRS website said mine was mailed on the 27th. Got it today. Hopefully yours has a similar travel time.

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PSN: Jiek

Week in review:
Down 1 lb even though my diet was not great. I'm gonna chalk it up to natural fluctuations in weight but it's definitely better than gaining. I'll take it.

Also definitely time to graduate to a higher weight on my dumbell bench. Second week in a row where I've been at that point and squeezed out an extra rep over last week on my final set. If I actually eat according to my diet it will most likely be difficult. I'm at least going to attempt it though. The dream of getting stronger while losing weight hasn't been a thing for me in a long while. I'd like to at least attempt it. I've added weight on my one arm version and my volume days already, but those are easier to manage.

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PSN: Jiek

Speaking of Cobra Kai. Even though the only place I went to this year was work, it was my Halloween costume


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PSN: Jiek

Ended my week 3 lbs up from last week. Everyone in my life felt the need to feed me this week so my diet went out the window.

On the upside, my heavy lift day I cranked out the most reps per set on my dumbell bench that I've done with 85s. Getting to the point where I would normally gear up to increase the weight. Unfortunately, this was not the direction I was intending to go. At least it's positive though so I cant complain too much.

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PSN: Jiek

I'm in dramatically better shape than my 20s simply because I didn't lift then. I'm pushing 40 at this point and by far in the best shape of my life. My older brother had similar experiences and he was nearly 40 when he started lifting.

As for keeping weights in an apartment, I've got a similar situation as Balrog. It's all in an extra room that doubles as an office. I use piles of blankets/pillows as mats. Balrog actually puts his equipment nicely away though. I leave mine sprawled all over the floor. I think I only have ~300lbs in weight total. It gets the job done for my strength level.

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PSN: Jiek

The video looks like it freezes at the 2 plate portion, but by how easily you did 3 im assuming you just moved so fast that the camera didn't register any movement.

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PSN: Jiek

Balrog0 posted...

yeah... the pics are over a year apart tho :(

In the first set? Still, progress is progress. I've had years that I've gone backwards

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PSN: Jiek

Your traps look a bit better from earlier in the year and overall less body fat percentage from what I can tell. Recomp is fun!

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PSN: Jiek

Youre making me realize that I haven't done an actual leg workout in forever now. I throw in some calf raises or something here and there but that's about it. Tbh I dont miss it

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PSN: Jiek

Saturday is usually my heavy lifting day. It went poorly in that regard because I had to work and was tirrd. I was mentally burnt out so I just kind of zoned out and went more towards endurance instead.

Anyway, sore as hell today. Down 9 lbs since last week though. That won't continue at the same rate but still it's a step in the right direction. Hoping for 5ish this week and then I'll probably be at the point where I'm only losing 1 a week.

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PSN: Jiek

Balrog0 posted...

that's awesome man
I started lifting just before the rona and I still haven't seen anyone. Im kinda interested to see if anyone says anything when I see them

today am ohp day
120x1 minimum

Even just from your progress pictures your changes are noticeable. Probably moreso in person

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PSN: Jiek

Took a recovery week. Starting this week off stronger at least on one lift.

My one armed barbell bench press is coming along nicely. My core has gotten to the point where it's not what's impeding my progress. I'm able to just kind of lift and have some linear progression atm. While this doesn't give me quite the pure chest workout as the two handed version, I definitely like the effect that it's having on my stabilizing muscles. That's helping my big lifts too. I'm only doing it once a week, so I'm definitely keeping it in my routine.

Anyway, trying to cut again. Saw a friend for the first time in 3 months. They said I've noticeably put on weight. Good kind in the arms. Not good in mid section. Vanity is a huge motivator for me, so hopefully this sticks.

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PSN: Jiek

Second week in a row with strength gains on dumbell bench press and ohp. My weight is exactly the same over that time period so good news there. I'm technically supposed to be trying to cut but being stronger at the same weight is even better.

I did tweak my back though. Thankfully, I somehow did it laying down to do reverse push ups. So it should be something that feels better by Monday since I doubt I did serious damage just from that. Plus next week is a light week since I'll be out of town a for a few days. So, I guess good timing for an injury.

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PSN: Jiek

CHM_Punk posted...

I avoid most protein bars as they have ingredients I personally consider junk or make me feel funny. More fruits and veggies are fine, but you may want to consider monitoring your sugar and carbohydrate intake if that is most of what youre eating and neglecting protein from beef, eggs, or fish. With that stated, if youre more physically active youll be able to get away with consuming more sugar and carbohydrates than a person that is not physically active and sitting on the couch watching Netflix or Hulu all day.

This is pretty much my same take on protein bars. It's really difficult to find a protein bar that's legitimately good for you but isn't disgusting to eat. Shakes are much easier and youre more in control of what goes into them. Obviously actually eating healthy being the best but I don't always have that kind of discipline.

Anyway, I think I've finally tweaked my workout enough to get better results. Mostly it's issues of being super tired after work and trudging through a lot of my lifts. The other issue was what order I was doing my lifts in. Just had to figure out a better order to place things. I miss quarantine and being able to sleep and workout all day

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PSN: Jiek

Machete is a pretty prominent amateur magician. Idk why you guys are so upset by this. It's just part of the show.

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PSN: Jiek

At best, you'd see some sort of real change several years later after employers realize it's difficult to replace someone at minimum wage. This will require them to go through that experience several times though.

So most likely, many will bounce around from job to job for awhile.

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PSN: Jiek

There's only one outright good episode and even then it's just typical shonen stuff, but it's super cool shonen stuff.

Honestly, I don't think you'll like it though.

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PSN: Jiek

Everyone was interested in him. Even Frankie

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PSN: Jiek

It's a terrible board in general. I've had much better luck having actual conversations about games on CE

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PSN: Jiek

He's more fun and profitable when he's a territorial dragon. Kids will buy his toys then.

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PSN: Jiek

We're struggling getting outright white supremacists to go back into hiding. Does the nuance of other whites really matter if we can't handle that tiny bit?

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PSN: Jiek

Crash posted...

Nobody hated C-3PO.

R2D2 did

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PSN: Jiek

Wheel of Fortune was originally conceived to be a game show version of Hangman. After it's pilot episode it was clear that it needed a drastic revamp. The contestants found the game too difficult and 30 men were savagely hanged in front of a live studio audience. At the time illiteracy was rampant. It was a horrible oversight

This grotesque disregard of life didn't sit well with sponsors even though the audience loved it and they were forced to help the contestants a bit. This is why they just outright give the letters rstlne to contestants. Thanks to this change it's now incredibly rare for a man to die during an episode.

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PSN: Jiek

I control the power of life and death. My only weakness is boobies. Im like a modern day Superman

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PSN: Jiek

Really feeling it today.
Had some very minor soreness from the row machine yesterday since it was my first time using it in months. Then shoveled snow. Then did my normal routine. Then later shoveled snow again. Work was a short day due to weather so I had a lot of free time, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to wear myself out.

Not looking forward to how my legs/core will feel tomorrow. Shoveling heavy ass snow is a very solid workout all in it's own.

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PSN: Jiek

No

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PSN: Jiek

Coloradough posted...

I played Hades for like 1 hour probably and really disliked it, what do you like about it? It was just repetitive to me. You're not really going anywhere, it's just square after square after square...

But I barely gave it a chance

I liked the actual combat once I opened up weapons that I liked and creating different builds on the fly from the random power ups.

For a rogue like, I actually enjoyed that I felt I was progressing in some way after every run which is often my issue with those types of games. Also a run takes at most like half an hour so I liked that it's easily set up to be played for amounts of time I can easily fit into my day.

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PSN: Jiek

Hades
Can't recommend it enough. It's the only rogue like that I've spent a significant time playing. I put in about 60 hours before I started to get tired of it. I was nowhere near conquering endgame challenges

Or as an ultimate timesink just play Warframe and grind away forever.

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PSN: Jiek