John’s Ramblings

With my current “Eastern Medicine” treatments for my laryngitis, it seems like I am spending all my time quaffing this or that, or making this or that to quaff.

From the time I get up, I:

• Make coffee
• Drink coffee
• Make tea (3 times per load of leaves)
• Drink tea
• Make herbal mixture
• Drink herbal mixture
• Get water
• Drink water
• Make flower-bud herbal tea (those squirrel nut thingees)
• Drink said tea
• Make carrot/vegetable juice in juicer
• Drink carrot/vegetable juice

… and that’s all before lunch

I do the herbal tea 3x a day, the squirrel nut tea 2x a day, juice once a day, green tea at least twice a day.

I spend a lot of time peeing, too.

It’s been a pretty disappointing year, health-wise.  The beginning of the year was marked by the pinched nerve thing that took away all my grip strength in my left hand.  Now that is pretty well resolved, and I was getting back into training until June.

We took a trip down to Los Angeles to visit my parents, and I picked up some crazy-ass virus in the airport or on the plane.  We flew down on a Thursday, and by Saturday the virus showed up first in my left eye as conjunctivitis (pink-eye).  We got that treated, but the virus wasn’t isolated to the eyes, and soon showed itself in my sinuses, fluid in the ears, and a cough.  On June 25th I woke up and I was extremely hoarse, and could only talk in a rough whisper.  We assumed that I had coughed enough that the vocal cords were damaged, but weeks later the condition was not resolving itself at all.  Another symptom I am experiencing is that I now experience exercise induced asthma symptoms.  Since my vocal cords are not working correctly I can’t effectively clear my bronchial tubes of the everyday run of the mill mucus and stuff that accumulates.  Consequently I get short of breath very quickly when I exert myself.  I also run out of breath when talking because the air leaves my lungs so much faster without the vocal cords to meter the flow.

We’ve seen three doctors including an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist.  I’ve had the vocal cords “scoped” with a tube up my nose and down the throat which revealed that the right side vocal cord wasn’t moving… basically paralyzed.  The next medical move was to do a C.T. Scan to see if there were any physical causes of the paralysis such as tumors.  Thankfully the scan came up clean, so no tumors etc.

The “western” docs want to wait-and-see what happens over the next month.  We decided to take a more proactive approach by scheduling acupuncture starting on Friday with a doctor in Seattle.  Given enough time this will likely resolve itself, but I think that giving the neural pathways a gentle nudge at the end of a few dozen needles will help things progress a little faster.

Earlier in the year I didn’t really feel safe to ride my bike since the hand grip problem made it impossible to use the front brake on the bike.  Now I can use my brake, but I’m not all that safe to ride in a group since I can’t effectively communicate with fellow riders.  I’ve done a few sessions with Luka up at Hocevar Perfomance Gym, but it’s hard to feel like I’m accomplishing much when I’m spending half the session wheezing with my hands on my knees.  So until I have a little better handle on breathing, I’m likely going to work out closer to home for a bit.  But work out I shall!

My son Brendan sent me a “ropes gone wild” rope for my birthday.  This sucker is 40′ long and 1.5″ in diameter.  It’s totally cool, and I’ll be able to do a lot of interval stuff with it right here in the driveway.

I eased back into a workout yesterday, with the following session:

Warm ups:

• overhead lunges
• side lunges
• inchworms

3 sets of:

• 10 x 16kg goblet squats
• 10 hindu pushups

3 sets of:

• 10 x 16 kg kb military press

3 sets of:

• dumbell curls “21′s” 2 x 10lb
• 12″ step-ups with dumbells

None of the weights were huge, obviously, but I feel like I’m really having to measure my output because of the breathing difficulties.  Consequently I used the session to really concentrate on form, especially because I’ve been out of practice for a bit.

Now I just need to maintain a little momentum…

I had the privilege of getting my ass handed to me by Luka last night, further distinguished by the presence of friend and all-time champeen complainer Big Roddy.

Warm ups were an absolute bitch.

• Overhead Lunges
• Side Lunges
• Inchworms with Pushups
• Overhead squats
• Plank to pushup

Then we got on with the workout:

#1, 4 sets of:

Trap Bar Deadlift 225lbs x 4, farmers’ walk the down floor, turn & walk back, then 4 more deadlifts.

#2, 4 sets of:

8 x 16 kg KB one arm swings, straight to

8 x 16kg KB x clean and press, straight to

8 x 16kb KB Squats

#3, 3 sets of:

• 10 x pushups with side-kick
• 10 x bodyweight rows on TRX
• 10 x Burpees with jump
• 10 x Dive-bomber pushups
• 10 x Jumping Lunges (per leg)

DOMS is just starting to get really good.  I anticipate being very sore in the morning.  Heaven help me, but I love that trap-bar.

Last August I attended the Kenneth Jay Viking Warrior Conditioning workshop to learn VO2 max training with kettlebell snatches.  I started out being able to do 25 minutes of work, and worked my way up to the maximum of 40.  I then had begun experimenting with different cadences and weights.  The nerve pinch happened in November, and my kb snatching days were done for the time being.

A couple of weeks ago, I felt that my grip had recovered sufficiently that I would be able to resume.  What was missing was my stamina!  30 sets (15 minutes) and I was toast.  Today’s attempt went much better, thankyouverrymuch.  Back to where I started in August:

Viking Warrior Conditioning

I’m shooting for at least two VWC sessions each week, and build this back up to 80 sets.  I’m also going to dig out my heart rate monitor, just because I like posting a graph or two to show you how damn hard I’m working!

After a few months of financially-imposed layoff from my training sessions with Luka, I had an early Fathers’ day present of a workout on Tuesday.  Wednesday I felt pretty good in the morning, but by 6 p.m. (the 24 hour mark) I was starting to stiffen up.  This morning I have this really exquisite Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness in my legs, in particular the insides of my thighs.  I think that the bench-step-ups were the primary culprit, but my first heavy deadlifts in 3 months had to have been a factor.

Warmups:

• Overhead lunges with pole locked out
• Side lunges w/pole behind head
• Bear-crawls
• Inchworms with pushups at the bottom
• High-knees
• Ass-kickers
• Speed-squats
• D-ball throws
• Plank holds

Set 1, 4 times through:

• Trap-bar deadlifts 8 x 225lbs
• Weighted vest pushups (2 short of failure)
• Weighted vest squat jumps (5)

Set 2, 4 times through:

• 15 bodyweight squats
• 10 bodyweight lunges
• weight bench step-ups, 10 each side
• 24kg one-arm rows, 5 each side
• 20 kg clean and press, 5 each side

Finisher:

5 minutes, as many 24 kg kettlebell swings as I could do.  In my delerium, I thought it was around 125.  No idea how accurate that is.

My days at work have been “action-packed”… well, as action-packed sitting at a couple of computers can be.  Very busy and more than a little frustrating at times.  There’s nothing like swinging some heavy shit around in our shop/man-cave/gym to blow out the cobwebs and burn off a little steam.  After a long and frustrating day it can be the last thing you want to do, but I feel much more accomplished if I finish a hectic day with a workout than happy-hour.  I would have loved to gotten my workout done sooner than 5 p.m., but I had clients and calamity from 6 a.m. until 4:55, so 5 p.m. it was…

Added incentive: Terri announced that for Fathers’ Day I am being given two private sessions with Luka Hocevar at his gym in Renton.  I haven’t been to Luka’s house-of-he-man-hurtin’ in a few months, so this is a special gift indeed.  After the last couple of months concentrating on just kettlebell swings, my overall strength needs some work.

I set out to do one of the workouts Luka gave me last year, featuring Escalating Density sets of exercises.  Silly boy changed his warmup routine, however, and did the warmups from “Enter the Kettlebell” after some lunges, RDL’s, and overhead squats.  So add in 4 sets of Hindu (dive-bomber) pushups, wall squats, and halos.  Oops, now on the the workout that prominently features pushups!

4 Sets of:

8 reps of 2 x 20kg front squats

8 negative chinups

Escalating Density Training Set #1: 10 minutes

• 10 x 28kg Kettlebell Swings
• 10  pushups

I did 8 sets in the allotted time, a far cry from last fall when I did 11!  The pushups were especially hard after warming up with those dang Hindu pu’s.  Always look to where you are headed before you start improvising with your warmup!

Escalating Density Training Set #2: 10 minutes

• 6 x 16kg kettlebell reverse lunge
• 8 x 24kg kettlebell 1 arm rows

7 sets, but last time it was 8.

I started to stiffen up after 2 hrs. last night, so standing up tomorrow when I wake should be pretty interesting.

Tonight was my first attempt at the Viking Warrior Conditioning kettlebell snatch program since the injury in November.  I’ve not done any snatches since my grip went away due to a pinched nerve, and it is just now feeling like I can hold on to the ‘bell on the downstroke of the snatch movement.

I tried to pick up where I left off: 15:15 protocol, 7 cadence, 16 kg.  I felt pretty good, but the grip started to fade after 15 minutes (the goal is 40).  Not great, but a good first attempt.  The left forearm took a bit of a beating due to form.  I just wasn’t very smooth on the weak side.  Give it time, John.  The bruise should make a pretty good photo tomorrow, so stay tuned.