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…

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.

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.

I really did go full-out on Wednesday.  I did strenuous stuff that I hadn’t done in months, and the soreness that I felt on Thursday (just startin’, ain’t so bad, let’s go dancing), Friday (OMG WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH MY ARMS BECAUSE I CAN’T RAISE THEM ABOVE MY HEAD), Saturday (with an oftentimes lackluster attendance at a party), and now Sunday (I can comb my hair without discomfort!), was truly exquisite.  Endorphines, meet Ibuprofen, I gotta go, I’ll call you on Monday.

I probably managed to shoot myself in the foot, trying to prepare for a session with Luka at Hocevar Performance on Tuesday with a hardass workout like that, but what the hell.  Felt great, and it was great to feel stuff get sore that hadn’t in months due to injury and the interference of life.

Now, I’m ready.  I’ll do some cardio, hill sprint, kb swing stuff tomorrow as a tuneup to Tuesday.  Then I’ll head to the temple and let the man whip my ass.

Can’t wait!

Thanks for the early Father’s Day present, honey.  Better than you know.

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.

• Bodyweight Squats x 15 reps
• Push Ups x 15 reps
• Reverse Lunges x 10 reps/each
• Knees To Elbows (in push up position) x 12 reps/each
• Burpees x 10 reps

Time 18:12.
Prior times:
10/24/2009 – 19:12
9/25/2009 – 18:54
I’m happy with that, considering the layoff! w00t!

I’m happy, especially given the fact that I haven’t done any Escalating Density Training since November!

I decided to dust off my “Luka” workouts that he set me up with last year at Hocevar Performance.  Because this was the first workout of this kind in several months, and because of the emotionally draining weekend prior, I opted for the one workout that didn’t involve a stopwatch.  I thought it would be best if I went by feel, rather than by the clock.

Workout “B”:

Warm up:

• Front Lunges
• Side Lunges
• Inchworms
• Romanian Deadlifts
• Overhead squats with pole

I knew I would be down on reps and weight in a few spots, and between my fatigue factor and the 30 mph headwind, I only did 1/2 the sprints as I had done previously.  I felt good (and tired) at the end but I didn’t manage to hurt myself.

As I looked to post this workout this morning, I found that the last time I did this workout was 11/21, and instead of bodyweight rows I had been doing blast-strap scarecrows (which I labeled as “deceptively hard”).  This was actually the workout where I managed to pinch a nerve doing those same scarecrows, rearranging my life for 5+ months.

I am glad I did the rows last night, instead.

Warm-ups, including some special “glute activation” drills.  If your trainer is taking extra time to activate your glutes, you can bet there’s going to be some lifting involved.

Double Kettlebell Clean-and-Press: 4 sets of 5 reps, 2 x 55lb KB’s

Barbell complex:

• Front Squats
• Lunges
• Thrusters
• Cleans

Dumbell Tabatas (20/10) 8 minutes:

• Goblet Squat
• Swings
• Clean & Press
• Squat Jumps

No more Tuesday nights with Luka for a while.  Sad.

Our workout life & goals have just undertaken a huge shift.  I’m just now getting my mental-arms wrapped around the changes in store, but the bottom line is that our cash flow picture has changed significantly so we are curtailing expenses where possible.  Among the things on the “discretionary expenses” list that are to meet the budget axe are:

• Weekly Tuesday night training with Luka at Hocevar Performance, and
• My date with the Russian Kettlebell Challenge Certification Workshop in April.

This is a huge shift.  The RKC was my next big goal.  Tuesdays were the highlight of my workout week, my chance to “lift heavy shit” and mold my aging  protoplasm into something that looks halfway decent when naked (no, there will be no pictures).  I was just feeling like I was “turning the corner” on my recovery from the pre-Thanksgiving nerve injury, so now this second dose of adversity forces me to do a complete reboot on the training regime.  Terri is as devastated as I, as she was seeing changes in her body that she has never had in her entire life.  We are determined to get back to the gym as soon as possible, but short of holding a “Send a Calnan to Training” telethon on the public access channel (maybe this is where I should sell those pictures), the timeframe for our return to Prowler-Pushing and Tire-Flipping on Tuesdays is not clear.

The new training regime isn’t established yet, but it’s basically going to be Terri and I training each other 3 or 4 times a week.  I still have 5 weeks of bootcamp training to go, so my Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings are scheduled for the next month.  With the equipment we’ve managed to acquire over the past year, we should be able to devise some pretty good kettlebell complexes, bodyweight sessions, and the occasional heavy lifting on our own (accepting donations of an Olympic Trap Bar, if you’ve got one laying unused in your garage).

With Spring apparently upon us (things are blooming, and the frogs are back!), we may even dust off the bicycles and start putting in some saddle time.  We haven’t led any rides in months, and I owe a friend or two a hilly ride to Black Diamond/Green River Gorge.

The next few months will probably be more of a mental than physical challenge.  We need to stay focused, even when the future gets foggy.