Papa's Got a Brand New Bag

[Deserve]

It was awesome. There are times when I love being a Texan. First and foremost the kids were good which is always a blessing. It was a total redneck weekend. Let me describe.

Friday (Day): Went to the in-laws ranch (so totally Texan) and grilled some burgers, fished in the pond with the boy and let the dog run around. We caught a lot of fish and the dog got chased by a longhorn.

Friday (Night): Now back in the safe confines of the suburbs we went down to the neighbors drank alcohol and played with explosives. This doesn't sound all that redneck until you consider that they pulled their patio furniture on to the lawn and it looked an awful lot like a couch and love seat. You haven't seen Redneck until you've drank beer on a couch in the front yard of a 3500 sq ft house in the burbs while drinking beer with 20 of your closest friends. It was a great time.

Saturday (All day): Mine and two other families went to a lake and road jet ski's all day. There were 9 kids and they mostly played in the water doing whatever it is kids do at the lake. We stopped at a great little seafood place where I got a nice plate of fried crawfish tails and a cup of gumbo. Any place with a concrete floor that can accommodate 9 kids and 6 adults in a back room segregated from the rest of the normal humans gets a thumbs up in my book.

Sunday: Rest

Overall it was a fantastic weekend. I need to do it more often.

[SpacecityPaula]

Sounds like a fantastic weekend Gabe

[kingkop182]

Sounds great, mate

[Aoife]

Originally Posted by Deserve

There were 9 kids and they mostly played in the water doing whatever it is kids do at the lake.

Pee.

[L'ilJ]

Sounds like fun!

[Deserve]

Originally Posted by Aoife

Pee.

I'm sure they did there fair share of that. Hell who didn't pee in the lake. Mostly they threw mud at each other.

Originally Posted by L'ilJ

Sounds like fun!

It really was a good time. It was like a mini vacation. I'm rested and relaxed.

[gregl515]

Sounds just about perfect.

[Deserve]

I did my measurements this morning and was nicely surprised. So surprised I want to recheck them tomorrow before I post them. I also forgot a couple of key measurements.

Here are some of the highlights. My arms went up .5 inches. I've also been talking a lot about my pooch. Well it has been reduced by .5 inches. My upper abs didn't change at all. Everything else basically stayed the same. My legs might have gotten smaller but I think that is a measurement error.

Overall I'm pleased.

[liftintexas]

on your way to cover model status.

and the 4th weekend sounded great, man

[Deserve]

Phase 2 Wrkt 11A

BB Bench Press: 2 x 6 @ 115, 1 x 6 @ 125 r90s
BB Arm Curl: 3 x 6 @ 70 r90s
Seated Row: 3 x 6 @ 115 r90s
Tricep Push Down: 3 x 6 @ 130 r90s
DB Incline Bench Press: 3 x 6 @ 50 r90s

Comments: It was a nice pleasant work out. I'm in a bit of a holding pattern until Julie gets something to me. No worries. It's nice to do something else.

[UConnJulie]

Originally Posted by gobbla

Would a machine program be out of the question? (asking, not telling)

Originally Posted by gobbla

A: I don't really know how broken your are and you're obviously in good hands with Julie. This isn't an attempt to move in on her territory in any way.

B: It seems like your biggest trouble would be bracing your abs. If you could do movements that you could take that action out of the equation then you're better off. "If" you could work in the 75%+ range at a mid-line volume then you might get some hypertrophy (or more closer to maintenance) without risking your insides falling out. It'd take an effort on your part to be sure not to brace and stay in a load that you could handle, but you should be able to hit the majority of everything and keep your ab stuff more on a stability level.

Machines may or may not be ideal, but it's not like they're the devil. If you're working muscles in a way that will make them grow (load + volume, your muscle doesn't know if you're lifting a rock\barbell\lever on a machine), you might get an imbalance or never make it in the big leagues, but it's a temp fix anyway. It's not like you're going to get jakt in 8mo. Once you get to the point to where you could do free weights without damaging yourself, you'd go back to them.

Tony,
I'm not 100% against machines, but in Gabe's case, I WANT his abs to be bracing with all movements. The trick is to ease into it slowly in his case to prepare the newly healed tissue for harder work down the road. A little bit of stress promotes the tissue to be stronger, while too much stress, well, we know what happens then (ript abz and not the good kind!!).
My issue with machines for rehab is that unless I am trying to create a localized strengthening that I can't target with something more functional for some reason, I generally prefer the functional approach. Gabe's abdominal muscles need to relearn to contract with all activities so that he doesn't hurt himself out shagging balls for his kid or doing yardwork.

Gabe, I hope to have it finished this morning sometime, and will email it to you!

[Deserve]

Perfect! I was about to start defvising another holding pattern work out. I was thinking shoulder shrugs. I don't know why those sound fun today.

[Deserve]

I can't get the stupid thing to show full size. The biggest thing to note is that I adjusted my beginning weight for the scale error and I started measuring my waist from right at the navel instead of several inches below. The biggest reason is that my primary goal is getting rid of the pooch and getting my abs in shape. With that being said I can't tell you how happy that I am that I managed to shrink those bad boys one half and inch. I also gained 3 lbs which lucky for me looks like it went straight to my arms. Now if I can only figure out a way to get my chest and legs to join the party it will be a regular fiesta around here.

I can't wait to see what new and exciting things Julie has in store for me. So far she has been knocking the inches off my mid section better than any fat loss diet I've seen. All good stuff.

I've been mulling over a goal in my head. I'm thinking that it wouldn't be to unrealistic for me to set a January 1st date for getting back to 100%. I define 100% as 171 lbs with fully functional abs @ ~12% body fat. The New Year would be good because that would be the anniversary of my near death experience. I think it would be a tremendous triumph to point the double rods outward and scream, I'm back.

6 months in I have my good days and bad. I can't stand the site of my stomach. I wear T-shirts funny and haven't taken my shirt off at the pool in forever. It's particularly bad because I've never been that guy. As I've said before when I got sick 171 was as heavy as I'd ever been. I now officially have body image issues. How weird is that? Well enough of my mindless meanders but another goal of mine is to write more so I guess a few more words on the page is a step in another direction. I didn't same a damn thing about spelling so you're just going to have to deal with that, it's a weakness of mine, but I do want to try and write more. Have a good day folks.

[gobbla]

I still think you're hot.

[Deserve]

Originally Posted by gobbla

I still think you're hot.

Unconditional love. It's rare to find these days.

[Deserve]

I had a great work out today. Julie hooked me up with phase 3. It's got a lot of stuff that I like doing. I'm also starting to move away from the pink weights. I'll post the work out tomorrow. I've trying to teach the boy to slide. I needed to take a break. I'm starting to sound like my dad and it's frustrating.

[Deserve]

Phase III Wrkt 1

Deadlift: 2 x 8 @ 160 R90s
Lateral Raise: 2 x 8 @ 15 R90s
Alt. Rev. X-Over Lunge: 2 x 8 @ 30 R90s
Chin Up: 2 x 8 @ BW R90s
Tri Pushdown: 1 x 8 @ 65, 1 x 8 @ 72.5 R90s
DB Bicep Curls: 2 x 8 @ 30 R90s
Pushups: 2 x 8 @ BW R90s

Comments: Funny but I'm not sore any where today. I usually am. Maybe tomorrow? I thought I pushed it pretty hard. Obviously not. The chin ups really stretched out the scar tissue. It never hurt so much as pulled. This was especially evident in the colostomy scar where they cut through the muscle. This morning everything feels good. I really enjoyed the work out. It was a good change of pace. My reverse alternating cross over lunges need some work. I'll go lighter on those next time to make sure I am doing them right. I was off balance. It's the first time I've done them.

It was great to get back into DL's and you can't go wrong with good ol meat head arm curls and lateral raises.

I will need to work on making the push ups harder. Those were easy to bang out. I'll go up on the ball n