evolution of the exercise regimen

So I haven’t written anything for a few days because I took some time to set up a YouTube channel and Twitter and Instagram accounts. I have a lot of big plans for all of this but then I get concerned because I have a professional life, and I wonder if the crossover will be problematic in any way. Will people take me less seriously in my other endeavors if they see me talking about all this fitness stuff, doing exercises and experimenting with supplements and medications on a YouTube channel?

On the flip side, it is something I have done my whole life really, and I have amassed quite a bit of knowledge regarding it all from my decades of experience and research. And if I’m speaking honestly and legitimately about something that really is a lifetime hobby of mine, why should it have a negative connotation? Anyway, this is the stupid issue I’m grappling with right now.

In the meantime, I’m in Rona-tine and bored as hell. So I might as well write something. I figured I’d start by babbling about the evolution of the way I exercise today.

I started doing it probably in part because I was seriously skinny in high school, my Dad was a burly guy who lifted weights and seemed to really respect sports that required strength and power, and I had a bunch of friends who were lifting. So why not? I had a bench with an Olympic bar and weights and a preacher curl attachment in the dingier part of my basement. I remember exercising down there vividly – cold checkerboard linoleum tile floor and the ever-present aroma of heating oil. My buddies and I would go down there a few times a week and do bench presses and curls, interspersed with highly competitive games of ping-pong in the less dingy part of the basement. That side was carpeted, had wood paneling on the walls and a tube fluorescent bulb at one end of the room that lasted only briefly until a paddle flung in anger shattered it into a million shards.

Then onto college where the gym I utilized was in the basement of one of the residence halls – yeah another basement – go figure. There, I started learning a little more about how to lift properly. I was taught the basic bro split style of lifting where you work each muscle group once a week to exhaustion – 15 or more sets for the larger groups and nine to 12 sets for the smaller groups. You know, something like chest and tris, back and bis, then shoulders and legs, and variations thereof. But I never really did the legs.

I did this for a while, and as a skinny guy it was easy to get results in terms of looking fit but I only gained a little mass. Nothing particularly noticeable with clothes on, anyway. I didn’t yet understand the importance of compound moves like squats and deadlifts and of eating lots of calories to grow. I looked around the gym from time to time and noticed some seriously large dudes. I just figured they were working harder than I was and, at the time, I didn’t realize that many of them were “enhanced.” So I figured I would work harder and started increasing the number of workouts per week I was doing. When I reached three chest workouts per week, I noticed that instead of getting stronger and bigger, I got weaker and eventually injured. I did something to my left pectoral muscle or the pectoralis major tendon. One of those things I still notice from time to time to this day, but it doesn’t inhibit anything.

Stepping back in time a little, I think it’s also worth noting that I played competitive tennis year-round for many years prior to going to college. I had developed what one doctor called tendonitis in my right shoulder from constant use of the joint, and then later in life another doctor told me it was arthritis and prescribed 1200 milligrams of ibuprofen per day. Not knowing any better I complied. I didn’t feel the pain but I can’t imagine the damage I did to myself. I eventually stopped the ibuprofen and after a few months of yoga, the “arthritis” was miraculously cured. Anyway, the tendonitis/arthritis thing was pretty serious in that my first few reps of shoulder press involved searing pain and numbness in the right deltoid (maybe even a little seeing of stars, too), which would then wear off and be no issue. You know, as a kid, you just work through that stuff with no thought as to potential future consequences.

So the chest thing was a learning experience. I went back to the regular bro split style but really started pushing how much weight I was using. And then I learned another lesson – it’s not about how much weight you are moving but rather how you are moving it. Form matters – see what I did there – like a little play on size matters? Moving on – while frenetically bent rowing plates (which was pretty much my body weight at the time), I heard and felt a huge pop in my low back. Very strange feeling. Not like searing pain or anything but my body was telling me something was not right. Went to a few doctors who at the time said nothing was wrong. I knew differently as I couldn’t sit for very long without a great deal of discomfort. But being a kid I just kind of ignored it and worked around it. I avoided anything that would stress my lower back. Eventually I came to learn from a World renown back specialist that I had caused a “spectacular collapse” of my L5/S1.

At the time, deadlifts and standing shoulder press, cleans and snatches weren’t very popular in the gym. Things were less whole body-focused. Bench press, pull-ups and downs, seated shoulder press (particularly behind the neck) were more what you saw everyday in the gym. I believe the combination of doctors telling me to lay off things that would stress my lower back and not engaging in these types of whole body exercises inhibited my ability to build up core strength and led to some injuries later in life. But more on that another time.

By the end of college, I had gotten a pretty good grasp on things and started putting on some decent mass. Sets of 225 on flat bench, even added some leg work and abdominals, and got into some deadlifting. Got up to 315 at one point. At the time, I probably weighed about 155. When I got back home from college, I went over to the local Bally’s gym (they were pretty popular back then) and signed a contract for a membership that I had no chance of being able to afford (the charge off made my first home purchase difficult but these things happen). I talked to one of the trainers there. I think I recall his name was Adam and he was “enhanced.” Not particularly tall, but huge. I said I was interested in putting on some more size so he recommended what he called a counter-rotation program. It was kind of a push-pull concept with a day per week dedicated to legs (on which I skimped). So week 1 Monday and Friday you would do your push movements (flat or incline barbell press, the opposite dumbbell press, flies, shoulder press and close grips or nosebreakers). Tuesday you would do the pull moves (deadlifts or bent rows (which I didn’t take seriously enough perhaps because of my back concerns), seated cable row, pull ups or downs, and then biceps). Wednesday was off and Thursday was legs and abs. Then week 2 you just reversed the push and pull, so pull was Monday and Friday and push was Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday stayed the same.

My exercise regimens revolved around the counter-rotation for a long time, eventually mixed in some P90X when that was popular and some yoga. Then in my mid 40s, I started experiencing a lot of discomfort in my lower abs and groin and noticed that the mid-line of my abdominals wasn’t really visible anymore. Of course, I ignored it for a while, but then decided to look into it. Everything I read led me to believe it was a sports hernia issue. Just so happens the premier sports hernia guy in the World is in my town so I looked him up. Had a visit with him and he determined that I had bilateral sports hernias, which is not really a hernia, but rather when the lower abdominus rectus muscles pull off of your pelvic floor. He also felt I had a diastasis, which means the linea alba (vertical midline of the abdominal muscles) weakens and stretches.

So I had surgery to correct those things. It didn’t go well. Had to be put back under immediately after I woke from surgery because I developed a hematoma that they needed to correct. Then during the course of the rehab they were concerned I might have developed a thrombosis and put me on thinners. That was a bad move because it caused the hematoma to recur. If you’ve never had one of these let me tell you it is incredibly painful. You are bleeding internally but the blood has no where to go, so it creates space to fill by pushing things apart inside your body. I felt like I was going to explode like that guy in Alien. I was a serious mess after all of that but refused to just lay down and die. I started getting back to weights.

I had lost pretty much all strength over the course of the recovery so it was very slow going. After I had developed a little strength, I signed up with my sister-in-law. She was a competitive bodybuilder and I had seen her make some incredible changes with her own body. I figured why not. She put me on a weight and HIIT program, with a sprinkling of German volume training, basically. She created a new program for each day that focused on the day’s muscle groups. It was more intense than I was used to, but I enjoyed the challenge. She also plotted my body fat percentage and gave me a macro plan based on my BMI. I think I started at 1850 calories per day. After a few months of it, I had gone from like 20% body fat to 9.5% body fat, and my weight went from 155 to 147. I was pretty shredded. Also had to add calories during the course of the program because of the weight loss. But all in all it was a good experience – bea10withcorrie.com – look her up if you’re looking for some specialized training. She’ll burn fat off of you – I promise.

After having taken so much body fat off, I thought it would be a good time to try to bulk up. So I looked up a bunch of growth workout plans. These days there is a lot of focus on muscle protein synthesis and whether bro splits or full body workouts induce more of it. I started with a bro split plan – went heavy with moderate reps. Really focused on legs, deadlifts (regular and straight leg), rack pulls and push presses – things I had never really focused on before. Weights started going up and I started getting bigger. Oh and I was eating a lot more calories per day as well. The surgeries took their toll on my core strength so legs and certain other moves were slow going, but, despite a few setbacks, I rode that workout up to 167. Body fat percentage went up a bit, but still most of the 20 was lean.

It wore me down though, and by the end of the run my left shoulder and hip were really bothering me. So I took a week or two off and planned out my next phase of lifting. My goal was to take a little weight off and focus on reps more in the 8 to 15 range, and to move away from the bro split method and more towards the full body approach.

After a bunch of research and some trial and error, I came up with the following regimen. It’s a four days on, one day off approach that sort of combines the total body approach with the bro split approach. With bro splits, you typically work the larger muscle groups like legs, chest and back for 15 to 20 sets per week, and smaller groups like biceps, triceps and calves for nine to twelve sets per week. In creating my revised approach, I wanted to make sure I stayed in the same ballpark of sets per week so as not to overwork things, which I’ve learned to be counterproductive. I also couldn’t see doing every body part in one day, three times per week. Don’t think I’d have the energy for that type of workout, which would probably take close to three hours, plus I think I’d go nuts not exercising four days of the week. Perhaps it’s a little bit of a sickness. I’ll look into it.

So it goes like this: Day 1 – Legs – ten to 14 sets covering all muscle groups in the legs; Day 2 – Push – six to eight sets of chest, three to four sets of a push shoulder move, and three to five sets of triceps; Day 3 – Cardio & abs (cabs) 15-25 minutes of cardio, nine sets of core/abs; Day 4 – Pull – ten sets of back, three to five sets of biceps and three to six sets of a pull shoulder move; Day 5 – Rest. Following this program, I’ve put on an additional ten lean pounds.

Next time we can start getting into each piece of the routine in a little more depth. Until then, be well my friends.