Back at it

[digitaldiscipline]

No burying the lede here: I got clearance to resume lifting and all other activities by the orthpedist yesterday, with the caveat that I should start light and progressively overload at a modest pace. The PA was cute with the way he dithered around the subject of returning to my former levels of awesome, so I cut him off at the knees (because, fuck it, I has been cooling my heels in the reception area for two goddamned hours and wanted some fucking dinner).

"What you're trying to say is that you can't guarantee that I will regain 100% of what I was pre-op, and if I was twenty years younger, that this wouldn't be how the conversation would go. I can respect that, even if it's going to provide motivation anywys."

"Well, yeah. If you were benching 225 before the operation, I'd say you should probably start with..."

(In unison) "... 135 or 125. Maybe 115."

So that's what I'm going to do today. I am going to get back out in my garage, under the bar, and see what I've still got, so I know how far I have to recover lost ground. Expect me to be angry at the iron and meat for a while, because I am pissed off and feeling betrayed.

Fuck forty, fuck mortality, and fuck being weak. Ain't nobody got time for that shit.

---

Other than the time away making me too soft to get into my belt (goddammit, need to bust my ass on that front more, but lifting should help lose the squish) I was pretty much where i’d hoped to be, or a bit ahead:

Bench: 135x6 / 155x3 (straight bar) / 135x5 swiss bar

Squat (to the 13” box to keep depth): 315x3 (hamstrings were the weak point on these, not surprisingly)

OHP (swiss bar): 115x5

Deadlifts tomorrow. Got 315x5 two weeks ago without chalk or belt, so I’m optimistic for 365 or 405

Comments

[anarcha.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I find it's helpful just to compare not to your PBs, but to where you were 2-3 weeks ago. Keeps your sanity. And my experience has been that fitness does come back, and it comes back quicker than it took to achieve initially, and sometimes there's a rebound effect from the time off.

FWIW, about 10 days ago, I "ran" on the treadmill for the first time since I got PRP done on my torn hamstring tendon (really sucky injury BTW - everything aggravates it). I did 3x60-90 seconds at a whopping 3MPH (my marathon pace this past march was about 8.3 MPH, for comparison).

I was thrilled. And since then I've been setting a new "PR" almost every day.

BTW, I really don't believe that 40 is too old. I'm 5 months from 40 myself, train with mostly people in their 20s, and I don't feel I'm any weaker or slower than they are. Where age comes into play is recovery and healing time.

Just my unsolicited 2 cents.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

True, true, and I am going to try and keep a healthy mix of perspective with my expectations. All those PRs were from earlier this year (whereas my PRs for pullups (32 in 2009) and mile (4:52 in 1995) are much more apples-to-oranges, because I was 35 and 55 pounds lighter, respectively). i would like to be within spitting distance of 2013's best numbers within a year - five pounds a week on upper-body lifts, ten pounds on lower-body ones - is ambitious but not implausible.

I'm stronger than almost everyone I know (the main exceptions to this is the 24 year old i work with, who is six-four and 320, and his best friend, who's 28 and six-two bodybuilder - (normalcyispasse doesn't count, because he's gone into seclusion, and may not even be human with how strong he is *grin*)), so my perceptions are skewed - my strength coach was the youngest guy to ever bench 600, and I've never even done half that. *laugh*