2022 October Training Reflections
Been roughly two month since turning weekly "trainer/ coach" - conducting an hour plus of class each Thursday in office. Having literally no idea what to do initially.
My own daily exercising has never been any strict regimented programs; outlined with exact sets, reps etc. It has all been one big long experiment from the start.
While my "Daily Trinity" of Pulllups, Diamond Pushups and Dips forms the base of each day's load/ intensity with other exercises--truth is, even for these fundamentals, its been a never-ending series of changes and adaptations as new discoveries and observations/ realizations are made -- almost daily at times.
Personally, being disciplined with core training has never been much of a regular affair either. Since definitions in these muscles comes naturally without much actual focused training. Most of my cores are indirectly trained because of the constant contractions applied while doing other exercises to maintain stability during movements.
Another session of fitness/ exercising conducted by another colleague after work on Tuesdays consists of more HIIT training from my understanding-- Thought it might be a good idea to introduce variations on Thursdays with core and stretching work instead. Fundamental stability from stronger core would be the basis of any exercises anyway. Also a good way to push my own lethargic ass for at least once a week core training...
Trying to remember everything is a chore though. Keeping the flow in adapting each session by looking at everyone's ability... and having to explain while remembering the sequence of exercises.... Good luck.
There are tons of exercise apps available these days that can work for individuals, but it's still hard to customize if you are working with a group with varying levels of fitness.
Next best course of action?-- Good old MS Excel and some doodling.
Still evolving to add or take away contents as the weekly training carries on... Wish there is a way to automate these stick drawing instead of having to apply them stroke by stroke with the "shapes" button in Excel...
The thing I struggle to balance personally was, during the 1 hour or so on Thursdays doesn't quite fit in sufficiently with my own daily volume and intensities. Ended the first few sessions by having a "second session" after getting home with my usual pullups etc.. But that means finishing up dinner late and daily sleep schedule becomes different.
To normalize, now I hit the pull-up and dip station at the Sales/Marketing Level and knock off a few more sets of diamond pushups before 6:15 where the abs/ stretching session starts... ADAPTATIONS!
Injury and the Road to Recovery -
Medial Epicondylitis (aka Golfer's Elbow)
... This was still a bitch affecting overall training. There are less gaps in between days of no pull ups this month, although I do take some days easy with just 10 reps or so. The month target as I am writing up the draft at this moment (~10 Oct 2022) is to hit around 650-700 by end of Oct.
This elbow pain started in Aug which I tried to ignore--- BAD IDEA!
It came back on and off after I learned how to "re-set" and "click" things back in place every few hours by flicking the arm. But it wasn't a cure-all method. Some days after exercising, the arm pump (especially forearm) makes the chronic buildup of pain worse in the evening. Waking up each morning was the worst part.
Looking through a ton of videos online and reflecting, I reckon it really warrants more rest, less stress in Sep. But it was hard to completely let up and not train at all... Pull ups was a little more than half of Aug's 1001 count. Dips and Pushups were lessened too.
Almost everyone who tries to teach you how to recover from this annoying pain will be demonstrating how to curl a light dumbbell to flex the forearm and doing a left to right rotation with a dowel. These works... BUT its not the most comprehensive and you may be starting off with a higher pain level to be doing it properly at first. Digging deeper... I finally found a couple more useful videos:
This one at first is like watching paint dry-- Almost skipped it but decided to watch the whole thing during my lunch break. Glad I did. The exercises here at first seem very trivial, hardly any movements, but yes it works! (Pain level of the elbow at this time was around 5-6 out of a 10. Absolutely unable to do any bicep curls)
This one I found most useful is the first half with the warming up rotation exercises before doing others.
Almost on the road to full recovery by now. Condensing all that I have learned and discovered in this journey, the most effective thing, personally, is pushing daily to flex the forearm muscles with wrist supination in lengthening/contraction exercises by following the natural muscular flow direction of your arm.
This is the part where themost talked-to-death forearm curls in most of the videos will try to show you too. But one key point missed in explaining what is most effective is how you actually have to intentionally "move" your forearm muscle forward intentionally and then contract them when doing this.
Majority of these videos will be instructions on how to flex these muscles and contract them at the end to control while letting your wrist drop as far down before supinating to bring it back up. That makes a lot of people unintentionally focus and strain the wrist. If you are already in pain, it really wouldn't work very well. While the wrist supination is crucial but in concentrating on that part of the hand- the focus is lost in trying to LENGTHEN and CONTRACT the forearm muscles which is the key to recovery
To be more effective, what I envisage is the muscle at the forearm like the circular musculature of a snake ... (which are packed like rings in a stack). I am trying to move forward just like a snake. There is limited movement in these muscles which is where the wrist supination comes in to "move" them.
It is hard to simply move these forward in your hand as your shoulders and upper arms will try to take over during the motion. You can't entirely lock them out either as that will actually restrict the full range of already limited forward motion that these muscles can perform.. So experiment a little if you ever need this. A video is probably better than half a page of rambling.... (note how I try to "push" the dumbbell forward as it is being dropped down as opposed to simply dropping it straight down and thus the extension of the forearm is more obvious)
Follow up to more on the Golfer's Elbow issue is continued in Nov Reflections
23 Oct 2022 - Intensity/ load is back up by now with the daily exercises and adding on air squats by now. The squats are usually a compounding with another 1-2 exercises as a finisher to the day's training.
Eg. Hammer Curl >> Air Squats, or Dips to Air Squats, 200m sprint+Air Squats and today at the park was 15 strict assisted Crunches under tension 100% + 5 Finger Pullups and 35 Air Squats.
While all of these added some weekly or monthly "goals" like the pullups -- I'm somehow losing the focus of exactly all the things I wanted to do.... Need to re-evaluate my longer term training plan...
.......
30 Oct 2022- Have more or less decided to "fix" the blurriness of a fitness program in my mental landscape by still sticking to the daily diet of pullup/ pushup/ dips. New finishing default superset exercise would be DF/AirSquats... for now. Fine tuning the reps and sets for this.
31 Oct- Kickstarted first real planche and handstand session... to continue or not for now? and oh.. hit another >1000 Pullups again this month... 1015 to be exact. Guess I'm just a die-hard Pull Up junkie :)
