Ian Murray, the MAT Wizard and a random extra leg…
So when last we left our mild mannered blogger, he was stuck in a vortex of unexplained knee swelling, general dejectedness and preparing for an annual cheat day ritual…
Some eating is about to happen…
Last weekend was Phat Boy Fiesta. If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that this is a yearly get together of the boys for a day of championship football (very lame this year), eating (very plentiful as always) and catching up (always fun). The event was born out of my broken ankle in the old days (Fuel Station fight before Xmas holidays in 1999) and the comradery that the Whiskey Jacks (there’s a way back playback) had and still have. Yes, there are a lot of brackets/parenthesis today, please keep going. I was laid up in a cast and the boys grabbed some food and kept me company on the blustery Sunday afternoon. The event evolved into Momma C cooking copious amounts of food and us gorging ourselves until the meat sweats overcame us to today’s variant of a potluck format (thanks again to our host Ron). It’s always hard to control yourself with the sheer volume of cheese infused goodness, but part of this journey is to be smarter with how much is eaten and understanding that a price will have to be paid to work off the fun. Thanks again Boys (and to the Ladies that let us go and put up with the side effects).
@Ruddz approved! Well, for the first little bit…
There’s how much cheese @Bubba?
One Plate Limit for Me…
Little Kiera made us dessert???
Now I talked about my first Sunday 5KM run in preparation for Chicago last time, but what I wanted to stress was even though the run was relatively pain free, I was off kilter. I could feel it in my stride and especially how I was striking the ground. It really does help to have an ace up your sleeve when it comes to the body and how it’s supposed to work, so I made a call to the Wizard himself Ian Murray (Core Strength). I haven’t been for a tune-up for a while and I was interested to hear him explain my knee scope results. Short story… Horrifying. The asshat that did the surgery told me that all he had done was fix the meniscus. In actuality he carved up my knee pretty badly (he probably did a good job and what was necessary, but when a patient asks what you did… F$#king EXPLAIN IT). Especially if you REMOVE something (anterior synovectomy) or cut something (lateral release). Anyway, Ian is confident that he can get me moving properly again and I will still visit the surgeon to determine if anything else is wrong. The muscles were still firing, but unlike the Spinal Tap video, the volume was at 1 instead of 11. Thank you again Mr. Wizard!
Kind of a heavy tone for a Saturday. It’s been a lot to comes to terms with, but it makes sense why the recovery period has been so long and I’ve still had trouble when putting stress on the knee during the first pull (barbell), the bottom of the row (largest compression of the capsule) and in the Squat. As a result I needed something new while I wait patiently for Mother Nature to turn up the heat so I can start running outside. I reached out to Rob at @Eastbound_Power and he’s putting together an upper body program for me, focusing on the Bench Press. I’m really excited to start training and to hopefully and finally take the BW Bench Press off of my goal board with a big check mark. We started off on Thursday with setting up properly for a heavy bench and after a bunch of tweaking we started looking for a fresh number to base the program on. We built up to 255lbs and Rob felt I had more, but for training purposes, that was far enough. I actually ended up lifting 5lbs more than my old PR (set in 2014) so that was a big WOOHOO moment.
@SavannahJessie making the food to keep us on track…
Somewhere in there is a lesson about doing what you can and staying positive. It’s tough, especially when you are working towards a goal to get derailed or sidetracked, but that’s life unfortunately. The key is trying to find things that you can do when something isn’t going your way. Would I like to have full mobility back and lift heavy, of course, who wouldn’t? For the time being though I have to shift my focus a bit to the things that I can control. I’m working with @canuckcoach to bring down my weight (10lbs lost in January) and when the weather clears, running and conditioning with @ajhughes77. With the new @eastbound_power strength program, I think I can manage to keep myself moving forward…
What I will be doing… Minus the Bourbon…
Have a great weekend
Beez