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*Day 2*

MW: 147.0

Calories: 2000

Exercise: Rest

Ugh. I hate when work stress and lack of sleep get in the way of my eating habits and work outs. I HAVE to stop skipping workouts which means I have to start doing them first thing in the morning.  I am just exhausted and feel terrible today, but the week will get better.

*Day 1*

MW: 147.0

Calories: 1800

Exercise: Rest

I may be getting a GoWear Fit, which makes me incredibly excited! I need to start drinking more water, by the way.  Anyways, I was reading Cosmo magazine yesterday for the first time in ages... It made me remember why I quit reading it. It holds tons of terrible advice! I did notice one specific piece of advice that irritated me. They gave the workout tip of what snack to eat post work out. Now, they did not specify if this is a weight lifting or cardio workout (though they may assume that Cosmo girls don't lift weights, who knows.) Their advice was to make sure you are actually hungry, and if so have some peanut butter, and whatever else they suggested. I am sure this would be fine if they specified a cardio workout. However, for a weight lifting workout, this is TERRIBLE advice. You should definitely eat after lifting weights--and it should be protein and simple carbs. Fat has no place in a post-workout meal. I am tired of seeing bad fitness advice everywhere!

*Day 0*
MW: 148.5
Calories: 1500
Exercise: Rest

My main goal right now is to get back into a consistent cardio and weight lifting routine, and to keep my calories at 1500 per day or less.   I hope to work out five to six days a week, and average a three mile a day run until my endurance improves. 

As far as weight loss is concerned, I do not have a specific goal. I simply want my jeans to fit on any given day, any given pair in my closet. 

My current supplements are an E/C stack, Fish Oil, Multi-vitamin, Vitamin D (until summer is finally here), cinnamon, and Vitamin C. 

I'm going to join this site because my attempts to track my food and exercise have proven futile up til now.

I'm a programmer by trade but my attempts to make a decent application to track this stuff have been dismal due to my lack of time to put into it.  This site looks a bit better.

Here's to hoping it works out better than things I've tried in the past.  And here's to hoping the weather improves so I can actually work out for a change.

Tim and I decided to resume working out at home, instead of the gym, saving £70 approximately gym membership a month, without the time consuming effort of getting dressed, driving to the gym, finding a free piece of equipment to workout on, be it the bicycle, jogging machine, weights etc; and workout at home to workout dvds andv videos. 

SATURDAY 23rd Jan 2010
Started my first workout in the front room using Jane Fonda's Low Impact workout.  A 50 minute workout which felt fairly intense as I'd not worked out in such a long time.  Felt euphotic, lots of endorphins and really enjoyable.

Sunday 24th Jan 2010

Despite feeling down due to a bad day at work, decided to buy the indoor chin-up bar that i've been eyeing on. Told Hubby about it and he wasn't supportive. I was disappointed but I'll prove to him with my new body come 11 April 2010.

Radiology being one of the specialty branches in medicine is commonly used to diagnose and treat various types of diseases and disorders. In this branch of medicine various radiation energies are used to diagnose disorders. Radiation energy includes different forms of electromagnetic energy like cosmic rays, gamma rays, X - rays, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, radar, radio waves, and microwaves.

 

As a medical specialty, radiology is classified into four subfields. This includes diagnostic radiology, nuclear medicine, therapeutic radiology, and interventional radiology. In diagnostic radiology, external radiation is used to produce images of the body. Whereas in nuclear medicine, a small amount of radioactive materials is used to create the image for diagnosis and treatment of the disease. Therapeutic radiology, also known as radiation oncology, utilizes radiation to study and treat chronic diseases like cancer. Interventional radiology is an innovative tool, with which the abnormality in the body can be treated without undergoing surgery. 

 

Radiology medical transcription is the transcription of reports associated with radiology. Radiology medical transcription is the best way to update and preserve the various medical reports. The different types of records include MRI and CT scan reports, angiography reports, ultrasound reports, etc. 

I am going to use the blog as a diary. Today was a lazy day, much lying around, watching TV. I did do a lower body workout in the morning. I didn't use my free time to my best advantage whilst having a free day. I ate no meals between 2pm - 7pm. Overall mood = OK.

I finally thought I'd start doing weights. Im 22, in great shape, but don't have a whole lot of muscle. So I bought a weight bench with weights, along with trying to eat alot of protein in an effort to get some muscle.

today wasw ok fitness wise wanted to do more then i did need to do a full body workout tmarrow. reading g-force bodybuilding , and body for life both are good

Proper training starts today, as I am still acclimatising back into the Australian summer from the European winter I will not be not pushing myself to 100%. That starts next week.

To further explain what I am doing I have taken the following from the WildEndurance website.

WildEndurance: the new standard. 100km through the Blue Mountains in one weekend, raising funds to save the planet.

WildEndurance is a unique trekking challenge for teams of 4-6 people. Experience the stunning beauty of the Blue Mountains World Heritage area - while raising funds to protect our wonderful wild places.

This will be a no holds barred account of how my training progressed. Currently I feel fat and out of shape, funnily enough, I look fat and out of shape also. Over a month of no training and eating excessively (closer to two months if I'm completely honest) has left me worse than I have ever felt or looked before.

Today I start again, let it begin.

Found out a little more about what's going on with my hand.

Apparently I have mid-carpal instability. When I was younger I broke my arm and since this was during adolescence, apparently the growth plates hadn't fused and the bone healed 'flat' (it should be curved).

As a result my wrist subluxes all the time which is stressing out the ligaments and leading to instability.

Up until now this hadn't caused me pain, but now it seems to be. This is likely a result of some/all of the following:

• I haven't been lifting due to my shoulder injury thus have lost a significant amount of forearm muscle and strength.
  
  
• Due to the shoulder injury (right) I've been using my left hand more
  
  
• I've been doing an awful lot of keyboard work over the last 18 months, more than usual
  
  
• Chronic build-up of inflammation
  

I was advised that at some point in the future I'll probably need corrective surgery, but this doesn't have to happen for a while, certainly not in the next year or two.

Here's a link with some more information about mid carpal instability (warning: Graphic images of surgery are there, don't look if you are squeamish)

Fortunately it does't feel as bad at the moment, and using a Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard really seems to be helping:

I've not written anything for a while so thought I'd update with how things are going.

Knee[s]
No real change, but I am attacking the plan I formed with my physiotherapist which is comprised of:

• Medial glute work
• Massage of the lateral retinaculum
• General glute activation work (eg: bridges)
• Quad exercises with an emphasis on the VMO

My knee feels the same, but my medial glutes are definately getting stronger. I'm going to see my physio in about 10 days and get him to observe the changes in my pelvic tilt and posture. Hopefully I'm dropping my hip less.

Shoulder
Not much has happened. I had my MRI Arthrogram today and will see the consultant to review the results next Wednesday - so until then I won't know anything else. Until I know what's happening with it I am not doing any shoulder exercises as I don't want to make things worse.

Hand
I had a bit of a scare with RSI in my hand. It was so bad I thought I'd broken my wrist! Fortunately it feels a lot better now. I've got a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and it's helping a lot.

Bodydaemon
Real life is busy for the next few days but I'll be back to adding new features very soon. Next things to be done are going to be:

• A few new reports (I want a 'time spent doing cardio' report, and 'distance travelled in cardio'
  
  
• Lots more exercises videos
  
  
• Tidying up of the exercise libary
  
  
• A more flexible way of recording exercises - so you'll be able to record as much information as you want in terms of distance, time, resistance etc. This came about when recording farmers walks - I got to thinking that some cardio exercises may involve resistance, and some resistance exercises may involve duration / distance. So once this is done, you guys can record exactly which information you want to. Exercises will have defaults (eg: by default 'running' will show distance and duration, but won't show resistance or reps!) - but you can tweak these

Hope you are all well. Not sure anyone is reading this, but still :-)

Going to make one final push to cut again, this time I really want it.

I've got a good healthy diet sorted out and I'm going to be doing a mixture of weights and CV. The key is clearly consistency and I've got to stop pissing around being dissapointed that I dont get anywhere in a week and watch what I'm putting into my face.

Starting off well, 2 good workouts in 2 days, i'll see how I feel at the end of the week as to how sustainable it is.

I want to be lean! I will be lean.

PS - Thanks for new gloves Ad, it doesnt half make grip more difficult though putting a fairly thick barried inbetween you and the bar...

Grrrrrrrrr.

I wasn't happy about having to have another MRI Arthrogram on my shoulder because, to be frank, they're not very pleasant. Having lots of needles rammed in my shoulder isn't my idea of fun.

Still, it needs (re)doing - even though I only had one 6 weeks ago - before the surgeon can tell me what's wrong, since the quality of the last scan was so poor (so a day of my life wasted there).

It was meant to be happening on the 24th of December.

I just got phoned and now it can't be done until Mid January.

Which means it's going to be at least 3 weeks extra before I know what's wrong with my shoulder..

Great!

I keep swaying back and forth between wanting to cut and wanting to get bigger, knowing full well the whole time the only way i'll improve on either is really down to diet and consistency. The latter I lack.

I saw a couple of older pictures of me when I was at a really lean 12 odd stone and I want to get back to that sort of definition. For that reason I am subbing my morning and lunch time meals for protein shakes and eating one healthy meal in the evening of lean meat and some lean carbs if I feel like it. Oh and lots of water. Lots.

I'm going to keep this up over the christmas period, it should be workable because I'm not too bothered about eating Christmas lunch etc, this isn't designed to make my life a misery. I'll be keeping up as much as possible at the gym going the days I can until the new year and we'll see if 3 weeks of subbing protein shakes in for meals will make a noticeable difference. Evidently I know it will take longer to achieve what I want but I want to see if its sustainable and worth it.

Oh noooooo....

My MRI arthrogram is booked for my shoulder on 24th December, so not much is going to happen between now and then.

Left knee feels OK.

Right knee is very, very clunky and keeps subluxing. Its not too painful its just popping a *lot* at the moment.

No knee or shoulder news today. (right) knee is very clicky. I've been on my feet a lot this week so I'm taking it easy.

Did a lot of cool stuff on BodyDaemon today, including the 'Photos & Videos' tab, which is new.

Personal situation

Not much happening today knee or shoulder-wise. I'm not going to do anything shoulder-exercise-wise until I've had the MRI scan done.

Eating has been OK - managing to stick to food plan (low carb, lots of protein, veggies and healthy fats) with no problems. The scales say I've lost 8-10 lbs over the last 5 days though most of that is going to be water.

Haven't done today's knee rehab workout yet, I'll post it when I do.

I feel optimistic about making progress, which is the main thing.

BodyDaemon

Made some changes to the site today. I've modified the 'Reports' section to feature a new way of viewing reports. I think it's a lot better. Interested to hear what other people think...

I had my meeting with the surgeon today.

He was great - very understanding and spoke to me at length about my options for both the right knee and shoulder.

I will do a 'part 2' article explaining these in depth, but the upshot is:

Right Knee
He thinks it's simply a case of patella maltracking. My options are basically:

• Attempt to rectify through physiotherapy;
• Have a lateral release.

I'm not keen on the lateral release idea yet, so the plan is to attack physiotherapy with every ounce of energy I have for the next 6 months, and if there's no improvement, go for the surgery.

Right Shoulder
He says the pain I'm getting does not fit the profile of arthiritis and seems to be due to a mechanical fault. He's spotted 2 things on the MRI scan that may be be causing me problems:

• What appears to be a cartilidge 'ulcer', which may require Microfracture;
  (noted as a Cystic Lesion in previous findings)
  
  
• It looks like some of the labrum has partially detatched from the glenoid.

Both of the above can be rectified surgically which is great news. However the MRI scan that led to the above findings is apparently not of the best quality, so he wants to re-do the scan. So the plan is:

1. Have the scan re-done;
2. Review the findings;
3. Make an informed decision to proceed with surgery.

Unless the refined scan paints a drastically different picture it looks like more surgery is inevitable.

Having said that, up until today I had been told my shoulder was 'as good as it's going to be' - so this is a dramatic improvement. Marcus Green has fixed my left knee before, and I have every faith he will do as much as is possible to improve things in my shoulder.

So - now I wait for the scan. I'll try to get it before Christmas.

In the meantime:

• No upper body exercise at all as it may make the damage worse;
• Lots of leg rehab workouts, doing whatever I can that doesn't hurt;
• Continue dieting to lose some of the excess weight;
• Try to remain positive.

Right. I have finally finished the article I've been working on for the last few days. It's not easy to try to remember a timeline of the last 5 years.

I haven't got much to add beyond the article, since not much time has passed, but I've managed to stick to my new improved diet over the last few days and have actually lost about 5 lbs though obviously it's mostly going to be water weight from not eating as many carbs.

Went for a long walk today (it's the only form of cardio I can do), covered what I believe to be about 7 miles. It's annoying because it's not challenging on my lungs / heart / etc.. at all, but it's going to be using calories and hopefully 'waking up' the slow-twitch fibres in my legs, so it's worthwhile.

I will write more over the next few days.

Feeling a little more optimistic about things in general

Starting a new routine, after a weeks recoup. This one's a mon-thurs movement isolation type o thingy. So eg chest, tric, wrist / lats, bicep, hammer etc. Based on 4 major compounds, isolations and 'extensions.'

Was doing about 8 weeks of 2weekly full body workouts (2 different ones) with a standard weight for every exercise to let the smaller'uns catch up while giving a bit of low impact strength training for the larger groups.

Hmmmm ... Now that I have 2 people following me and potentially checking up on me I am not going to be able to get away with eating so much garbage.  This is a good thing, really .... this is a good thing.  I'll make healthier choices as a result of this and eat less chips and chocolate and red vines (sniff, sniff, wipe away a tear).  And I'll probably eat a real lunch a little more often instead of the 100 calorie packs, the sugar free puddings, the protein bars, or the FiberOne poptarts.  It's good thing (if I keep telling myself this I'll eventually believe it). 

Yeah .... it's a good thing.

I'm having a rubbish time with my shoulder.

There's a post about it in the forum - so I won't duplicate any information here.

If anyone has any words of widsom or encouragement I'd love to hear them, as I really feel like I'm fighting a losing battle.

Thanks,
Jim

This is just a test. I want to check my blog is publishing to blogger OK.

I think that I have to shed all that I have become to become who I want to be.  I have a lot of weight to lose, not only on my body, but on my shoulders & mind.  I have no doubt that I can do this, I just have to stay focused.  That's the part that gets me every time.  I have goals now. I have things that motivate me.  I have reasons.  I can't fail.  I can't.  I am a 26 year old child.  I think that I am finally seeing the importance of taking care of myself.  I lost who I was for a little while and now the vision isn't so blurry.  One day the picture might be good enough for one of those fancy frames.

I've been led to question the idea of a "hard gainer" recently. I was under the impression that I might be such a person who finds it hard to put on weight because of their genetic make up. I think recently the situation I've found myself in has opened my eyes, you need 3 things to make a fire they say... fuel, oxygen and ignition. I think its the same for growing bigger, my components are again fuel (food), oxygen I would substitute for rest and ignition... training. They're all about equal in weighting in my mind now. If you don't have enough of one you either get a shit fire or nothing at all... same for growing. Recently I've been eating like never before, seriously stupid amounts of food and its costing me a fortune, however, if you look at my body stats page you will see that I'm clearly growing, and fast too. In the last 3 weeks I've put on nearly 8 lbs in weight from force feeding myself enough protein and food in general. I'm not hanging back on anything, I eat anything in sight to ensure I dont have a negative calorific deficit at the end of the day. I'm feeling it too, today I managed 130kg for 8 in my deadlift set and it didn't feel terribly hard at all. I'm gonna go on until I hit my target weight (which is only 2kg away now for about 2 months more of training) and then I'll re-evaluate. If I keep growing like this without hitting a plateau i'll just keep training until I get as big as I want then cut. That should keep me happy for a while. Cutting however, will not.

I actually got into fitness in my late teens and early 20s because I was convinced it would help me to enjoy a better quality of life for longer as I got older.  I had in mind that it would be cool to get bigger and look better, but mostly I just didn't want to end up like all the older people (50+) that I knew. 

Now that I am in my 50s I am really glad I got into keeping fit.  I never did gain all that bulk that my 20 year old self would have liked, but now I couldn't care less about that.  I still manage to run a 10K every other day at about 7 minutes a mile and I can still lift a lot of weight for a very skinny guy.  At 51, skinny's not such a bad thing!

Hmm. It looks like this is not retaining all of the weights which I have entered. Interesting.

i want to check this appears in blogspot

Finally got a home gym with neighbours! Bought a power rack with a chin up bar plus a 145kg barbell. We have a lock up in the compound down from my house so it has all been put down there. It has lighting and we can play i pod music so the atmosphere is good. Found additional approx. 100kg in 1 inch diameter weights there so with cheap E Z and straight bar should be all set. Have a couple of dumbbells up to about 14kg for now. Will get a medicine ball and have a punch bag up and ready. Getting a free bench and possibility of making a platform for olympic lifts if we can get a few safety mats. With all that and the compound itself for space to sprint and try strongman events such as tractor tyre flips the workouts should be excellent.

Farmer's market shopping today. Tomatoes (3), onion (1), garlic (3), strawberries (pack), lettuce (2 heads), salad mix (1 bag), baby carrots (1 bag), sugar plums (6?), lemons (3), steamed sweet potatoes (about 3 in a pack) and nectarines (3) all came out to $21.40.

1 1/2 scoop of Whey + 1 gr AAKG + 0.5gr ALCAR + 1g MSM + Multivitamin

100-125gr WheatGerm + 1 scoop of Whey + 1 scoop of Casein + sprinkled Cinnamon

5 Egg Whites + 2 Egg Yolks fried in Extra Virgin Coconut Oil + 2 Spring Onions&/Or a serving of Fibrous Veg +Spices(Cayenne Pepper,Tabasco,Turmeric,Parsley,Methi) + 4 1000mg Fish Oil Caps






1 scoop of Whey + 2 scoops of Casein

Hello

Finally, I started my beginners workout plan today. I was able to workout for around 25 minutes straight and at the end, I was dripping in sweat. It was a nice feeling :)

Now, my quadriceps muscles are aching a bit.

Also, as I was going to down to place my head and nose on the ground for prostration, my shoulders did not held up my upper body. I was about to hit my face on the ground, but i got hold of myself as i was just about to touch my head on the ground.
Getting back up from the prostration position was quite difficult as it felt as my shoulders were not there. I did eventually get up slowly. By the time on my last unit of prayer, the shoulders were aching less and were back to normal (almost).

So this was my first day. Tomorrow is Core and that is going to be tough.

Hello

I will begin a full body workout plan for weight loss. Presently, I am setting up my routine so that I may begin exercising.

    My tonsil surgery is now behind me and I've spent the last 3 weeks trying to recover after my throat was reinfected. I'm back at the gym which feels good but at the same time I have to be careful as I am still getting worn out fairly quickly and I am still sleeping long hours at night.

As a result of the operation I've lost quite a bit of fat and a little bit of upper body strength. My shoulders seem alright, about as special as they always were, my chest has lost a a few kilos of lifting power which is annoying because it was never that strong in the first place.

Due to the weight loss I think I am about 10 lbs lighter than before the surgery and from what I can see most of it is not muscular loss, my strength hasnt gone down that much so i'm fairly happy with that as a result.

What I have been looking into at the moment is a diet along the lines of the velocity diet or the V diet as its known. This diet is an extreme weight loss plan, protein rich which I believe was developed as an extension to a diet aimed at obese people who need to lose weight quickly. Porting it to a body building point of view to shred fat still works a charm but working out whilst on the plan is kinda hard as the carb level is rediculously low. The diet even goes as far as allowing you a whole one solid meal per week which to me is not going to happen. I am not *that* desperate to lose a bit of fat that I am going to cut back to one solid meal a week, I'd be seriously miserable and I wouldnt be able to keep that plan up.

To this end I have changed the diet as it were slightly, at the moment I have one solid meal a day. That is I have a protein shake with a bit of fruit smoothy when I wake up (for vitamins), depending on whether or not I go to the gym in the morning or the evening i'll have a bacon roll from the canteen in the morning and a shake shortly after. Then I have a shake for lunch and a meal around 5 or so of good lean food with a lot of protein (tonight is sausage and prawn miso ramen) and then a shake later on before bed.

I wouldnt like to say I can "see it working" or anything of the sort yet as I've only really been doing it in dribs and drabs for the last week to see if I can actually stomach it. Ahuhuhuh I see my sense of wit is still with me. Seriously though its actually fairly hard to maintain but think of it as just cutting lunch out as a solid meal and having a shake instead. I think that a couple/few weeks on this diet with normal training should let me lose enough weight without loss of muscle or strength to the point that my body fat will be very low, around 7% again if I do the course well.

I want the fat this low so I can then focus on starting to train for mass again without having a lot of fat on me. I just think i look and feel a lot better when my body fat is very low. The fact that I now have a girlfriend (I'll look back on this in however amount of time when I randomly read this entry again and will most likely be letting myself in for a whole host of sorrow but hey) is not going to deter me to start getting slack with my health, she's a lovely trim size 8 and I want to look good for her too.

Dime

It's increasingly looking like the patella pain in my right leg is down to my hamstrings not working properly.

As an experiment I am massively upping the amount of hamstring work I'm doing to see what happens.

I just got some Iron Woody bands, which make it a lot easier to do hamstring work at home. I train in my garage, so certain bits of equipment easily accessible in gyms are lacking.

Anyway, fingers crossed....!

It's been ages since I wrote on here!

Ironically since it takes so much time (of which I have very little) to work on BodyDaemon I haven't been logging as much as I'd like. That's not to say that there isn't a lot happening with my injuries, though.

Shoulder - recovery from labrum/rotator cuff repair
My shoulder is getting a lot better. I've been seeing a very good physiotherapist (Jeff Kahn, based in Bearwood, Birmingham) and, with his guidance, have been able to get rid of most of the inflammation whilst carrying on strengthening the shoulder. I do my rehab exercises 2-3 times daily, consisting of the following exercises, all with therabands:

• Abduction (a rowing movement)
• Adduction (straightening arm with theraband anchored behind body, resisting)
• Lateral raise (exactly like with a dumbell, but with band)
• Internal rotation
• External rotation

I'm definately getting stronger. I'm hoping to introduce light weights to these movements soon, with my physio's permission of course. But generally speaking, all is good.

Left Knee - recovery from removal of Cyclops Lesion
Since the cyclops lesion was removed, I've had very few problems with my left knee. There is still some crepitus which is, in part, being caused by scar tissue buildup, but its nowhere near as bad as it was. I'm having ultrasound and massage to help work the crepitus. Strengthening is going very well.

which leads me to the one remaining injury which is not improving..

Right Knee - Retropatellar pain syndrome
Basically:

• My right knee hurts when i bend it
• Cycling hurts after 2-3 minutes
• Deep squats hurt immediately and often leave me in agony
• After I sit for a while with my knee in flexion, when I bend it there is a pronounced 'click'

The kneecap is shifting laterally and being dragged towards the outside of my body. This is bad.

I've been working, with the guidance of the droitwich knee clinic, on strengthening my VMO muscle via intensive physiotherapy, with exercises such as:

• Terminal Knee Extensions (see video below - these are working well)
  
• Very small ROM squats
• Leg extensions (last 10 degrees ROM)
• Straight leg raises
• Small ROM squats with medicine ball between legs
• etc..
  

Unfortunately I don't seem to be responding well. My VMO is getting stronger, but it's not stopping the pain.

Today I saw a chiropractor to see if they could spot another reason why I'm still getting pain. Their findings were:

• Build-up of tension in lateral parts of quad - worked with massage - but hasnt made much difference
• A lot of movement - too much - in my kneecap
• Patella tendon is stretched, and the kneecap is quite 'high' (so danger in overstretching quad as it could make it even higher)
• Quite tight laterally in quad
• Hamstrings look to have lost some tone which may not be helping
• The patella is very, very irritated which is why I'm getting pain.

Suggestions of said chiropractor were:

• Try not to go into the painful ROM at all as the irritation is stopping improvement
• Strengthen hamstrings
• Stretch quads laterally but don't go overboard
• Carry on working on VMO
• Investigate taping, a knee brace or similar to force myself not to enter the painful ROM for a while
• Talk to consultants back at the droitwich knee clinic about the possibility of a cortisone shot to remove the inflammation while I go about making things better.

So, we'll see. A fair bit of stuff to try to work on there.

Hey guys, just posting to try out the blog.

I'm currently having a rest day so I'm looking forward to getting back to my routine!

I filled in my "Body" section info today. Was interesting to see the size difference in dominant VS non-dominant muscle groups - time to shape up! ;D

Mark

Urging yourself to workout when you've been at work for 8 hours and you've barely eaten 1000 carlories in the day is particularly hard work.
I'm not even convinced I'm going far enough either... time will tell but will I be able to keep this torture up?

I do want to be leaner though..

  Just a sample BS Blog entry to get my bearings on the system.

 

I've just had a knee operation.

I can't type much due to my shoulder still being in a sling, but it turns out I had a 'cyclops lesion' in my knee. To quote kneeguru:

---

A cyclops lesion is a complication of anterior cruciate ligament surgery, where the new replacement ligament slowly strips away and bundles into a knot, jamming up the 'intercondylar notch' and preventing the knee from fully straightening. The lump sometimes looks like the central eye of a mythical 'cyclops' monster, hence the name.

---

A little background for people that don't know me that well - I've had several knee operations over the last 5 years for an ACL reconstruction, a meniscal tear, nerve damage / scar tissue removal, 2 more meniscal tears, then removal of a plica. The last of these was in 2005. Since then I've had the following problems:

• pain when straightening leg
• horrible noise / crunching when straightening leg
• pain during any exercise
• pain when sleeping
• stabbing pains in knee when driving
• pain when sitting
• weight gain due to inability to do any cardio exercise, or indeed even just be on my feet for more than a few minutes
  
• no-one knew what was wrong.. several medical professionals suggested i "live with it". one (a senior surgeon at a respected hospital) said it was just 'wear and tear' and 'id probably need a knee replacement in 10 years'. good eh????
  

The goal of the operation was to figure out what on earth was causing all of this, and hopefully fix it. Since this isn't covered by my insurance, I had to pay for the surgery (around £4000).

So, the operation identified and removed this cyclops lesion.

Other than that, my knee is apparently in great shape inside. I've got around 85% of my cartilidge left, and there's hardly any wear and tear (not bad for 7 surgeries).

One of the most frustrating things about this has been fighting for the diagnosis of the problem. I've been complaining of this for well over 18 months during which time I have seen countless physiotherapists, surgeons, chiropractors, paid for MRI scans / x-rays, etc. In the end they had to go inside my knee to see what was wrong, but I was discouaraged from having an operation at all, since it came with no guarantees.

I guess it's a good thing I stuck with my instincts and insisted on a procedure to hopefully figure out what was wrong.

I won't know for sure whether this has fixed the problem until I'm back on my feet properly, but I was getting pain upon extension - the symptoms of a cyclops lesion - so hopefully this is it fixed.

I now have lots of rehab to do. I was discharged from hospital today and I've been walking around and it's not too bad, although obviously it is extremely sore.

If this is the end of my knee issues, I can't begin to explain how happy I am :-) My injured knee has literally been the bane of my life for the last 3/4 years, as anyone who knows me in person can attest. I've been affected not just physically, but emotionally and financially. That may sound a bit over the top, but until you've been through a chronic injury you can't appreciate how horrible it is.

 It's too early to tell yet whether this has fixed things, but I'm very, very hopeful.

I'll resume physio next week at the Droitwich knee clinic.

Cheers
Jim

Finally hit 140 kg squat tonight. It was controlled and down to parallel. In about 10 months my squat has improved from 6x80 to 1x140 kg so very happy with the progress. Although i had done some extra workouts between my last pb attempt and the start of the new program, im sure the smolov routine quickly improved my squat max. I didnt even do the total 3 weeks of the base mesocycle, only doing the last 2 and my squat increased 15 kg. Definitely will be using it again. Thinking of trying it for other lifts starting with deadlift, although might have to cut back on volume to allow my back to recover.