Creation of an Explosive Mofo - My Training Journal :)

[coolcolj]

I found a nice place to "foam roll" my upper traps, the rounded corner of my kitchen bench top
Works great on my glute medius and lower back too.

Just found out my dad has this $4000 massage bed type thing, that heats up to 65 degrees and then rolls this hard ball or something under the bed against you body! High tech foam rolling I guess. Gonna try it out. It has a 40 min program or you use it under manual control.

I'm just amazed I can now raise my arms overhead without my lats tugging under tension.
And this morning at my part time job, my upper body felt so much stronger, I didn't feel anywhere near as tired from all the lifting, carrying and throwing. And hardly any shoulder pain from impingement at the extreme ranges of motion in hard throws. This means I will have more energy left for BBall this afternoon as well.

I do feel a bit sore from all the foam rolling though

 

[coolcolj]

Saturday 17th May - Micro Cycle 8 - Week 4 - Day 2

Bodyweight = 85.4kg 187.9lbs in shorts and t-shirt

Nice drop in bodyweight from last week. Shame it didn't help
Didn't feel so good today.

Outdoor BBall court - one right next to park with a bent rim - Nike Free 7.0 Trainer

1 hour total

did some dribbling, a few shots and some moves for about 30 mins.
Dribbling continues to improve, but I felt flat and lethargic.
Shooting felt good, finally free of shoulder impingement on hook shots!

Then did 20 or so jumps of all types. No pop in my hops today. Probably down about 2 inches from last week, and that's with me being lighter and a little stronger. Technique was sucky too.
Heavy week strikes again...those deadlifts always kill my CNS. I should jump well next week, going by the current tends...

 

[coolcolj]

18th May 2008

Bodyweight up a bit today due to pigging out at my Dad's birthday get together at a restaurant, but I made sure I drank Diet Coke
Most of it food and water weight I reckon, so it should go by the end of my low calorie part of the day.
Might get some progress pics done today.


felt pretty decent this morning, the first thing I noticed when I got out of bed was soreness and stiffness in my ankles/feet. That went after a while, but everywhere is not as bad as usual. Even my spinal erectors felt much better. Just an overall mild achey feeling. Even my knees didn't ache walking downstairs, without a length warmup....

If Foam rolling works so well why not do more of it?
When I went to the kitchen to get something to eat and drink this morning, that stone kitchen benchtop's curved edges, and corners did the trick.
This works great for most of my upper body, upper part of my glutes/hips and lower back. A bit too low and the wrong angle for my lats though.
My 3x21 inch card board roll does the rest of the work on my lower body. I'll pickup a tennis ball and cricket ball (put em in a sock) for my foot sole muscles and calves.
I also find sitting on the stair as I sometimes do to put my shoe on works pretty good for the glutes and hips. Prop one leg up on the other and lean and roll to one side, and the hurtin is there, especially on concrete/tiled steps.
I have a proper high density 6 inch x 3 feet foam roller on order for other things like thoracic spine and more gentle rolling from the larger size.

Did some mobility drills to get the body loose and muscle temp up. Worked on lower back and hips glutes first. And then went beserk and hammered my whole upper body, even my obliques, abs etc.
After I finished I could do a full circle with either arm without any clicking, popping and pain spots!

good 30 mins of work there I think, nice bit of cardio early in the morning to get the calorie burning underway
Your lower body does get hammered a little crouching down to use the bench top for foam rolling though.

Will do my lower body later today before I go for my 25 min walk.

The mostly painful and tight muscles were my upper traps, front delts, biceps and the rear part of my shoulder where the cuff muscles are. Not a surprise they are ones causing all my shoulder issues and limited range of motion...
That's what years of sitting in front of a computer does - it puts your front delts and biceps, in shortened state for long hours and they soon tighten and knot up. Plus the traps get all tight from the hunching forward.

And then when try and do mobility and thoracic work, stretch em, or do cuff work, you run into shoulder impingement issues, so it becomes a catch 22 situation. Only foam rolling and massage can fix it, then you can stretch, do mobility work and scapular+cuff work to complete the cycle.

Surprisingly, my pecs and triceps hardly hurt at all.
I still wonder how I got up to a 295lb close grip bench with no arch and leg drive in such a condition...maybe when everything is fixed up I can closegrip bench 315lbs at a 155lbs, or whatever weight I end up when I lean down that is 2x bodyweight !
Short arms = pressing leverage advantage

 

[coolcolj]

this new Eric Cressey article nails it on the head

http://www.t-nation.com/article/performance_training/the_proactive_patient

Tip #2: Your Shoulder Pain isn't Just About the Rotator Cuff.

Hopefully people have come to realize that while the rotator cuff is where it frequently hurts, it's not always the cause of the pain. Case in point, in a 2006 study, Kibler et al. reported that 49% of athletes with arthroscopically diagnosed posterior superior labral tears (SLAP lesions) also have a hip range of motion deficit or abduction weakness.(2) How often do you see therapists do hip mobility drills with shoulder rehab patients?

With that in mind, if your shoulder hurts, ask them how their rehab program addresses each of the following:

1. Scapular stability.

2. Thoracic spine range of motion.

3. Cervical spine function.

4. Breathing patterns.

5. Mobility of the opposite hip.

6. Mobility of the opposite ankle.

7. Overall soft tissue quality.

8. Glenohumeral (ball-and-socket joint) range of motion.

9. Rotator cuff strength and endurance.

Most therapists will be quite good with #1, #8, and #9. If more PT's simply added #2 and #7 to the mix, things would come around much quicker for most patients. The other four are just a bonus.

 

[coolcolj]

Also I find massaging the eye muscles (with eyes shut), along with some eye movement drill patterns (up and down, left/right, diagnol top/bottom and full circle) and focus exercises ( ie focus on your finger and then quickly focus on something 10 metres away, back and forwards as fast as you can - like pushups for your eyes ) also improve the eye health and eye sight quality pretty dramaticly!
And keeping your eyes focused on an object while you move your head up/down, left/right, in circles and then look left/right and focus quickly on something on each side. I do the eye massage after each set of drills/exercises
Then do the same with one eye covered etc

After all these years of sitting infront of a computer, I'm nearly at 20/20 vision with this stuff, which I do before I go on my 4-5 a times a week 25 min walking
Plus a whole bunch of mobility work and scapular wall slides and pec/lat stretches and my hip flexor stretch/glute activation move

This is like my health and well being battery

 

[coolcolj]

Oh yeah I also did my forearms on the benchtop, makes sense to me as we use a forearms a ton, and they sure were tight and painful!

 

[coolcolj]

another good foam roll article
http://laurensfitness.com/2008/02/24/tennis-ball-part-1-a-tool-you-never-knew-you-had/

 

[coolcolj]

I found a small Mini Basketball pumped up fairly tight works great as well for foam rolling. There are some small ones, but the one I used was volleyball sized.

probably the best thing so far for getting at my lats, serratus, and triceps
Hits the upper hammies better than anything else so far, the size of the ball stretches the hams as well. Works the hips, glutes, quads and IT band nicely, but more gently than a PVC pipe type roller even with your whole bodyweight on it.

best thing so far for the inner thigh, adductors and VMO. The height and dimensions of the ball allows it to put a decent amount of pressure on the inner leg even when your fully relaxed on the floor and it's small enough to not get in the way

And you don't get as tired as with a foam roller, since you can balance on it and hold onto stair rails or use your leg to help a bit.
Some bodyparts can be done fully relaxed, lying on the floor

 

[coolcolj]

Did more "foam rolling" tissue work on my upper body on the kitchen bench top, or self myofascial massage. And the mini BBall on my lower body and lats, serratus, triceps etc

Squatting off a chair or toilet seat without using your hands to help and with a narrow stance is now pain free! Man it's been a couple of years since that has happened.....
That's probably the most painful part of a narrow stance squat ROM, right at parallel
Left inner knee used to scream, and the right now and then in some stances

I think it was caused by my glute medius being really tight, because that's what gets tight when you sit down a lot.
It is really sore when I foam roll it.
Tight glute medius pulls on IT band and boom knee pain.
But I foam rolled every muscle in my lower body, and been pushing my ankle and hip mobility hard, so who knows

All this time, I'm thinking quad/ hamstring imbalance, weak VMO or some other crap that is popular these days, err it was none of that....
And stretching doesn't really seem to help at all. It doesn't loosen up the muscles like Foam rolling and massage does. Or stretching only works until you've unknotted the mucles with foam rolling/massage

Noticed I can get my knees up much higher, when I tuck my knee to my chest and it feels easier to do so without my lower back rounding. Must be from the looser glutes. That should help my full squats a lot too form wise - get rid of the tail tuck at the bottom

Looking forward to squatting tomorrow and driving back up my leg and hip strength, and beyond!
I have so much more confidence in my squatting and jumping now. Good times

 

[Azinine]

I gotta get a foam roller...