Injuries

So as I am sitting here right now I'm icing my hip and knee, so I think this is a very prudent subject for a post. I've had a history of knee problems, so I have to ice it at least a couple times a week & take glucosamine as kind of a preventative measure so it stays relatively pain free. I have at least 6 or 7 ace bandages at strategic locations around the house so I can comfortably ice where/when I need to. However, not having a fully functioning ice maker makes it a lot more difficult to take care of it appropriately (it makes like 20 cubes a day. Ridiculous. How do you fix an ice maker? ).

The hip is new...not really sure where/when it came from. Makes leg days (like today) pretty hit or miss. It doesn't really affect flexibility, but it makes me feel so much weaker on squats & deads and makes me a lot more tentative on heavier lifts. I probably could have hit another rep on both today but I didn't want to aggravate anything. Plus, not having anyone there to spot me or tell me if my form is deteriorating doesn't help.

Anyways, I guess this is the price one pays for training so hard. Everything has been feeling better in the last couple weeks so I can only hope the nagging injury bug just goes away without having to take any major time away from the gym.

Oy Vey...

So it has been a couple weeks since my last post, and it has not been a good stretch to say the least. Foxfield weekend (April 28th) I had a bout of...well I'm not too sure what exactly it was. That saturday night I got really sick...uncontrollable chills & nausea. It was so bad I had to take a scalding hot bath to get my body back to regular temperature. I ended up eating (a lot) off my diet as that's the only thing that made me feel better. In retrospect, I wasn't eating a whole lot and that combined with the strain on my body from the competition could have made me sick. Or some of the food I made for foxfield day (2 salads) could have gotten contaminated during prep or gone bad in the cooler during the long day. Either way, with the amount of food I ate Saturday night and the strain I felt on my body I decided to scrap plans for the May competition.

Since then, I have gone through spurts of straight awful eating. I intend to stay in relatively good shape since I am planning on still competing in July & September...but with nothing pressing until then it's hard to stay completely on my competition foods list. For most of the day I'm perfect...typical oats & eggs in the morning, shake mid morning, postworkout shake if I lift, sweet potatoes & chicken early afternoon, big salad late afternoon. This is where I struggle. Example: yesterday I had an ice cream sandwich (Klondike Oreo cookie) after my late afternoon salad. Yum, that's good. So good, I had another. And another. Good thing there were only 4 in the pack. Then I hit up the other box of ice cream sandwiches for 2 more. And then before my nighttime shake I had 2 more, for a total of...wait for it...8 ice cream sandwiches in the course of about 2 hours, not to mention a few packs of sour patch kids, a few tostitos & salsa, etc. That's a total of about 1600 calories (mostly sugar) just from the crap I ate after dinner. Ugh, just reading that makes me feel a little ill (though that ice cream tasted freakin' good). This type of thing has only happened a few times since the competition (keep in mind it's only been 2 1/2 weeks since the comp, so that's a relatively high percentage of days), but it's been hard trying to readjust to a 'normal' lifestyle. Just one of many things to keep working on...