SSD: Still not respectable

[simonrest]

What have you been up to?

[alek]

I know I’m one of the village idiots/class clowns/court jesters around here, but I saw your mention of asceticism and other recent postings. I just wanted to point out my somewhat accidental exposure to Stoicism early last fall; I read William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, and I’ve essentially adopted stoicism as my “philosophy of living”. It shares several principles with Buddhism, but it does have some distinct differences. Again, with the mention of asceticism, you might be interested in a couple other ancient Greek philosophies Cynicism and Epicureanism. While I’m not trying to proselytize, I thought you may be interested in other perspectives.

Irregardless, good luck with your existentialism. #Not_a_shitpost.

[stuffedsuperdud]

@alek ^I will have to add this to the list. I was suddenly reminded of various Nabokov things I had to read in high school, which I did not properly process back when life was both infinite and meaningless, but they sure as hell hit hard now.

Meanwhile today:
Squat:
20kg x a lot
135x10
225x8
315x6
335x4
345x2
315x10 LOLWUT
That backoff set came a bit out of nowhere. I mean, all the above reps felt goodish, and for the first time I months I was squatting comfortably, but I wasn't expecting to uncork that one. RPE of 8 or so.

My right glute's fairly sore now though..ugh...where's the fucking Icy Hot?

[mbasic]

SSD,

I was searching thru my old personal email acct for my dad's death certificate...an e-copy that I could quickly forward on.
Search function: "death + certificate".
So I found an old email, where I sent a copy of your post about your weightlifting-intervention by your family (thinking you were gay and/or steroids and/or socially unacceptable and/or etc) .... damn that was a piece of writing I copy-pasted that I sent it to my sister to get a laugh.
There was a similar situation with one of her friend's boyfriends or something. She laughed so hard at what you wrote.

The snippets that trigged the find:

My mom gave me a disdainful glare at this, and I awkwardly sat down on the ottoman, just outside their pincer formation. I chuckled nervously and offered a, “Uh…what’s going on?” There was always the chance that they were about to announce someone’s death, but lettuce beef reality: I knew what was going on.
. . . .
[he means his two-year certificate from the local community college saying he’s a master plumber or something like that…nothing to sneeze at, sure, but he’s deliberately being misleading]

Anywhoo ..... I remember when Exodus started up .... I think The Work was lost in The Rippening of E-n-P or something. As I don't think it was it your log. I think it was a EnP thread about family not understanding gym-life, or whatever. It was post "#920" of a thread; that's not your old log that I see.

I have it if you'd like me to re-post it here or PM it to you. I think everyone could get a kick out of that....

======================

I'm going to finish a 36 hr fast thru today.

[stuffedsuperdud]

@mbasic you mean it's saved somewhere??! Well come on now don't hold back. Let's see it!

Yea, it was in E&P because IIRC @Allentown kept asking about it, but got rippened back when we all suddenly found out in the most nauseating way possible that Rip wrote better fiction than I did. I didn't have it backed up and the computer I wrote it on broke back in 2015 so I figured it was gone forever. I tried to reconstitute it from memory some time back but it had been too long and I wasn't quite as traumatized anymore, and couldn't quite recapture how awkward the whole thing was.

[mbasic]

I knew that there would be trouble the moment I walked through the front door. My mom had come downstairs and greeted me with a tight smile and a, “Oh! You’re still so swollen, even more than last time. Are you lifting those weights again, like I told you not to?” On all my previous visits home, this sort of thing was followed by a low-dose grumbling to last the duration of my trip; annoying, but nothing particularly damaging, and if that’s all she’s complaining about, given my litany of actual shortcomings, I’m coming out ahead. This time was different though.

Everything came to a head a few days later, when I got back from an errand run and found my mom in the living room with her sisters Nora and Wendy, as well Wendy’s husband Joe and Renee, the Briton married to my mom’s brother Hershel, who had apparently managed to slip out of attending. My mom’s eyes were red and a half-empty box of Kleenex sat on her lap, atop a photo album. She glared at me.

Renee took point. An Oxford-educated biochemist with a talent for persuasion, she looked at me calmly and said gently, “Hi StuffedAsshole. Sit down please. Your mom called us over here because we have something very important to talk to you about.”

My mom gave me a disdainful glare at this, and I awkwardly sat down on the ottoman, just outside their pincer formation. I chuckled nervously and offered a, “Uh…what’s going on?” There was always the chance that they were about to announce someone’s death, but lettuce beef reality: I knew what was going on. I also knew that Renee was doing this as a favor to my mom, as usual, and that the rest were just trolls, here for the show and to perhaps enjoy a bit of self-aggrandizement before the night was out, i.e. standard-ops for my mom’s side of the family.

Renee continued. “We’re here to talk to you about your weightlifting. Your mother is very concerned about your health.”

My mom forced a smile and opened with a rehearsed bit: “Son, I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear. But I love you so I have to tell you. You are very unhealthy right now. You weigh 220lbs and have to lose at least 80. And the first thing you have to do is promise me that you will quit lifting weights. Forever.”

I knew this whole affair was guaranteed to spiral completely out of control, but still held out the hope that we could all get through it, kind of like the other Sully landing a crippled plane in the Hudson. “I know I’m a little overweight, but-”

“You’re a lot more than a little overweight! You have no neck! I don’t understand why it all goes to your back and your shoulders. It’s especially ugly. Think of how many job interviews you must have already blown. There’s something wrong with you that’s making it so that you don’t have a gut like a normal fat person. It’s in all the wrong places.”

“I’ve been over this with you. I could be a bit leaner, sure, but my shoulders look ‘muscular’ because of lifting weights…”

“And that’s exactly why you shouldn’t lift weights. Demeaning yourself like some shmuck. Why don’t you spend your time on something more productive! Or get a wife or something! Your old roommates are all married now. Wasting your time lifting weights…”

Things were quickly turning choppy! “This has nothing to do with anything. I can lean out by tightening up my diet a little. But lifting weights makes a person stronger and less susceptible to pretty much all ailments.”

My mom sensed that I was growing annoyed, and played her mommy card. She gently took my hand and opened the photo album; she had filled it with every photo of me ever, starting form age 0 and ending around 2011, when I started training more seriously. “Look at this,” she said, her voice breaking. “I made you so handsome. Your whole life even in college I made sure you were never dirty or hungry. Look! Look at that boy! He was so beautiful. And now…now this…”

“Mom this is getting kind of unsettling. Where are you going with this?”

“You! You are where I am going with this.”

Joe jumped in at this point. A chubby plumbing contractor at the end of middle age, he fancied himself some sort of semiprofessional philosopher, and enjoyed delivering pretentious soliloquies at family gatherings, with apologies to the entertainers in Louis XIV’s court.

“Oooookay. Everyone, if I may interrupt here? I think I know what is going on. SuperIrritated, you feel like your mom is not hearing you. I get that. I was your age once too, you know. I always wanted to get these big muscles. I was going to the gym every day. And it worked. I got bigger and stronger. But you know what? I still wasn’t satisfied. I still wanted more. So that was when the other boys at the gym started telling me about steroids. They told me that steroids would make me bigger and stronger. And you know what I did? I told them, ‘NO! No I am not going to put that stuff in my body and you can take that to the bank!’ Because you know why? Because even if it did make me bigger, it wouldn’t be real. Nothing in life is free, SuperEyeRoller. Nothing. It’s how I own my own business. It’s now I hired twenty employees and got all of them life insurance. It’s how I have a master’s degree.* I worked for it. And you should too. No shortcuts. So just say no whenever someone offers you any sort of, of, of those steroids.”

My Aunt Wendy chimed in. “I’ve heard of those steroids. My doctor wanted to put some in my shoulder last year. I told him no, I want to get better naturally. You never know what these doctors will try next. They just want the co-pay! Bunch of sheisters!

“SuperDuff…are you on steroids?”

“Of course he’s on steroids!” my mom shouted. “God knows what else! He lives alone so far away so he doesn’t have a mother to tell him no! He ends up listening to all those gorillas from work, and they’re all the same! Just a bunch of stupid boys who wasted their lives in graduate school so now they think they know better! Ask him what else he’s taking! I can’t! It’ll break my heart! Just look at the piles and piles on his shoulders; that’s not normal! Renee, please, ask him!”

Renee turned to me. “SuperRoids, tell your mom you’re not on steroids. She needs to hear it from you.”

I briefly contemplated telling them I’ve maxed out all the Dbolz, but instead halfheartedly said, “Mom, I’m not on any drugs.”

“Liar! Why do you lie to me! Oh God now he’s a liar too. It’s those Koreans you work with. They’re smoking all the time like they’re so much smarter than everyone. I think they were all in the army too, so of course they’ll smoke. They’ll even kill people! Smoking? Smoking is nothing! What other drugs are you on?! Do you smoke marijuana too?”

“…I’m not ‘on’ anything…”

“No, it’s not those Koreans, you moron,” Nora scoffed at my mom. “Why are you so stupid, anyway. These weightlifters, don’t you remember from back home when we had that Kazakh student visit our school? He would go lift weights with the local team, and then they would all go and eat all that red meat and smoke opium.”

My mom burst into tears again, covered her face, and gurgled a noise through her fingers. “AUUUGH!! Nora don’t call me a moron. My heart is hurting so much already. SuperTerribleSon, are you on opium? Tell me the truth. Please, just tell me the truth...Oh God only people in organized crime smoke opium…” Now she was sobbing uncontrollably.

Nora gave her a Kleenex and glared at me. “Tell us the truth. We can’t help you otherwise. Now, I know you aren’t a mobster. So tell me: do you smoke opium with your co-workers? Or with the people at the gym?”

“I don’t smoke anything. I am not even particularly muscular…”
My mom leapt out of her chair and hurled the photo album across the room; it struck a clock and several picture frames, all of which fell and smashed all over the floor. “OH GOD! NO! NO! I DON’T HAVE EARS FOR THESE LIES! JUST SHUT UP! YOU’RE BREAKING MY HEART! SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU STUPID FUCK! YOU HAVE DESTROYED EVERYTHING I WORKED FOR!”

Everyone stared in horror. Renee reached out but my mom swatted her little hand away. “You all have to hear this! AND YOU ESPECIALLY, SuperOMGWTF! I have been calm and collected before but I will be perfectly honest now. You disgust me. Your neck and your shoulders are swollen like God knows what! You’re fucking fat and disgusting! And you have a PhD? PhD? HA! Fucking PhD! You wasted your 20’s getting that fucking thing and now you are not even physically qualified to work in a lab! Smart people are tall and thin and gentle. You should be down by the docks, loading ships with your shoulders. You look like you’re about to go break someone’s kneecaps. Fuck you. Fuck. You. And you think you’re so fucking smart, you fucking asshole, you fucking cunt. I am your mother so I have to love you, but ask a less generous mother what she’d do. She’d fucking disown you is what she’d do. I’d never do such a thing but they would. And this is how you thank me?! All this work I put into you and this is how you thank me?!”

She started sobbing harder and harder, her eyes and nose flooding her face with snot and tears, but remained steadfast in finishing her speech.

“I saw your Facebook. Those fucking idiots watching you lift, cheering your name. You’re a fucking freakshow to them. They’re laughing at you. They’re going home and saying, ‘Hey today we saw a degenerate ape shoving weights over his head.’ And you are giving them that because you are so fucking stupid! I want your boss to fire you. I am calling him now and telling him that he has a chimpanzee working for him and that he needs to fire that thing now before he breaks the office.”

“Oh God, mom please. Please slow down…”

“FUCK YOU! There you go again with your temper! Why is it that every time I say anything you explode in my face! I see you rolling your eyes at me. When was it? It was when you were dating that fat Ukrainian girl Katya. You were dating her and you hated me and you rolled those stupid eyes at me!”

“You said some awful things about her and I told you that those things weren’t true. And she wasn’t fat…she just had an overzealous mom [who was your Jewish clone!]…”

“That’s a fucking opinion!” Here she choked on her own saliva, but managed to wheeze out, “You have an opinion…..and I have mine…….Everyone is right because…because that is what opinions are. And you know what everyone’s opinion of…of…of you is? That you’re a…..fucking caveman. PhD? How about P H…..f-f-f-f-fuck you, you disrespectful little brat…”

Finally she collapsed back into her chair and coughed into a Kleenex. I burst out laughing at the mental image of my mom cursing me out with her dying breath.

Renee was visibly shaken by the outburst, while Nora nodded in agreement with my mom. Wendy looked at Joe, and said, “You. You stupid idiot. Talk to him! Tell him to apologize to his mother.”

Joe clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. He opened them slowly, sighed an exaggerated breath of world-weariness, and stared at the floor between my feet. “SuperNephew, sometimes, sometimes you just have to face the truth. Because the truth is facts. And facts are facts. Cannot be changed. That’s why they’re called facts. So the fact is, you tried to cheat. Okay so you cheated and you got these big muscles, but now we’re past that. What I care about is-”

“But I have never used any drugs. I’ve never even smoked a cigarette in my life.” Okay fine I lied a little bit; I figured it wasn’t the time to bring up my functional alcoholism.

“Let me finish, please. This is important and I feel like everyone needs to hear this. What I care about is, why did you take drugs.”

“Oh God…this is so not about drugs, Uncle Joe. I think you misunderstood something from before. My mom just doesn’t want me to lift weights.”

“SuperInterrupter, PLEASE. So you took some drugs. Was it to impress girls? Clearly it was not, because you don’t seem to care about girls. So what then? I think we all know the real reason your mom is concerned about it, because it’s obvious to me. Now I am just one guy, but I think it is obvious to everyone else too.

“SuperScaredAboutWhatUncleJoeWillSayNext, was it to impress other men?”

“Uh…no I hate everyone at the gym.”

“That’s not my point. My question is, are you trying to impress men with how strong you are.”

“No…and everyone at the gym is stronger than me.”

“Again, that’s not my point. Okay I guess the real issue I am trying to address is, are you acting out because you are attracted to the other men at the gym?”

“I…I don’t know what to say. I can’t see how I can even dignify that with any sort of answer.”

Nora said, “No no Joe is right. I’ve heard about this. Their gym is not a normal gym! A normal gym has women, and people people doing light exercise and running. They go to these secret gyms. That’s why they don’t have any actual weightlifting machines in them, just some weights. It’s because it’s all fake. It’s just a front! They go there and they get together and they have these these- these- they have these illegal sex parties, where everyone takes steroids and rages out. And I hear sometimes they even do it in the anus! I saw it in the paper…”

This sent my mom into a whole new round of tears. Between sobs, she shouted at Renee, “AHHHHH! I KNEW this was going to happen. This is what happens when you don’t get married and make babies at a normal age. You never learn how to love a woman, so then you start lusting for men! This is a fact! We see it back on the farm all the time. All the perverts in the area are single men! They don’t know what to do with their dicks so they start doing things like fucking the animals or children or or or touching themselves, or meeting up with each other.

“SON. Do you want to go to jail? Is this what you want? You want to be arrested when you catch AIDS from a man’s anus? Because that is what the gays do. They have sex in each other’s anuses. Do you want that? If you want that, also tell me and I promise I will forever let you go lift your weights and put your dick in men’s anuses. If you don’t want that, you better drop the attitude and start listening to me.”

“Holy shit I’m not gay. I just can’t get laid.”

“There you go with your backtalk again! Of course you can’t! What girl wants a subhuman like you! You and your fucking temper! That’s why you waste so much time at the gym. You are at the gym and making those awful grunting noises and you don’t have a mother to tell you to stop straining under the weight! No mothers there because you guys are all too good for your mothers. Okay fine we’ll just pretend that no one carried you guys for nine months. You all fell out of the sky. I didn’t spend nine months fearing for your life. Angels gave birth to you. You are from some angel’s cunt. OKAY?”

“…”

“Don’t roll those eyes at me! You roll those eyes at girls too? That’s why you’re always bitching about not having a girlfriend.”

“I’ve never bitched about that.”

“Fuck you you fat pig. You stupid I-can’t-get-girls fucking pig. Girls don’t like pigs. How can they? Is she supposed to take a pig home to show her parents? Does she want to make half-pig babies? Girls want gentlemen who golf and jog and make lots of money. But you only rolled those fucking eyes at me when I told you to go to law school!”

And then, a small miracle. Perhaps funny out of steam, she collapsed into a chair, closed her eyes, and cried softly into a Kleenex. Nora glanced at her watch; it was time for her to check on her son, a tightly wound 42-year-old cardiologist in Westchester whom I am sure would one day completely go bananas and murder-suicide her. "Well, I'd say we're done here. I'ts getting late. Listen your mom. I want you to look at your mom and tell her that starting tomorrow, you're going to go swimming and jogging, and you'll get healthy and married."

Desperately clinging to the high road, I McCained that drivel back. Everyone departed soon after, with Joe giving me a nod and two silent pats on the shoulder, for maximum gravitas, on his way back out. A minute later he barged back in for his keys, which sort of spoiled any effect he might have had. We haven't broached the issue since, and I'm probably just going to quit lifting and take up cocaine, incest porn, and raw veganism until they all die, for everyone's sake.

*[he means his two-year certificate from the local community college saying he’s a master plumber or something like that…nothing to sneeze at, sure, but he’s deliberately being misleading]

[augeleven]

Your mom seems like a nice lady

[stuffedsuperdud]

Holy shit thanks @mbasic. I see now it was foolish of me to even try reconstituting this last year; a few of the nuggets I had completely repressed. My mom and that whole shitty half of my family, everyone. Have you guys ever read Portnoy's Complaint? An undergrad intern introduced me to it back during my lab days, and it quickly became one of my favorite books. Just realized this reads a bit like that, only less funny and more suicidal. Yick.

Your mom seems like a nice lady

Yea..... I actually grew up with this, so it didn't really occur to me that it wasn't normal or appropriate behavior until I was in college. Hell, even in 2015 or whenever this happened, it didn't seem particularly bizarre to me; reading back, it's actually a bit surprising to me now what I accepted as normal as recently as then.

As part of my recent adventures in accepting circumstances for what they are instead of raging that they are not want them to be though, I don't blame anyone for how this shit went down, and do realize that this doesn't come from nowhere: her family had a tough time when she was a kid and she seemed to get it worst of all, out of everyone under their shitty roof. The result seems to be a total inability to regulate emotions, coupled with a perpetual victim complex. Her siblings and cousins are pretty fucked up too so it might very well be a nature component too, on top of the environment, and with her specifically, I suspect that her relationship with my maternal grandmother was more strained and negative-leaning than I realized as a kid, and that she had clearly been the victim of what we might nowadays refer to as gaslighting. Interestingly, she has described to me stories told to her by my grandmother about some of the stunts that her mother and grandmother, i.e. my great- and great-great-grandmothers, pulled, which takes us back to people born in the 1850s, and while it's not quite shit repeating itself, it does all ring familiar. Sensitive Gen Z kids take note: this is what intergenerational bullshit looks like. We've never had a potentially disruptive event like immigration to the other side of the world though, so maybe we'll get lucky with my generation, end it here, and downshift to standard ops middle class white suburban non-traumas, like beating up a teenage referee at a youth soccer game or not paying for your shitty kid to go to that fancy private liberal arts college he wants, because Cal (Go Bears!) is a much more financially sensible route to a bachelor's degree in a STEM field, which he'll hate you for because he sucks at math for some reason. American Dream, baby.

Fortunately, in the years since the evening described above, she seems to have mellowed out some in her older age. Or at least, she's no longer fixated on my lifting, which I guess I don't actually really do anymore...so there's that. I did go to her house last month, coming straight from a conference that was in town, and when she saw me in a suit and tie told me I was too fat and stupid to be cosplaying as Prince Charles, so it's good to know she's still got some fight in her I guess.

Speaking of not lifting, here's my not-particularly-noteworthy lifty thing for today:
Bench press:
45lb x 20
135x10
185x7,8
195x6
205x6x2

immediately followed by

Barbell skullcrushers:
45x12
55x12
65x12x2

Barbell situps with 45lb barbell and a lot of body English because my abs are atrophied to kingdom come. Those Tuesday squats kicked my ass and I've been walking around with a girdle of DOMS. Good.

[brkriete]

Holy shit thanks @mbasic. I see now it was foolish of me to even try reconstituting this last year; a few of the nuggets I had completely repressed. My mom and that whole shitty half of my family, everyone. Have you guys ever read Portnoy's Complaint? An undergrad intern introduced me to it back during my lab days, and it quickly became one of my favorite books. Just realized this reads a bit like that, only less funny and more suicidal. Yick.

I really hope you've read A Confederacy of Dunces....

[stuffedsuperdud]

@brkriete Thanks! I've got it on my phone now. Leaving in a few hours for the next work trip and will hopefully have some time on the plane and hotel to push into it.

Back continues to feel better. Very very rusty but I did manage:

Snatch pull + hang power snatch + snatch 1+1+1
20kg x a lot
40x1x2
50x1x2
60x1x4

Nothing felt crisp or strong but the positions were at least reasonably comfortable, i.e. my joints haven't frozen up on me at least. Hey whatever happened to MobilityWOD? Is Kelly Starrett still a thing? My PT (jacked chick who lifts, which lends her more cred than the usual PT) thinks he is (was?) a charlatan.

Clean pull + hang power clean + hang clean:
20kg x a lot
40x1x2
60x1x3
Right elbow continues to be a bitch in the rack position. Weight was not an issue, as I am actually able to muscle clean much more than that.

Press (with muscle clean)
20kg x a lot
40x10
50x8
60x6
70x4
80x3 it's fine

Let's see what the elbow has in store for tomorrow. At least now I have a bit of an assessment though and the PT can adjust accordingly.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Welllp...my elbow was hot all week so that was disappointing. Luckily I got called out of town for work anyway so it was all a wash; we have a big client in Thousand Oaks CA, which is a suburban hellhole if there ever was one, and reminds me way too much of the years I spent living in Orange County CA. One of the cherries on top is that there's nowhere to train. There are however several tasty breweries (standard ops for any town of left-leaning upper-middle-class overeducated nerds, I guess?), so I was pretty trashed the whole time instead.

Today got back into it and did:

Press (muscle cleaned):
40kg x 10
50x8
60x6
70x5
80x2
82x1 RPE 9+

Front squats:
First ones in probably 2.5 years. Haven't done them since COVID, and if you guys recall, in the months before COVID, I was doing a lot work on my elbow to try to improve my front rack, so it's really been a mess going back to 2019.
I managed:
40kg x 10
50x6
60x6

Leg strength was not an issue but the front rack was very uncomfortable.

DB elbow work:
Overhead tri extension: 75lb x10x3
DB curls (palms forward): 30lb x 10x3
DB bench: 65lb x 15, 75x11
Windshield wipers: 30lb x 10x3

Pretty limpdick comeback as far as comebacks go, but it's still another step in the right direction I suppose.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Squat:
45 x 20
135x10
225x10
315x8
335x6
355x4 RPE 9 or so
365x1 => Should have been a double but I missed the groove and this turned into an ugly asymmetric grinder. Recall I once did this for a set of 10....fucking hell.

[stuffedsuperdud]

More bb fun:
DB rows 65lb x 12 x3
Windshield wipers 25lb x10x3

Curling in the squat rack
45lb x 12
55x12
65x12
75x12

Skullcrushers in the PL bench station thingy:
45lb x 12
55x12
65x12
75x12

[stuffedsuperdud]

Still at it:

My elbow has made some strides recently and I've been able to milk a bit more pain-free ROM out of it. Trying to do more front-racky things all the time and vaguely awaiting the day when I can comfortably clean. For now:

Press (with muscle clean)
20kg x 20
40x10
50x8
60x6
70x4
80x3
85x0 slipped out of the groove and I lost it.

Clean pull:
80kg x 10
110x8
140x6
150x6
160x6x3 relatively pain free but shifting towards the left (good) side a bit

Windshield wipers for elbow, up to 30lb x 8 each side

[stuffedsuperdud]

Some recent exercise highlights:

I've been traveling a lot of work, so a lot of hotel gym stuff, like:

DB bench supersetted with DB bent rows: stuff like 65lb x20 x3, with slow eccentric and fast up.

DB bis, tris, and shoulders (curls, OHP, skullcrushers, triceps extensions, etc.) for sets of 15, with stuff in hte 25 - 35lbs

For travel conditioning, I load up my backpack with whatever I have on me and go for walks through the cities I'm in. Seattle has a surprising # of hills, which is pretty fun.

Gym stuff from the other day:
Press (barbell muscle cleaned)
20kg x a lot
40x10
50x8
60x6
70x5
80x4
83x1 missed rep 2
70x5

Barbell biceps / triceps using 75lb barbell

Clean pulls:
70kg x 8
110x6
140x6
150x6
160x6x2
170x6

Squat:
45lb x 20
135x10
225x10
315x8
335x6
355x4
365x1 -> lost tightness and got pinned

My back is finally feeling better so that helps. However, my right hamstring is misbehaving. Interestingly, it does not really bother me when the hammies are actually engaged, e.g. RDLs, hamstring curls, etc. Instead, it hurts when the quad itself is engaged, e.g. during a squat, right around parallel, for both down and up, or the first part of a dead when the barbell is below the knees. This is decidedly annoying.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Felt a bit more like myself today as my hammie behaved. Given the general lack of DOMS in my right quad after squats, my PT suspected I'm controlling the descent mostly with my left leg, and the lack of tightness in my right leg is affecting its ability to come out of the bottom. So, kept the weights a touch low and focused on symmetry:

Squat:
45lb x 10
135x10
225x10
315x8
335x6x2

feelin' okay

[stuffedsuperdud]

Minor injuries are resolving themselves in a surprisingly okay fashion. Last two squat sessions consisted of

45lb x 10
135x10
225x8
315x6
335x5
345x5
355x5 RPE 8 or so
315x5

and (back kind of sore this time but knee okay)

45x10
135x10
225x8
315x5
325x5
335x5
345x5

I've also been doing a lot of bench (working sets around 205/210 x5) and riding the Airdyne, which I am enjoying way more than expected and has me feeling healthier than I've felt since early 2018 when I first left DC. I've been joking about training for summer 2022 since the initial lockdowns, and here we are....I guess we're out of excuses, and if COVID has taught me anything, it's to stop procrastinating on things I'm bad at, seize more shots, and generally live every day like...well, maybe not like it's your last, but to enjoy a healthy appreciation for the temporary nature of all things.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Some recent exercise:
I am able to do cleans again with minimal discomfort, i.e. sort of got my elbow back to where it was circa 2018 and earlier, before things went off the rails. The movement feels uncoordinated and awkward but at least it's not a total no-go. I can muscle clean about 80kg, but not full clean much more than that because of how untrained I am oooops.

Presses are still hovering around 70 - 75kg for 5x5. Everyday max is about 85kg. No idea how I was able to uncork that 91kg 2 years ago but it ain't happening now.

I was able to deadlift 160kg x 5 RPE 7 or so, but 170x4 was RPE 9 or so, and my low back flared up to remind me not to get cocky.

Doing a lot of bis and tris still which seems to help the elbow on its road back to usability.

[mgil]

Slow stroke symmetrically for proper elbow loading.

[stuffedsuperdud]

Some training highlights from the past few weeks, as my back and right knee have felt better.

Press:
73kg x 5 RPE 8
80x3 RPE 10

Bench:
215x5x3, RPE 9 or so

Squat:
355x5, RPE 8, maybe

Bent row:
93kg x5, RPE 8
80x10, RPE low

Deadlift:
160kg x10, RPE surprisingly low

Doing also a lot of time on the Airdyne and about 1 36hr fast per week for what that's worth (probably nothing outside of a temporary calorie deficit).