SkyzykS's Keep Hitting It Until It Works Again Log

Training Logs
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So, a little background-

Age: 47
Weight: 173-175
Bodyfat- plenty!

I’ve exercised in some form and been involved with athletics throughout my life. Wrestling from early on, conditioning for other various activities, bicycling, snowboarding, and just for fun. Sometimes just because.

I’ve never been a mass monster. Usually just medium build, occasionally pretty lean, more recently just kinda blah. Pics will probably be added at some point.

So, to get the ball rolling-in the morning of June 19, at 4:00 I awoke having a heart attack. Thanks to quick response from emt’s, a great hospital within a 10 min. drive, and a wizard of a cardiologist I’m here today with some fancy new cardiac hardware. In the words of the one cardiologist that came in one time (I was pretty highed up on morphine most of the time) “You’re lucky everything went exactly as it did or you’d be dead right now.”.

Following the hospitalization, a couple of my friends busted my balls, agitated, and dragged me out for some short walks, then a little longer. Then some biking. Quite a bit actually. We have an amazing network of trails here in Pittsburgh, and even one within spitting distance of my house, so wo took full advantage of them. And a good bit of hiking. Thank God for those bastards, and fuck them right in their fucking faces! :joy: (ill show them this later, but I’ve also told them the same a few times irl.).

THEN I started cardiac rehab. There were some wonderful people there, Very knowledgeable, helpful, and caring. I progressed nicely, albeit with a bit of difficulty (it’s not supposed to be easy), and finished that up last Monday, Oct. 28th. which brings us to today.

Here at home I have a schwinn airdyne, a 20 and 10 lb. dumbbell, and a couple of stretchy bands, a mountain bike and a 7 year old. At my buddy’s place we have a wide range of equipment, rack, etc. Nothing fancy, but it works.

There are some limitations. At this point I’ve been cleared to lift, but nothing more than what I can do for 10 clean reps, and my target heart rate for exercising is 110 to 135 bpm, with an absolute max of 140. I set off the lunk alarm a few times at cardiac rehab, which is kinda playful funny with the nice nurses and physiologists but at the same time very serious. I’m finding my limits as I arrive at them, and kind of fleshing out a new plan to be in decent shape and not croak. At least not while I’m sleeping. I want to at least be doing something cool or heroic if I die, not sleeping. That would just suck.

So there will be cardio, weight circuits, and some weight training. Hopefully some laughs. Not many tears, Pics of food, and probably quite a few local references.

I’m only tagging @whang @Basement_Gainz @EmilyQ @ActivitiesGuy @loppar to get the ball rolling, but I’ll extend an invite to anybody that would like to participate. I’ll answer any questions I’m able to, and look forward to interacting, chatting, trading insults, and just general bs’ing.

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So tonight-

Airdyne:

5 min. @ 45 rpm.
5 min. @ 50 rpm.
5 min. @ 55 rpm.
5 min. @ 50-53 rpm, just kinda cruising a little.

Cool down for a couple minutes, distance–5.5 miles.

Goblet squats w/ 20 lb. dumbbell:

4 sets @ 10 reps.

Felt good, but kinda eh, so-

3 sets of 20

Felt better.

The target was 100. Didn’t have any real plan to get there, just wanted to see how it went. Heart rate was at about 144, got a little hypotensive (dizzy, wobbly) but not badly.

Push-ups:

Sets of 10 during commercial breaks.

Total- 50. Really just got bored and decided to start this log instead. Might do 100 next time.

Still pretty weak, so we’ll see where it goes from here.

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Also can’t forget @flappinit @dchris and of course, @anna_5588

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Awesome dude! Will be following along. Glad you’re turning your life around and that your kid is gonna be with your for longer!

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I’m here! Have you thought about a commercial gym with a play area for kids? Might offer some variety, and my kids didn’t mind going at 7. Though there were four of them, so places like that might have been easier for them (someone to play with).

I’m really just so glad that you’re okay.

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In for the log.

Mostly for the insult trading, but also the log.

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Definitely in, appreciate the tag brother.

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Said it before, I’ll say it again: glad you didn’t die.

Now go work on being so healthy your 7yo son will have to put you in a home when you reach 90yo.

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Great to hear you’re doing good man.

Don’t worry about strength, focus on slowly rebuilding your work capacity and please be patient.

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I looked into it about two years ago. A new planet fitness opend up and I thought that would be nice, but they don’t allow kids under 12 on the floor, and at the time there were plans for child care based on interest but I moved on.

He likes playing on the airdyne and has actually gotten pretty good at it. In a more over all way, I’d like fitness and exercise to be something fun that can be done anywhere. We square up toe to toe for goblets, go face to face on push ups, and he has his own set of dumbbells (3lb’ers) that he uses while I use mine.

I just try to keep it light and fun for him. So far he’s having a good time.

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The patience is where I’ve run into problems.

A few times I’ve pushed too far/fast or what ever and get very low blood pressure/palpitations as sort of a rebound effect of exercise.

I’ve found out about exercise induced hypotension exacerbated by meds, and some foods! Typically, relaxed I’ll run at about 100-105 systolic, and mid to low 60’s diastolic, which is great. During exercise I’ll run at about 140’s/high 60’s, also great. If I push too hard, post exercise I’ll drop to low 90’s/low 50’s. Not good. I’ve gotten held from leaving at cardio therapy a couple of times from that.

Oddly enough, I guess from some reading, the bromelain in pineapple also drops it pretty good,which sucks because it’s one of my favorite snacks.

So when my love of that tasty tropical treat and fear (there is a lot of that) based drive to “fix this fucking thing” collide, I find myself couch locked for a while sometimes.

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I get it, I’m also impatient as hell, but this is about dancing at your sons wedding in twenty years’ time, not about how many goblet squats you can do now.

Be patient and keep it cool.

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Do you work off of a set program or just wing it?
That might help you by presetting the amount and exertion level. Even world champions follow scheduled work rather than train to failure daily. Except wrestlers maybe…:wink:

Agree with loppar and others - your season is now changed from 10 minutes of level 10 on the AirDyne by Dec 31, to years of health to raise that boy and whomever else is in your life. Cliche but you are in marathon, not a sprint.

Best wishes on your journey.

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Morning cardio:

Warm up:

10 min. @ 35-40 rpm.
10 min. @ 40+
15 min. @ 50-55
5 min. Arms only @ 40 rpm.
10 min. @ 50+

Cool down, 12.7 mi. in 50 minutes.

So, my take on cardio- it takes about 20 minutes to fully get into the aerobic energy system. I’ve observed thus far that right at/about the 20 min. mark there is a pop in performance with no real increase in effort. After that, it’s just a nice cruise. At this point my cruising speed is about 55, which is up from 35-40ish about mid July when I got the bike and started measuring it. Actually, 40 was about as good as it would get through July, but I hit 50 a few times briefly just to push it.

Nothing broke, but my wife yelled a lot. She has since met with my doc, who reassured her that I won’t break my stents. They’re in there real good.

I joke around a good bit because I tend to confront fear with humor, bravado, or aggression. When I can direct it toward something useful it’s not so bad, but that isn’t always the case. There are a couple times where I’ve come off irl as an asshole or calloused, and aggression turned inward can be damaging too. I’ve found a counselor to help with some of the bad coping mechanisms and deeper problems that have come up through this. I may rant a bit and or discuss those things occasionally too.

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Nice. I wish I could do that. Everybody I’ve ever heard talk about counseling says it’s basically a disinterested 3rd party person telling you to “stop that!” In a different way.

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Thanks.

On structure- I had been working under the direction of the cardiac therapists which amounted to a 5 min. warm up (treadmill) followed by 40 min. of various cardio activities- treadmill, aerodyne, rower, and elliptical. 3 times per week. Then on my off days I’d do something either at home or outdoors (light weights, biking, hiking).

I had a falling out a few weeks ago with a buddy. He kept pushing for me to go on a ride down the Allegheny Passage. We ended up with a few back & forths about me making excuses and not trying hard enough until I finally told him to fuck off for a while.

So I do hold back a little. I just didn’t want to end up dead beyond the reach of medical help (or anywhere else). We’re now in the butthurt stages of getting past that, and by morel season (spring) everything will be ok.

But I am going to run him down and drag him through the woods like backpack by next July. And he knows it. :joy:

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There have been a few undeniably bad effects that I couldn’t ignore.

I have a good bit of confidence in this guy. So far he’s been good. Nothing I’m going to drag out here, but it’s going to go deep.

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Go fishing with him.

You know the saying -
A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.

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Glad to see this log, man. I’ve been so swamped with work and parenthood that I haven’t been checking in much here other than to log my own workouts, but I think it’s great that you’re logging & I’m glad to hear things seem to be trending upwards for you.

I have some spare stuff that you might be interested in to bolster your current mismatched home collection. I know you’ve got a buddy with a more fully equipped setup, but if you wanna have a few more spare parts to play with at home…

Now that I do all my training with Rogue gear from my “spend some money on yourself before you have a kid & never spend money on yourself again” purchase: I have an EZ-curl bar, about 100 pounds of old Standard (1") plates, and a pair of loadable dumbbell handles that are mostly just sitting there in my garage. Might even be some other stuff up for grabs too, drawing a blank right now. The only ‘untouchable’ items in my garage gym are the squat stands, the good bar, the good plates, the axle, and the kettkebells - but I’ve been trying (lazily…) to figure out how I can donate or move some of the older stuff to someone that can use it, so I’d be happy to give it up if you think it’d be useful for you.

You wanna pick any or all of this stuff up, it’s yours, just shoot me an email.

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Wow! You’re really crushing it! Didn’t you have a heart attack only a couple of months ago?

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