Haven’t logged anything in a long time, was chugging along pretty well without it for a while and making decent progress. Bit of a change in my situation recently and I’ve got to shift my training focus for a while - logging will keep me more accountable.
Bit about me, was an aspiring powerlifter for a the first few years I logged here, finally bit the bullet last November and competed.
Went 212.5/110/230 at 98kg.
Nearly hit a PR 3rd attempt on squat, had a shocker on bench because my feet moved on the first two attempts at my opener, got a solid pull in but missed my 3rd attempt.
Really enjoyed the day, proud of myself for dropping about 8kg to get to the weight class and still hitting close to my PBs, qualified for BDFPA nationals but didn’t end up going due to funds.
After that I let my weight creep back up above 100, and focused on getting my bench and deadlift up. PRs since then are a 227.5kg squat, 125kg bench, and 240kg pull.
Since then, I’ve had a bit of a setback. In May I was doing a dropset on the legpress and started getting a serious headache, along with nausea and general feeling of wanting to die. Being a medical student and constantly hammered with “sudden onset severe headache over the back of the head is a bleed”, I had a little bit of a worry, but I ended up getting driven home and riding it out for a couple of days before finally going and getting a head scan - logic being, if I’d survived the 25 minutes it took for me to stall going to hospital, it shouldn’t be anything serious.
I turned out to be half right. The scan came back showing some blood in my subarachnoid space. That’s generally quite a big deal, it normally comes from a burst artery and basically leads to a loss of oxygen to and compression of the brain.
Mine was slightly different, I apparently had a venous abnormality which has existed for years, perfectly happy, then randomly popped. Probably the leg press triggered it, but it could’ve gone any time.
The end result is, I had to take a month of training at all, I’m now under strict instruction to take it easy until I am properly signed off in November.
I’ve been doing light bodybuilding training for my upper body, and very little lower body work at all.
My limitations are basically, I can’t make my intrabdominal pressure spike too high. That limits lower body work. I’ve spent the last few months prefatigueing every upper body muscle before going anywhere near anything heavy, and just driving up volume.
I’m now home from uni for summer and will be training mainly with 24kg and 40kg kettlebells. The goal is getting my bodyweight down and fitness. That’s where the accountability of logging comes in. There will probably be shirtless pictures. With downlighting
Starting weight (buying scales tomorrow) 107kg range.