Archive for the ‘BodyBuilding’ Category

I have had five acupuncture treatments & one cupping

You can get your own TENs & cupping sets and ask the acupuncturist for a program to apply on your self – I intend to do that next week

I am trying to regain full strength after my recovery – as ever its a slow process with rotator cuff injury.

I have made a couple of posts along the lines that at 49 it is a good idea for me to create a new training regimen aimed primarily at joint development.

Anybody like me that has trained for 30 plus years has a foundation of extensive muscular development.

With andropause comes collagen deterioration which is directly related to hormonal decline. One can dose on colostrum, antler and other supplements.

But there is an array of hormones and other biochemicals at play plus years of accumulated micro injury (and in some cases macro).

So having torn and now largely healed my RC I have spent a year doing shoulder joint physiotherapy. Basically its bodybuilding for your connective tissue.

So its a real good idea to do this for the entire body – right?

Jaw, Neck, Back, Hips, Shoulders, Knees, Elbows, Wrists & Ankles.

All points where disability comes up in masters athletes.

Obviously this requires a paradigm shift as so much time will be involved there is not going to be time for a standard bodybuilding routine.

But my body is built & on this routine I can maintain mass & strength – maybe even make gains.

Certainly much of what we call bodybuilding & power training can be a part of this routine.

However there will be much more derived from physiotherapy exercises for the specific joints.

For the shoulders you must train like you had a torn RC, same for all the rest following the carefully designed protocols to develop the integrity of those joints.

If you do this for two years training specifically for joint integrity you will have transformed the internal structure of your body allowing you to periodize with power lifting & bodybuilding as a masters athlete.

I have the shoulder routine down now & even as recently as 3 months ago I was still finding important new information after months of intensive research on shoulder rehab.

Next I will introduce hip & glute training – again it will take months to get down, then I will add back & spine.

Eventually a year or two from now I will have my own training system totally focused on my joints & connective tissue.

I’m doing this for longevity.

Now as a part of this longevity I must add the correct cardio vascular protocol HIIT – which I already do.

I must add qigong & yoga methods, herbalism and other modalities to enhance my longevity.

Once I finally move from New Zealand to the UK I will indulge in peptides, SARMs, hormone replacement & stem cells.

It wont happen over night but I will develop a proper athletic conditioning system for older athletes.

Where we all seem to falter is the joints primarily with cardio vascular coming second.

I am also an avid cognitive enhancement enthusiast so that too is part of the program.

My goal: To still be an athlete with good health & a good physique well past 60 & by 2038 even beyond 70.

At present I call it “joint centric training”

Yes I am past the one year mark with this injury. Its nearly better but manual work is still very ache inducing. In the gym I am regaining my upper body power. I can do full body pull ups again and my bench is increasing nicely.

I still dont press over head & wont for some time. I tried to paint ceilings for several hours at work & got bursitis in both shoulders for about 5 hours.

Apart from that its pretty good and I have begun acupuncture to help with the final recovery.

Mind body connection has traditionally meant positive thinking & meditation. Perhaps tai chi or some other psycho somatic therapy. Later in the 20th century biofeedback technologies became popular.

In the 21st century advances in brain imaging have been linked to studies of brain function & cognition.

I saw a recent study last week where specific activities and thoughts were mapped and stimulated the exact same brain regions in all subjects regardless of culture and language. These were abstract concepts such as “the car is blue” or even more complex.

So while the brain is neuroplastic – it does have a genetically determined optimal configuration.

This means that there is a cognitive map for all human thought & behavior.

It means that patterns of thought & behavior entail patterns of brain region activity that are the same every time & in all people.

It means that people with special talents have duplicable brain activation patterns. Athletes & academic geniuses for example.

Currently western research into training these patterns into other people involve neurofeedback and tDCS. However MRI studies of acupuncture have revealed that stimulation of acupuncture points also triggers specific brain areas unrelated to the sensory experience of the acupuncture.

This means that deliberate stimulation of acupuncture points can be more effective at modulating cognitive protocols than tDCS.

It also means that cognitive activity will show a signature in the body.

What is required to do this is an extensive cognitive MRI map of the brain & its protocols and a similar map of acupuncture effects upon the brain.

In the mean time therapies such as tapping & qigong claim to do similar things but without the MRI & brain mapping we have no quantification.

http://www.pnas.org/content/95/5/2670.figures-only

Wow its now nearly 11 months since the injury. This did not come on slowly. It came when I was putting my super weight vest on after 5 years of KB & cross fit training & many more of regular weights.

It was over night from super athletic – to miserable cripple.

Was it the compression of the vest or the ballistic KB’s? Both most likely.

Anyway its beginning to approach recovery. I can now do pullups – not full bodyweight, lat pull downs, pressups & most pec exercises.

I believe it is beyond 90% healed but it is still vulnerable to retear & still does not feel right.

I have found the past two month the most difficult emotionally. This injury has cost me thousands of dollars & even prevented me from moving to the UK.

I grew up in a small town in rural new zealand. Hated the place & left in my late teens.

Spent most of my life in Auckland which is now fully invaded by immigrants. Its impossible to get a decent job here now.

So I am heading for the hills with my ass burned. I’m going fur trapping down in the Bay of Plenty.

Its prime possum territory & I have been down & been allocated a 2000 hectare block of back country bush with streams, landslides, a hut and impenetrable bush.

I plan to go in for 2-3 weeks at a time. My hut is an 8 mile hike up stream from the end of the road & I will be moving 100lbs + of gear in and out.

This means I will need to use flotation of some kind to transport my gear.

There is no power, running water or cell coverage.

I will use wind & solar power, water is no issue I’m next to a small river, satellite internet is a must but I may have to hack it as no provider here can offer me broadband in the bush.

I hope to bring out $1-2K of fur per week & still run my eCommerce business on satellite broadband.

No people, nature, peace & quiet and lots of hard physical bush work. It will do me some good for 3-4 months.

Dangers are rats that set off the possum traps, have leptospirosis and steal food, earthquakes & landslides. The area is very steep & rife with landslides. Oh yeah & it snows on accasion. So this will be tough.

Tougher than primal.

OK now we have all heard about peptides right. Those injections some dudes take when they have injured a tendon or torn a muscle. Well yeah thats all well & good if you want to order them & make sure its a good supplier and then actually take the needle.

But face it compared to SARM’s & bioidentical hormones what can they do?

I mean it sounds like they have potential for further research but thats it right?

No – Peptides are & can do far more. In fact there are peptides that can lengthen your telomeres, there are nootropic peptides, cardio vascular peptides in fact there are peptides for every organ system in your body.

So you are saying yeah sure somewhere in a secret research lab or at some university.

No- that was 30 years ago. You see the peptides we are used to here in western sports medicine are frankly – not that good – compared to the peptides developed & tested on humans in Russia for the last 30 years.

Peptides with names like Epitalon, Thymuson, Endoluten, there are over 30 in fact.

Heres the deal. These were initially developed by the Soviet military to enable soldiers & astronauts to survive nuclear war & the radiation in space.

The man that devloped these compounds is Dr Khavinson & he is now 70 and still rather spritely.

Dr Khavinson is now a gerontologist & the goal of his research is to enable human survival to 120 years.

Many people have used these peptides for 20 years so there is a wealth of research & evidence. Nothing like this exists in the west. The Russians it appears were way ahead in peptide research.

Epitalon the pineal peptide is the one that extends telomere length. It is also a nootropic but they have two other nootropics too.

All of this stuff is available now, over the counter & it is cheap & medically proven.

Some research by the doctor: https://www.antiaging-systems.com/articles/351-peptide-regulation-of-aging

His personal website: http://khavinson.info/

Now normally with peptides I like to advise caution but in this instance I dont need to. There is 30 years of medical research backing it up. I say knock yourself out & shoot for 120.

Video – kind of cheesey but worth a watch:

Heres my personal experience with a child molester.

They say that here in New Zealand one in ten children is sexually assaulted by an adult.

This is widely regarded to be an accurate estimate as most of these people are multiple offenders.

However most of them are not apprehended. Most of them do not even go before the courts.

I’m gunna tell you bluntly about my personal experience with this.

When I was 12 years old my parents marriage was about over – fights all the time etc.
There were 7 of us kids and me and my younger sister are 10 years younger than the rest.

So anyway the folks were having a fight as usual and I decided to go out for a walk and get away from it at about 6 pm.

By about 7pm it was getting dark so I made my way down an industrial street to get home faster. I noticed some dude walking some distance behind me perhaps 200 meters.

Being a 12 yr old kid out at night without permission this got me a bit scared so i thought about hiding until this person was gone. I told myself – no everything will be OK.

That was one of the worst decisions of my life.

I looked back behind and this dude was now jogging – it was pitch dark, no street lights at this end of the street. Next thing BAM this ****er grabbed me from behind and started to suffocate me around the throat.

This dude was pretty big, about 28-30 ish. I was immediately in shock – thought he was gunna pull out a knife and stab me to death right then and there. That sort of thing did happen in my town so I was convinced this was to be the end of my life.

I was in shock and on an adrenaline rush – started punching, kicking, screaming like crazy.

I fought that ******* with everything I had for about 15 minutes.

This dude was trying to strangle me to death, he smashed me in the face and I was bleeding from my nose. He kept telling me to shutup and he was going to kill me etc.

Finally I had no more energy and was paralized with horror. I was trembling with shock.

This sick ****er dragged my into an empty lot and lay down on top of me. I still thought he was just gunna pull out a knife and slit me up.

The came the worst, sickest realizaition you can possibly imagine. This mother ****er actually had an erection.

I was 12 man, and I aint gay. Prior to this moment I thought I was just gunna be murdered.

Christ why me !! How the **** could I get out of the situation ?

There was a house nearby and I could see them looking out the window to see what was going on – they could have saved me man – but they did not.

I hated those people for many years.

Ok so then the pervert started his sexual shit. He wanted to rape me , take photographs of it at his house and then kill me. This ****er dragged me behind some buildings stuck his hand down my pants, tried to perform oral sex and forced his finger up my ass.

Meanwhile I am terrified out of my mind, convinced I am about to be raped up the ass and murdered.

So by now an hour has passed since this nightmare began. I start pleading with this ****er to let me go. Oh yeah – he stuck a bag over my head that was from the local abattoir.

Anyway I couldn’t flee or fight so I had to use psychological tactics to escape.

I also got some clues to this ****ers identity. I lived in a small town of 4000.

He slipped his first name by accident, he knew my brother, my dad had taught him at school. Later that proved to be enough.

Anyway I finally escaped, convinced this asshole I would meet him in a week and he could molester me and my school friends.

I got home at 11 pm – my mother was waiting, I just said “a queer got me mum”.

It was so horrible.

We got the cops immediately. I was made to give statements over and over until 4am. They took all my clothing as forensic evidence.

Police policy with rape complaints at the time was to treat them as false during the first 1-2 hours. That’s exactly what they did. Finally they conceded that I had indeed been attacked by a child molester and began an investigation procedure.

The child molester knew were I lived and in the following week began to phone my house.

I was having nightmares every night. Had them for 3 years after that. Anyway the cops cooked up a plan that I would meet the child molester the following week at night in the park.

They would use me as a guinea pig then swoop in and catch him.

To cut a long story short they ****ed the operation up, chased him for a mile with dogs and spotlights and he escaped.

The following week me, my dad and brother got talking about the clues he had given to his identity.

He said my dad had taught him at school, he was about 28-30, his name was paul, he knew my brother who was about the same age.

Dad went through his school records and there was only one person called paul that was a match. Dad told the cops and they got this dude in for questioning.

I could not give a clear visual ID that would stand up in court because this guy had put a bag over my head so they let me listen to his voice.

I had seen his face but it wouln’t have stood up in court.

It was him 100% without any doubt. The dude that tried to murder me was Paul Hogan of kaikohe.

But without a visual ID it was not sufficient. Turns out this guy had raped about 10 kids.

Some of his victims became my friends later. One became my best buddy, he was lucky coz the molester picked him up hitch hiking & he managed to get out of it before it got bad for him. We were gunna whack this dude. My friend actually knew him from the gym but was too terrified to report it to the cops.

As an adult he is still too freaked by the whole thing to tell the cops.

Anyway, I became a drug addict and a street kid for a few years after that. It ****ed my life up totally for about 7 years.

Now had there been DNA back then they would have had the bastard as during the police stakeout I ran off with his jacket. Had they kept that evidence for 25 years they would have had the DNA. But of course they did not.

Frankly the Police handling of the whole thing was a slapstick disaster. They had the guy caught in a stake out right there in the spot lights with dogs & cars chasing him.

Justice was not done. Frankly I always wanted to take a gun & kill him and his kid fucking family.

Perhaps one day.

I hate the lies, half truths and bullshit surrounding the pharmaceutical VS nutraceutical industries.

Researchers are in many cases biased by financial gain on either side if the fence.

Small short term studies will do the SEO & press release circuit touted as irrefutable evidence of whichever side is in favor.

Here’s my take on it.

1. If you are taking high dose Vitamin C & E then all cofactors should also be in a balanced ratio.

2. A double blind study of 30, 100, even 500 people is irrelevant. Only a metastudy of 1000 or more people can make such research relevant scientifically.

3. A 2-3 month exercise study is also irrelevant. The effects of over training and training adaptation do not become significant until after this time frame.

So as there is abundance of disinformation I will share my educated assumptions

1. Antioxidants are good for you and increase lifespan & quality of life

2 Exercise is good for you and increases lifespan & quality of life

3 Worthwhile exercise, diet & supplementation are permanent strategies, not short term or even long term

4 One of the basic principles in bodybuilding is periodization & we periodize our diet to match our training

So if you are going to take high dosages of some supplements for whatever reason, all co factor nutrients must also be increased. The co factors of cofactors must also be increased

A high dose will not be used long term it will be cycled to match training intensity, injury & recovery

Looking specifically at Vitamin C & E. The research papers currently being touted are short term & with a small number of participants.

The claim is that as antioxidants decrease the inflammatory response to exercise this reduces adaptation in the immediate time frame & these small studies are evident of this

Here’s the thing. Are you prepared to grow & adapt a bit slower if it means you can train for the rest of your life with less injury & greater resilience?

Because I can almost certainly guarantee that this is what a long term study will show. That long term the antioxidant groups out last those showing short term & immediate gains

The balance of course is periodization

The average time for recovery from a rotator cuff injury OR surgery is nine months. It may take six for some people & twelve for others to get to the same point but for all it will be eighteen months before you are really back to your old self – if indeed you do heal.

So now at eight months (sounds like a pregnancy) I am pretty good. Certainly everyday it gets a small percentage better & I have noticed this all along.

Now I can do full body (100+ kg) hangs easily without pain. I can do light lat pulldowns, even pec deck flyes without pain. But only light.

The two exercises I am not doing are overhead press & bench press – I will wait another six months for those.

I have lost no strength apart from the shoulder. That’s because I kept training from day one of the injury – just avoiding the shoulder.

You may as well take time out & focus on other stuff.

1: GRIP – you can train grip until the cows come home with an RC injury & it will come in handy too during the later phase of physio when you are doing a lot of bar hangs to open the shoulder joint. Early on bar hangs will not be possible due to bursitis & pain. Don’t worry in a few months you will hang with strength.

2: HIIT cycling – On a real outside bike & inside on the incumbent machine. My cardio is up & my thighs are pumped. Also a dramatic increase in erections with the real outside cycle sprints. I do have a special two piece seat to protect my gonadal circulation. That’s important as cycling with a normal seat that sticks up your ass definitely causes impotence & probably prostate disorders too.

3: Core training – Go hard its no problem with an RC injury.

OK that’s it for 6-8 months give your shoulders a rest apart from a strict physio discipline.

What have I learned form my injury?

1: To periodize a joint centric program of physio based protocols. To get my joint structures prepared for the ravages of life beyond 50 which for me is a year from now.

2: To use SARMS, Peptides & HRT when possible as well as other anti aging protocols.

3: To partake of life’s pleasures & maintain a sense of humor.

Sadly a month back one of my old school buddies killed himself after 18 months with a broken ankle & torn ligaments. I know another guy that did the exact same thing a few years ago but he had snapped both Achilles completely & had the ankles fused in surgery. Frankly both guys would have been better off with amputated feet & prosthetics.

Anyway I enjoy chasing the young ladies far to much to consider topping myself.