Author: veganhealthbenefit

It was unfortunate to have the gym closures due to the virus. That’s no excuse to stop training but I stopped, and will restart with a body weight program. I really enjoyed rock climbing on the indoor wall. Maybe if I find an outdoor wall I’d be more inclined to do it, one with an auto belay device.

The idea for exercise now is to do some cardio daily, even if it’s a simple walk around the block. Rising early, I can complete the task before the extreme heat. Last month was the hottest August in Phoenix. I effectively spent no time outdoors recently, but heat is no excuse if there’s time in the morning with no sun. I like Phoenix heat and although it’s like the reverse of snow weather, tolerating in summer rather than winter, I prefer it. It’s easier for me personally.

I’ll redo my spreadsheet and keep a backup for when the vaccine is widely distributed. I am playing it reasonably safe with the virus. It’s possible with luck by summer of next year the threat will be gone.

I’m pleased to continue the whole food-plant based diet and maintain a weight now at 150 lb. It is roughly where I was when I was working out 5 months ago. I am current on Mandarin modules 1 to 3 on Memrise, and 1/3 the way through module 3. The obvious continuation of the Mandarin program is online language partner time. I’m nervous about it. However, it will be extremely beneficial.

For several days I played racquetball solo in an open court in the last hour. For now, it’s very fun cardio compared to other measures (except the high intensity wall climbing). Yesterday, I climbed the 2nd of 4 difficulty level paths on the wall, and did it twice. Arm strength is the limiting factor. For reference, I can’t do pull ups, but for now I can manage to use leverage and get past a spot on the wall that’s an overhang. With repetition, I will get stronger.

A mild, dry cough started on Thursday Today is Sunday. There’s some coughing by my housemates, too. Something might be going around. I’m tracking the symptoms. I wouldn’t seek medical attention unless it’s a prolonged fever or difficulty breathing. I have been following the current China crisis so I have an eye on what’s happening. I have a keen interest of medical science-related topics, either current or educational in nature. I follow sources which closely follow from a very scientific and evidence based perspective. Knowledge is power. Other topics of interest are evidence based exercise articles and videos, and of course evidence based diet.

When the cough subsides I will continue with cardio and the split squats and ab work. My cardio will be: wall climbing, racquetball, recumbent bike hill climb with and fitness tests. I came in at what is shown as ‘high’ VO2 max on my last test yesterday @ 38. I intend to improve that for multiple reasons but a big one is to improve respiratory resilience during an infection. I’m just taking a few slight changes to improve my risk profile for awhile.

Other VO2 max charts show me at the top of the good range at 38. Excellent if 41-45.3. Superior is > 45.3. I think what really helps is very high intensity cardio in the anaerobic heart rate zone. Like 3 sessions of 5 minutes in the 180 beats per minute range with good breaks in-between is very helpful. Those types of sessions can only be done once or maybe twice a week because they are too intense and cannot be recovered from any sooner.

I am very happy to have found the climbing wall and the racquetball court as very fun cardio alternatives. A prime motivator to stay with a task and goal is that its intrinsically rewarding, as opposed to some sort of end goal. For now, I find both intrinsically rewarding.

If I end up doing rock wall for a long time, there is a risk of muscle imbalance, apparently. That would probably take many months, but I can work proactively to prevent the issue. Rock climbers can tend to have imbalance because they heavily use more pulling than pushing motions.

To counterbalance, I can use pushing exercises and activities. Right now, two which can help are the incline dumbbell curls and what I have been doing is the handstands. These handstands are wall supported and I walk up into position. This is intense not only on the front shoulders but when vertical on the whole upper portion of the torso and all upper arm muscles.

An interesting topic is some high intensity exercises I perform: Bulgarian split squats, and high intensity recumbent bike intervals. Both require significant recovery time as in more than 1 day before repeating the exercise, and up to 6 says of recovery for each of those. For now, these are the most important exercises I perform, but I need to make sure they don’t interfere with each other and have sufficient rest, so planning the days is key. I can do squats, rest a day, do interval training, rest a day, and back to squats. If that’s too much, which it very well could be due to not being able to increase performance on either, a required characteristic to show progress, then I can put an extra rest day between one or both of these exercises. A better schedule might be… Squats, rest, rest, high intensity, rest, rest.

By rest, I don’t mean not do any other exercise, just not either of those exercises. When doing the rock wall, my limiting factor is not legs. I won’t burn them out doing that, so they won’t get in the way. My cardio does get up pretty high on rock wall. That could interfere with the recumbent bike high intensity. For now, I stick with the most fun, rewarding and least likely to quit and just continue to do the rock wall. If I’m not recovering on the other, the high intensity, I will put in more rest days for it but stay on track with the rock wall.

Today I will do Bulgarian split squats with about 30 lb of weight. Still building back up to the end of December maxes I was doing on the cable machine, but feeling very good. Will do exercises for gluteus medius (clam) which helps with IT band syndrome, tightness on the outside of the thigh sometimes. Ok, yeah self diagnoses, not worth going to the doctor for some tightness. Also doing the Nordic curls, which are basically form a kneeling position and leaning forward (with feet under something very heavy) so the hamstring gets an eccentric flexion. Considering doing 5 x 60 half bicycles for the ab work.

Finally, I should be back onto at least some cardio, but missing today on cardio shouldn’t be a big deal since I had good cardio all week, including high intensity and multiple fitness tests. The fitness test on the stationary bike is probably not real accurate. It estimates the VO2 max based on heart rate, age, sex, weight. But it’s something. It’s good to have some progress on lowering the heart rate. I am getting closer to a full test . It has been stopping when getting outside the cardio zone, I think.

Racquetball I have been trying again solo and played briefly with a guy who didn’t know how to play while a couple of his friends watched. I forgot the rules after 30 years but reread them. I know the basics now, like where a person stands to serve, number of bounces required for serving (1 and only 1), where the ball must drop after the serve, etc. I don’t know it all but enough of the basics. There are some drills about movement I happened to see when researching drive serves. I may try those very simple ones. In addition, I can practice drive serves. They are apparently the way to go for serving, a method I hadn’t known about.

In summary: #1 Bulgarian split squats with 30 lb, maybe up to 5 sets. #2. clams for gluteus medius. #3. Nordic curls. #4 Racquetball. #5 5 x 60 half bicycles. Lots of work but it will feel rewarding. Very good plan.

Back feels pretty good.

I have 2 weeks left in this city and the rock wall, and this gym. I will stick to the Bulgarian split squat at which I am doing quite well with dumbbell weights. I walked some laps on the track, did a good number of wall climbs, and completed the 2nd difficulty level I think 4 total times and got a few cheers. It’s not that difficult, but cheers *are* nice. There’s a bell to ring at the top of 1, and I usually ring it: A cowbell.

My back felt funny during the dead lift but it had been just a little bit funny before then. I need to stretch it out also. I spent an hour solo in a racquetball court. It was excellent. I feel good all around. It was decent cardio, which is key to improving health.

I made homemade whole when bread and stayed up pretty late last night, and have a good amount of fruits. I have a pretty big bag of oatmeal I need to finish eating. Also, I have lots of beans and pasta, maybe good enough for 2 weeks, plus spinach.

Today may be another exercise free day, I don’t know. It’s actually cloudy here in Phoenix and nearing sundown. Unusual but not dreary. It really never is to me in this city. Trying to stay in Phoenix area now.

I’m pretty proud I got back on the ball with the exercise. I had a cold for a few weeks and I wanted to be sure it was gone completely to avoid a situation where a sickness comes back, only worse, so I gave it a few more weeks. That way, I can avoid both the sick time and a doctors visit necessary at that point. Exercise is a pretty intense stressor to the system. However, light cardio isn’t a big problem which I did.

We hear about a disease spreading but I think in general, there are things that can be done to improve immunity against disease, these things are inexpensive and can be done by anybody. The following link shows the many things that can be done

Harvard Medical School – What you can do to improve your immune system

The ones that apply to the current infectious disease outbreak: hand washing, don’t smoke, Eat a diet high in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Restrict saturated fats and sugars to 10% of total calories. Minimize consumption of red and processed meats., maintain a healthy weight, maintain blood pressure, moderately drink or do not drink, get adequate sleep From what I have read, by far the best thing a person can do for their health if they smoke is to quit smoking. Also, there are studies that show a correlation between extremely strong resistance to the common cold virus and good amount of sleep regularly.

These things can be done very quickly to improve risk profile in the fact of a quickly spreading disease. They are not foolproof measures, but there really are no guarantees in life.

• Quit smoking
• Get blood pressure under control, even if from medication alone.
• Eat very healthy
• Get plenty of sleep

Some of the biggest risk factors for the coronavirus are: smoking, hypertension, diabetes. Go to the doctor for treatment of all of these. They have medicines that can aid in quitting smoking and they work rather quickly, as do the hypertension and diabetes.

Please don’t be scared of the disease but take action where you can, which is plenty of areas which make a huge impact.

In a new hotel I have access to dumbbells up to 45 pounds. This will keep me going on the Bulgarian split squats for the next 2 weeks. I can proceed with all exercises soon, either today or tomorrow. Busy with work-related activities also, and Mandarin study, but squats are the #1 priority for me. I can still do that, study Mandarin, do continuing education for a technical certification and *also* spend most time on work-related activities.

I haven’t done much cardio other than walking through an enormous Walmart. I don’t have shoulder soreness. I think the rest has been good for me over the last two weeks. I have no new year’s resolutions because I have goals already that I’ve been pursuing.

I chose to be very careful and refrain from any physical activity during this illness is almost gone. It’s not gone yet with some congestion and post nasal drip. The mild cough is gone. It’s not great I’m behind on exerise but on the plus side there is what is called super compensation after time off, assuming it’s not too much time. It can take as little as a couple weeks to get back to the previous level of strength.

I have some serious real life activity to take up significant time soon, so I just need to squeeze in the training. I have 3 simple exercises and 1 doesn’t take long although it’s very physically demanding. That is no problem and I shouldn’t have a problem here.

Cold or flu

I have nasal congestion but all else is fine. It’ll put back my training a couple days. Plenty to stay busy otherwise, though. Mood is good and appetite is great. I bet in 3 days I’ll be 90% and probably a week 100%.

Training-related soreness / tightness

My right side neck was tight down towards the shoulder blade and massaged it which helped. I have minor tightness along the upper side of the leg and stretching makes it feel great. I haven’t moved around much like cardio or walking in awhile. That can contribute to the tightness. There is obvious lack of use of the glutes which supposedly contributes to tightness in that area. I get nervous about the neck but I don’t do handstand pushups and I have a pretty solid handstand. There was very slight tingling in the hand. I might drop handstands for 2-3 weeks and use the decline pushup, which is very intense and a great way to back off the intensity on the shoulder but also the wrist pressure goes way down. When feeling better, of course the squats are most important.

I can potentially do pick pushups, also. Those are the obvious progression prior to handstand pushups. I can build a good base. I’ll consider each those exercises as a temporary measure.

The squats stay in the routine. They are key. I need to have full energy and no cold or flu to do that at this stage in the game. I don’t want to risk getting worse. It is a very intense exercise the way I perform it with a lot of inflammation caused. This reminds me of what Mike Israetel has stated in a couple of his videos: squats can really tax him. He says there’s an overall maximum effective dose for exercises and big compound movements, especially squats and dead lifts, push towards that maximum a lot.

Diet steady / calories tracking back to break-even from surplus

The diet continues as whole wheat pasta and black beans with 5 ounces of raw spinach daily as the goal. On average, slightly less on the raw spinach but I’m picking it up on that. Drinking tea, 6 a day, and homemade hot chocolate made from cacao powder and sugar cubes-3 a day. Recently I ate a lot of granny apples over the course of a few days. Very tasty. I think a better way to get sugar is through fruit than through sugar cubes. Bananas are quite cheap, but apples are good. Oh, I bought blueberries and ate 12 ounces today, which is an expensive amount.

Considering dropping the cacao powder after this bag and sticking to fruit. Also I’m going to by salt free beans, and cut out the salt once again. The only reason I added it was my bread was tasting bad without, but I’m not cooking bread. Tasks:

• Drop cacao and granulated sugar drink.
• Use fruits / berries for sugar craving from here onward.
• Buy salt free beans after this.
• Discard remaining salt / sugar.
• Keep bean consumption at 2 cans daily with the whole wheat pasta.
• Keep raw spinach at 5 ounces.
• Keep calories at break even.
• Groceries: Buy tea, fruits (bananas possible), pasta in the next day or two.

Consistency / Tenacity

Training will continue and I have some things I can do even now with this cold. I proceed with other endeavors steadily. I’m keeping my eye on the tasks as hand. bIt feels good to write up everything and think it through to maintain motivation and focus.

I did my handstands, though. After a nice break, I got a significant amount of handstand time. This is the usual wall-supported, though. I am working with doctor about side effect which should go away and if not, or I can’t learn to train regularly using it, then I guess I have to switch.

I was watching more of Mike Israetel and the strength training scholars on his same videos. He curses some and I get it, it’s entertainment and that comes out during the entertainment portion. It’s not frequent enough to stop watching. I avoid media with cursing just so it doesn’t become ingrained. It’s a simple way to make it less likely I use a poor exclamation in my life.

Mike and some of his colleagues also are bodybuilders so it’s interesting to hear their anecdotal stories that go along with a well defined and nuanced viewpoint of scientific literature related to the topic.

I should be less sleepy after minor prescription medication’s increase that should subside within a week and it’s impacting my workout schedule. Days are shorter and I like to go to the workout facility before dark, but I can still make it down there today maybe. I definitely can do a couple exercises including the handstands and gluteus medius work. It’s not ideal but I can can some training done. I think I am responding well to training. I can see increases in my muscularity in my shoulders and arms, but it’s subjective of course.

A calorie surplus is at 250-450 daily, which is too much, but that’s ‘on paper’. A lot of times during consumption of a pure plant based diet, the actual calories consumed turns out to be a few hundred less, and it’s not clear why. Tracking is pretty strict, especially with the highest percentage calorie items such as whole wheat pasta and black beans. The discrepancy is apparent through reconciliation with weight change over a pretty long time, such as three months. Weight gain in the past 3-5 weeks has been about 4 pounds, which is too fast, but the 250-450 surplus.

There is some benefit to a slow weight gain, or hyper-caloric state during strength training, but a big goal for me is not to let the waist size creep too far.