I’ve been recovering from a back injury like forever. I wrote about my journey a couple of years ago.
I now have an update. I wrote about moving into a new place and how that kickstarted by urge to play tennis again. At the end of that post, I said I felt strong enough to not get injured again.
Fast forward a few days of playing and I felt sore all the time, especially all along the nerve that goes down from the lumbar spine through my glutes all the way to my feet.
My pilates instructor had also told me to lift weights to get stronger. I remembered what my brother said about Strength Training. So I picked up Starting Strength, a definitive book by Texas grandpa, Mark Rippetoe, on gaining strength through barbell lifting.
He points out that untrained humans are far below their strength potential. But with a little stimulation from lifting weights and a lot of eating and rest (muscle is built outside the gym!) one can go almost 80% of the way in 3-9 months with a simple progression.
He keeps the number of exercises really low overall with only 5 compound lifts and a couple of other exercises. Also on any given day you only do 3 or 4 of them.
What you vary is the load. It needs to go up pretty much every time you lift.
Why is that, you ask?
When you do a lift that is enough to stimulate growth and then go back eat and rest, you build a tiny extra bit of muscle. You then need a slightly higher weight next time to stimulate further growth.
I built my own program based on these books and their YouTube videos and spent last September through November focused on it.
The increasing load means sessions go over an hour even with just 3 exercises because you need to rest enough between sets. There is no room for ego here. One must stick to the planned program and take all the rest needed in order complete the next set.
Strength comes from building more muscle and keeping them trained. For a 5’9” guy, I went from a thin 67 kgs to 75 kgs. I made pretty decent progress on all the lifts.
A normal day during this time would see me eat 4-6 eggs, 500gms of yogurt 25-50 grams of whey protein, and either 200 gms of paneer or half a chicken to get my protein. Also add 2 big spoons of peanut butter and lots of veggies and some carbs.
After this experience, I’d say eating less to reduce weight is easier (for me) than trying to gain weight!
Interestingly my HBA1C went from 5.9% before barbell training to 5.7% now, even with a lot of ice-cream desserts during this time!
Even with working out 3 times a week, recovery was tough. I couldn’t do much other activity and put a pause on the tennis.
Whenever I failed my lifts I could trace it back to either not eating or not resting enough. As long as I did both, I made progress.
My shoulders feel wider but the big change has been: bye bye slim fit jeans!
In the first half of December, I went on a 2-week trip and when I got back my gym had shut down! The gym in my community doesn’t have that single piece of equipment I need: a squat or power rack. Nor do they have smaller weights that allow increments of 1-2.5kgs that are needed after a point.
I tried making do with what was available but I couldn’t maintain a good program during this time. I slightly busted my back during a deadlift at a weight I probably wasn’t prepared for. So I stopped.
I’ve been hunting for a decent gym. Most gyms have a large number of different expensive equipment but cannot find the space for a couple of simple power racks!
I finally started at another place a couple of days ago. It is a longer commute but I hope to make it work.