A Canadian Guy Diary

I write in the hopes others read my mis adventures and avoid undo pain.  School of hard knocks it painful.

Todays lesson is brought to you in part by DOMS. The pain you feel will get worse.

The story:
So yesterday I decided to really change up my routine.  So I whacked on 10 lbs more on the EZ curl bar for the preacher curl, another 10bls on each dumbbells the bench press, did pull ups and chin ups to failure, push ups with my feet 3' above my head, etc...  The end result was serious ripage on muscles.  It felt GREAT!!!!

Woke up this morning and everything was sore.  Lifting the shampoo bottle was near impossible (wife switched it with a 100lbs weight while I was not looking I bet).  Shifting the gears in the car was painful and required a little grunt and a delt to help the arms...  I was a mess. AWESUM!!!  

During the day things got better and only my tri and bi ceps hurt lifting something heavy and holding the curl position (like my coffee cup  :'( ).  The shifting gears on the way home was almost back to normal.

I needed to stop at the pharmacy to pick up some supplies and every time I do stop at the pharmacy I use the automated blood pressure machine to check my blood pressure and pulse.

For those that never seen one.  its a machine you put you arm in and the blood pressure cuff is around your bicep and tricep.  It infaltes and does a few tests.
Example of said torture device.


So I sit down and slid my arm in. A warning voice is hear screaming in the deep recesses of my mind but I ignore it.  I press the start button.  The cuff gently inflates and NEARLY TAKES MY ARM OFF!!!  Or so is what it felt like.  The 6" wide band inflating around my arm almost had me blacking out with the pain the muscles were in.  A tear rolled down my cheek along with a yelp from my mouth.  I reached for the stop button but the pressure started to reduce to take other measurements.

Now being an engineer and very technical I know one measurement is never good I always get three and use the average.  So I force myself to relax and push the start button waiting for the million needles to enter my muscles (analogy of the pain ).  I mad sure not to flex but I still yelped.  On the 3rd time I pinched my leg HARD with the other hand...  So I took my results and my supplies, paid for them and rubbed my arm all the way home.  Where I started my cardio...  Now it feel normal...

On the good news my pulse was 59, and the two pressure readings where in the optimal range.  Next time I'm flexing and see if the machine chokes  

Wow that machine sounds painful, I did mine in a college lecture, wasn't too painful but then someone doing it usually is better than a machine

Congrats on the low HR, mine too is around 59/60, which is a crazy improvement on the ~75 I used to have

Great going on the doms , nothing better than not being able to lift your arm, until you actually need to type or do anything other than lie down 

Cardio is not like Weightlifting

case and point
After's yesterday's session 100 million dollars could not have made may push 80% on my squats.  My quads are DEAD! DOMS what a pain in the muscle...   

Anyway I had trepidation about doing either jump rope of stationary bike for cardio as walking and climbing up the stairs sent jolts trough my quads.  But hey no pay no gain, what does nto kill you makes you stronger, blah, blah, blah. 

So I jump on the bike and gave my gaol of let see how it feels after one song.  And guess what starts... Gun 'n Roses - Paradise City @6m41s.  My heart nearly stopped.  I ground the teeth and started pushing.  I love the song so quickly I was able to tune the pain out.  Once the song was over I did not have much pain in the quads. They were dull and achy but not pain.  So one more song (sweet child of mine, then November rain, then You could be mine, then welcome to the jungle and finally knocking on heaven's door.) I cannot make this up that was the song sequence.

well that was it over 30 minutes of cardio @ 15.6 mph not bad.  Stepped off the bike and nearly fell.  The legs had nothing left in them.  The stairs where murder but I did them and now the pain is slowly going down.  Could I do a 50% squat.  Hell no.  a body squat right now would find me on the floor.  Yet I think I could do another 30 on the bike.

Ah well c'est la vie!

<<Wednsday arrives>>




Yeah I completely agree, I've ran into those days where nothing in the universe would make you push any harder and you'd rather curl up and die. You should have taken the million dollars and ran

I dunno how you deal with DOMS so good xD when i have to walk to school i feel like im wobbling, thank god nobody else seems to notice the wobble LOL.
also im pretty impressed in your cardio routine on the 1st page of this thread. 30 minutes of jump rope is 2x what i can do.

New goal to add once I reach the 20 pull up goal...

Bench press my weight and than some. 

Tried it today with 140lbs was able to perform 6 perfect slow reps for 3 sets.

175ish