Q&A, three part post: Lifting, lifestyles, nutrition, etc. **LONG**

[Green Kool Aid]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thremp,

This isn't a matter of not working through the pain in my knee. I literally can barely do the elliptical without ridiculous amounts or burning. Lifting is not an option really.

As far as asthetics/balance goes, my lower body is a lot bigger than my upper body anyway.

Maybe TXredman or smiley can help me out with my above question??

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you read what I wrote? Or just have a prewritten excuse?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the sort of bulls.hit I hate from people. Everyone assumes I'm being a huge baby about my knee, and thats just a joke.

I get bad grades in school because I don't study.
I don't make a lot of money in poker because I tilt and suck.

I understand most of my defeats.

However---With my knee, I have worked tirelessly for a long time to the point of near tears as it has sucked so badly and I have seen minimal improvement, so don't be [censored] for no reason.

I laid the facts out as best I could, and you don't even really know what you are talking about anyway.

Anyone else?

[Thremp]

GKA,


Since you have problems with reading comp.

1) Use your other leg.
2) Adapt regular workouts to one legged variants.
3) Continue to rehab the other knee, since at this point in time, from your posts, you are almost a cripple.

I called you a huge baby about looking for a weak sauce excuse not to work lower body. Nothing about your knee.

[Green Kool Aid]

Thanks for clarifying, but I'm not worried about lower body (at least in the gym currently)

I don't think it's a good idea to workout one leg and not the other.

I am trying to regain the strength in my left leg to match the strength in my right, and this would hinder the process.

This got sidetracked, but I'm still looking for ideas for upper body workout.

[MatthewRyan]

quick question, are those muscle milks the same as making your own whey protein shake?

[Thremp]

[ QUOTE ]
quick question, are those muscle milks the same as making your own whey protein shake?

[/ QUOTE ]

More or less. Some are MRPs. Muscle milk makes a whole line of products. But for all reasonable differences: Yes. Its virtually the same stuff.

[Thremp]

GKA,

I want you to know this isn't a personal attack, but rather an attack on a whole segment of people with your viewpoint.

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=460341

There's an article that is rather old, but I've considered doing before.


My main problem with your argument against doing leg exercises is.

1) You propound you have tried to rehab and that it causes pain to do anything with your knee including the elliptical. I'll assume since it is no impact you are clearly unable to run and that walking isn't a pleasurable time either. Unless you plan to go through life crippled, I'll assume you'll remedy this.
2) You take having one bad leg as a chance to not work the other leg. Despite there being some decent evidence that strength transfers between to two limbs and that you'll likely never become a fiddler crab wrt your limbs.
3) Instead of taking a simple alternative of doing rehab on one leg, and training the other leg. (Which is brilliant if you injure your dominant leg) You decide to let the injured one atrophy to the level of injured leg. This makes very little sense to me. Maybe someone can expand on why they'd want to do this.
4) I could explain hormonal release etc etc about working lower body, but it'd just be rehashing something that was done a million times already.
5) If you blew out an elbow... You'd still work your other arm? I can conclusively say I have never in my life seen a "LOWER BODY WORKOUTS ONLY. I will never be lifting anything above my waist excluding my lower back.

[BPA234]

Should he be hitting it this hard as a beginner? "Seems" like way too many exercises and sets for a beginner that will likely lead to over-training? Should he not focus on major muscle group exercises for 6-months?

[BPA234]

Great thread and obviously a lot of work and effort.

Any suggestions for working out with injuries? I have some joint issues and a rotator cuff that, after a freak injury, is now easily torn.

Thanks.

[Green Kool Aid]

thremp,

i know. i just think we weren't understanding what the other was saying.

wrt what i can do. walking is okay, and very very low impact biking and elliptical. as soon as biking or elliptical gets too hard my knee starts to really hurt, because of the atrophy post surgery my knee hasn't been tracking correctly either, which is another thing im working on. i do leg exercizes, but they are through physical therapy, so im not worried about it.

fwiw when i was running track in high school the vast vast majority of my time in the gym was composed of abs, low back, squats, leg extensions, and hamstring curls, and plyometrics. also did some stuff with hip flexors.

i appreciate the advice, and did not take it as a personal attack.

[tdarko]

GKA,

I haven't really followed the entire progression of the thread so I missed where you said you were injured.

Muscle atrophy is gradual though it seems, feels and looks terrible to the person/victim. What you need to realize is that when the body part becomes healthy again it will regain its original strength (or its strength when injured) at a rate much much faster than it atrophied.

Don't worry about your legs being disproportioned right now because when you have rehabilitated your knee you want your other leg to have stayed just as strong as it was because your leg that was once weak can only get as strong as your other leg. Listen to thremp, incorporate one leg variants, rehab endlessly, use low impact machines for cardio and you will be fine.