Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

watch out with the one band workouts. it can make the bands unever. you can always wiggle around that tough in how you set them up. just try and be consistent about interchanging them if you only use one.

I was alternating them but unfortunatley I forgot and left one on the bar for a couple hours afterwards so now they're really uneven. I think I should have used both (one on each side) at the same time and just figured out a way to get the tension right that way. Oh well.

Yesterday did 19 sets of 10 chins (also regular bench). Set a timer to go off every 10 minutes and knock out a set of each for 3 hours. 10 reps each set is a sort of PR although a ten minute rest is a lot.

Started out my workout today with 100 chins in 20 minutes. Also added pushing off from a wall with my wrists after the benchs to hit forearms a little. They've gotten skin and bone like since I don't do tri pullovers anymore. Seem to be improving with this extreme high volume experiment.

Slight change in plans. Instead of max volume per week, will switch to max volume per workout with suffcient healing time between workouts. I've been perpetually sore on chins. Also will add in running after 2 years without it. What the heck was I thinking? So day 1 run, 2 bench, 3 chins, 4 rest, 5 repeat. (This by the way is the ONLY way I ever had good success with endurance running. One long run every 4 days.)

Did first run yesterday, just 35 minutes of easy interval stuff.
Today did bench presses 152x6 every 3 minutes for two hours. Left shoulder feels little off now. Not sure if I'll be able to do such high volume benching for any long term.

Pretty easy 362 chins in 90 minutes. 60 or so more than I've bothered to do in the past.

What are you eating these days? what happened to the green smoothies?!

Oh I was going to ask you about those.... problems came up. Expensive fruit, etc. Different levels of ripeness really change the taste.... Juiced apples taste bad....

Questions: Have you ever just used juices (already turned into juice) from the store? I was thinking that would be a lot cheaper. Fruit is really expensive in Los Alamos. (Like a single green smoothie costing 3 or 4 dollars...) Is it an aquired tasted? Like apple juice with a single leaf and then eventually it starts tasting good?

Lately I've eaten really bad. Lots of corn chips and salsa.... Chocolate, etc.
Trying to stop that now and want to have a diet primarily of fruit/fruit juices and oatmeal. Then odds and ends. (Some nuts/nut butters). Nothing green in there at all right now I'm afraid.

I've never used store-bought juices. Of course fresh is best, but the point is to get more greens in you; so I say do what you can.

How about frozen fruit?
Also, citrus fruits are usually not too pricey, and bananas, no? Here in Cali, citrus is pretty cheap -- actually, most fruit is cheaper because we excel in migrant-worker exploitation. So we're pretty dang lucky, I guess!

What is less expensive there?

Another good tip for buying fruit is the too-ripe fruit they sometimes bag and sell as discounted because they are ready to chuck them. You could buy those and freeze.

Buy what's on sale and freeze.

Also, you can add sweetener, if that's the issue with flavor.
You can use less fruit that way.

I also use very little fruit because that's the way it's evolved for me; however, I still need to sweeten it. I choose Stevia. Stevia is not good alone; but if you add it to fruit (works especially well with citrus) it's a great sweetener.

You could use half the amount of fruit, add stevia to sweeten. It comes in tinctures or powder. It may cost a bit more at first, but, you use only a pinch of it; mine lasts a long time. It's somewhere in the hundreds-times sweeter than sugar.

Chips? Stop buying chips and chocolate and buy fruit

I've never had stevia, I just did a search and read a little about it.

http://www.stevia.net/fda.htm
While the American public has waited in vain for a safe artificial sweetener to be developed, citizens of certain other countries have for years -- in some cases, for centuries -- enjoyed a safe, natural sweetener that is virtually calorie-free and to which many other health benefits have been attributed. This miracle sweetener is a South American herb called Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni -- commonly known simply as stevia, estimated to be some 150 to 400 times sweeter than sugar.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration since the mid-1980s has labeled stevia an "unsafe food additive" and gone to extensive lengths to keep it off the U.S. market -- including initiating a search-and-seizure campaign and full-fledged "import alert."

To judge from the extensive measures the FDA has employed to keep Americans in the dark about stevia, one might assume it was some type of dangerous narcotic. But, in fact, no ill effects have ever been attributed to it, although it has been used by millions of people around the world, in some locales for hundreds of years.

So adamant has the FDA remained on the subject, that even though stevia can now be legally marketed as a dietary supplement under legislation enacted in 1994, any mention of its possible use as a sweetener or tea is still strictly prohibited.

Now that stevia has been designated as "unsafe" -- almost certainly to benefit the politically powerful sweetener industry -- the agency has insisted on stonewalling any and all evidence to the contrary. Once the FDA makes a decision, neither practical experience nor scientific research is likely to bring about a reversal of its position..

As Rob McCaleb, president and founder of the Herb Research Foundation, puts it: "Sweetness is big money. Nobody wants to see something cheap and easy to grow on the market competing with the things they worked so hard to get approved."

Arghhh!

Yeah bananas/citrus aren't expensive. I just need to experiment more. I only tried pears and apples so far. Pears were good but too expensive.

But it just doesn't sound good, you know? Well I'll mess around some more.

2 days ago ran for 25 minutes in the freezing cold.
1 day ago benched 152x5 every 2 minutes for an hour then some incline and tri stuff 20 sets each, one a minute.
today chinned 6 rep sets every 2 minutes for an hour. Did 10 reps last set. Then wide chins and curls 20 each every minute.

Back hurts from running. Maybe if I hang upside down right afterwards I will undo the spine compression and slight disc displacement.

So do you not trust stevia or the FDA? I never have trusted the FDA; the long arm of the artificial sweetener industry (and the sugar lobby) is behind most of the stevia bashing. It's been used in Paraguay and Japan for many years.
I wouldn't go overboard on it; but I'm not afraid of this sweet plant I can grow in my own backyard unless I am convinced of the dangers, of which I am not, at this point. If I keel over, I'll let you know.

Well, the smoothies shouldn't taste like greens; they should taste like a fruit smoothie. Is it the color that's throwing you off? I think that happens a lot.

I'd love to be able to hang to stretch my back! Actually, that's pretty much the only use my pullups bar gets nowadays But I don't hang bat-style on it...I'd love one of those back stretch thingys...something like THIS

Btw, I left you a (possible) book recommendation on the other site

I don't trust the FDA of course. You know me. It's just more corruption. I get so sick of it. They even have to be corrupt about that? Argghh! I'm going to get some Stevia eventually but they don't have any where I live of course.

That link didn't work. I have an inversion machine which I got for like 150/200 dollars. It really helped last May when I was still in a lot of pain from herniated a disc in Feb.

I had a couple apple juice and kale smoothies. They taste OK. It's just a mental thing. Most food I look forward to and think of as tasting good. I just don't quite think like that with these smoothies so it takes willpower to go make one.

ETA: Link works now. Yes that's exactly what I have except I didn't pay that much for it. I don't remember where I got mine.... I'm sure I didn't pay more than 200 for it.

It may be at a vitamin shop, if you can't find it in a market (do you have a healthy-type market around? they usually have it, but it will be in the supplements section instead of the sweetener section ).

If not, I can always send you some; no problem. Lemme know.

Thanks. I should be OK though. We'll go to Sante Fe this weekend which should have some. Also could order some online I think.

Yesterday too damm cold for jogging. Instead ran 10 sprints of about 40 yards. As I haven't sprinted really in years I knew I should be very careful. But I wasn't careful enough. Today my right knee is a little swollen and it hurts a little to straigthen or bend it all the way. Great.

Today bench 153x5 every 110 second then some reverse grip benches and tricep presses.

OK so:
Despite not doing wide grip pullups for a very long time I was much stronger at them and didn't get sore at all from them. Thus they are useless if one is already doing chins.

Despite all the people who say that chins are a great bicep exercise and you don't even really need to bother doing curls if you do chins. I'm pretty weak on bicep curls now and I got very sore from doing them. Thus I shall continue doing them.

So today I did 300 chins in one hour and that was absolutely all I had. Weighed 210. (boxer shorts and empty stomach, in the evening fully clothed I weighed 220 a few days ago.) My left bicep was still sore from doing curls 4 days ago but it didn't affect my chinning at all. Finished off with 20 sets of curls in 20 minutes.

The swelling in my knee is almost gone today and there's no pain.

So I'm set to move now. Shall be away for a while I guess.