Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness

I have decided to start one of these since I finally got into the physical therapist and got some exercises to do. He was blown away by the size of my quads, so that felt good. He said my hamstrings are extremely tight, so gave me some stretches and some things to do to strengthen them. I think I am going to start up with some hammy curls to bring them in line with my quads a bit more than Romanians seem to be doing.

I probably will only update this when I make some decent progress.

Yesterday I did lower body and abs. I recently had to decrease the ROM of my squats from below parallel to just slightly above it thanks to my torn hamstring and glute. A couple of the exercises I did (I do a form of HIT, so I just do one warm-up set and set as hardcore as I can summon):

Squats: 315x9
Romanians: 425x6

Then I did two sets of calf presses, some one legged leg presses, decline weighted crunches, oblique work and reverse cable crunches. Then some stretching.

I hope to get back heavily into cycling again if this physical therapy gets me to the point where I can load up on it again.

Wow duuuuuude that's some serious strength right there, i'm thoroughly impressed as well! I will be checking in to see this as you update for sure. Nice lifts.

You know i've always found that heaven forbid i should contract a muscle to do anything more than sitting up or getting out of bed, some doctor always tells me, oh my gosh your muscle is incredibly tight. I mean gimme a break! Of course a worked out muscle is tight. I'm not on the all i do is stretch all day long routine and if i was they'd probably be saying OH, well you need to build strength and then proceeding to ask me to balance myself on six different sized disc pillows and other such barious balancing devices while holding weight balls, closing my eyes rotating the ball around me while touching my left inner eyelid with my right index fingernail and singing the macarena at the same time. It's like they want you to feel like you need them to correct everything. Ahhh just got back froma doc can you tell? He's right bout the tightness though in my lats and it being a big prob, lol.

Well just wanted to say i'm excited about this journal and glad that you've created it. GO CUBBY

Thanks, L&G. I am actually about to swap programs, so I will be concentrating on some different lifts. I am trying to cut down and maintain or gain muscle mass, which despite how nearly everyone claims it to be impossible for non-beginners, I seem to be able to do it.

I think this doctor was fairly legitimate in his diagnosis. He told me where the usual range of motion is and showed me mine and it was quite bad, especially on my left (injured) side. I am going in for physical therapy again on Monday and will be starting my alternate lifting program then, probably with some leg curls thrown in for rehab purposes. I had a few days off on a vacation in Michigan with some friends, where I didn't bother with the rye, so I will get on that rejuvelac making again, not worrying about sprouting the rye.

I hope to be hitting some four plate per side sumo deadlifts before I switch back.

Also, on the hair front , I think I am going to let it go wild and curly again because keeping it straight in summer humidity is proving futile. I am going to go long again also. Shooting for shoulder length or so.

Well, I went to do sumo deadlifts with two plates and a 35 per side today, which I did with three plates a side on Tuesday without trouble, and my glute wouldn't let it happen. This has been happening more often all the time. I then went to do some leg presses and my glute hurt immensely.

I have decided to stop the free weight stuff for a bit with my legs, which pisses me off quite a bit, but I guess I can't really complain since I have been doing them with torn muscles for over a year and a half. Leg presses, extensions and curls for awhile, along with my physical therapy stuff.

I have an x-ray on Monday, hopefully that includes an MRI, which I believe is what I really need.

I already decided to try to cut off some fat and now since I can't do the best bulking exercises, I suppose this is a good time to just continue to cut until I am shredded, which I have yet to do.

I haven't put any food stuff up, so here is my typical daily consumption:
My typical breakfast:
Smoothie with 1/2 cup blueberries, 2T spinach powder, 1t gelatanized maca, 2T hemp flour, creatine, stevia and cinnamon
1 cup dry oatmeal, cooked and flavored with stevia, molasses and cinnamon

Throughout the day:
1lb kale or collards
1lb brocolli
1-1.5 cups dry legumes
2.5oz tempeh
2oz nuts and seeds
A couple oranges or apples
A cup of strawberries
Dried fruit: apricots, prunes, raisins, currants, dates, figs
A cup of cherries or grapes
Lots of carrots, I love them
Nutritional yeast added to lots of stuff
Mixed frozen vegetables
Peas
No salt and very little garlic (I have found this to be the primary contributor to my gas problems)
Most other spices are fair game, though I limit (reluctantly) some Indian type spices due to odor problems (I have a tendency to pile them on, I love them so much)
Lots of cinnamon, black pepper and ginger

My post-workout shake is usually:
A scoop of gemma
100 or so calories of fruit
Depending on fruit, maybe some cinnamon, carob or vanilla
Stevia
Creatine

I went to the emergency room over the weekend for blinding pain in my glute. I have been going easy on it lately, not even doing leg presses, focusing on my physical therapy. They gave me 800mg ibuprofen, 500mg vicodin and I don't know how much valium and it merely took the edge off. I have a bottle of eight vicodin now, having just taken two this morning due to waking up to even worse pain. It must be nerve damage of some sort; I have never felt such an inescapable, excruciating, torturous pain in my life. I actually cried a little bit on Saturday, not because of the pain, but because of how frustrated I am with it and how trapped I feel by it.

Now my mom is going to come here to my apartment, pick me up and take me to the hospital she works at to get an MRI, which all the doctors so far have been reluctant to give me; I don't understand why, I have known from the first time I wanted to go to a doctor for this that I would need an MRI to find out what is wrong and get this injury healed.

So I should finally be able to make actual progress in my recovery and be able to get back to real, deep and heavy squats and deadlifts. I cannot wait. Doing only leg curls and extensions makes me feel like such a weenie. I am actually embarrassed on leg day because of being confined to them. I feel like I am being lazy.

Despite all this leg crap, my cutting has been going pretty decent and my upper body has been progressing nicely. Here's to hoping that my legs aren't incapacitated long enough to give me a gorilla look. Probably not, since my lower body is my fastest developing section.

I must say stretching is extremely important. It's a lesson I've only recently learned, and since I've been stretching carefully everyday (+ other muscle work) my weak foot and wrist are feeling much better (I've only gotten serious about fitness the last couple of years, thus my intense research on recomposition). My GF was basically disabled from her tight shoulder muscles (she's a gardener, and had torn her rotator cuff, etc.). When she finally got her X-ray it was totally healed, as you'd expect, but that didn't prevent her from feeling disabled. So she performed the basic stretches she was given during physical therapy and she healed herself in 6 months (she had been limited physically for almost 2 years). It really drove home to me that stretching is the foundation of health and strength, not some relatively unimportant, slightly helpful method. So now both her and I are commited to fitness and we're gaining muscle and strength by making sure our muscles and stretched and flexible.

So I think my health/muscle building knowledge is finally complete. I think of it as a pyramid:
Low-fat vegan diet for optimal healing potential
Stretching for muscle balance and flexibility
Intense but safe muscle work

It is important to realize that one of the reasons children heal quickly is that puberty slowly lengthens the bones, which automatically stretches the muscles. That's why some bodybuilders are into extreme stretching, they are trying to similate puberty.

Is the glute pain local or a shooting pain? Hopefully it is local . . . can you remember a specific time or movement that startd it? Sorry if you have posted this already. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Thanks for the responses and info.

The pain is localized. It occurs mostly in different parts of my left glute, so I am guessing it is not a nerve problem. It started to hurt after I tore it during a martial arts class doing a kick higher than I should have attempted.

I have always been good about stretching, but it seems I need to learn how to better do it.

ok, glad it's not a disk problem. Sometimes it is hard to learn to relax and let gravity and alignment do the stretching rather than grabbing and pulling, huh?
Hope you heal soon!

Haha, yeah, I have a tendency to want to try to dislocate my joints by pulling as hard as I can so I can stretch farther. Bad stuff.

My MRI is scheduled for August 5th.

Hope you're feeling better!

Nice squat numbers!

Thanks. Yeah, I am feeling much better today than a couple of days ago. I got in a great upper body workout. Lower body is tomorrow, but I am not really looking forward to that since I can't squat, deadlift or even leg press right now without irritating my ass. I need to take this as a lesson to back off from workouts when I have an injury, because I will only make them worse.

I just received the results from my MRI yesterday. Apparently I may have a Tarlov cyst on one of my discs in my back. It doesn't grow by cell division, so it has nothing to do with any sort of cancer cyst. Spinal fluid causes it to expand. My symptoms match those of the Tarlov cyst disease exactly, so I am really thinking this is it. Unfortunately, the surgery to correct it is invasive, risky and the recovery time is long.

Sorry to hear that man, is there a way to avoid aggravating it, to avoid surgery?

There is a lot of controversy on how to treat them. It seems that there are some minor surgeries which involve draining the cyst and filling it with a "glue" which I hadn't found until just a little bit ago. I am going to angle for a CT scan, which is supposed to show definitively if it is a Tarlov cyst or not. After that, I am going to try to get into contact with some experts about the cysts. Luckily, I have already exhausted many of the preliminary treatment options, so I will not have to bother with them and will be able to get down to some of the more proven stuff. Hopefully the "drain and glue" will solve my problem, as it is minimally invasive.