Gym & Exercise Thread

[HailtotheYo]

Yep, still AIT, and the 0430 is for day shift. Swings and Mids do their own at midnight and 0930. I think a few of my old buds from BMT ended up at Ft Sam Houston for their tech training.

Oh, shifts in AIT ? Must be at the OJT portion I take it.

Yeah, all of the Medical MOS's are pretty much here now Army/Navy/AF, and even a small handful of Marine. HUGE construction and add-ons yadda yadda the last 5yrs here. The AF actually "runs" the post officially now even though it is still an Army post. Not complaining, it makes it better for everyone.

I've been doing some plyometric exercises during the week and I swear it made a difference today at football, I got a shed load more tackles in than usual.

Plyo's are killer in a good way. Explosiveness, speed, everything. They work both sets of muscle fibers (fast/slow twitch).

[IAceI]

Especially good for a busy night in a busy gym. All you need is a small area and maybe a box step. Some jumps with or without weights. A mat to do some burpees or whatever. Maybe a medicine ball to do some jump squats or whatever. Sort of exercises that you get from Premiership footballers to help with their explosiveness. Tried and tested and all that, and like mentioned, works both twitch muscle fibres so helps with endurance and sprints.

8lbs is a lot to lose in a week mind. Even at an overweight level I only really managed to lose 3-4lbs in a week at best.

Speaking of weighing, weighed in yesterday at 13 stone 5lbs which is the lighest I've been in a couple of years. Still able to grab enough fat round my lower abdominals to think there's more to go before I sacrifice any muscle.

Now one for the more physiological minded of us. I was training chest on Sunday and found my right shoulder coming under a lot of pain during incline bench press with the bar. Now I do have some long-term problems with my right arm which limit its movement and I can't actually turn it palm up, but otherwise it should have been okay. It may be due to me playing a bit more tennis than I was earlier in the year, and I may have tweaked my shoulder a bit but ultimately it was quite painful. We did a few dumb bells instead to help the range of movement be a bit of free, but for the whole session - we did flyes on the pec-dec machine and cable crossovers - and my shoulder was still sore. It was like a stabbing pain, it felt more like it hadn't been loosened properly, as if it hadn't been warmed up but we spend a decent amount of time warming up before each session so it should be loosened up.

Not really sure what's happening, and I haven't really trained shoulders properly in a while but it is a bit worrisome. Any ideas?

[Gazz]

I know, I figure it was mostly water and a bit of fat, I've set myself a plan of 2lbs per week, which is the recommended amount.

My shoulders are fucked too, they used to dislocate easily as a child, including once both at the same time when my dad was swinging me round. My right one makes a popping noise on command and it's especially bad when I'm lifting weights.

For someone you wouldn't class as sporty, I have a lot of injuries.

Numerous dislocated shoulders.

Torn both ACLs

Torn right PCL

Damaged Achilles Tendon

Numerous ankle injuries

Dislocated big toe that still causes me pain.

I'm basically a wreck.

[IAceI]

Sounds delightful. I'm very fearful for my ankles sheerly because of the amount of times I go over on it. More clumsy than anything. It's worrying everytime I twist it it seems to take longer to heal. I remember in Magaluf I twisted on the first day - and realised had I not been pissed I would have been in quite a bit of pain - about 3 months later and I could still feel a twinge in it and it wasn't feeling completely right.

As for my arms, they're just a disgrace. Not only have a I got about 30% movement in my right wrist (the radius and ulna are stuck together apparently so I basically have three joints) but I can't seem to get through a game of tennis without both my arms suffering from tennis and golfers elbow (never played golf before like but apparently the symptoms match). I actually woke up one day wih a sore arm from a particularly long darts session. >_<

[TCO]

8lbs is in 1 week is impressive, no matter how you look at it so well done on that!

I know the horrible feelings of aching joints and injuries.

When I was around 13, I began devolping tendonitis in bothe my knees which eventually flared up in my ankles too. Being stupid I gritted my teeth and kept playing football trying to ignore it. It got to a point where after training on a Wednesday I had to ice both my knees and hobble around for 2 days in school in the hope that it wouldn't be so painful that I could play on the Saturday or Sunday. It's an horrendous condition and I truly have sympathy for Owen Hargreaves as a result. It's gone now because I gave up competitive football for the sake of me being able to walk properly!

The only real joint pain I get now is in my left shoulder is after throwing an American Football around. I reckon that's due to lack of those muscles more than anything though because outside of throwing and swinging my I'm right hand dominant in most cases.

As far as innjuries go, my list is fairly decent too.

Sprained left wrist (x2)

Sprained right wrist

Broken left wrist

Fractured Right index finger

Sprained Left index finger

Constant respraining of my left ring finger, so much so it clicks now.

Grade 3 left ankle sprain

Lower back strain (x2)

Right Shoulder sprain

Ingrown toenails in both big toes removed

A lot of those can be attributed to hypermobile joints in my hands and arms, which produce hilarious party tricks whilst drunk are a hinderence playing sport

[IAceI]

I like how we're all injury prone, that's reassuring for a thread devoted to exercise.

[Lineker]

We doing injuries suffered now? I've fractured my leg and my spine!

[Gazz]

We doing injuries suffered now? I've fractured my leg and my spine!

Pfft! Dab of the magic sponge and you can walk that off.

[TCO]

Injuries are fun to talk about though because they're in the past. If I go a year without fucking one of my fingers up, then it's been a pretty boring year!

Oh I've also been concussed after falling in a water park in Tenerife. For me, almost felt like teleporting, one minute I was running up to go on the slide again and bam! It's two hours later and I'm vomiting in the sink in the appartment and feeling very woozy

[Lineker]

I wish it was the magic fucking sponge...

[IAceI]

Fractured spine isn't anything you can't get up from, stamp your foot a few times and run off. That was my favourite thing at U10 football, you go down with a sore foot and are told to stand up, stamp your foot on the ground again and run off. Worked a treat too, and toughed you up.

And fucking hell its legs day again already. Not amused. 6pm tonight and it's time to write off being able to walk until the weekend.

[Lineker]

Eh, I suppose all that metalwork now holding my spine together is completely unnecessary!

[IAceI]

Stop your whinging and run it off man.

[Lineker]

Well I have now!

[DavidMarrio]

That was my favourite thing at U10 football, you go down with a sore foot and are told to stand up, stamp your foot on the ground again and run off. Worked a treat too, and toughed you up.

Or when you hurt yourself and they tell you to rest and you decide nah I wanna keep playing haha. I did that a few times and really did me no favours. I done my tendon once and did the worst thing you could do and take your football boot off causing it just to swell immedietely and then decided I'll just play anyway. Couldn't walk for the next few days after but it got me some time off school

One of the worst injuries I've had is when I nearly lost all the feeling in my left arm. I cut open my hand pretty deep and I just remember going the hospital to get stitches and being told if it was just a tiny bit deeper it would have got a nerve.

Other than few sprained ankles and a dint in my shinbone thats about it in terms of injuries. Oh apart from when I had osgoodschlater disease I think it was called. Basically in secondary school my bones grew quicker then I was growing (Basically kinda more painful version of growing pains) so my knees would swell and it would hurt to like crouch, walk etc at times.

[TheGreatJ]

U10 football was the best.

Thankfully, I've never broken anything, apart from a chipped tooth. Touchwood.

However, I did go through about 8 months of very, very limited physical activity because my achilles tendon decided to fuck off on me. I couldn't play football without spending more time stretching my achilles than actual playing. I just strained it or something, and against doctors advise, I carried on doing physical activity until I could barely walk after a game of footie.

Gym helps any kind of muscular injury IMO. Rest it for a week if its just aching/pulled, then slowly started building up the weights! Start at the smallest one you can do whilst being able to feel it, and build up to your normal weights (:

[IAceI]

What's everyones preferred method of cardio training then? I prefer to do mine charging around at 5 a-side because it allows me to work up a good sweat in between rifling home screamers. However as that isn't enough (and we aren't playing for about a month) I'm doing a lot of cycling at the gym.

I used to do cross trainer but got a bit bored of it and never really liked the treadmill. Always just seemed to end up with sore joints, even more so if I try and run around the street or anything. So yes, a bit of tennis, 5-a-side in a sports hall and a 2 or 3 days of biking. I'm about to head on the bike in about thirty minutes or so, it's a real nightmare sometimes but I just have to think of the weight loss I'm aiming for and it generally sees me through.

Also the Inna megamix coming on the 50 inch screens in the gym has helped me through the pain barrier a few times too.

[Thrilla]

I generally hit the gym before work and just do cardio. I do 30 minutes on the cross trainer, 10/15 minutes on the bike and then 5k on the treadmill.

I'm attempting to start playing sports again but its difficult to get people interested. I want to start playing basketball again (I played in sixth form but messed my shoulder up before going Uni) and try badminton or something.

[Gazz]

I bought myself a mountain bike, so I've been using that to get about on for short journeys. My mom and dad live about 2 miles apart so that's a good blast to do that and back everyday and there's alot of canals and country lanes to ride.

[Meacon Keaton]

I'm back to doing the rowing machine in the mornings when I wake up and going for an easy mile run when I get home at night. Once I'm satisfied with how my cardio is, I'll get back to lifting.