Beginning of the Vlog

Alright well here we go with the shoulder labrum tear.  I've decided to start a Vlog in an attempt to try to spread the prolo word through a different medium.  I'm still going to write about it, but the writings are going to be more of a supplementation to the videos.

Here's the prologue, where I lay down some of background for why I'm seeing Dr. Fullerton. If you want the absolute full history of my shoulder/neck problems they can be found here.

Modifications to make to your Trailblazer

I know, I know. Typically this blog is about crossfit/fitness, but it's been a slow couple of months so I'm broadening the scope of the posts to keep things entertaining.

I own a 2003 Trailblazer, and have done or am doing all of these modifications/fixes. Here are the things you need to do should you come across a trailblazer, especially a 02-03 TB.

Get it re-tuned from PCMforless.  This isn't a tune up in the sense of making sure the spark plugs work correctly. This is reprogramming the car's computer to enhance performance and improve MPG.  When I had this done it completely changed my car. It no longer clunked when shifting from 2^nd to 3^rd, and the MPG went up from 13 to 16, not to mention I got about 20 more horsepower.  Bang for your buck, this is THE upgrade to get. Also, it’s very, very easy to do on your own. You just need a wrench that will fit and about 30 minutes.

Replace the sway bar endlinks with Maxx Endlinks. The TB just destroys OEM endlinks, but these are so beefy

Left OEM endlinks, Right Maxx endlinks

they will change the way your TB handles all by themselves. When I had mine replaced it really changed the feel of the car. It seems on the 02 and 03 models they made the bushings of super soft rubber. Upgrading them to these polyurethane will really change how the truck feels.

While you’re at it, change your rear sway bar as well with the Hotchis sway bar. This will really help with body roll, plus it comes with a set of bushings for all four wheels that will also help out with the ride.

If you experience a groan/crunch/squeak when going over bumps or when braking, the most likely culprit is the lower arm control bracket. Especially with the 02’s and 03’s, the bushings in these brackets are soft rubber and get destroyed rather easily. Replace them with a bracket that has polyurethane bushings, and it will last much longer than replacing them with rubber.

You might also want to check out the upper control arm as well, they suffer the same problem of being made with soft rubber bushings.

Replacing the shocks is also a great idea. GM designed the TB to have 5 degrees of lean, with is pretty loose. Lots of people use the Bilsteins HD and like them. I’m going for something softer so I will be getting the Ranchos SRX shocks.

Concerning brakes, my research has led me to hear good things about the brakemotive set for the TB, when my current set of brakes wear out I’ll be replacing them with these.

That’s all I have. Do these and you’ll have a TB that handles much better than stock, and will accelerate and brake much better as well. Of course, if you have any comment/criticism, please let me know in the comment section.

First WOD in over 2 years???

Recently one of my friends here in Dallas started doing Crossfit.  He’s fixing to go to Vietnam to explore the largest known cave.  He’s a fairly skinny guy, one would call him a hard gainer.  Anyways, he’s getting caught up in the Crossfit world, and I think it’s pretty cool. I envy the excitement in his eyes when he starts talking about what they did in the WOD the other day.  That high of getting your first clean, etc. I can see his passion, and I am happy he’s getting hooked.  

Well I decided to join my friends (a mutual friend also joins in on the free class) in Crossfit 214’s free intro class that’s on every Saturday.  Usually it’s just bodyweight work, something noobs can’t really mess up and it’s easy for big classes. I really wasn’t looking forward to running or whatever, but I wanted to be social and relive the ol’ Crossfit glory days.  So I decide to go and this is the WOD:

Partner WOD

AMRAP 8 minutes

3 DB Clean

6 Push Press

9 Front Squat

+

3 burpees (done while partner goes)

I really couldn’t have asked for a better WOD. The movements were in my wheelhouse, short AMRAP and you have built in rest because it’s a partner WOD! I had even brought my Risto’s just in case!

I went with one of my friends and we hulked out with the 30# DBs. We managed to get in 11 rounds and 1 rep, and honestly I’m not sure how it would have been possible to get 12 rounds in since there was minimal resting while performing the lifts. It was fun, I’ll admit. And something that light probably didn’t hurt any of my gainz. Surprisingly I wasn’t really sore the day of or today. I was kind of winded at the end, but my conditioning definitely held out for 8 minutes. Oh and I am still ridiculously slow with burpees. I still try to throw myself down and up but during the warm up I was behind everyone by a good 1.5 burpee.

Speaking of gains, I’m currently sitting pretty at 224, pretty much the heaviest I’ve ever been.  My 11 year old niece has commented on my belly, but I really don’t mind because while my belly has grown some, so has all of my muscles.  I’m really hoping I can hold on to this muscle while getting my shoulder treated, I’m really hoping I can sprint and perhaps some other stuff (Maybe even bicep curls!?!?!?!???) to at least maintain. I am tired of getting stronger, only to have to reset everything because of an injury. In the fall semester last year I got up to 275 for five reps on Starting Strength (SS) with the low bar back squat, but then I had to stop squatting at all for about three months and then had to start all over, with front squatting 65 pounds and that being not too easy.  Now I’ve front squatted 225 five times with SS and have gone on to the 531 program. With 531 I’ve reached all kinds or PRs on the overhead press and bench, but I fear that I might have to give that up for a while, maybe as long as six months. I hope not, but even if I do I am content with that because the pain in my shoulder is driving me crazy. Absolute bonkers. I am ready to get better, and if that means a little hiccup with my training, so be it. 

Also got a chance to meet the instructor, who happens to have FAI in one of his hips joints.  We got to talk a bit, but I could tell the was thinking  going into the convo that he was going to be the one to give me advice, and I think he was a little dismissive of the advice I had to offer him.  I know it sounds crazy that FAI, the calcification of the bone, can go away on its own but at least with me that seems to be the case.  When the PT tested me for FAI of the right hip (the one that’s gotten all of the treatment) I tested negative for FAI, and with the left hip there was some minimal pinching with internal rotation. Hopefully that is either gone or will go away with some prolo. I am really interested to see what the ultrasounds will show.

Addressing the other side of the hip

See how one hip joint is lower?

So for the past, I don’t know, 6 years or so I’ve been addressing the pain in my right hip.  PRP seemed to repair the torn labrum as well as stabilize the joint in dramatic fashion.  When physical therapists examine both hips, they find that my right one moves better than my left one.  Also, when I lam hanging out in the bottom of a squat I notice that my right hip joint is lower (I.E. moving better) than my left.

Now that Dry needling has finally released all those painful adhesions in my groin, I’m pretty much pain free on the right side. Sometimes I feel some pain in my gracillis (pain in the inguinal crease, gets worse when I try to raise my leg). But I’ve noticed when I do some work with the softball on my piriformis area it seems to go away.  So with regards to my right hip, I think I’ve got things about as good as it’s going to get (almost no pain while doing heavy lifts).

But one sensation that I’ve always been dealing with is pain/tightness in my lower back on the left side. It would usually flair up every once in a while, (I mean, almost five years ago I was thinking it was a kidney infection) but now that I’m back to deadlifting it’s always there. Either that or I just got used to it and it took a while to realize something was wrong.  I find my L5 is almost always out of alignment, and when I twist my torso one way it hurts that side, but when I twist the other way there is no pain.  So I’ve started thinking about my left hip.  I know the psoas on that side is always really tight, nowadays it’s tighter than the right side.  I also remember that the MRI came back with the diagnosis of bilateral FAI both cam and pincer type.  That means that the FAI was also going on in my left hip. And to finish it all off. I spent MONTHS of PT trying to get my left hip working correctly so that I would pass the Thomas test AND the Ober’s test. 

So all of this information points to the fact that perhaps my left hip should be addressed.  I’ve tried PT and that really didn’t do very much at all.  However, perhaps one or two prolo treatments will tighten everything back up? I’ve decided that while I’m down in Austin to see Dr. Fullerton about my shoulder I might as well find out my options for my hip. 

I don’t expect to get anything done when I’m down there for my first visit. For one, I might be going alone so I have to be able to drive back up to Dallas the day of the treatment, and I don’t think I could do that if he shoots up my hip.  Secondly, with my shoulder labrum healing I will probably be restricted from doing pretty much any upper body exercise. I’m hoping he will give sprinting the green light and I’ll join the local sprint club here in Dallas.  If I’m going to be able to sprint for exercise, I doubt getting prolo treatments for the hip will be allowed. …However since there isn’t a torn labrum being treated here perhaps I won’t be limited in what I can do with my lower body three days out from a treatment.

I have a lot of questions, but I am hoping that treating my left hip will help balance things out, and perhaps stop the lingering muscle tightness in my right hip. Only three more weeks until I see Dr. Fullerton!!!

Note to Future Self

Next month I’m going to use prolotherapy to treat my shoulder.  It’s been a ridiculously long journey to finally find the root of my shoulder/neck issues, but I seem to be near the end of it.  However, even though stabilizing my shoulder is necessary to get stronger a part of me is still really, really not looking forward to limiting my upper body strength training.  Yesterday I just overhead pressed 140#s easily, and my arms are looking bigger/better than they have in a long while, if ever.  The idea of no bench press or overhead press for like 3 months is scary, but I know treating my shoulder is the only way I can get rid of the constant pain in my neck/shoulder.  So to help remind me of how bad my current situation is, I decided to write down a day in the life.

• Wake up, crack neck from sleeping on my side/back.
• Figure out which ball to use to try releasing the knots in my neck, back, and arm.
• Try desperately throughout the day try to release various knots, sometimes being successful.
• Always feeling pressure in my inner ear, like I need to decompress my left ear ALL THE TIME!!!!!
• Sometimes crack my neck again, feeling the temporary relief as various muscles relax for a time.
• Feeling the mechanics of my left arm differ from the mechanics of my right arm in any pressing movement.
• Looking in the mirror and seeing more of my left trap than my right (I have noticed this since high school and if this fixes that it will be a great relief)
• My left shoulder muscles giving out on my near the 10^th rep of something heavy because they are already waaaay too tight and can’t be pushed any farther.
• This simple knowledge that I know something is wrong with my shoulder, sitting in the back of my mind the whole time.

All these things just wear me down, day after day. It’s so much of my routine I don’t even think about it now, but I want to be able to look back and remember exactly what I’ve overcome.

If this prolotherapy treatment works like I think it will, I will be in a much, much, much better shape.  I’m going to make video entries documenting my progress. I want the whole world to know about prolotherapy and how well it works as an alternative to surgery for damaged labrums.

Traveling abroad? Do these things first!

So I took a quick visit to London to see my best friend Allan, and I have to say I was the most prepared I think one can be for traveling international. When I touched down at Heathrow and turned on my phone I got an email from Allan saying he was sick and I needed to get to his apartment on my own. He gave me a great detailed guide (almost too much), but it wasn’t a problem because I was prepared. How was I prepared? Three simple steps:

1.       Credit Card: I called the credit card company a day in advance to let them know I was traveling to London, so when they saw charges coming from there not to freeze my card. This definitely saved me some hassle when I’m at the airport and needed to buy a train ticket.

2.       Phone plan: The day of my departure I called my carrier (AT&T) and bought myself an international voice, data, and text plan.  Buying these plans in advance and in the US is much cheaper than buying one overseas. Not to mention it’s a lot harder to gain access to the right number to call when your smart phone isn’t working.  This was super important for me because I planned on using the GPS feature of my phone to navigate the streets of London, which means I needed data.

3.       Cash: Pounds, to be specific. I contacted my bank four days ahead of time and got myself some cash. You get the foreign currency at a much, much better rate then at the airport. Cash was super important for me because the cabs/buses were cash only,  and they would not have appreciated me trying to use American Dollars.

So if you’re leaving the country, doing these three simple things will let you be prepared for anything that may happen.  Also, when you go to work out, make sure what you’re lifting is in kilos or pounds. Mistaking one for the other will lead to some definite surprises.

The Morals of a Paleo Follower.

Today I’m going to talk about a subject matter that I think about all the time: diet.  I think about it all the time, and read about it all the time, but I rarely, if ever, talk about diet.  I’m not going to be breaking any new ground here, but I feel the need to get this off my chest so I can get on with my life.  It seems that the old saying should be remade to state “Never mention politics, religion, or diet in polite conversation”, since the easiest way to raise a paleo person’s hackles is to talk about how unhealthy red meat is, or visa versa with a vegetarian/vegan. There are many flavors of diet out there, but specifically I’m going to be talking about veganism and paleo(ism?).

First off, why can’t we be friends? Paleo and vegan (in spirit) are both pro-local, unprocessed foods and both hate Monsanto and McDonalds. Both are also anti-dairy in general(Although Paleo does allow one to eat dairy if you it turns out you’re lactose-tolerant, same with grains too, actually). Given the small difference in what the diets perscribe, we really should be holding hands and singing kumbaya and make plans to help out local farmers and fight corporations like Monsanto aka the devil.

But for some reason we can’t get along. Taking morals out of the equation and talking strictly about health, I’ve noticed that a vegan simply won’t try out paleo for two weeks, nor will a paleo person try abstaining from meat for two weeks.  Why is that? Why do people refuse to try the other side? Well, my guess is that they both work pretty well. I mean, what happens to a person who goes from eating whatever to veganism or paleo? THEY SUDDENLY START CARING ABOUT THE FOOD THEY PUT IN THEIR BODIES!!!  You start to really monitor what you eat. This, combined with the lack of processed foods and probable reduction in sugar, and guess what? You suddenly lose fat, get healthier, and feel better!!

The problem is that it seems to be human nature to say “Hey this worked great for me, so if you’re not doing it like how I did it then you’re doing it wrong.  What’d you say?? I’m doing it wrong??? NO YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!!! YOU DIE AND GO TO HELL!!!!” We tend to think there is only one way, and that our way is the best way.  This passion can blind us from the fact that what might work for you might not be right for some. Or perhaps what works for someone else may also work for you, if you cared to change things up. But the thing is people don’t care to change things up, at least not very easily.  Would it really kill a paleo person to have a meal where the main source of protein is tempeh? Would it really be unhealthy for the vegan to occasionally have some liver (a real super food)?

We always try to take our own personal experiences and then apply them to the world. This doesn’t work because 1) the world is a much bigger place than our own experience and 2) our application is always biased by our beliefs.  We tend to accept things that strengthen our belief, and tend to ignore things that weaken them. Just  seems like human nature, I guess.

Health vs morals

The argument about which lifestyle is healthier will probably go on decades. Again, I don’t see why paleo  and vegan can’t get along because there are quite a few commonalities. Whatever the case, I’m not going to really argue which one is healthier. If it makes you happy, then go for it. I was once called into a debate on FB to argue that grass-fed meat is actually healthy. I try to avoid these things because arguing is useless, for every Super Size Me there’s a Fat Head, but because I was asked to do so I obliged and for my arguments/beliefs I was likened to one who believes the earth is flat. I found that funny because I always viewed the media’s love for veganism as analogous to the belief that the earth is flat: An idea that was once popular but is now defunct by science (Personal belief here, I know “science” can be manipulated).

But I think people tend to confuse health with morals. I guess the idea is that if a lifestyle is healthier than it must be a more inherently moral lifestyle as well, that our bodies are the ultimate judge of what is right and what is wrong, and act accordingly. Morals you can’t argue about. I mean, I could tell you your morals are wrong, but I believe that would be pointless. I understand this is my own personal belief on morals, but I believe there are no “correct” set of morals, there are only your own personal set of morals. And if it works for you, then God bless you. Others may believe differently, but if you believe in something, well, then whatever makes you happy you should follow through on.  I should also note that Veganism is much more closely tied to a set of morals (prevention of animal cruelty) then paleo. Probably why it seems that I see a lot of Paleo people will have the occasional cheat (myself included) while Vegans will almost never cheat. When it’s about someone else (or other animals), you tend to stick to your guns more readily than if it’s just about you.

But why do we even fight on the matter? It’s not like a vegan is going to get into a discussion with an omnivore and suddenly be like “Oh my God you’re right, I’ve been doing it all wrong!!!!”

To use an analogy, raising children is like believing what is the best way to eat, a real personal belief based on morals.  It’s like Mrs. Hall’s article about how she is raising her kidsand Morgan’s response to it saying she’s an awful mom. These two ladies simply have different morals, and so they are never going to see eye to eye.  Parenting styles are highly individualized, and so are eating habits/beliefs.

Again I know I’m not really setting the world afire with this post, but I am going to conclude with my own personal views.  I’ve had some inner conflict about being paleo while still caring about animal rights, and this has been going on for quite a while.  Early last year, I’ve tried to explain to myself how I can mourn the loss of a pet guinea pig while enjoying bacon. I don’t know if I really got to a full resolution that day, but now after a year or two to let it stew I think I’ve come up with a more complete explanation.

For some being to live, another being must die. Hell this even applies to plants in the equator who compete for the sunlight. For example, even following a vegan diet requires thousands of insects to die in the form of pesticides, not to mention the whole bunch of plants that also have a right to live. So it’s a slippery slope to me. If it’s ok for insects to dieso that you may live why is it not ok for other animals to die? So I feel that while it is alright to eat other animals from a moral standpoint, I feel like you owe that animal something. When you take that animal’s energy and make it a part of your own, that should create the obligation to not waste it, to use it to become the best possible human being you can be.  So for me, I try every day to make that day have meaning, to never pass up the chance to do the right thing and better the world around me as I know how. Note that I’m talking about death here, not suffering. I’m very much against animal suffering, which is why I buy grass fed beef, humanely raised pork, and try to buy eggs that came from happy chickens(I try to buy everything from local sources). If I thought I’d be happy living off the land in Alaska, I would.

So that is where my moral compass is pointing. I’ve never heard of another paleo person talk about the morals of paleo, but perhaps now that I’ve written this I may spark some kind of dialogue.  Please let me know what you think in the comments.