January 2014 Update Video - Vegas Trip - Getting Bigger - Torn Quad

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted a YouTube video, I was away most of last week attending the SHOT Show in Vegas. I go every year to Las Vegas in January for the SHOT Show gun show, this is for my other YouTube Channel and other website ReplicaAirguns.com. I generally take my Wife Nicole with me and make it a bit of business and a bit of pleasure, we have a good time and take in the Vegas entertainment, food and drink.

This year I came back 5 pounds heavier (Now 188 pounds) even though I ate pretty good and got in three decent workouts while I was there, we also walked a ton which should have offset the extra food and alcohol calories? No big deal since I am trying to bulk a bit :)

A mentioned in an earlier post, I tore my Quad last Monday doing some squats over at my CrossFit Langley gym, we where doing three rep max sets and it was the 4th set at 305 pounds when I overloaded my Left Quad Rectus Femoris and tore it a bit, ten good news is it is not a major tear, I am assessing it to be a first degree tear since there is no bruising and I can use the leg for normal low weight use now (walking and stuff). You can read my original post about it here.

Now that I am back, I will have more regular videos for you as per normal...

Pop Goes the Weasel - Or Should I Say Rectus Femoris!

After a week away in Vegas it was back to the grind and today happened to be leg day at my CrossFit Langley class and it was heavy day, on this heavy day we do 5 sets with 3 reps of back squats increasing the weight with each set till we get to our max three rep weight. Of course we do our regular warmups before hand.

All went well right up to and including my 275 pound third set, I felt pretty good and was sure I was going to squeeze out at least 2 reps at 305... Well I did get one off but at a pretty big cost! Right at the bottom of my first rep of 305 pounds, as I was coming up I felt and heard a "pop" that was accompanied by a very significant sting in my left Quad. It actually stopped me in my tracks and I paused on the way up, I was not sure what to do since I had a spotter behind me and did not want to drop the weight on him, so up I went unassisted and to be honest as I went up it was not all that hard and the sting was kind of forgotten since I was so focuses on getting this weight up and off of me.

Needless to say, no more squatting for me on this day and perhaps for a while :( I finished up the workout doing 10 reps times 6 sets of sit-ups, push-ups and pull-ups, and I did get a pretty good workout in for the day considering what happened.

So here I am sitting at home typing away on my keyboard with an icepack on my leg, not sure of the severity of the Quad Rectus Femoris tear? I am thinking it is at least a first degree tear (about a 5% tear). It could even be a second degree tear (more than 5% but less than a complete tear), but I am fairly certain it is not a third degree tear since that would be a complete tear and there would have been no way I would have been able to get the weight up.

Because of all of this I have decided that from now on I will only lift to get stronger in general. I am not going to do sets under 5-6 reps max since every time I have sustained an injury it has been during reps of 3 or lower. So there will be no more single rep Personal Record attempts. What's the point if I get injured in the process and I can no longer train that body part. That is completely anti productive and not worth the satisfaction of saying I can lift "X" amount of weight.

Home Workout - Chest, Triceps and Abs with Polar Flow Summary

Follow me along in this video where I do an at home workout focussing on Chest, Triceps and Abs. I use a combination of exercises that incorporate free weights, smith machine, pulleys, my Total Gym and body weight.

As I do with all my workouts now-a-days, I track my heart rate using my Polar Loop paired to a Polar H7 (with smart Bluetooth) heart rate monitor so I can track my calories burned during my workouts. I show you a graph of this workout at the end of the video so you can see my total workout time, peek heart rate, average heart rate and calories burned for the workout.

I also talk a bit about a gaol I have which is to potentially compete in a mens over 40 physique fitness competition at the end of this year, I will have to see about this but without goals you are only limiting yourself!

My New Years Resolution - Gain 5 Pounds of Pure Muscle

So I mentioned a couple of videos ago some tips on how to keep your 2014 New Years Fitness Resolutions, but I did not mention what mine where. Perhaps because I was not sure at that point? Well I have a plan now for 2014 and my new goal for the first 3-4 months is to put on some muscle mass. This is not something my body is prone to doing, I'm pretty good at shredding up and sure I can gain fat easy juts by eating but adding muscle mass quickly is not something I have been able to do easily in the past.

As you know I have been doing a lot of CrossFit over the past 6-7 months and it has been really greta for me in many ways. In some ways it may have limited me to add muscle since most CrossFit workouts are heavy on the high intensity which in a way is like cardio but with the benefit of more of a cardio workout. But the fact of the matter is by doing the high intensity training you do rob your body of some of its ability to put on pure muscle because it is multitasking and needs some of the energy to go towards the high intensity effort you are performing and then some of the energy goes into building muscle.

My goal is to gain between 5-8 pounds of solid muscle while maintaining a lean body mass, I plan to do this by cutting down on my CrossFit workouts to about 3 days per week and ramping up my Isolation body building style workouts to at least 3 days per week. I will be eating slightly more calories than I need so I can gain the additional muscle mass but my food intake will be very regulated with a lot of protein with some carbs and lower fat.

During my "transformation" I plan to "keep the shirt on" until I get to my final target weight what ever that turned out to be ;) Right now I am 182 pounds at about 8% body fat, I want to be at least 185 pounds at 6% body fat or closer to 190 pounds at 7% body fat when all is said and done.

So keep posted and I would love for you to share your Fitness Goals for 2014 with me so we can work towards them together.

New Years Day 2014 Inner Tubing at Cypress Mountain with the Family

It's always fun getting out with the family when hills and snow are involved, and not just for the kids :)

It's been kind of a tradition to head out to the the slopes each year, either on Boxing Day or like this year, New Years day and head up to Cypress Mountain for some inner tubing. Last year it was a winter wonderland in our local BC mountains but this year our winter has been so mild that most of the ski hills are not operating. At least Cypress Mountain with the aid of snow machines had the inner tube hills running.

We had a greta time and decided to skip the tow lineups and walk up the hill which is  a really great workout, it's like walking in sand but uphill while dragging a heavy object behind you (usually I had to drag mine and my sons inner tube).

I'm not sure exactly how many runs we got it in but it was at least 6-7 so all in all we got a pretty good workout in!

Enjoy the video, most of the video is shot while I was wearing my Liquid Image MODEL 367 - IMPACT SERIES HD 1080P Goggle Camera with the exception of when I put them on Gabriel for one of his runs. I also got some video using my iPhone 5s and took advantage of the 720p 120 frames per second slow-mo feature.