Strength training for once I get my back straightened out

Ok, so my back has obviously been having its problems but I keep getting more and more excited about working out the closer I become to getting this thing straightened out.

So here is where my head at right now as far as exercising goes.

I have no doubt talked about the 4-hour body in previous entries and have mentioned the book Building a Gymnastics Body. Well I am starting to think that I want to combine some of the different things discussed each book.

My goal is to build up my strength and flexibility to the maximum I can achieve while maintaining my current body weight (or at least around it plus or minus about 5lbs due to Creatine supplementation).

The diet part is going to be tricky, I have never been one to eat very unhealthy but I am probably going to have to start restricting my diet in order to raise my natural testosterone levels. That means lots of eggs and red meat for me. In the morning when I wake up it will be eggs and at night it will be eggs before bed. Meh!

Also, I am beginning a supplementation program that includes drinking a mixture of cayenne pepper and water, fish oil, creatine ethyl ester and multi-vitamins. Most of those things are pretty self-explanatory except for the cayenne/water mixture. This combo will be taken for its thermogenic nature and will allow me to lower my body fat.

I am not overly concerned about being ripped so my diet wont be some insanely complicated thing where I watch every carb, count every calorie and have a freak out about raising insulin from eating to much fruit.

Next thing I will be making sure to do is to make all my bathes cold bathes because this again raises testosterone as well lowers body fat.

As far as the exercise program goes I intend to get up at around 5 a.m. M-F before I have to go to work so I can do a little egoscue, kettlebell swinging and yoga.

After work I intend to do that superhuman strength training protocol discussed in The 4-Hour Body. Which basically is doing bench and dead lift three times a week. The way this is done is low reps and long rest periods between sets.

I want to figure out a way to include squats into this plan but I'm not sure how I am going to do this. I was thinking since I work out at home that I could do low rep squat work by doing one zercher dead lift and then proceed to squats for reps before setting the bar down.

After all this lifting I intend to do the work out of the day from the gymnastic bodies website to build some foundational gymnastic strength. I say I intend to because the super human protocol is designed in order to allow the athlete to do weight training along with their sport specific training.

Once again I'll end this with some yoga.

Finally, assuming I am not completely exhausted from all this I want to run a little on weekends either normal or retro running depending on how I feel.

That is the plan lets hope that I can stick to it, but first I just need this back to heal.

Back almost completely healed from Egoscue

Well last night I was reading through my copy of the 4 Hour Body and was looking at the section about reversing and curing life long injuries.

I figured since I am a fairly active person who currently has a bad back I might see what this section of the book has to offer.

In the book Ferriss talks about the different methods he has tried to relieve his back pain and the ones that he found to be most effective.

One of the methods mentioned but not considered to be the most helpful was Yoga. That's when I thought to myself Damn, because I was banking on this Yoga thing to get my back straightened out.

But he later mentions walking in Vibram 5 Finger shoes, or barefoot walking, this of course has been something I have been interested in trying since I read Born to Run earlier this year. Of course with it being winter in Michigan and me only having just graduated and using whatever little money I have for Christmas shopping this was an impractical solution to my problem.

Ferriss talks in great detail about this egoscue method of rehab, great, here was something I could actually do in my living room without freezing my feet.

There were about 5 or 6 rehab exercises described in the book but Ferriss said that only three should be done on a daily basis, but in my head I was thinking what the hell I'll try them all.

So, I gave them shot not really expecting great results but low-and-behold I was completely wrong. I was feeling great my back still had a slight kink in it but I figured I would test the water with a few Yoga poses.

After attempting a few poses I was convinced that I needed to put this into my daily routine, my flexibility through my back was better then it has been all year.

I woke up this morning even more surprised because my back felt even better then it did from the night before.

Anyways definitely worth checking out if you have a bad back. Look for it in the 4-hour Body by Timothy Ferriss