once more unto the breach

i've just had the last in the series of three acu-stim quad treatments.

if you have been following along you are well aware that i have been getting a massage and acupuncture. electrodes are attached to the acupuncture needles for deep muscle stimulation. i have also been trying to endure a more aggressive stimulation each time.

after the first two treatments i don't notice any change in the size of the muscle. frankly i think it would be too soon to be able to see that. i have noticed increased joint stability, particularly first thing in the morning. it was quite common for my knee to shift laterally when i climbed the stairs. i attribute this new stability to the acu-stim treatment.

i suspect that a stronger more stable joint will respond favourably to training. i expect that before long i will notice improved shape and size in my vastus lateralis, the quad muscle that i felt suffered the most from my injury.

and for those who enjoy watching my quad shimmy...

where's the flood??

there was a lad in the gym last evening who had me quite perplexed. for once i wasn't confused by his training application or his form. what had me giving my head a shake was the 'urkel' nature of his gym shorts.

this was a lad in his mid to late 20's, so it wasn't one of those strange old guy trends. i suppose on one hand it was a pleasant change of pace from the kids who wander around with 6 inches of boxer's on full display.

it was his leg day and he performed multiple sets of squats and deadlifts with his shorts all up in his business. i can only imagine how uncomfortable it might have been for him to walk around with the inseam of his shorts tickling his duodenum but when you factor in squatting and further add the pressure from the weight of the bar. frankly i can't help but wonder if there wasn't an easier way's for him to sterilize himself.

and while i am on the subject of how people wear their clothing. what is it that causes folks to raise their pants higher as they advance in years? i don't wish to over-share but at the rate my father is going it won't take much longer until the waist band of his pants fit him like a choker.

shake, rattle and roll

the video below is from my second quad treatment. first a hour long massage followed by acupuncture with electro-stimulation.

i felt that i needed to try a more aggressive approach to ensure the validity of this treatment option. to that end i had them turn the machine up a bit. i don't think you will have to watch as closely as last week to see the muscle contraction.

ladies and gentlemen may i present the macarena a'la miche or the franken-miche part deux.

either way... enjoy

beware of miche

the door bell rang while my family was having dinner and my father answered the door.

it was a woman who was trying to collect money for some cause. my father told her that it was a bad time and asked her to come back later. she moved so that he could not close the door and she started into her pitch. she mentioned it was for the children and that he only needed to give her a little donation. my father told her to come back later, for the second time but the lady kept talking over him.

i told my father to go back and eat his dinner, that i would handle it but my father refused. and went back to arguing with this woman. he told her that we had family visiting and that we were sitting down to dinner and that it just wasn't a good time and she needed to come back. eventually she left and my dad went back to his dinner.

i believe that if you show up at my home, uninvited and if you are peddling a cause that i am not interested in and/or do not support; it is in my right to tell you i am not interested. and you have to leave. if you don't as far as i am concerned you are now trespassing and however i choose to speak to you from that point on, is on you.

a few years ago we had a lot of people at the door trying to peddle their religious beliefs.

i was trying to sleep in one sunday morning when someone began to lean on the door bell. on my way to the front door i passed the rest of my family, sitting in the kitchen in frozen silence. they told me not to answer the door as it was some religious group or the other and then went back to their madame tussauds imitation.

well i am sorry but i do not believe you need to hide in your own home to escapes the religious doctrines of others. i marched my happy ass to the front door and i opened it. there were two women on the front step. they smiled and started to raise their reading material and i cut them off. it was a while ago but i think i said, "hi, we aren't interested so please f--k off. thanks. have a great day." and i slammed the door shut.

i am fairly certain we weren't bothered by any more of those calls for the rest of that summer.

am i going to hell? yeah probably... but it is a lot easier to sleep in on sunday mornings.

the day after

at the risk of seeming all kinds of obsessed with my quad... which i am by the way but nonetheless here are my post treatment comments.

i woke up to a rather interesting sensation in my leg, not an uncommon sensation but not one i am used to feeling when i haven't done anything.

i feels like i have post-workout muscle fatigue but only in a portion of that left quad. the feeling is not local to the exact area of treatment and the rest leg feels 'normal'.

as i mentioned last night i would like the treatment to be a bit more aggressive next week... although i am now a tad nervous what the day after might feel like.

thursday is leg day and i am really curious to see if i will notice any differences.

can you tell i am a little excited?

on pins and needles

i was able to shoot a video clip of the acupuncture muscle stimulation therapy. it really wasn't as gnarly as i feared it might be.

it wasn't the electro-stim that worried me, i have only ever had an acupuncture needle inserted once before and suffice it to say that it didn't go well. well to be honest i went just this side of bat sh#t crazy and demanded that it be taken out.

so since it went okay i am going back again for more next week. i was told two or three sessions and i should see some improvement, if it is indeed going to work for me.

maybe next week i will get him to turn it up higher... maybe we can make the electrodes do the macarena.

the video clip has been edited to just over two minutes. it was a ten minute procedure but i thought i would only include the highlights. do not adjust your set, there is no sound.

today is the day and other random bits

so folks, later today i will be having the quad treatment i previously mentioned. briefly, the plan of attack is an hour long massage. after which they will insert some acupuncture needles. the needles will have electrodes attached for deep muscle stimulation.

it is another beautiful day out, so i took the bike to work. in light of the massage/acupuncture treatment the decision to ride may prove not to be one of my better decisions. but what can i say? sometimes you just gotta dangle your toes over the edge a little. okay so maybe in this case toe dangling could get me killed but i really won't know for sure until later.

the adductors are the leg muscles that i rely on most heavily while riding. as my adductors will not be directly involved in today's treatment, i should be okay. for those of you unfamiliar with the adductors, they are the inner thigh muscles that are directly responsible for bringing one's legs together.

the adductors are the same muscles that make the 'here's my stuff*' machine's so popular on the gym floor. sadly so many people continue to spot train and unfortunately spot training is generally ineffective. particularly when you are solely focused on the inner or outer thigh muscles and the abdominal muscles.

the one thing i learned during my years as a personal trainer; you can not discourage people from spot training. if someone is concerned with their midsection the only exercise they are interested and/or willing to do every crunch variation known to man. it can be pretty frustrating as the trainer when you realize that your clients wish to focus their efforts on the most ineffective training method possible. you would think as the hired professional they would be willing to take advantage of your experience but that is not the case. all too often people believe more, is more and the reality is quite the opposite.

* my personal non-patented term for the adductor machine's. why? because they generally point in some unfortunate direction at the club i train in, towards the area of the gym where people like to gather and stretch. to me, it seems like the exerciser is going; here's my stuff... here's my stuff... here's my stuff...

i may be just a little crazy but it is all just part of my charm!

excuse you?

they say that people respond favourably to confidence but i believe one must be careful not to exude obnoxiousness instead of confidence.

on two separate occasions random gym guy has tried to tell me what to do. he didn't ask me if i wanted to do 'XYZ' but rather he just demanded i follow his direction. clearly he doesn't know me. suffice it to say that i am not properly trained and i do not 'sit', 'fetch' or 'stay'.

if there is an established relationship: coach and athlete, teacher and student, mentor and oh crap... is there such a thing as mentee—?

well look at that... according to google; 'mentee' is an actual word although 'protege' is generally preferred.

there is no established relationship between me and random gym guy. we talk... sometimes. we have similar training ideologies and are often amused by the way others train. but that's where it ends.

i am a stubborn woman who knows her own mind. and guess what? i am also ridiculously set in my ways. so when mister man comes along and tells me to jump, the answer he gets is not ,"how high?"

and since i know you're probably curious... so far the answer hasn't been "—uck you."



yet!

shock the monkey to life

first of all my apologies to mr. gabriel, but his lyric is ever so fitting.

yesterday i went for a massage and rmt paul wanted to know the date of my next show, apparently he wishess to attend.

i explained that i still require quad symmetry before i can even consider returning to the stage. the left quad atrophied quite a lot after my injury and though i have gained back some of what i lost i still have a ways to go.

he and his partner believe then can ensure that all available muscle fibers are firing. although i am kind of scared, dare i say poop-less, of their treatment plan i have decided to give it a shot.


next tuesday evening rmt paul is going to massage my legs then anthony, his partner, is going to fire acupuncture needles into my quads. anthony will then hook me up to electrodes for deep muscle stimulation.

rmt paul showed me a couple videos of the technique. it is all kind freaky seeing the little jumper cable attachments clipped to the acupuncture needles and then watching the lot dance in the patients skin.

i think i am going to talk rmt paul into handing me my phone after i am all hooked up. i want to shoot a clip of it for you guys, if i am allowed.

the hard part, beyond sitting there with needles stuck in my legs, will be fighting the urge to do a frankenstein imitation... or would that be frankenmiche??

what was that?

when i got home from work today i picked up the recycle bins and took them to the back of the house where they are kept.

a couple steps away from where we store them and something moved. i glanced over and i saw a long dingy grey and white coat. skunk!

i wasted no time getting the hell out of the backyard. in fact i am not sure that the recycle bins have landed yet. i launched the bins and shot out of the backyard with a speed that would make usain bolt jealous. in fact i didn't stop running until i was on the street in front of my house.

so the question is, is pepe le pew still out there? and who is going to go out there to clean up those bins? not this kid that's for damn sure!!!

ma nature:1 miche: 0

decisions... decisions...

i am the conclusion of another 6 week rotation of the x-rep training protocol. i started training with this style at the start of the year. i am still really happy with how things are progressing but it is definitely time to make some further plans.

my weight seems to hover around 167 lbs. i think that is likely the lowest that i am going to be without further dietary adjustments. there is a delt vein that is visible in my left shoulder most training days. that vein comes out when i am lean. the point of the diet was to get leaner clearly i have done that.

i can't see an advantage of being any leaner than i am now. to get leaner i would have to adjust my caloric intake and that would likely affect the strength gains i have made so far. also, i am not currently ready to do a show, so there is no advantage to getting leaner now.

one change i am considering is the frequency of my cheat meal. i would like to move it to one meal every four weeks. one meal every six weeks fits in nicely with the six week rotation of the x-rep protocol but i am curious if i could still maintain my current weight with a more regular cheat meal. earlier in the year my body weight would fluctuate more during the six weeks and the longer period gave me the opportunity to make more improvements to my condition.

i didn't bother to take any progress pictures at the end of this cycle. i also didn't take my measurements. since my weight has been as steady as it has it is likely that my measures will remain steady as well.

but what i am considering is filming some of the workouts again and posting more training videos.

why? for one it has been quite some time since i have done it and it is well past time to do a form check. when you train alone no one has an eye on your form. technique ensures you get the most out of the exercise and it generally minimizes risk. proper form is something i am always concerned with but when your going for one more rep sometimes things can go terribly, horribly wrong.

as well a lot of the exercises that i am currently doing are relatively new to my routine and i simply haven't had a chance to watch myself perform them.

i have a lot of decisions to consider during the coming de-load week.

it probably seems like i am going to a lot of trouble or even over thinking this but i believe that physique sports are a marriage between change and consistancy. you want to change enough to make improvements but not too frequently. you have to give your plan time to work.

rome after all, was not built in a day.

i regret nothing!!

first of all the movie was all kinds of awesome. consider that i waited patiently for nine months for the release of the avengers. that was a long time and the potential for disappointment after such a long wait was a legitimate risk. but then you have to factor in, the whedon factor. joss whedon owns this genre; action/adventure with a healthy dose of make believe and that should be enough but mr whedon also brings the funny!!

so how good would i say this movie was? this was; bring it home to meet the parents because you finally found 'the one' good.

i am sure that inquiring minds would like to know what time the movie finished and/or what time i got to bed. i left the theatre at 2:50 a.m. and it was about 4:00 a.m. before i hit the rack. it is likely that i actually did get forty winks as the alarm went off an hour and a half later.

today is clearly going to suck. i can feel that already. today i will be powered by nescafe.

my plan is to get through the day. drink my body weight in coffee if need be. have a power nap after work before heading to the gym to get my chest workout done. i briefly thought about going straight from work to the gym but i'll likely nod off under the bar and get pinned.

but ultimately i regret nothing!!

y.o.l.o!!

did i mention that saturday is my cheat day? yet another 6 weeks is behind me and i am looking forward to pizza and a deep N delicious chocolate cake.

but first i've got to get through today.

avengers assemble!!

okay this could turn out to be one of my worst ever decisions... but sometimes you just gotta say what the #$@*.

the avengers movie starts this weekend and for the truly twisted there is the midnight showing tonight. now clearly a midnight movie would not be a wise decision for someone who is required to get up at 5:30 am for work.

clearly i am not wise. i am going.

tomorrow i am going to be basically comatose but so be it. there has not been a movie released in forever that i have had any desire to see and i have been waiting for this one since they released captain america last year.

i can't wait!!!

job titles i could never have...

during last night's basketball game i caught a bit of the on-camera interview with the coach.

it got me thinking that they essentially ask the coach and players the same questions time and time again. surely it must get tiring delivering the same stock answers: we've got to cut off their dribble penetration. we need to better guard against the 3-ball. we got to stop giving them open looks. we need to shut down the lane. to list a few.

just once i would love it if a coach answered the questions like i would:

reporter: coach you had the game well in hand but towards the end of the half you seemed to let them back into it. what do you attribute that too?
coach miche: they started scoring more than we were.
reporter: (visibly taken aback) i see and how do you plan to turn that trend around in the second half?
coach miche: i was kinda counting on us scoring more than them.
reporter: (stunned) ah... thanks coach... and ahhh... good luck in the second half.
coach miche: thank you

there are a lot of occupations out there, that i am pretty sure i am poorly suited. it might be fun, from time to time to take a look at them.

or maybe just fun for me.