Having fun again

[tuberman]

I've been around before on AM, and I'm back.

I was injured late last December with an injury to my right knee. A seat collapsed under me, trapping the lower part of my right leg underneath and it literally ripped the tendons free from my right knee taking some bone from the patella with it. I needed a major four hour operation to repair it. The surgeon drilled three holes in my knee and reattached the tendons with heavy gauge wire.

I didn't get back to working out for 6+ months until almost July of this year. But I'm back now and it's fun again. I will be 63 years old in less than a month. The surgeon told me I was healing like someone 35 years younger in mid-May during my last visit. I heard management at work had a small betting pool with the odds that I'd never make it back (my age and all). I was back at work in early May and have not needed a day off since. I can now do 15-20 reps with my right leg alone with 120 # to lower than parallel on a leg press machine, but I'm still very careful. I still cannot twist the right leg very well, but it is somewhat better. I have completely normal ROM in bending the leg and knee. I'm stationary cycling for 45 minutes a day 6 days a week.

My upper body strength is great and nearly back to the level it was before the accident. It came back quickly as I've mainly used machines, so I have not need to worry about stabilizing muscles, and muscle has memory as well as fat.

I was worried about all the fat I might have gained during off time with good cause as I did gain way too much, but not as much as I thought. After putting in 10-11 weeks to regain strength and some muscle I finally got up the courage to get on an accurate scale, I was fearing a weight in the mid-270's, yet it came in at 261+ pounds -- still bad, as I was in the upper 230's when accident happened. I'm 5' 10" and I don't know what current body fat is, but I do have a lot of muscle under the fat. I've been on a diet for the last two weeks an I'm down 8 pounds so far, and weighed-in at under 254 three days ago.

When I started working out in early July I made a pact with myself that I would get under 200 pound on a diet (say 185 -190) and than rebuild some muscle at that point. I will lose the weight now because the one time I've cheated on my diet I got nasty anxiety. I've never used actual steriods in the past except low-dose anti-estrogens such as form. I'm pretty knowlegable about natural test boosters and switch them in and out with decent effect. When PP had a sale on their transdermal Dermacrime product I picked up two of those to potentially speed up my muscle recovery after the long diet I'll need to reach my weight goals. They sit in the pantry unused for now.

I'm doing about 1800 Kcals a day with about 170-175 grams of protein. I am doing protein shakes and these are backed up with extra Leucine at several grams per shake. Even though the protein levels are a bit low for retaining muscle, I've had decent success with retaining muscle at the levels before as long as I added some BCAAs or Leucine to the mix. I am working weight machines and resistance exercises pretty hard at high reps for the added calorie burning effect. I'm also taking three supps to keep cortisol and stress levels down from all the exercise. So far it's good!

If I dropped all the test boosters and the anti-E's for a period a blood test would probably show low or borderline testosterone, and I could probably get a script from a doc. Just a thought.

I am strong, have a butt load of endurance, and without me asking, people assume I'm 10 years younger, but I want to improve on this by a lot. I'm very confident that I can make vast improvements in the next year.

 

[gymrat827]

interesting story, any questions or did you just want to share??

 

[tuberman]

Gymrat,

I was just reintroducing myself. I probably will have questions in the future if I get stuck. I may actually try to get TRT in the near future and stack something like RS-Transderm with it to rebuild, but I build muscle fairly easily anyway. Right now I'm good.

Thanks for stopping by, and the reply.

 

[TINYTOAD]

Sounds good! Welcome back!!!

-TT

 

[tuberman]

Tiny,

I've been meaning to drop by your thread and read it through, so I will soon. I have read bits of it already.

I've been testing dropping down to 1200 kcals a day for two days a week to get in a low scale weight. The protein I eat during those days is very compact. I use whey powder before and after my exercise sessions this whey has only 1 gram of carbs and 105 Kcals per 22 grams of protein, so two scoops is only 210 Kcals with 44 grams of protein. I also eat the real tuna (the stuff without the soy protein as the cheap tuna has today) as it has 30 grams of protein for 120 Kcals. Using food similar to this along with the leucine addition allows to still get in about 170 grams of protein on a 1200 calorie diet. This is only for the two days before a weekly weigh-in. The volume of food is pretty small during those two days, and I allow a cheat or re feed day the day after the weigh-in where I allow myself about 3000 Kcals and over 240 grams of protein and lots of carbs on those days. This is working well thus far as I have now lost about 13 pounds from beginning.

Thanks for the hello.

 

[gymrat827]

keep on doing what works.

 

[Dutchman]

Gymrat,

I was just reintroducing myself. I probably will have questions in the future if I get stuck. I may actually try to get TRT in the near future and stack something like RS-Transderm with it to rebuild, but I build muscle fairly easily anyway. Right now I'm good.

Tuber, I've been on Test Cyp for 2 years, now at 100 mg and have been using the RS Transaderm for about 5 weeks now. I am very happy with the combo.

 

[tuberman]

Tuber, I've been on Test Cyp for 2 years, now at 100 mg and have been using the RS Transaderm for about 5 weeks now. I am very happy with the combo.

I've got one bottle of the oral Dermacrine and one trandermal and one of the the RS-Transaderm that I picked up for $39 and free shipping. Now that Dermacrine is gone the price has gone up. But, hey, I have enough for a while now.

I have lost 24.2 pounds on my diet now with no noticeable thyroid shutdown yet. I do 10 day cycles with 2 full refeed days and 4 days of moderate calorie deficit and 4 days of near starvation. In the last 2 of these 10 day cycles I do 4 days of 1100 Kcals per day, but I can't keep that up or thyroid shutdown will cut off weight loss.

 

[grunt03]

I was injured late last December with an injury to my right knee. A seat collapsed under me, trapping the lower part of my right leg underneath and it literally ripped the tendons free from my right knee taking some bone from the patella with it. I needed a major four hour operation to repair it. The surgeon drilled three holes in my knee and reattached the tendons with heavy gauge wire.

I didn't get back to working out for 6+ months until almost July of this year. But I'm back now and it's fun again. I will be 63 years old in less than a month. The surgeon told me I was healing like someone 35 years younger in mid-May during my last visit

That’s a fantastic recovery getting back into the game after only 6 months at any age.

I've been testing dropping down to 1200 kcals a day for two days a week to get in a low scale weight.

Interesting! I’ve also been doing that as part of a recomp attempt where I switched from lifting 6 days a week down to 3, though one day is actually 2 workouts AM/PM, but that allows me to only eat above maintenance (about +10-20%) 5 days a week and below (about -50%) 2 days a week. In 7 weeks I lost 4.5 lbs. of BF and gained 4.5 lbs. of LBM (my weight stayed the same but the calipers and mirror showed about a 2% fat loss).

 

[tuberman]

That’s a fantastic recovery getting back into the game after only 6 months at any age.

I've worked hard at it. The surgeon told me twice that I was recovering like someone 30 or more years younger. The ability to twist with that knee is still poor, but better than it was a few months ago. I can do 130 pound leg presses with that leg alone, but I'd like to get it over twice that in another year. A nasty injury!

 

[tuberman]

Update

Time to update this tread. My diet stopped about 2 days after my 11/06/11 posts as on that morning I hit a deer driving home from work. It was a fairly large female and she went up over my car and bounced off my roof. I had less than a half second warning as she had obviously been running full tilt before she got to the road. Whether or not insurance would fix my car was also up in the air for 5 days after, and they finally decided to total the car. I came out okay, as I purchased a 2010 model car, and received a decent deal. I lost 25-26 pounds before this detour and was down to 236.2 pounds from 261.8 at start. I had some problems finding a car I wanted. It took me nearly 3.5 weeks and many 5 hour sleep days. My diet fell apart. I did start doing more training as soon as I got the newer car, and I never stopped doing weight training during my car search in spite of the short sleep hours. I did let my cardio slide though.

I'm getting back on track with the workouts since getting the car, but eating has just gotten back to diet levels the last two days. I weighed 244.4 today and that's not too bad as over 5 pounds of that is probably water and bulk in digestive track. Today is Dec. 30th, and during the next 5 weeks I will diet strongly again. I lost about 12% of my strength while losing the 25 pounds, and I have about 70% of that back over the last few weeks of typical eating habits and I'm still 18.4 pounds down and starting again. My goal is to drop 10-12 pounds from my previous low weight. I would like to reach 225 pounds or a bit lower.

Some time early to mid-February my tactics will change. I've used only Dermacrine previously at 4 pumps per day for only two weeks as it was just a quick run to see how I'd feel, and after a week or so it felt somewhat stronger than the strongest test booster combo I'd ever used. It may have picked up some more strength and effect into the 3rd or 4 weeks and longer, and it was less than the full 5 pump dose. Yet now PP has the new Andro series and it looked good for leaning out and more depending on which I might use. And they have a very tempting sale. I bought some AndoDrive and I will order one AndroLean. I also have some extra 7-KetoDHEA 100 mg caps around. I still have 1.5 bottles of Dermacrine, an a full RS-Transaderm around. Although I don't want the amount of DHT you get from AndroHard or even AM, I might try a couple of pumps of the transdermals under my boys as this stuff is site specific and should produce some DHT when applied there for a bit of hardening effect. My goal is losing decent weight with some tightening/hardening and keeping my strength and muscle this time. I will use a calorie deficit but not as pronounced as I have to do to lose weight without hormone help. I will probably use supps to keep my cAMP up along with kelp as these tend to keep thyroid levels from falling.

I figured I might work my way up to something like this:
AndroDrive = 4 caps per day
AndroLean = 2 caps per day
Dermacrime = 2 pumps applied below the "boys" and could go to 3 per day.
1x 100mg of extra 7-keto caps per day to add to the AL effect

I'm thinking of doing two 6 week or two 8 week cycles (would need another AL on 2x8 weeks, but I shall see) I'll do a 5-6 week PCT in between and after. If I decide to do a second 8 week cycle I would ramp up to 4 AL per day and keep AD at 4 per day as I already have enough to cover that. I think that in another 6 months this will make a huge difference. I was planning to go down to 185 and rebuild muscle to 198 -200, but doing it this way I may be fairly lean at 205 to 210. :yeah:

 

[grunt03]

First, just in case you didn’t notice it PP is running a New Year’s sale. Check out the Company Promotions forum for the details. The only product I’ve tried of theirs is EndoAmp-Max, so it might be time to give something else a try.

You’ve really had some crappy luck lately, but at least it sounds like you got the car taken care of ok. Stick with it and you’ll make the rest of your goal 10-12 lbs. I wish I could give you some of my energy as I took two weeks off for some overseas missions and lost 2 lbs. because I wasn’t able to workout or eat enough. If I don’t count calories I overestimate how much I’ve eaten and don’t eat enough. Well at least people have finally stopped telling me that my metabolism will slow down when I get older.

 

[tuberman]

First, just in case you didn’t notice it PP is running a New Year’s sale. Check out the Company Promotions forum for the details. The only product I’ve tried of theirs is EndoAmp-Max, so it might be time to give something else a try.

You’ve really had some crappy luck lately, but at least it sounds like you got the car taken care of ok. Stick with it and you’ll make the rest of your goal 10-12 lbs. I wish I could give you some of my energy as I took two weeks off for some overseas missions and lost 2 lbs. because I wasn’t able to workout or eat enough. If I don’t count calories I overestimate how much I’ve eaten and don’t eat enough. Well at least people have finally stopped telling me that my metabolism will slow down when I get older.

grunt,

How's you workouts going other than the trip? I'm still doing a lot of cardio when I have the time, and even got in 2 days per week during the car search (on my days off from work). I sometimes do over 2 hours of cycling and I average about 1:45 per day -- 6 days per week with fairly high intensity for half of that.

I purchased 3 AndroDrives, and 1 AndroLean on the PP sale. The 40% off brought them within reason for me. These are their mildest steroids, and really more like a testosterone replacement, but at a high level. They are leaning steroids. They allow you to lose moderate amounts of weight and gain small amounts of muscle at the same time or lose large amounts of weight and stay even on muscle. Even AndroMass is basically testosterone replacement, but at an even higher levels meant for making good gains. I won't get the AndoLean until early in February, and will start a cycle a short time after. Until then it's regular dieting.

EndoAmp-Max is a good product as it keeps cortisol under control without hormones, also just good for brain several ways. I'm using some now.

 

[grunt03]

How's you workouts going other than the trip? I'm still doing a lot of cardio when I have the time, and even got in 2 days per week during the car search (on my days off from work). I sometimes do over 2 hours of cycling and I average about 1:45 per day -- 6 days per week with fairly high intensity for half of that

I just started my second week of workouts post trip and am back in the groove having a great DE lower body workout today. I’m still following (should say learning) the Westside system and loving it so far. It’s a great for me since I’ve always got program ADD and it lets me switch up the max effort lifts often. I’m in what’s called the accumulation phase which is a little more like body building in that there’s more focus on rep work and the max efforts lifts top out in the 3-5 rep range rather than singles. I’ll keep at this phase for a few weeks until I feel like I’m really back in shape from the two weeks off.

I’ve been lax about my cardio which mainly consists of hill sprints. I usually do them a couple times a week on the way to work, no hills near where I live, but I’ve had a lot of time off work lately due to the holidays so I’ve got to get my butt in gear and do them.

Unfortunately I lost 2 lbs. on the two weeks off. I just hope most of it was fat. My goal is to put on 4-5 lbs. in the next 8-10 weeks which will bring me up to around 175 lbs., I’m around 171 lbs. right now.

Good to hear you’re getting back in with the cardio. You lose cardio fitness much faster than you lose strength assuming you’re eating at maintenance. How are your workouts going with the cutting?

I’m interested in hearing how the AndroStuff work for you. I haven’t tried any AAS of any kind yet since I’m still making pretty good gains naturally, but from what I’ve read around here starting out with something light and simple is the way to go.

 

[tuberman]

I just started my second week of workouts post trip and am back in the groove having a great DE lower body workout today. I’m still following (should say learning) the Westside system and loving it so far. It’s a great for me since I’ve always got program ADD and it lets me switch up the max effort lifts often. I’m in what’s called the accumulation phase which is a little more like body building in that there’s more focus on rep work and the max efforts lifts top out in the 3-5 rep range rather than singles. I’ll keep at this phase for a few weeks until I feel like I’m really back in shape from the two weeks off.

I’ve been lax about my cardio which mainly consists of hill sprints. I usually do them a couple times a week on the way to work, no hills near where I live, but I’ve had a lot of time off work lately due to the holidays so I’ve got to get my butt in gear and do them.

Unfortunately I lost 2 lbs. on the two weeks off. I just hope most of it was fat. My goal is to put on 4-5 lbs. in the next 8-10 weeks which will bring me up to around 175 lbs., I’m around 171 lbs. right now.

Good to hear you’re getting back in with the cardio. You lose cardio fitness much faster than you lose strength assuming you’re eating at maintenance. How are your workouts going with the cutting?

I’m interested in hearing how the AndroStuff work for you. I haven’t tried any AAS of any kind yet since I’m still making pretty good gains naturally, but from what I’ve read around here starting out with something light and simple is the way to go.

My cycle is going to be pretty wimpy compared to a strong dose of the Ando series, but I'll probably feel like I'm blasting for 8 weeks. I believe the Westside stuff was a great choice for you. A bit of envy from me on the hill sprints as my right knee is not close to letting me run ........yet. I've picked up 3 bottles of Super Cissus Rx per Dutchman's reviews of it, and will use it a week before and for at least 2 weeks after cycle as an add on to help work on my bad knee.

I'm on an intense cut right now, or about 1250 kcals a day 5 days a week, with 2 refeed days. I want to drop another 18-22 pounds before starting cycle. Doing a lot of cycling, but cut down on the difficulty by a couple of levels, but keeping my time up while cutting. When I get on the cycle I will cut the amount of time on cardio in half to about 50 minutes per day, and maybe drop one more level in difficulty. I want to focus on strength gains and small muscle gains with several more pounds of fat lost. The AAS I will be using is specifically aimed toward leaning. My cardio base endurance will translate quite well into harder weight workouts if I only maintain on the cardio. This is an advantage of having a lot of endurance that most BB's and even power lifter's seldom enjoy.

The amount of Andro I will be using will only boost me somewhere in the 1900 -2200 test eqv. range. A lot of those guys think the 3000 test eqv. level is weak and shoot for 4500 +. Natural test booster only get me to the 550-750 range and that's the excellent ones. But that cycle is at least 5.5 weeks away, and my cut now is equally important to me. First things first.