SeanR1221, Awesome comparison pics! And even if you are not even near your goals of this year, you look totally swole none the less! Splendid work.
Thanks! I hope you're starting on the path to feeling better too.
PM me anytime and we can chat.
Yep. It is actually starting to feel better. I went light on Romanian deadlifts on Tuesday and that seemed to help a lot.
Also today was a splendid day at the gym! Hahah, I don't know how many of you remember me mentioning Epic Beast and goblet squats some time back, but I actually today talked to the Beast again for like 20 minutes or so. He was extremely friendly and checked my squats and Romanian deadlifts. He gave me couple nice tips to keep the form right and also complimented that my squats seemed so much better compared to the last time I talked to him. I had this stupid smile for the rest of the gym for the compliments and totally new motivation to do those since I now know again better that what I should be paying attention to form wise.
I'll try to keep this somewhat relevant to the topic at hand...
Deal is this: when you're younger it's easy as hell to not be overweight. I used to roll around with a 6 pack when I was 19 and all it took was me going to karate class twice a week. When you get older, all that stupid crap you did bites you in the ass, and hard. So what happens is (in my experience so far) folks filter out to the edges and you have tons of people that rate 5 and below, a lot of whom used to be super attractive. Then you have the ones that are still attractive or put a hell of a lot of effort into getting that way, but have seen and heard literally every pickup approach known to man.
The good news is, it's very no bullshit. The bad news is that you better be good at the approach, because everybody's heard it all before and a lot of us are too damn busy to get to know organically.
I suck at approaching people so... gotta work on that.
It seems that I might hang around with extremely fit people since I generally estimate their ages so much lower (they all seem to be in perfect shape). I realized at some point that my colleague most likely isn't younger than I am, if she already has an 18-year-old son. Oh well, more motivation for me to keep active and keep hitting the gym as well.
I am sure this all would have been so much easier if I would have started this on early twenties instead of late twenties. But better late than never.
Oh and good luck with working on your approaches.
Getting back to your back issues, I'd suggest finding yourself a good set of core exercises that include shoulder work (military presses, tons of planks and whatnot.) I wound up getting a personal trainer largely to help with this and it's really, really helped me a lot.
My core is terribly unbalanced--squats never helped with that, and I was doing considerably more weight than you are. You should incorporate targeted exercises rather than depend on the squats and deadlifts to fill that gap.
I think I wasn't as informative as I should have been what comes to my back issues. I have slight problems with my lower back and couple disks in there. I have been doing core muscle training around the last two years now at home. Admittedly I don't do it daily anymore since it is so much better that I don't feel the need to, but I go to pilates still once a week and do planks and side planks and so forth about twice a week on top of that. Also I do Nordic walking once or twice a week at the moment since according to an orthopedic professor that I went couple times it will benefit the back. These had all helped me a lot and I haven't eaten any pain medication since early May.
Good that you mentioned those though since I think I need to start to do those mentioned core muscle training sessions more often now or at least when needed.
Now when I have changed my gym program to only free weights I have been feeling pain on the back of my tighs and I have been trying to figure out is it nerve pain or muscle pain. I am yet not sure, but of course the back is in new situation since I haven't done that kind of movements before. I am being hopeful that the back and spine will get used to it and that I can start to add weights at some point. I am still not counting this to be the only core work out for me, so no worries. I still very much appreciate both of your concerns and tips. ^_^
