Futurestrength

I think I have read every single hernia post on this website. I just have 2 questions I was hoping to get clarified

1. You waited years until you got your hernia repaired, correct? I know it’s not recommended and best to go in asap, but I believe I read that you waited over two years until yours was repaired, is that right?

2. You said that 2-3 days after the hernia is repaired, the mesh is integrated into your body and not at risk of opening back up, and is just a pain issue, is that correct?

I read from someone else that I wouldn’t be able to hike with my dog (who enjoys pulling hard chasing wildlife) for 2-3 WEEKS as I’d risk opening up the mesh and undoing the surgery. Is this true? Or is what I thought you said correct and after a couple days I’d be able to hike and deal with hard pulling and just have to deal with the pain?

Mark Rippetoe

1. I don't like to have surgery, so I always wait.

2. I don't remember saying that. Wait as long as the surgeon tells you.

Futurestrength

1. I don’t like surgery either and plan on waiting as long as I can, obviously before it becomes an emergency though

Right now I have no obvious bulge, and I just get some pain whenever I yell or occasionally when lifting

What made you decide it was time to get the surgery? I’m assuming you had some symptoms while you were waiting?

2. This is the forum post where I read about the mesh integrating after a few days: Inguinal Hernia Recovery

Mark Rippetoe

Have you actually been diagnosed with a hernia?

Futurestrength

I have not, I’ve just read through dozens of posts with my same symptoms and you always seem pretty certain it’s a hernia, and both of my parents have had one as well

It’s just a sharp pain in my groin when I yell and sometimes a dull pain when walking but that’s more rare and tolerable. Nothing that’s super concerning to me at this point,

Mark Rippetoe

You can't just walk in and request surgery with the guy diagnosing the injury. You post here is premature.

Matt James

A question that has been percolating in my mind for a couple weeks. Is the 1g protein per lb of bodyweight that's recommended for novices still the recommendation for a guy who's been doing intermediate programming for a couple years? Or, assuming a consistent total caloric intake, should he consider skewing more towards carbs for the purposes of recovery?

Robert Santana

I find that I can get away with less now than I could before. The theory is that we become more efficient at turning it over as we become more advanced. Same can go for any macro tbh. We become very adapted and true overload becomes less frequent because of the recovery time between overload events. In practice, this really depends like anything else. Have you tried to play around with your ratios to see how you respond?

Matt James

I haven't really messed with my ratios yet. I have my diet pretty well dialed in at this point. I try to set a baseline of about 200g protein and 300-350g carbs and if I need to add or subtract I usually manipulate carbs first and then fat (my fat intake is relatively low without being anal about it). That's served me well historically through almost a year of 4-day TM and then about 9 months of a less stressful 8/5/2 program that Nick D'Agostino wrote for me. I recently had to lay off for several months due to illness but I kept my diet consistent in order to not lose mass, and it worked pretty well. Just got done doing a modified LP (twice a week due to recovery) to get back to reasonably heavy weights and now I've been doing a press-focused 3-day TM (which I'm finding actually easier to recover from than the 4 day version, at least for now). Plan is to run that to get back into PR territory, and then probably switch back to a more sustainable long term program.

The reason I asked the question is that I'm at a point where I suspect I won't be able to pack on muscle as easily as before, and I'm starting to think about recovery as a bigger priority than growth. I'm 45, 5'9", probably 210-215, 38" waist and dropping.

Robert Santana

Well recovery drives growth it just happens over a longer timeline since overload events are worked up to over the course of several weeks or months. So you just have to make sure you are eating and sleeping well and then when you hit those realization phases of your training cycle you definitely want to eat more than baseline.