A great week so far and incredibly happy to report that my situation with piriformis syndrome is getting much better. It isn't gone but it is much improved. So much so that I am sleeping almost the entire night now and during the day I sometimes forget that it is still an issue.
As I stated in my last log entry, I had gone too hard with my Skipload the previous weekend (and long) and had to cut it back this last weekend to only Sunday (instead of starting Saturday night). I also did decide to make a small diet change for this week on top of the change to the Skipload and it is paying off quite well. As of Wednesday I am already baselined where last week I didn't baseline until Saturday and didn't drop below baseline on Sunday. I have little doubt that this week I will drop below without much of a problem.
I cut some fat from both training and non-training day meals and cut the carbs out of my non-training day meals only. I thought I would go flat quickly but so far I feel great but it is only Wednesday. I train legs tonight so obviously this could help to flatten me out. I am ok with that considering I need to get leaner and being flat is a necessary evil to get that done.
Weird situation this week, though: As I have dropped calories I have increased in strength. It isnt BECAUSE of the drop in calories but just happens to be an odd timing because I think it is from not dropping last week below baseline. I put up numbers for chest and back that I haven't come close to for a while and rarely at this low weight. It will be interesting to see if it continues tonight for legs but I was also up last week for legs, as well. I am not usually one that progresses in strength while on restricted calories and higher cardio so this is a pleasant surprise. Add to that I am only at TRT levels, as well.
The piroformis syndrome is better for one reason: I have been doing some torturous stretching. It suuuuucks - or at least it did but is now a lot more tolerable. While doing hip flexor stretches in the past week or so, I was pushing the stretch only to the point that the pain from the sciatic nerve started to kick to the point that it was hard to tolerate and I would back off. What I started doing was pushing through that pain and stretching further and harder and what I found was that once I broke a certain plane, I actually went PAST the pain and could hold a deep stretch. I am now doing this twice a day, everyday, and it has helped tremendously. I anticipate that at this rate I will likely be pain free or damn close to it by Monday. I will then have to keep up with more frequent stretching at least for my hip flexors probably stretching every time I get done training and every time I get done doing cardio on non-training days. That is a lot of stretching but ... I don't want to deal with this again.