All posts tagged "notes"
Spent a week in the Catskills at a little place on Amber Lake with the fam. Lots of babytime, napping, BBQing, mixed with some swimming, running, and rowing made for a very relaxing week. Only took a few official workouts, but my nagging injuries are still nagging. Had a few abortive attempts at kung fu practice, but nothing good enough to log. I may have to get myself looked at if these pains don’t straighten themselves out.
It’s 2010 and it’s time to get serious, kids. My diet has been awful and my workout regimen has been sporadic since the Mayor arrived. For the remainder of January, I’m going to straighten up and fly right. This isn’t some bullshit new year’s resolution that will fizzle out in a few weeks, it’s just a re-commitment to serious fitness. That means more consistent workouts and enforcing strict Paleo dietary restrictions. Here are the rules for the remainder of January:
I learned some valuable lessons from my first Paleo challenge in July and I’ll make sure I get plenty of fats in my diet to keep me sated. I’ll post a daily recap to keep me honest and on target just like last time. Let’s see how it goes.
As or my January fitness goals, I’m keeping it simple and focused:
My workouts will remain short, intense, and basement friendly, though I will aim to make them more consistent.
I decided to give up on my 30 days of strict paleo eating yesterday, on the 21st day. I didn’t give in temptation or anything, I just got really bored with it. There were definitely some good things that I’ll take away from this little experiment, but doing any restrictive diet like this with zero cheat days allowed is just no fun. And maybe trying this experiment when my wife’s pregnant wasn’t the best timing either.
The funny thing is that I didn’t feel different during the past 3 weeks at all (except those days when I wasn’t eating enough fat and feeling hungry). After drinking some beers and eating some pizza on Saturday, I still felt the same. So I baked some blueberry muffins with the wife on Sunday and even drank a glass of milk. Still felt great.
I figure my long-term plan will be to stay 90% paleo compliant - I’ll keep up with healthy breakfasts, snacks, and lunches, but slip in the occaisonal fun cheat. The tricky thing is to make sure that the cheat is worth it - there will be no taking chances on bad pizza. But my biggest takeaway from the challenge is everything in moderation, even moderation.
Today was my first full day of eating strict Paleo, as per Byers’s non-challenge. I’m jumping in for 30 days, come what may. After that, I’ll reevaluate and see how much of this will become a permanent change for me.
I’ve been toying with the Paleo diet for a few months now (though I never cut out dairy), but I wasn’t very strict and allowed a few cheat meals each week. The reason I’m jumping into this now is because I had a rough night on the Fourth of July. After eating all sorts of crap and drinking a few beers, my stomach was knotted up all night. Feeling like that is totally at odds with all of my fitness goals, so why the hell would I continue to do that to myself?
For the next 30 days, I will eat no:
I’ll only be eating real food.
On day 1, I cooked my eggs in coconut oil, which was surprisingly delcious. I also cooked a bunless hamburger and ate home-made guacamole with nose carrots instead of corn chips. Had a few other fruits, salad, and some coconut water throughout the day. Felt good, fella. Zero temptation thus far.
Update: threw in the towel after 20 days.
My favorite warmup to get the juices flowing and the hips open:
Repeat 3x
“St. Mary’s Playground is temporarily closed due to falling debris from the subway tracks.”
Now that spring is here and I’ve been squatting 3x/week for about six months, I’m switching gears. I’m a helluva lot stronger from all those squats, but I need a break too. During my six month strength cycle, I learned the basic barbell lifts, went through seven weeks of the Stronglifts 5x5 Beginner program, and did nine weeks of training on the Texas Method Intermediate program. I made some serious strength gains since October, due in large part to the solid foundation of technique I learned from Coach Keith of Crossfit Virtuosity (and all that dedicated practice and careful programming didn’t hurt either). Since I had never squatted, pressed, or deadlifted with barbells before, I have no benchmark to measure against (and I know it’s not safe to attempt 1RM with subpar form), so I can only use the numbers that I hit in the gym with Keith as a reference point.
Keeping that in mind, here are my before numbers:
And my 1RM numbers after my strength cycle, from April’s Crossfit Total:
I’m pleased as punch with my gains, but all that lifting and squatting made it very difficult to keep up with my conditioning. I maintained short, intense workouts while I was lifting 3x/week, but had to cut out longer/running related workouts to allow my body to recover. I’m also tipping the scales at 190 right now, which feels a little too heavy for me.
In the coming summer months I have a bunch of races to prepare for and will focus more on running, swimming, and overall conditioning while trying to maintain my strength and barbell technique. I’ll be lifting 2x/week instead of 3x and will be rotating heavy days with explosive/speed strength days. I’ll also mix in a back-off bodyweight strength training day when I think my CNS needs a break.
To keep me on task, here are my training goals for the summer months:
I’ve been using Tumblr to manage and publish my workout log since January 2008. I hadn’t seen anyone else doing it at that time, but it seemed like a simple solution and allows me to update my log anywhere and keep track of my progress. After a little over a year of dedicated posting, I’ve grown to love the tumblr platform and have even found a few other like-minded people posting their workouts and fitness-related links on tumblr. Here’s a list of the tumblr-powered workout blogs that I follow:
Want me to add your tumblr-powered workout log to the list? Email me and let me know what I’m missing.
Just got back from 10 days in gawjess Hawaii with the wife. Had lots of fun, caught a little sunburn, and even improvised some workouts between travelling and activities on our full itinerary. Some random workout-related notes from my trip:
All in all a great trip. Now I gotta catch up on my back-log of workouts.
Just looking through the archive and I realized that I just missed the one year anniversary of posting. I’ve had google analytics installed since Feb 08, so here’s some superficial data on year one:
I guess I’m no longer a beginner in the strength training game because simple linear programming just isn’t working for me anymore. I’m not able to fully recover from my previous workouts to keep up with the demanding 3x/week lifting schedule. I’m starting on the Texas Method tomorrow. I’ll post my thoughts on the stronglifts program soon.
Since I hurt/overworked my elbow in December, I’ve been on a break from the 90 Day Burpee Challenge. I was originally pausing the challenge with every intention of resuming it once my elbow felt good, but I’ve decided to throw in the towel. It was dumb to try the burpee concurrently with the demanding stronglifts 5x5 program and my rigorous kung fu and conditioning schedule. It was almost certainly the burpee overload that injured my elbow in the first place, so good riddance to them. I don’t need injuries.
I’ve realized that I drop a lot of names in my humble workout log and some people have started to ask my opinions on a particular gym, or a book, or a park for outdoor workouts. So here’s a list of links to my reviews of the equipment I use, the places I work out, and relevant books that I’ve read:
You can also view all reviews, all one star reviews, two star reviews, three star reviews, four star reviews, and five star reviews.
Have a suggestion for something I should review? Send it my way.
Today’s burpee workout clinched it, I’m hopping on the bandwagon and jumping into a modified version of the 100 day burpee challenge that’s recently been spotted all over the Crossfit community. Since I did 100 today, I think I’ll skip 10 days and make this the 90 Day Burpee Challonge. My ground rules:
This will force me to create some clever burpee-centric workouts and hopefully get my 100 Burpee time way down by the end of the Challonge. Today counted for day 1 (11 burpees), so there will be 12 on the menu for tomorrow. Day 90 will be another go at 100 burpees for time.
Update: Due to an elbow injury, I officially threw in the towel on 1/13/09.
