Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week has seen me testing out some fun things, and making a few changes to the routine to accommodate scheduling. Scrapped the Wednesday run since I had to be at work early, and had been out late for a midnight movie with friends, switched my Tuesday treadmill run out for a VO2max test, and my Friday Tempo run out for a Maximum Heart Rate test. Both of those went well. Today I had to scrap my 9-miler due to weather conditions not cooperating with my plans, and I'm working on backup plans for future runs to ensure that I can still get my training miles in even if the weather doesn't want to play nice.
The running is only one aspect of my workouts though, and this week I promised a more detailed explanation of the new resistance training plan I'm working on so here it goes, broken down by the day.
Sunday is abs and full-body circuits. My ab routine goes 1x10 myotatic crunches, 1x10 TVA contractions, 75 two-handed kettlebell swings with a 20 pound kettlebell, and 30-seconds of plank in the pushup position, and on each side. After that my full-body routine is 2 circuits of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 20 lunges (10 each side, alternating), 20 dumbell rows (10 each side), and 30 jumping jacks. Once I get through one round of that I go through a second round, in both cases with as little rest as possible between exercises. Fridays I do the same thing as Sundays to finish off my week.
Monday is Arms/Shoulders, 3x5 of each of modified dips (don't have anything the right height to support me so for now it's basically pushups but facing up instead of down), lateral dumbbell raises (aka Shoulder Flys) superset with bicep curls, and finished off with a machine shoulder press. Wednesday is Legs day, as it's the furthest away from my long runs and I don't have a run on Thursday in my regular rotation. 2x10 of each of squats, lunges, stiff-leg deadlifts, and machine leg curls. The squats and deadlifts here are being done with dumbbells instead of barbells because the equipment I have access to is dumbbells and a weight machine. Thursday is my Chest/Back day, 3x5 each of pushups with my feet on an exercise ball (adding an extra stability element compared to regular pushups and putting more emphasis on my chest than on my legs), pectoral/chest fly, machine chest press, and supinated lat-pulldowns.
Weeks one and two are being used for working out the kinks in the routine and for figuring out appropriate starting weights. After that I'm either going to increase every week provided I hit my rep count, or making the last set of each exercise "to failure" and increase the weight if I can get at least 2 more than the previous sets of the exercise. I'm not sure which option I'll be taking yet but either way the point is clear, keep the weight increasing. When I reach the limits of my equipment I'll have to figure out where to go from there, but when possible it's likely to be toward making the exercises more difficult through leverage disadvantage. Trick will be making sure I keep whatever I do safe.
For now I think that's all I have to say. If you have feedback I'd welcome it, either way it's time for the numbers for today. 208, up a pound from last week and back to where we were sitting for the weeks preceding. Bodyfat is still stabilizing after my measurement recalibration and I'm feeling pretty darned good these days. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 75)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Running seems to be progressing smoothly, weight seems to be holding fairly steady, even been sleeping fairly well this past week so all told most of my measurables seem like they are doing pretty well from cursory examination, though the real numbers will hold out for later in the post.
You may recall from a few weeks ago I talked about doing some work on a plan for trying to trying to put on some muscle, one that I was basing on research into workout plans used by various actors to get into shape for movies roles as seriously buff dudes. Looking over the information I could find about what they all did there were a lot of similarities, so piecing those together should in theory give me results as close to theirs as possible with a smaller amount of effort.
Firstly, diet comes into play. Food is at least as important in these kinds of endeavors as the exercise so it pays to start here. Of course, high amounts of protein are a goal, minimal sugars, minimal processed food, and one somewhat strange common factor was restricting carbs to only the earlier portions of the day (and even then usually rice, oatmeal, or tubers). That one seems strange at first but makes some sense when taken into the context of time of day and it's relation to insulin sensitivity and the insulin response of most carbs. The other common factors were that they tended to eat a large number of meals, often eating every 2 hours throughout the day, and usually supplemented with protein powder and/or creatine. These things combined should help me provide a good base for the resistance workouts that form the other pillar of the research, and luckily they don't stray too far from what I'd been striving for already. The more frequent meals help increase the total amount of calories per day without making any single meal too large, which is a trick that may come in handy as things go on.
For the actual lifting the common themes seemed to be using compound exercises for the lifts, to increase the muscle groups activated in the shortest amount of time, 3-5 sets of a moderate number of reps each. The workouts tended toward splits between various body segments, which for now I'm going to try but may end up shifting things around later on, and minimal rest periods to keep heart rate up so that you burn some fat along with the building of muscle. I'm somewhat limited in my workout options due to the resources at my disposal with the fitness center at the apartment here, but hopefully the plan I've put in place should get me at least tolerable results. Once I get bored of this, get to a proportion I like, or stop seeing results from this I already know what I'm going to move to, but that's for later. For now it'll be 2 days a week of circuits and abs (much like I was doing before) on Sunday and Friday, work on the Chest/Back on Monday, Legs on Wednesday, and Arms/Shoulders on Thursday. Next week I'll report back on how the first week played out, and what exercises each day is composed of, but for now I'm going to sign off after the numerical round up.
So what's the scale say this week? 207, down a pound from last week. Not the best, but we'll see what this new plan does for things I suppose. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Running seems to be progressing smoothly, weight seems to be holding fairly steady, even been sleeping fairly well this past week so all told most of my measurables seem like they are doing pretty well from cursory examination, though the real numbers will hold out for later in the post.
You may recall from a few weeks ago I talked about doing some work on a plan for trying to trying to put on some muscle, one that I was basing on research into workout plans used by various actors to get into shape for movies roles as seriously buff dudes. Looking over the information I could find about what they all did there were a lot of similarities, so piecing those together should in theory give me results as close to theirs as possible with a smaller amount of effort.
Firstly, diet comes into play. Food is at least as important in these kinds of endeavors as the exercise so it pays to start here. Of course, high amounts of protein are a goal, minimal sugars, minimal processed food, and one somewhat strange common factor was restricting carbs to only the earlier portions of the day (and even then usually rice, oatmeal, or tubers). That one seems strange at first but makes some sense when taken into the context of time of day and it's relation to insulin sensitivity and the insulin response of most carbs. The other common factors were that they tended to eat a large number of meals, often eating every 2 hours throughout the day, and usually supplemented with protein powder and/or creatine. These things combined should help me provide a good base for the resistance workouts that form the other pillar of the research, and luckily they don't stray too far from what I'd been striving for already. The more frequent meals help increase the total amount of calories per day without making any single meal too large, which is a trick that may come in handy as things go on.
For the actual lifting the common themes seemed to be using compound exercises for the lifts, to increase the muscle groups activated in the shortest amount of time, 3-5 sets of a moderate number of reps each. The workouts tended toward splits between various body segments, which for now I'm going to try but may end up shifting things around later on, and minimal rest periods to keep heart rate up so that you burn some fat along with the building of muscle. I'm somewhat limited in my workout options due to the resources at my disposal with the fitness center at the apartment here, but hopefully the plan I've put in place should get me at least tolerable results. Once I get bored of this, get to a proportion I like, or stop seeing results from this I already know what I'm going to move to, but that's for later. For now it'll be 2 days a week of circuits and abs (much like I was doing before) on Sunday and Friday, work on the Chest/Back on Monday, Legs on Wednesday, and Arms/Shoulders on Thursday. Next week I'll report back on how the first week played out, and what exercises each day is composed of, but for now I'm going to sign off after the numerical round up.
So what's the scale say this week? 207, down a pound from last week. Not the best, but we'll see what this new plan does for things I suppose. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 74)
Still Sunday for just a little bit longer.
Today has been a bit hectic and as such I don't have a post prepared for you guys, I might get one together this week sometime, but more than likely I won't and it'll be til next Sunday. For now though, I will update with my weight at least.
208, same as last week. Sticking pretty steady of late, and that's not a bad thing really. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Today has been a bit hectic and as such I don't have a post prepared for you guys, I might get one together this week sometime, but more than likely I won't and it'll be til next Sunday. For now though, I will update with my weight at least.
208, same as last week. Sticking pretty steady of late, and that's not a bad thing really. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 73)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week has been pretty steady in terms of most of the things I usually track, so not really much to talk about there.
So, finishing up the breakdown of my running cycle there are 3 other types of runs in addition to the ones I talked about last week. Each one of them is planned to be done in place of either a treadmill run or a timed run, once every three weeks. The cycle for them is setup so that I replace one run a week with one of my specialty runs.
The first run I've completed out of the selection of specialty runs was a tempo run. Once I get the heart rate monitor it'll help dial in the pacing for them a bit better, a pace that sustains 85-90% max heart rate for about 20 minutes. Luckily for me my typical running route is around 3 miles, which means that just tearing into it at a given pace should allow me to complete it in about the right amount of time. This run through I did the run at an average pace of 9:03, which I think was probably fairly close to what I'm after here based on what I have come to understand of the process, but without some harder numbers I'm not entirely sure. For now, I'll just shoot for improving the pace in small increments until I either get the monitor to check for sure, or I find a threshold at which I just can't pull it off anymore at which point I can reasonably infer I passed my lactic acid threshold by too far. The purpose of these runs is mainly to increase my bodies ability to process lactic acid and prevent my leg muscles from becoming acidic over the course of my long runs, but also to help me train for keeping a consistent pace across a distance.
The second type of specialty run I'm working on adding in is the hill run. Hill training is something I want to incorporate because I don't like it. This may sound odd, but I don't like it because it's harder than my regular running so by doing hill running I get better at it which will come in handy during races, and for increasing all of the various running related metrics. This run will take place on my treadmill day so that I can control the grade of the hills in addition to their length. My plan is that I'll do a quick warm-up, followed by alternating 2-3 minute sets at either 2% grade, or whatever I settle on my higher grade being. I'm not sure what it will be yet, though it'll probably start closer to 6-8% and then move up as time goes on with these workouts. I'll keep up the repeats for 15-30 minutes, a quick cooldown and then be done with the run for the day.
The last of the specialty runs is a type of training called Fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish. Basically you do your warm-up, then you pick a landmark and run to it at a fast pace, somewhere between "sort of hard work" and "full sprint" and then you run past there at an easy pace to recover before doing the whole thing again. It's an unstructured type of interval workout that works on improving speed, acceleration, and overall response of the various energy systems in place in the body. I'll likely do these with 5 minute bookends to warm-up/cool-down and then run my normal timed route using the random intervals outlined above.
So there you have it, my 3 specialty runs to flesh out my 3 week training cycle. Now from there onto the numbers for this week. 208, same as last week. Weight seems to have stabilized, and now that I've recalibrated how I'm measuring bodyfat that seems to have stabilized as well. One of these days I'm going to have to upgrade to something automated for that task if I want to start getting better numbers. Until next week, keep on being the you you want to be.
This week has been pretty steady in terms of most of the things I usually track, so not really much to talk about there.
So, finishing up the breakdown of my running cycle there are 3 other types of runs in addition to the ones I talked about last week. Each one of them is planned to be done in place of either a treadmill run or a timed run, once every three weeks. The cycle for them is setup so that I replace one run a week with one of my specialty runs.
The first run I've completed out of the selection of specialty runs was a tempo run. Once I get the heart rate monitor it'll help dial in the pacing for them a bit better, a pace that sustains 85-90% max heart rate for about 20 minutes. Luckily for me my typical running route is around 3 miles, which means that just tearing into it at a given pace should allow me to complete it in about the right amount of time. This run through I did the run at an average pace of 9:03, which I think was probably fairly close to what I'm after here based on what I have come to understand of the process, but without some harder numbers I'm not entirely sure. For now, I'll just shoot for improving the pace in small increments until I either get the monitor to check for sure, or I find a threshold at which I just can't pull it off anymore at which point I can reasonably infer I passed my lactic acid threshold by too far. The purpose of these runs is mainly to increase my bodies ability to process lactic acid and prevent my leg muscles from becoming acidic over the course of my long runs, but also to help me train for keeping a consistent pace across a distance.
The second type of specialty run I'm working on adding in is the hill run. Hill training is something I want to incorporate because I don't like it. This may sound odd, but I don't like it because it's harder than my regular running so by doing hill running I get better at it which will come in handy during races, and for increasing all of the various running related metrics. This run will take place on my treadmill day so that I can control the grade of the hills in addition to their length. My plan is that I'll do a quick warm-up, followed by alternating 2-3 minute sets at either 2% grade, or whatever I settle on my higher grade being. I'm not sure what it will be yet, though it'll probably start closer to 6-8% and then move up as time goes on with these workouts. I'll keep up the repeats for 15-30 minutes, a quick cooldown and then be done with the run for the day.
The last of the specialty runs is a type of training called Fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish. Basically you do your warm-up, then you pick a landmark and run to it at a fast pace, somewhere between "sort of hard work" and "full sprint" and then you run past there at an easy pace to recover before doing the whole thing again. It's an unstructured type of interval workout that works on improving speed, acceleration, and overall response of the various energy systems in place in the body. I'll likely do these with 5 minute bookends to warm-up/cool-down and then run my normal timed route using the random intervals outlined above.
So there you have it, my 3 specialty runs to flesh out my 3 week training cycle. Now from there onto the numbers for this week. 208, same as last week. Weight seems to have stabilized, and now that I've recalibrated how I'm measuring bodyfat that seems to have stabilized as well. One of these days I'm going to have to upgrade to something automated for that task if I want to start getting better numbers. Until next week, keep on being the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 72)
Sunday yet again, time for the weekly update.
Mileage is increasing steadily, run today was over half of my current single week record, with todays run being over half of my first stage goal distance.
So, what exactly am I doing with all this running you may wonder. Well, it's actually a fairly carefully constructed running program I've cobbled together from various other training programs I've found online ranging from Jeff Galloway's Run/Walk/Run program for people shooting for completion of a Half-Marathon to programs designed to achieve specific time goals for Half-Marathons. I've looked them all over, and done a decent amount of independent research into various training options and strategies, and put together the program I'm using now, and the one I'm going to transition myself into in the next few weeks.
Currently I'm using two timed runs each at a total duration of 30 minutes, 20 minutes of intervals (80% "up", 20% "down") and a 5 minute warm-up and cool-down on either side; and a single long run each week run with 5 minutes warm-up/cool-down on either side of mile repeats (80% "up" 20 "down") for the target distance of the week. The immediate goal of the timed runs is to improve my pace and thus the distance per run. The immediate goal of the long run is to increase my distance running ability progressively, by adding a mile to the distance each week, until I reach my current target distance of 12 miles. After that I'm going to decrease the long run to 10 miles a week for a while as I work on improving my pace on the 10-milers. Sporadically I'll increase the long run up past the 12 miles I went to originally, in steps and then back down to 10 again to keep working on pace. The goal of all this being to get myself to a point where I can easily run the race distance in a reasonable pace.
In addition to that I currently do a weekly treadmill run of 3 minutes at what I have tested as my VO2max, the threshold at which exercise becomes more anaerobic than aerobic, and 3 minutes at 50% thereof. Repeats of that for most of the workout duration are designed to increase the threshold, and I increase both the high and the low speeds on those workouts progressively to ensure I keep improving. At the end of those workouts I turn the speed on the treadmill up to see how fast I can run for 30 seconds continuously. Another metric I track during these runs, because there are fewer other things to distract me than most runs, is my turnover. I pick a minute, of my 3 minute up interval, and count how many times my feet hit the ground. The idea being that the more times they hit the ground, the further distance I can cover in the interval at the same stride length, and since my barefoot running style means that my stride length falls within a certain range that I can't change all that much, increasing turnover is the best way for me to gain speed.
Well, that went on a bit longer than expected, so I guess I shall save until next week the changes I plan to make to my running schedule to turn a weekly cycle into a 3 week cycle with even more vectors for improving my running efficiency and capacity.
So, what about the scale this week. 208, down a pound from last week. With the sadly low percentage of my diet composed of protein right now I'm not all that surprised by the thinning out my increase in running seems to be contributing too. My bodyfat seems to be holding pretty stable, which means I am sadly losing some muscle mass along with fat, but I'm working on plans to change that. So stay tuned. Always be the you you want to be.
Mileage is increasing steadily, run today was over half of my current single week record, with todays run being over half of my first stage goal distance.
So, what exactly am I doing with all this running you may wonder. Well, it's actually a fairly carefully constructed running program I've cobbled together from various other training programs I've found online ranging from Jeff Galloway's Run/Walk/Run program for people shooting for completion of a Half-Marathon to programs designed to achieve specific time goals for Half-Marathons. I've looked them all over, and done a decent amount of independent research into various training options and strategies, and put together the program I'm using now, and the one I'm going to transition myself into in the next few weeks.
Currently I'm using two timed runs each at a total duration of 30 minutes, 20 minutes of intervals (80% "up", 20% "down") and a 5 minute warm-up and cool-down on either side; and a single long run each week run with 5 minutes warm-up/cool-down on either side of mile repeats (80% "up" 20 "down") for the target distance of the week. The immediate goal of the timed runs is to improve my pace and thus the distance per run. The immediate goal of the long run is to increase my distance running ability progressively, by adding a mile to the distance each week, until I reach my current target distance of 12 miles. After that I'm going to decrease the long run to 10 miles a week for a while as I work on improving my pace on the 10-milers. Sporadically I'll increase the long run up past the 12 miles I went to originally, in steps and then back down to 10 again to keep working on pace. The goal of all this being to get myself to a point where I can easily run the race distance in a reasonable pace.
In addition to that I currently do a weekly treadmill run of 3 minutes at what I have tested as my VO2max, the threshold at which exercise becomes more anaerobic than aerobic, and 3 minutes at 50% thereof. Repeats of that for most of the workout duration are designed to increase the threshold, and I increase both the high and the low speeds on those workouts progressively to ensure I keep improving. At the end of those workouts I turn the speed on the treadmill up to see how fast I can run for 30 seconds continuously. Another metric I track during these runs, because there are fewer other things to distract me than most runs, is my turnover. I pick a minute, of my 3 minute up interval, and count how many times my feet hit the ground. The idea being that the more times they hit the ground, the further distance I can cover in the interval at the same stride length, and since my barefoot running style means that my stride length falls within a certain range that I can't change all that much, increasing turnover is the best way for me to gain speed.
Well, that went on a bit longer than expected, so I guess I shall save until next week the changes I plan to make to my running schedule to turn a weekly cycle into a 3 week cycle with even more vectors for improving my running efficiency and capacity.
So, what about the scale this week. 208, down a pound from last week. With the sadly low percentage of my diet composed of protein right now I'm not all that surprised by the thinning out my increase in running seems to be contributing too. My bodyfat seems to be holding pretty stable, which means I am sadly losing some muscle mass along with fat, but I'm working on plans to change that. So stay tuned. Always be the you you want to be.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 71)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Weight has been trending a little low this week so we’ll have to see what comes of that later on in the post.
The ups and downs with my weight, especially when my daily calorie intake is taken into question along with other factors, has lead me to the conclusion it is probably time to look into changing up my nutritional composition again. I’m thinking something similar to the Primal Experiment from January.
This time around, due in part to my increasing running mileage, I’m going to be keeping some more carbs in my diet, but I think I’m going to limit them to rice, and tubers. Other than that to flesh out some calories and load up for my long runs I’m going to be trying to keep to lean meat, veggies, nuts, seeds, and some fruit like before. It’s tasty, it’s not bad for me, and if my research pans out to be true may actually improve my times in addition to helping me lean out and put on some muscle.
The other thing that’s been tumbling around in my mind of late is trying to see what I can do about putting on some more muscle and seeing what I can do about some abs. So far it looks like my 6-minute abs is having at least some impact on my gut, and the circuits that I’ve been using to accompany it are doing pretty well all around as well. So, with some inspiration from going to watch Thor, I found the best information I could about a number of celebrity transformations for movie roles, Hemsworth for Thor, Bale for Batman, Craig for Bond, Butler for Leonidas, etc. I’ve been comparing what I could find about what they did to prepare for the roles, and there are a lot of similarities in their methods. Exactly what similarities I noted I’ll save for next week, but suffice to say I think that with a little work and some dedication I think I can probably replicate at least some measure of the results, albeit reduced because I don’t have 6 hours a day to work out and a staff of dietitians, trainers, and chefs to keep everything about me humming along smoothly. With what I do have though I think I can probably get good results, though it’ll take me longer than it did for the celebs.
Well, further details on that to come later, for now though let’s take a look at the numbers shall we? 209, down a pound from last week. So as I suspected, I dropped a bit over the week, but with some increased caloric intake I think I can remedy the losses with some more muscle. Body fat is down, if only slightly, so at least the spread is moving in the right direction even when the needle itself isn't. Until next week, keep working toward being the you you want to be.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 70)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week had some ups and downs on the scale, though it seems to have leveled off now, I think mostly due to some changes in my workout volume. That being mostly taken care of now should help keep things pretty steady again.
Shortly before writing this post I completed my second distance based training run, 4 miles with warm-up/cool-down, and I have to say, it was easier than I expected for something a little over a mile past my usual distance. I'm hoping that stays true as I keep packing on the miles over the coming weeks.
This week, while pondering the meaning of life and everything I suspect, I stumbled across a realization about myself. For reasons I have not yet been able to determine I have a pretty terrible sense of personal awareness. Which is to say, I'm less good than I feel I really should be at things like figuring out when I'm starting to get dehydrated, monitoring how fast I'm running, gauging how much and what quality of sleep I'm getting, what's hard enough and what's too hard in terms of my resistance training. I'm not completely worthless at those thing, I'm just not as able as I feel is normal to determine when something is only slightly off from the baseline, instead noticing things when they are becoming a bigger issue that could have been mitigated or prevented had I known what was going on that little bit sooner.
Now comes the realization. This is why I love things like Runkeeper and Dailyburn so much. They let me collect data about myself easily that I can use to figure out the answers to those questions quicker, and in some cases predictively. Knowing "I lost 34 ounces of water on that run" is much better than "I'm a little thirsty" and allows me to get back to my baseline state that much quicker. Keeping my sleep journal for the last week or two has let me figure out at least a little bit more about how I view my sleeping and opened up a bit more into the quality of my sleep. Collecting data helps me fill in the gaps and become better at maintaining myself at optimal efficiency. Bring on the data I say, I've got spreadsheets enough for all of it.
So, what do the final numbers of the week from the scale tell me? 210, same as last week. Little bit of bouncing around during the week, more than normal at least, but all balances out in the end. Until next week, be the you you want to be everyday.
This week had some ups and downs on the scale, though it seems to have leveled off now, I think mostly due to some changes in my workout volume. That being mostly taken care of now should help keep things pretty steady again.
Shortly before writing this post I completed my second distance based training run, 4 miles with warm-up/cool-down, and I have to say, it was easier than I expected for something a little over a mile past my usual distance. I'm hoping that stays true as I keep packing on the miles over the coming weeks.
This week, while pondering the meaning of life and everything I suspect, I stumbled across a realization about myself. For reasons I have not yet been able to determine I have a pretty terrible sense of personal awareness. Which is to say, I'm less good than I feel I really should be at things like figuring out when I'm starting to get dehydrated, monitoring how fast I'm running, gauging how much and what quality of sleep I'm getting, what's hard enough and what's too hard in terms of my resistance training. I'm not completely worthless at those thing, I'm just not as able as I feel is normal to determine when something is only slightly off from the baseline, instead noticing things when they are becoming a bigger issue that could have been mitigated or prevented had I known what was going on that little bit sooner.
Now comes the realization. This is why I love things like Runkeeper and Dailyburn so much. They let me collect data about myself easily that I can use to figure out the answers to those questions quicker, and in some cases predictively. Knowing "I lost 34 ounces of water on that run" is much better than "I'm a little thirsty" and allows me to get back to my baseline state that much quicker. Keeping my sleep journal for the last week or two has let me figure out at least a little bit more about how I view my sleeping and opened up a bit more into the quality of my sleep. Collecting data helps me fill in the gaps and become better at maintaining myself at optimal efficiency. Bring on the data I say, I've got spreadsheets enough for all of it.
So, what do the final numbers of the week from the scale tell me? 210, same as last week. Little bit of bouncing around during the week, more than normal at least, but all balances out in the end. Until next week, be the you you want to be everyday.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 69)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Interesting week this week. Kept up with what I'd been doing before and started some new things for good measure.
Firstly, if you've not blocked the app from your Facebook feed you've probably noticed I'm logging runs through Runkeeper a bit more often than before, I think 4 days in the last week. I decided at some point this week that I wanted to start training for a half marathon. No specific reasons other than to push myself past my current limits, and because having a specific goal in mind makes that easier for me. So I put together a training plan for my running with scheduled runs at various durations and distances so that I have something I can refer to to keep on track. So far I've done one of the timed runs and one of the distance runs on my new plan and it's going well so far.
Also this week I decided to start working on the exercises from the Pre-Hab chapter from 4HB, because they are easy enough to fit into my schedule on otherwise "off" days, and they won't hurt anything at the least, and at the best might help prevent injuries down the road. That combined with my 6-minute abs workouts and associated bodyweight circuits should keep me busy most days. I've also started with a weekly treadmill run, to coincide with Lara's biking, to push my aerobic threshold up, and once I get my heartrate monitor, alternated with a run to increase my bodies ability to handle lactic acid buildup. All that should workout to me being in much better shape overall, and staying that way.
In the wonderful world of me being a ridiculous data monger I've decided to start keeping a sleep log and tracking statistics related to my sweat rate. First, the less disgusting of the two. In an effort to improve all aspects of my life through better data collection I've decided to start tracking my perceptions related to my sleep, quality, time it takes to fall asleep, how much I wake up during the night, and if I wake up too early. So far it's been feeling fairly productive, though since it's all based on perception rather than numbers there is only so much it can do. The Sweat Rate data is an effort by me to make sure that as I increase my mileage further I avoid dehydration. When I run, like most people who do so, I sweat. How much I sweat is a variable number based on pace, temperature, humidity, and dew point, or at least that's the theory. By weighing myself before and after a run, and knowing how much water if any I ingested while on the run, I can determine how much water weight I lost over the course of my activity. That number combined with the duration of the activity can allow me to calculate a loss per hour which I can track against the conditions listed above to hopefully determine a predictive method for my sweat rate that will let me ensure I stay properly hydrated as my mileage increases.
Anyway, that was a fairly long post today and so I shall sum it up fairly briefly with numbers. Scale tells me I'm at 210 this week, same as last week, which is what I'm after right now. Until next week, always push yourself to be a better you than you were when you woke up.
Interesting week this week. Kept up with what I'd been doing before and started some new things for good measure.
Firstly, if you've not blocked the app from your Facebook feed you've probably noticed I'm logging runs through Runkeeper a bit more often than before, I think 4 days in the last week. I decided at some point this week that I wanted to start training for a half marathon. No specific reasons other than to push myself past my current limits, and because having a specific goal in mind makes that easier for me. So I put together a training plan for my running with scheduled runs at various durations and distances so that I have something I can refer to to keep on track. So far I've done one of the timed runs and one of the distance runs on my new plan and it's going well so far.
Also this week I decided to start working on the exercises from the Pre-Hab chapter from 4HB, because they are easy enough to fit into my schedule on otherwise "off" days, and they won't hurt anything at the least, and at the best might help prevent injuries down the road. That combined with my 6-minute abs workouts and associated bodyweight circuits should keep me busy most days. I've also started with a weekly treadmill run, to coincide with Lara's biking, to push my aerobic threshold up, and once I get my heartrate monitor, alternated with a run to increase my bodies ability to handle lactic acid buildup. All that should workout to me being in much better shape overall, and staying that way.
In the wonderful world of me being a ridiculous data monger I've decided to start keeping a sleep log and tracking statistics related to my sweat rate. First, the less disgusting of the two. In an effort to improve all aspects of my life through better data collection I've decided to start tracking my perceptions related to my sleep, quality, time it takes to fall asleep, how much I wake up during the night, and if I wake up too early. So far it's been feeling fairly productive, though since it's all based on perception rather than numbers there is only so much it can do. The Sweat Rate data is an effort by me to make sure that as I increase my mileage further I avoid dehydration. When I run, like most people who do so, I sweat. How much I sweat is a variable number based on pace, temperature, humidity, and dew point, or at least that's the theory. By weighing myself before and after a run, and knowing how much water if any I ingested while on the run, I can determine how much water weight I lost over the course of my activity. That number combined with the duration of the activity can allow me to calculate a loss per hour which I can track against the conditions listed above to hopefully determine a predictive method for my sweat rate that will let me ensure I stay properly hydrated as my mileage increases.
Anyway, that was a fairly long post today and so I shall sum it up fairly briefly with numbers. Scale tells me I'm at 210 this week, same as last week, which is what I'm after right now. Until next week, always push yourself to be a better you than you were when you woke up.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 68)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week brought with it some big changes to my workout plan that I'm exploring for various benefits. It also brought some good preliminary numbers in terms of body metrics and very delicious food at an event we got invited to yesterday.
So, what have I done to my workout plan? Well, as I mentioned last week I finished up my bulking phase and have decided a combination maintenance phase and some dedicated time working toward a six-pack was in order. As such I decided to experiment with the 6 Minute Abs chapter of 4HB. It's a pretty simple set of exercises, short as the name implies, that leaves me feeling like I've put in some hard work. A set of 10 myotatic crunches, 10 12-sec TVA exercises (the humorously named cat vomit exercise), and 75 2-handed kettlebell swings. You do this twice a week and when combined with a diet that allows you to stay under 12% body fat it is supposed to yield pretty impressive results in the abdominal region. We'll see how that pans out.
This week also saw Lara decide to join me in the gym, yay Lara!, with some stationary biking. As a result, I needed a plan that would keep me busy a bit longer than 6 minutes at a time. To help with that I decided to add on to the 2 6 minute abs days with some bodyweight circuit training. A circuit comprised of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 10 lunges on each side, 10 dumbell rows on each side, and 20 jumping jacks gets my blood pumping pretty well and presents a good full body workout in a short time. Last time in I completed 2 full circuits, working my way up to 3 and then increasing the weight on various exercises to increase the difficulty and get a better burn. Because I was in need of a 3rd day a week to workout I'm going to fill that day with some work on beast skills, right now trying to work on pistol squats, and then some treadmill work at or near my vVO2max to help increase that threshold. Better cardiac health, better respiratory fitness, and better running speed, all from a fairly short workout overall. I can live with that.
So what does the scale have to say this week about my efforts. 210, up a pound from last week, combine that with a .2 drop in body fat and I'm not doing terribly. I'm going to be shooting for keeping my weight fairly steady for now, or at least not actively trying to put on or lose weight, and see what happens. Until next week, keep striving to be the you you want to be.
This week brought with it some big changes to my workout plan that I'm exploring for various benefits. It also brought some good preliminary numbers in terms of body metrics and very delicious food at an event we got invited to yesterday.
So, what have I done to my workout plan? Well, as I mentioned last week I finished up my bulking phase and have decided a combination maintenance phase and some dedicated time working toward a six-pack was in order. As such I decided to experiment with the 6 Minute Abs chapter of 4HB. It's a pretty simple set of exercises, short as the name implies, that leaves me feeling like I've put in some hard work. A set of 10 myotatic crunches, 10 12-sec TVA exercises (the humorously named cat vomit exercise), and 75 2-handed kettlebell swings. You do this twice a week and when combined with a diet that allows you to stay under 12% body fat it is supposed to yield pretty impressive results in the abdominal region. We'll see how that pans out.
This week also saw Lara decide to join me in the gym, yay Lara!, with some stationary biking. As a result, I needed a plan that would keep me busy a bit longer than 6 minutes at a time. To help with that I decided to add on to the 2 6 minute abs days with some bodyweight circuit training. A circuit comprised of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 10 lunges on each side, 10 dumbell rows on each side, and 20 jumping jacks gets my blood pumping pretty well and presents a good full body workout in a short time. Last time in I completed 2 full circuits, working my way up to 3 and then increasing the weight on various exercises to increase the difficulty and get a better burn. Because I was in need of a 3rd day a week to workout I'm going to fill that day with some work on beast skills, right now trying to work on pistol squats, and then some treadmill work at or near my vVO2max to help increase that threshold. Better cardiac health, better respiratory fitness, and better running speed, all from a fairly short workout overall. I can live with that.
So what does the scale have to say this week about my efforts. 210, up a pound from last week, combine that with a .2 drop in body fat and I'm not doing terribly. I'm going to be shooting for keeping my weight fairly steady for now, or at least not actively trying to put on or lose weight, and see what happens. Until next week, keep striving to be the you you want to be.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 67)
Sunday yet again and time for the weekly update.
This week saw the completion of my first race, the warrior dash. For those who don't know it's a "mud run" with an advertised 3.4 mile course and a collection of obstacles along the route. Runkeeper tells me the course was closer to 3.3 miles than 3.4, which fits up with the rather different course layout that we ran compared to the posted map. The obstacles were also different from what was on the map. Regardless, it was a blast and I'm likely to do it again if I get the chance. My time came in around 48 minutes, which is slightly higher than I was expecting but not a problem, my goal was to finish plain and simple and I did that.
This week also marks the end of my bulking experiment, so it's time for some results and some analysis. I put in a total of around 3 and a half hours of total gym time over the course of the experiment, which is even less than I figured I'd end up at. Over the course of the protocol my weight values went up consistently as represented by this helpful list:
This week saw the completion of my first race, the warrior dash. For those who don't know it's a "mud run" with an advertised 3.4 mile course and a collection of obstacles along the route. Runkeeper tells me the course was closer to 3.3 miles than 3.4, which fits up with the rather different course layout that we ran compared to the posted map. The obstacles were also different from what was on the map. Regardless, it was a blast and I'm likely to do it again if I get the chance. My time came in around 48 minutes, which is slightly higher than I was expecting but not a problem, my goal was to finish plain and simple and I did that.
This week also marks the end of my bulking experiment, so it's time for some results and some analysis. I put in a total of around 3 and a half hours of total gym time over the course of the experiment, which is even less than I figured I'd end up at. Over the course of the protocol my weight values went up consistently as represented by this helpful list:
- Close-grip lat pulldown: 75 -> 105 (40% increase)
- Shoulder Press: 45 -> 85 (90% increase)
- Chest Press: 85 -> 115 (35% increase)
- Leg Curl: 45 -> 75 (66% increase)
Some good numbers, consistent increases across the board. The numbers would possibly have increased more if I had been better about my caloric intake, about 80% of the time I made my overall calorie goal, but I only made my protein goal perhaps 30% of the time, and that's being somewhat generous. Even despite that I made good strength gains and seem to have made some reasonable mass gains to go with it.
So where do I go from here? Probably going to do some testing with Slow-Carb mixed with testing out the 6-minute abs stuff from 4HB. I'm really not needing to add more mass now so much as redistribute what I've already got so that it looks better.
So what does the scale have to say about all this progress? Today the numbers came up at 209, up 2 pounds from last week, and 7.1% body fat, down half a percentage since last week. Since the start of this experiment I've gained 12 pounds of muscle and dropped 5.2 pounds of body fat. For the amount of time I put in I'd say those are some pretty fine results. Only time will tell what the future holds. Until next time, be the you you want to be.
Addendum: Sadly, due to a couple issues this didn't get posted until Monday morning. Sorry about that. Look for pictures to show up by Wednesday.
Addendum: Sadly, due to a couple issues this didn't get posted until Monday morning. Sorry about that. Look for pictures to show up by Wednesday.
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