Exercise and Fitness - Olympic spirit!

[Iskaral Pust]

12 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Trying to get back on the wagon after being out w/ a cold for a couple weeks.  Was still working out regularly, but my diet has slid and now I'm back over the 200 lbs mark.  I'm going on vacation at the end of the month, so until then it's no added sugar, limiting my carbs, no alcohol, and at least one yoga class a day with the goal being 10 classes per week.  With this diet I'm hoping to lose 10 lbs fast and then level off to about 190-195.  

I know all about the rhinovirus absence.

As a general observation, don't sweat it too much on minor weight gain this time of year.  Some bodies feel the need to add some winter insulation and fighting it with calorie restriction might just lower your energy for exercise.  Some bodies even get leaner this season as they burn body fat to raise temperature but then gain a little fat in summer when they burn fewer calories.  Seasonal variations are hard to fight, it's better to just keep a healthy diet as much as you can and keep exercising.  It all levels out.

[Starkess]

So I joined a gym near my new apartment (like literally a block away), and I keep wanting to be like "I'm new because I moved, not because I'm a resolutioner!" Ha. Oh well!

I've been working out at home or work for the last several years, so it's weird being at a gym! I've been checking out some classes, which have been fun (although crowded) and it's good because now I have cardio options besides running. Because my heels are still aching from time to time, and I'm a little scared to bite the bullet and start running again.

I've got about 5 lbs to lose after moving and holidays. Okay, maybe 10. It's been a long couple months! But I finally have a kitchen again so I don't need to eat out a billion times a week and can workout more regularly. I'm looking forward to feeling fitter and healthier!

[peterbound]

Started crossfit again, after a loooooonnnnnngggg strength cycle.  Got my BS over 500 and my DL over 600, then decided I need to throttle back.  Getting old and all.  

 

Need to get back into running.  Want to do the AF half this year.  

[Eponine]

I'm (eventually) training for the Honolulu marathon next December. I've been doing yoga at home.

PB, I'd ask you if you wanted to do a sprint triathlon, but I'm guessing the swimming part wouldn't work for you. OTOH, I could get a head start while you flailed around. 

[3CityApache]

15 hours ago, Seaworth'sShipmate said:

Who here runs?

Do you run often? If so how has running helped you or made you feel good? Has it done neither of those things?

Quite a few of us do. I usually run every second day. Last year about 130 km per month on average. Since I started running (almost two years ago) I lost about 10 kg (in the first six months) and then kept my weight at about 71-72 kg. Running definitely made me feel good with myself.

@Leap I have never used Strava, but I had no problems with connecting my Garmin to Endomondo. It works perfectly, my Garmin trainings immediately appear on Endo.

[baxus]

16 hours ago, Seaworth'sShipmate said:

Who here runs?

Do you run often? If so how has running helped you or made you feel good? Has it done neither of those things?

I used to run, but don't anymore. It will help you with both weight loss and overall fitness, but I always found it a bit boring.

In a month or so, I will get back to running a bit because on April 22nd I will run a half-marathon in my hometown for the 10th time, but after that I'll probably switch to cycling and/or swimming instead.

[Iskaral Pust]

On 1/3/2017 at 10:59 AM, Seaworth'sShipmate said:

Who here runs?

Do you run often? If so how has running helped you or made you feel good? Has it done neither of those things?

I played soccer as my primary exercise for almost three decades.  I used to run between games, say 3-5 miles on a treadmill, for fitness and conditioning.  But I generally find running boring and kind of a grind.  I stopped all cardio a year ago and have got the same benefits from just lifting weights.  Any and all exercise makes me feel good.  Some are more enjoyable than others.  I enjoyed playing soccer on a team much more than running by myself.  I may reintroduce some running, especially incline interval sprints for variety, but I doubt I'll ever enjoy distance running.

[Iskaral Pust]

Last night was a lower body session.  Last week was my first return to squats in several weeks and my legs remained stiff for 5 days afterward.  Then last night on my very first warm-up I could still feel that burn in my quads.  I pushed ahead anyway and just dropped my heaviest weight to only 200lbs -- better to do good sets at a low weight than do nothing or do something with bad form.  My quads were on fire through all the sets but my strength was fine and I did five heavy sets with no difficulty other than the muscle burning.

After that the rest of the session was a relative breeze.

[3CityApache]

14 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I played soccer as my primary exercise for almost three decades.  [...] I enjoyed playing soccer on a team much more than running by myself.  I may reintroduce some running, especially incline interval sprints for variety, but I doubt I'll ever enjoy distance running.

I also played football (where does this strange name "soccer" even come from?) for about three decades, not profesionally, but I liked it a lot. Until I got injured, severed my knee cruciate ligament and had to do the surgery in 2012. I have never played it since then. And so I started running, though I always hated it passionately. I used to say "unproductive running is boring as hell" and it was. I always preferred running with a purpose, like in football or tennis or whatever other sport. And yet, after few months of forced trainings, it somehow grew on me. It still isn't always easy to go out running on a cold and windy day (like yesterday), but I can't imagine my life completely without it anymore. It strangely soothes the mind. Yeah, I know it's not for everyone, but I think everyone should at least try it.

And by the way, playing football and running by yourself are two completely different kinds of exercise for me.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, 3CityApache said:

 (where does this strange name "soccer" even come from?) 

It's a shorthand for Association Football, used in countries where "football" has other meanings.

I've never been particularly athletic, but I'm making sure I get regular walks in (8km today). It's been a good start to the year so far.

[Iskaral Pust]

And although soccer is viewed as an Americanism, it was also familiar as I grew up in Ireland because football meant Gaelic football. 

Sorry 3CA to hear it was an ACL that took you out. No career-ending injury for me but I gradually found I was enjoying it less: limited time while I was doing an MBA part time, guilt at time away from family on weekends, late night games midweek that ruined my sleep, and the gradual decline of sprint pace in my mid-to-late 30s (the over-30s leagues are far out in the suburbs, not available in the city).  I also struggled with the right level to play: I mostly played at a high competitive level with former college players, but occasionally got tired of some of the heavy tackles.  Whenever I tried a more recreational level league I was frustrated by the standard of play. 

i enjoyed running, swimming and rowing as a substitute for the first year after soccer, but got jaded on high volume cardio for being repetitive and causing stress injuries like shin splints, shoulder joint and carpal tunnel respectively. 

[baxus]

Just to clarify my last post, I'm not against running at all. It's a great workout and I see it as a great way of improving fitness. I used to run 40+ km per week at one point and it worked like a charm in achieving my goal at the time (a half marathon in 1h40min or under). It's just that I get bored quite easily if I don't have something else to break the running routine.

In addition, running does very little for your upper body so I've always preferred rowing (which does include a fair bit of running in training) and swimming.

There's something about all those sports that lets you zone out of all the stress and hassle of your everyday life and just focus on your breathing rhythm or the angle at which you put your hand in the water or at what point do you turn your oar to catch the water just right.

[aceluby]

Two more classes down the hatch.  Down 2 lbs, 8 more to go!  Rest day tomorrow.

[peterbound]

Soccer, just to clarify, is an English creation, not an American one:

in 1863, and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time, such as rugby football. The word soccer is an abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in universities in the 1880s (sometimes using the variant spelling "socker").^[1][2][3][4] The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford Brown, an Oxford University student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football (see Oxford -er). Clive Toye noted "A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarise names by shortening them. ... Toye [said] 'They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer.'”^[5]

The term association football has never been widely used, although in Britain some clubs in rugby football strongholds adopted the suffix Association Football Club(A.F.C.) to avoid confusion with the dominant sport in their area, and FIFA, the world governing body for the sport, is a French-language acronym of "Fédération Internationale de Football Association" – the International Federation of Association Football. "Soccer football" is used less often than it once was: the United States Soccer Federation was known as the United States Soccer Football Association from 1945 until 1974, when it adopted its current name and the Canadian Soccer Association was known as the Canadian Soccer Football Association from 1958 to 1971.

The reaction against soccer[edit]

For nearly a hundred years after it was coined, soccer was an uncontroversial alternative to football, often in colloquial and juvenile contexts, but also in formal speech and writing.^[6] In the late twentieth century some speakers of British English began to deprecate soccer for reasons that remain unclear. "Soccer" was a term used by the upper class whereas the working and middle class preferred the word "football"; as the upper class lost influence in British society from the late 1970s on, "football" supplanted "soccer" as the accepted word, possibly as a byproduct of class warfare. There is evidence that the use of soccer is declining in Britain.^[6] Since the early twenty-first century, the peak association football bodies in soccer-speaking Australia and New Zealand have actively promoted the use of football to mirror international usage and, at least in the Australian case, to rebrand a sport that had been experiencing difficulties.^[7] Both bodies dropped soccer from their names.^[8] These efforts have met with considerable success in New Zealand.^[9]

[Iskaral Pust]

1 hour ago, peterbound said:

Soccer, just to clarify, is an English creation, not an American one:

Thanks, I knew that already.  Soccer and rugger are still used by the middle class in England (which is like upper middle class in the US) as shorthand for football and rugby.  But soccer/football long ago morphed into a working class (blue collar) sport and was called football instead.  So "soccer" has negative connotations in the UK from an association with wealthy effete and know-nothing Yanks.

Outside of the UK, in most countries that play it, football/futbal/fussball/etc is the universal term.  Oz/NZ was an outlier because it inherited the UK history plus it had a more popular domestic game of Australian rules football, similar to Ireland's Gaelic football both in play and in cultural opposition to "English" soccer.

[Datepalm]

What are the thoughts on barbell rows?

5*5 seem to have switched their rows recommendation from dumbbells to barbell since the last time I tried lifting, which seems great - dumbbell rows were by far my least favorite exercise - but now I've got a certain amount of lower back soreness and I know that that's always been a slightly tricky area for me (very flexible, very pronounced S curve, often a little achey.) On the other hand, I know I really need to work on the muscles there (at least, that's what I was told last time it came up with a doctor, er, in the army), but also an area I really don't want to mess with. Anyway, any recommendations on a row alternative that's really careful on the lower back? And/or, a good exercise FOR that's area that's very careful? (Back in the army, I was given pilates exercises...)

[Iskaral Pust]

Datepalm - I think you want deadlifts to strengthen your lower back, which is important for overall core strength too.  A lighter version is to suspend your torso off a bench with your legs lengthways on the bench and something pressing your legs to the bench, clasp a weight plate to your chest for extra resistance, and raise your torso from bent forward (forehead on the ground) until your back is horizontal and even slightly upward tilted.  

You can supplement your core strength with stabilization exercises like body weight squats on an unstable platform, or by improving your internal girdle by pivoting at your hips (twist your torso side to side with feet planted) with resistance from a weighted cable or similar.  

Make sure to keep your lower back curved inward slightly and shoulders back as you do deadlifts or barbell rows.

Aches in your lower back can have lots of sources from sciatica to posture to tight hamstrings to weak or unbalanced core muscles to crushed discs.  A lot of the stabilization muscles in your core are interconnected, either by overlap or by counter-pull. 

I'm sway-backed too and deadlifts with good form give me no problems.  It is an area though that aches from too much sitting or too much time standing in one position. 

[Greywolf2375]

On ‎01‎/‎03‎/‎2017 at 9:37 PM, peterbound said:

Started crossfit again, after a loooooonnnnnngggg strength cycle.  Got my BS over 500 and my DL over 600, then decided I need to throttle back.  Getting old and all.  

 

Need to get back into running.  Want to do the AF half this year.  

Dude, I'm 45 - screw getting old.  My goals for this year are BS 400+ and DL 500+. 

Unfortunately wrenched my back the wrong way and am on the bench for a few days, but if nothing else we need rest days now and then.

[Iskaral Pust]

Last night I got back to the gym for shoulder press and pull-ups.  It went really well but I've been feeling a nagging strain in my right elbow for the past couple of weeks.  It fired a bit as I started some dumbbell curls so I just abandoned arms and lat raises.  The heavy exercises are the main thing and I'll let the elbow rest a bit.

We were planning to go snowboarding this weekend and finally try the feeble ski resorts of Wisconsin.  But delays to getting our equipment tuned up after a long storage, plus my legs are stiff after squats, has made this weekend unlikely.  We'll probably go next weekend instead so long as the snow conditions don't deteriorate a lot next week when it warms a bit (but new snow should fall).

[3CityApache]

Quite unexpectadly a really arctic weather has come to Poland for the last few days. It's a bit surprising as we haven't really had real winters for at least few years. It was about -14 °C in the middle of the day yesterday (and due to the wind perceptible temperature was about -25°C), so my running training was quite an extreme experience. I was planning to make a fast 5k, but after really good first km (4:35) I felt clogged, the hair in my nose got frozen and I couldn't move my facial muscles. My fingers and toes went numb and my even my shoes stiffened somehow (I guess the cushion gel in them got frozen too). As a result my pace slowed down dramatically and I only managed to make 6k in the 5:03 pace. And felt totally exhausted afterwards.

Today was a bit better, it was -10°C and almost no wind, so I managed to make 10k in 5:16 pace and was even able to speed up the last km to 4:55 pace. But all in all running in such freezing weather is not something I like, that's for sure. Hopefully frost is going to last just few more days.