Exercise and Fitness!

[Bellis]

Post here about your exercise and fitness goals, successes, questions, pictures, etc.

If you mainly just need to get to a healthy weight, you can also join the discussion here.

[Lightning Lord]

After general laziness over the last couple of months, I have started running again this week. I had already decided to do so, but now it is important: My co-worker found a half-marathon for me to run, taking place in less than 4 weeks. I've done these and full marathons before and had intended to do a full marathon in the fall. This just bumped up my training schedule.

I initially hadn't thought about this when I started running again on Saturday, just went out and hit the trails. 15 kilometers later, I was pretty sure I would need to scale back. Then on Monday I was told about the race and decided I didn't have time to scale back. I did 10k Monday night and 12k last night. After work today, I am intending on 15k again, with an off day tomorrow. So little time to get ready!

[lessthanluke]

My legs are spent from ydays squats. 5 x 5 is hard. It was the start of my second cycle of sheiko which is gonna be fun lol.

[Lucky Pierre]

My chest is a lot sorer tonight from yesterday than it was this morning.

Tomorrow I work legs and abs with the new additional weight.

:)

[lessthanluke]

My chest is a lot sorer tonight from yesterday than it was this morning.

Tomorrow I work legs and abs with the new additional weight.

:)

Good man. Lifting heavy weights is fun!

[Stego]

Gotta go heavy, Pierre. :D

If you're not ready to puke after a leg day, you're not doing it right.

[Lord O' Bones]

Is this the thread where the pics go? Or the other one?

[Iskaral Pust]

So is this the People's Front Of Judea or the Judean People's Front?

It's now two weeks since I injured my ankle. As of yesterday I can limp around without crutches, but it's still very sore and inflexible. I need to start massaging it and forcing it to flex so that I don't prolong the stiffness. I don't expect to be playing soccer for a while.

But I have been doing some good upper body weights during this period. Not real heavy weights yet, but five sessions in fourteen days is far more regular than what I was managing before, and I had four days of business travel in that period. I still can't commit to the disciplined routine that I know works best. I just don't have that kind of control over my schedule.

Walking around airports on crutches is like doing hundreds of partial dips. I got an extra little workout right there.

[Lucky Pierre]

Gotta go heavy, Pierre. :D

If you're not ready to puke after a leg day, you're not doing it right.

Well... fine... lets see.. tomorrow's menu consists of: squats, dead lift, leg press, donkey press, body curls and incline situps.

[Lucky Pierre]

Walking around airports on crutches is like doing hundreds of partial dips. I got an extra little workout right there.

That is the truth.. :cheers:

[Stego]

Well... fine... lets see.. tomorrow's menu consists of: squats, dead lift, leg press, donkey press, body curls and incline situps.

No need to do leg press if you are squatting heavy, IMO. But if you are squating and doing dead lifts heavy.... you should be vomiting.

[lokisnow]

Judean People's Front of course.

cardio today, walked to the gym (round trip 3.6 miles) and did an hour on the treadmill watching american idol and biggest loser).

the first real question for me comes up, I'm planning on doing friday's workout on thursday because there's a double feature I want to see at one of the repertory theatres in town on Friday. otoh, there's a free screening tomorrow of the Tyson documentary, I could move tomorrows workout to thursday and do the friday workout saturday. this sets up another level of interference though, the LA times festival of books is saturday and there's another double feature that night I may or may not hit. Sunday is beach volleyball with my buddies. Somewhere I'm going to have to compromise to get my next two workouts in. damn.

my last young coconut was bad (haven't had a bad one in ages) and when I went to vons to get more, all they had were already modering. :( so I had just drink my protein powder straight up, rather than made with the young coconut. Not pleased.

On the other hand, Trader Joe's new frozen dish, Paneer Tikka Masala with Spinach Basmati Rice is an epic win. I usually don't buy frozen dishes with rice, because there's usually too much rice, it's not any good heated up and adds hundreds of useless calories to the meal. This however is a very reasonable amount, about a half fist's worth of rice, and quite a lot of the tikka masala, with many chunks of paneer. The two are awesome on their own and outstanding combined. the whole thing is also only 330 calories which is just about perfect for me. I'll probably be having one of these a week. went well with broiled salmon, though I overcooked the salmon since it was frozen and I was guesstimating how long to cook it.

[Kat]

locke (maybe this should go in the diet thread, but whatever)- have you tried the boil-in-a-bag Indian entrees that they have at TJ's? They don't come with rice, so if you want something that's tasty and easy to make but rice-free, check them out. (They're near the ramen and soup.) I ate a lot of these in the desert because it's decent food that's pre-made but not frozen. Also good for backpacking. Which I am doing this weekend at Big Sur. My ex is trying to lose weight, which I don't even want to ask him about, because he's one of those people who can gain and lose 30 lbs without trying or noticing until way later. I guarantee you that this is one of those trips that sounds great but I'm going to be whining on Monday about how my hips are falling off. Again. Because my ex and our friend like to hike twice as far as I do in one day, and I let them do the "organizing." :|

[Red Sun]

Kat, how far do you always need to drive to get to all those awesome hiking places? Anyway, California seems like an awesome place, because you have the ocean and the mountains in close distance. :envy:

Back to the topic of fitness: Despite what I wrote in the other thread, I did not go running. Instead, I made another bike tour (20 minutes + 40 minutes on some of the hillier streets), because I wanted to buy some more plants for my balcony. Later the evening, I did 4 exercises: one for the shoulders/arms (3x10), one for the entire back (5x10), one sort of crunches (5x10), the plank (3x20 sec.) and some stretching.

Since everyone posted their goals, my goal regarding fitness is first and foremost to daily physical activity (be it biking, work-out or other things), in order to be more active. Aside from this, I really need to strengthen my core and my back, but apart from wanting to be able to do real push-ups, I have no specific goal.

[Liffguard]

Since the last thread got closed, and I'm such an attention whore, I'll repost what I posted there i.e. current pics and fitness goals.

Front

Side

Back

I'm not too bothered about my appearance, but it would be kinda nice to fill out my shoulders a little more and cut my waist down a little. Eh, low priority.

Fitness-wise I have three main goals I'd like to acheive, in different time frames:

By September I aim to be able to run 1.5 miles in less than 9.5 minutes and achieve a level 13 bleep test.

By the end of the year I aim to deadlift 200kg.

Current scores are 10 minutes 30 seconds for the run, level 12.3 for the bleep test and a 160kg deadlift.

Wish me luck.

Also, I know Stego's been pimping out Body for Life. For those who maybe want to go into some more detail there are three books I heartily recommend:

The Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning - R E Beachle. Just a really big book with everything you could ever want to know about the science and principles of modern fitness, as well as really breaking down the techniques of all the essential lifts

Athletic Body in Balance - Gray Cook. The aim of this book is to thoroughly assess your own body, discover where the imbalances, weaknesses and lack of proportion lie, and then fix them.

Stretching Scientifically - Thomas Kurtz. In many ways this books seems dated now, as a lot of what it talks about is common knolwedge. However, I personally found this book really helped with my warm-up and cool-down routines and I generally get injured much less.

[Lucky Pierre]

Well, I didn't puke. I'm not really a puker... but I could barely stand after the set of squats :) But I will be adding a bit more weight next week I think. I managed to get thru everything. The calf muscles took a tremendous beating today too! The Lower back and abs are still burning... I did the body curls and almost doubled my performance from last week-which really is just getting back to normal after the illness.

All in all-I'm very happy with it and feel good. Legs are still a little spaghetti though... :)

[Xray the Enforcer]

After almost two weeks of sloth (vacation and now trying to get rid of the fucking headache that has plagued me for weeks), I am ready to go back to the gym and continue my quest for health and better posture.

Question: I'm on muscle relaxants to banish my headache (tension headache caused by really tight muscles and a bit of fascia inflammation). Should I even both working out at this point, or am I going to be damning myself to another round of headaches? Stego, got any clue?

[Lucky Pierre]

Question: I'm on muscle relaxants to banish my headache (tension headache caused by really tight muscles and a bit of fascia inflammation). Should I even both working out at this point, or am I going to be damning myself to another round of headaches? Stego, got any clue?

I don't know what the medical answer is- but I take Zanaflex and Relafen nightly for arthritis. I think you should get back into the swing of things and if necessary just go a bit slower. Something is always better than nothing!

Good luck with the headaches. They suck most.

[Greywolf2375]

After almost two weeks of sloth (vacation and now trying to get rid of the fucking headache that has plagued me for weeks), I am ready to go back to the gym and continue my quest for health and better posture.

Question: I'm on muscle relaxants to banish my headache (tension headache caused by really tight muscles and a bit of fascia inflammation). Should I even both working out at this point, or am I going to be damning myself to another round of headaches? Stego, got any clue?

Well, working out will release toxins that are stored in the msucle/fat inyour body - depending on how you react that might lead to a headache or contribute to an existing one. Are you going to a chiropractor at all for adjustments? Took a while, but for my wife she and our chiro/kinesiologist finally figured out that it was a combination of her neck, some of the oral muscles and atmospheric pressure changes that were leading to her headaches - on the level of migraine headaches.

Keep moving, do some level of activity, but maybe not as hard as you would normally go if you are having a headache/on medication.

[seastarr]

Liff!guard you're looking great!

Xray, I'm the madame of migraine, and heres what helps my head:

1) Getting enough sleep.

2) Daily exercise--well before the headache sets in.

3) If it's a tension headache, massage of the head and neck. You should be lying down for this.

4) Ganja--I just dissolve it under my tongue before going to sleep. This may only be legally accessible in California, but I've been on all the regular prescriptions, and they were awful and hard on my body. The ganja is what does the trick when the headache sets in and I can't get to sleep cause it hurts so much. Almost without fail, I wake the next morning with a clear head (and puffy eyes).

5)I've been gluten and dairy free for 6 months. Headache incidence went from 8-9 times a month to 1-2 times a month. That's a big deal for me, because they were quite debilitating.

I wish you good luck in dealing with them. They are real bitches. It took me a long time to learn to manage mine.

I would suggest getting back to exercise very gently after such a long headache. Maybe a nice walk and a little stretching. Does your gym have a restorative yoga class? That might be a useful thing to add to your life. It can help dissolve tension and involves very gentle postures designed to help you relax and let go.