Back at it

[Sasquatch]

Just got home from day seven of daily gym trips. Wife and I are going, with goal of going every day until work & school kick back in for me - then we'll be going on my days off. I'll be doing daily PT in school, so I'm not missing out on daily workouts anyway. Might seem crazy, doing daily exercise, but I've got some mandatory benchmarks I need to hit by December, and my ass has never been much of a runner - but I've *got* to run. Specifically, I've got to be able to run 300 meters in under 80 seconds, without dying. Since Texas has been parked in close orbit to the sun for the last three months, running outside without dying hasn't really been possible, so we went and got a Planet Fitness membership. I've also been working on rowing 500 and 2000 meters under times - my best 500 has been 1:55 right now, and my best 2k row has been 8:05 - I want to get those numbers down.

We've hit the gym every day straight for a week and I can honestly say that aside from general muscle soreness one gets from working out - I'm feeling good about it. I figured out exactly how fast I have to run to make that 300 meters in 80 seconds benchmark - which is 8.12mph roughly - so a few times I've pushed myself and managed to hit it every time. The last couple, I bumped the speed to 8.3mph, and today I hit that for a sustained 100 seconds - impressive for me. I'm not just focused on the sprints - I've actually been more endurance focused figuring the sprinting will come as I am able to sustain runs for longer. Four months of daily work outs should get me where I want to be.

Besides the treadmill I've been hitting the bike and doing at least a couple miles a session on it with medium-high resistance. I'm incorporating some weight machines in every few days right now - will probably do more weights as I get further into this but my number one focus right now is running / cardio. Hoping a side effect of the exercise will be shedding weight / building muscle, but honestly as long as I can make my run & row times, I could care less.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

Sounds awesome.

Needing to row is interesting.

What is the reason?

 

[Grumps21]

Sounds awesome.

Needing to row is interesting.

What is the reason?

He has to row-row-row his boat

SOLD - MAGNOLIA - 188 Decoys - Duck / Geese

**QUACK QUACK** these are gone. bought a boat last month. A mountain of decoys came with it. I do not hunt birds. Don't have the desire to start at the moment. There are 164 floating decoys of varied variety - including a handful that have been made to be "feeding" - the front is weighted...

www.texasguntalk.com

 

[Sasquatch]

Sounds awesome.

Needing to row is interesting.

What is the reason?

physical agility test

 

[Rafe]

Be a bit careful about the every day approach. As we get older, one of the most difficult triads to balance is exercise frequency, intensity, and recovery. At a cellular level, ya gotta have adequate rest time. And, of course, diet and good sleep play a big role in recovery and improvement.

If you haven't, you might want to consider finding a certified trainer you have confidence in and have him/her map out a goal-oriented schedule for you. You don't need to do one-on-one gym sessions (which they might want to sell you) if you're confident in motivating yourself, but having a set, prescribed schedule with the target on December and some benchmark measurements along the way can be super helpful. If done scientifically, the schedule will involve some flavor of a periodization concept, a way to vary activities in order to make consistent gains without overtraining or backsliding. And if so, sticking to the schedule and recording what you do becomes vital.

I know it's Google (blech) but I've found Google Docs spreadsheets to be a good way of scheduling activity and documenting what I do and when. I also use each day's section to record dietary intake and comments about sleep, how I feel, injuries, etc. It's a fairly thorough personal diary that I can access from the PC, phone, or tablet; in the gym I record stuff via the phone. People probably think I'm looking at text messages.

And the look on your doctor's face will be priceless when he asks you, "How's your diet and exercise," and you pull up the spreadsheet and show him what you're tracking. I stuck a cover sheet on mine where I total each week's total macro nutrient, calorie, and sodium intake, an annual chart of week-ending bodyweight, and a summary breakdown of weekly time spent on both resistance training and cardio.

 

[olddirtygerm]

Be careful about working out too hard at Planet Fitness. They'll set the lunk alarm off on you.

 

[Havok1]

Congrats on the progress! It’ll all get better over time.

 

[Sasquatch]

Be careful about working out too hard at Planet Fitness. They'll set the lunk alarm off on you.

Haven't seen it happen yet. Their "lunk alarm" nonsense even applies to people who grunt - which would be most weight lifters actually lifting heavy. For some reason, I thought they might actually have sensors on their mats for free weights for people who drop the weights dead lifting or something but nope.

Haven't seen free pizza since we've been there - must have ended that?

 

[Mohawk600]

I started a workout regime back in April and was doing days a week.......resistance and cardio. Started making some real good gains (lost 18 lbs) and then had an inguinal hernia repair done 4 weeks ago.

I'm going to the gym this afternoon to get on the treadmill for an hour or so and will be able to start lifting again in two weeks.

 

[Rafe]

I started a workout regime back in April and was doing days a week.......resistance and cardio. Started making some real good gains (lost 18 lbs) and then had an inguinal hernia repair done 4 weeks ago.

I'm going to the gym this afternoon to get on the treadmill for an hour or so and will be able to start lifting again in two weeks.

Sounds like the duct tape and chicken wire patch went well! Good luck on the rehab. Lumbar back and the gut just suck because it's so hard to work around them; they get enervated every time you move. Not to mention cough or, the worst for me after having some spinal butchery done in 2005, sneezing!

Forget I said that! Do not think about sneezing! Do not even picture someone else sneezing! Don't do it...

 

[Mohawk600]

Everything is healing nicely. Did 3 miles on the treadmill in an hour. Walking 3.8 mph. No weights yet

 

[Sasquatch]

Day 9 in the bag. Went "light" the last couple days - that is I focused on lower impact stuff. I did today push my first 500K on the rower and duplicated my best time on that - which right now is 1:55 - plus I did the tread mill and this weird cross country ski like machine - NOT an eliptical which I thought I was getting onto - made for a good warm up to the row though. Tomorrow I'll get back into faster paces again. Yesterday I did treadmill for 25 minutes at a 15% incline, followed by 3 miles on the bike.

 

[Walker Travel]

Day 9 in the bag. Went "light" the last couple days - that is I focused on lower impact stuff. I did today push my first 500K on the rower and duplicated my best time on that - which right now is 1:55 - plus I did the tread mill and this weird cross country ski like machine - NOT an eliptical which I thought I was getting onto - made for a good warm up to the row though. Tomorrow I'll get back into faster paces again. Yesterday I did treadmill for 25 minutes at a 15% incline, followed by 3 miles on the bike.

You're probably referring to a "Ski Erg" which is similar to a rower.

I love to see folks getting fit, keep it up!

If you don't have one, I highly recommend a fitness tracker (I prefer Garmin products) so you can start seeing objective improvements to your health besides just weight loss and your time/distance increasing. I track my resting heart rate, HRV, sleep, pulse ox, and etc, and there is a clear correlation to working out and the numbers looking good.....and having a few drinks and the numbers looking terrible!

 

[Sasquatch]

You're probably referring to a "Ski Erg" which is similar to a rower.

I love to see folks getting fit, keep it up!

If you don't have one, I highly recommend a fitness tracker (I prefer Garmin products) so you can start seeing objective improvements to your health besides just weight loss and your time/distance increasing. I track my resting heart rate, HRV, sleep, pulse ox, and etc, and there is a clear correlation to working out and the numbers looking good.....and having a few drinks and the numbers looking terrible!

My wife bought me a smart watch last year for Christmas, been using it ever since. It's essentially a cheap Fit Bit - it tracks heart rate, sleep / wake, steps, etc. and synchs with an app on our phones to track all of those stats - I can see at a glance how much or how little sleep I got, how many times a night I'm waking up, resting heart rate, max heart rate and duration - its pretty spiffy. It also estimates calories burned during exercise / activity throughout the day - and it seems to be pretty much in synch with the calorie burn estimates on the machines at the gym - there's usually a slight discrepancy because if I hit the stationary bike, most of that isn't tracked as steps / movement unless I swing my arms at my sides vs holding the handles.

Today was day 11 - I set another modest record for me today in that I was able to sustain a 6mph run longer than I have before. Not super impressive pace for the athletes in the crowd, but for someone that's never been a runner, I'm stoked. I almost doubled what I could do at that pace little more than a week ago before feeling the need to slow down to 4.5. I also did just under 4.2 miles on the bike before going for 50 reps each on the chest press and weighted ab crunches. My legs were too jelly to hit the leg press machine today.

Modest wins are good for the spirit and I do generally feel better today than I did 11 days ago. Not saying its a huge difference, but I'm definitely feeling better.

 

[Sasquatch]

Day 12 was a treadmill and bike day. Ramped up from a walk to a jog to all out run for as long as I could. Hit my target heart rate and stayed there for a bit before switching to the bike to finish the session. Was a long day and I was already kinda pooped by the time we hit the gym but still managed a good 45 minute workout.

 

[leVieux]

Just got home from day seven of daily gym trips. Wife and I are going, with goal of going every day until work & school kick back in for me - then we'll be going on my days off. I'll be doing daily PT in school, so I'm not missing out on daily workouts anyway. Might seem crazy, doing daily exercise, but I've got some mandatory benchmarks I need to hit by December, and my ass has never been much of a runner - but I've *got* to run. Specifically, I've got to be able to run 300 meters in under 80 seconds, without dying. Since Texas has been parked in close orbit to the sun for the last three months, running outside without dying hasn't really been possible, so we went and got a Planet Fitness membership. I've also been working on rowing 500 and 2000 meters under times - my best 500 has been 1:55 right now, and my best 2k row has been 8:05 - I want to get those numbers down.

We've hit the gym every day straight for a week and I can honestly say that aside from general muscle soreness one gets from working out - I'm feeling good about it. I figured out exactly how fast I have to run to make that 300 meters in 80 seconds benchmark - which is 8.12mph roughly - so a few times I've pushed myself and managed to hit it every time. The last couple, I bumped the speed to 8.3mph, and today I hit that for a sustained 100 seconds - impressive for me. I'm not just focused on the sprints - I've actually been more endurance focused figuring the sprinting will come as I am able to sustain runs for longer. Four months of daily work outs should get me where I want to be.

Besides the treadmill I've been hitting the bike and doing at least a couple miles a session on it with medium-high resistance. I'm incorporating some weight machines in every few days right now - will probably do more weights as I get further into this but my number one focus right now is running / cardio. Hoping a side effect of the exercise will be shedding weight / building muscle, but honestly as long as I can make my run & row times, I could care less.

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Know the feelings; the P.T. ordered by my Surgeon @ U T starts tomorrow.

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