The Fitness Ninja

Almost didn’t do the workout today.  Didn’t sleep too well last night for whatever reason (tummy was doing barrel rolls) so today felt like I was walking through mud the entire time.  When I got home, I spent about an hour looking after the baby as my wife packed for their trip to the lake.  It’s Canada Day tomorrow so that means a day off (what’s weird is this year Canada Day falls on a Thursday but Friday is still a regular work day) and my wife decided to head off along with her sister to their trailer in cottage country.  So… I GET 2 WHOLE DAYS OFF TO MYSELF?

Ah… what to do with all this freedom?!?!?!

I know… I need to clean the frikkin’ house.  Seriously.  I can finally get some needed chores done out of the way.  Man, being a grown-up really sucks sometimes.

Where was I? Oh yeah… well, I felt so drained I decided to take an hour nap.  Once that was done, onto more snuggling with the baby before he leaves.  7 o’clock rolled around and they took off.  I puttered and cleaned up some minor messes around the home then decided to clamp down and get Burn Circuit 3 outta the way.

It was ONLY 32 MIN.!!! Man, I love these short workouts.  Although, I have to admit I think Chalene has an imbalanced obsession with shoulders.  Seemed like the entire routine today was shoulders.  Lotta flies and presses in that half hour. Got a decent sweat on as I put my dumbells back up to 30s for a number of the exercises.  12 reps be damned.  I’m happy with 8 super hard reps… try to push to 10 when I can.  What drives me nuts is when there is a balance component to any of the exercises as I’m not the most co-ordinated lifter (despite having months of Yoga X under myb belt you’d think my sense of equililbrium would be better… IT’S NOT!) and I find myself toppling over now and again and having to re-do the rep.

On a side note, I wish she had named the dvds akin to the P90x titling system so you know exactly what parts of the body the routine is supposed to target.  I’ll just have to pay attention and write it down next time.

On another side note, I’m seriously considering starting my grease the groove program again while doing Chalene as I do not want to lax on pull up work.  However, I think that in addition to the weighted pull ups (gotta move that dip belt up into the 25 pound zone [up from 20]) I will pair every 5 reps on the bar with 10 push ups of some sort or another.  Gotta make a chart so I can track all this.

Calories for today: 1810… could have been a lot lower but I decided to treat myself to half a cup of delicious frozen yogurt (mocca flavour) and 1/3 a cup of granola.  MMMMMMM… that shit is the bomb.

This is a new song I’ve added to my running list.  Peace!

You know… to be totally honest with you, I went into Chalean Extreme thinking this would be a cake walk as I’ve done both P90x and Insanity (the programs Beachbody seems to push as ‘hardcore’).  I thought “This is the girls’ routine… piece of cake”.   Yet, I find my ass being kicked by Chalene Johnson with light weights no less.  Those high rep – low weight sets really set the burn in your arms!

Mind you, I still contend that CE does not break me down as badly as Insanity or P90x usually does.

Today, I did the Burn Intervals and Ab Burner routines.  Burn Intervals is an interesting program as it’s the first cardio centric video I’ve seen from Beachbody that makes you use weights as a form of recovery period from the aerobic portion of the dvd (neither Plyo X nor any of the Insanity routines use weights).  It’s actually a very thoughtful move on Chalene’s part (if she was the one who planned it that way) as it means you are ALWAYS doing something throughout the video.  There is no 30 second breaks to recover.

In many ways, this routine reminds me of my favourite P90x dvd, Core Synergistics as it has a nice blend of both cardio and light weight work… and it feels like you work every part of the body.

Ab Burner is nice in that compared to Cardio Abs and ARX, it’s ONLY 10 MINUTES LONG!! WOOT! Having said that it is still a pretty trying 10 minutes.  I like the fact that Chalene has you doing honest-to-God crunches.  I haven’t seen those in either ARX or Cardio Abs… and yet they give you a pretty good burn.  Almost seemed like crunches were skipped over by Shaun T. and Tony for ‘fancier’ moves or variations thereof.  Add in a twist and a chop to the crunches to work the obliques and it felt like my core was on fire.

On top of both routines, I decided to run home tonight.  The weather was good.  Nice and cool and there was a decent headwind going against me for a little bit of added resistance.  Got home in about 40 minutes which is par for the course.  Still working on my Chi-Running form to make the pacing of my runs easier.

As for nutrition… eating overall today was good.  I did cave into some cravings and had 2 chocolate chip cookies at work that someone baked.  Calories for today: 1670 (that’s not including what I burned off via all the exercise).

Alright peace out! Hope you’ve had a great day!

I have to get used to this whole lifting slow thing.  I’m used to going at a medium / regular pace or explosive when going up in a lift.  And to be honest, Chalene’s advice to lift slow in order to build muscle seems contrary to everything I’ve ever read in Men’s Health and elswhere (not that that’s saying much MH is notorious for giving contradictory advice depending on who they cite from issue to issue).  Or … it could be that neither tempo is right and that each benefits a different factor in the muscle?

I dunno.  I have to research this more.   This article is an interesting read on the topic along with this thread.

Seems like slow lifts = more size but faster lifts = greater strength gains.

Regardless, I do feel a wicked burn during Chalene’s workout because my arms get so damn stressed out by taking like 4 seconds to lift and lower anything.  It got to the point that I had to lower my weight back down to 25s during the arm work because they were just *burning*.

At least tomorrow is a cardio / abs day Chalene style.  Looking forward to that because there is no way in hell I can see her and her posse getting as crazy as Shaun T. (or even Tony and his Plyo X).

Alright, peace out!

Calories for today: 1858 (but I spent 3 hours in the mall walking around and carrying the baby / pushing the stroller in addition to the workout… that’s got to count for something right? RIGHT!?!?!).

PS Chalene’s younger sister is totally hawt.  Chalene is too but in a cougerish way.

Alright so this is coming a day late and a short one but I figure I would write a few words on it.  Strange but the second day of the Chalene Extreme program is actually a rest day!  At first I thought “WTF?” but then the more I pondered its placement the more it kinda made sense.  One of the key complaints I’ve seen pop up about P90x is how SORE people are after the first day, then they’re made to roll right into Plyo X on the second day.  If there were a rest day on the second day that allows people (especially those who are new to this or are coming back from a “de-conditioned” state) to recover a bit and be a bit fresher for the third day.

Me? I did Max Cardio Conditioning in place of the recovery period.  This is because a) I wanted to keep up with a 6 day program and b) I didn’t feel I needed the rest.  Actually coming off of almost 2 weeks of recovery routines, I’m feeling pretty damn fresh.  Also, I didn’t feel like Chalean’s workout really taxed me on that first day.

Calories consumed for yesterday: 1811 (my range is 1500-1850).

Alright, peace out… be back later!

Alright.  So I’m gonna see what this Chalean Extreme is about.  I did the first workout of the 3 month program.  “Burn Phase 1″ I believe it’s called.  It’s… interesting to say the least.  Very different in format and execution than either P90x or Insanity.  Feels less intense than either program as I don’t feel totally burned down by it the same way I do after Tony or Shaun work me over.  What’s interesting is Chalean’s focus on slow lifting and moving.  I don’t know how effective this will be in building muscle but it sure does make every move feel harder by virtue of the fact that everything lasts longer and you can’t use momentum to lift the weight.  I still got a decent sweat by the end of 35 min.

Other initial thoughts… I don’t like their timer bar.  It’s to hard to see the number of reps left.  Also, that’s a terrible unit to gauge an exercise.  Why use a rep count when different people will be hitting different rep counts depending on their abilities?  I didn’t even pay attention  to how many reps I did of each move as I was too focused on following Chalean’s instructions on proper form.

Speaking of which, I was pretty clumsy during the workout as I didn’t really know what to expect.  This is normal.  I was the same way when starting both P90x and Insanity.  Trying to look at the television at the same time I’m moving the dumbells isn’t really conducive to good balance.

Alright, peace out!

Calories for today: 1202 (kinda low… gotta eat something else).

Alright so here I am at the start of a new excercise 3-month cycle.  I have to re-commit to getting fitter.  I hate going through all these months of work without showing any significant changes in my body’s constitution for it.  So here goes… I will do my best to track all my food via SparkPeople over the next three months and post the daily calorie count on my blog.  Not that anyone will care but at least it makes me accountable to tracking my food / calorie intake.  And isn’t that the whole reason I started this blog in the first place? To make me accountable to my fit self?

I hope I can stick with this promise.  I’ve tried unsuccessfully before in the past to do this, but I think this time being aided by SparkPeople I may actually be able to meet my nutrition goals.

What else? I hope to get more sleep and not stay up so late reading / playing Catan or other games.  This I think will be a hard one to follow as I’m naturally a night owl.

Eat more protein / protein supplements.

I’ll add more as I think of them.

But this leads me then my next post…

Well, today was kind of strange as the wife and I took Eli to Mt. Sinai hospital.  We got up super early (like 4:50) to get ready and feed Eli.  He wasn’t allowed to 2 hours prior to the test and we knew that if we didn’t feed him that he would go absolutely nuts.  Everything went well except the tonne of traffic we had to face due to the downpour on the way there.  Thankfully, there were no incidents with protestors or police in Toronto (there were a lot of them in Queen’s Park which we could see from the hospital).

The test took 2 hours and at the end of it we had a better understanding of my son and his deafness.

He has nerve damage in his left ear which has resulted in moderate to severe deafness.  He’s actually not totally deaf in that ear but it takes a pretty loud sound in order to get through to him via that channel.  Interestingly, the nurse who was helping us said our son had better hearing than her as she had *complete* deafness in one of her ears.  She said the condition did not slow her down in any way.  The doctor also tending to us was also partially deaf and you would have never known it unless they told you.  Their speech was impeccable and they functioned like anyone else.

This gives me a great deal of comfort as I thought Eli would be totally deaf on that side.  The doctor said to help alleviate matters we could opt for a hearing aid but she noted that most people with one good ear often don’t get hearing aids as they can function perfectly fine without them.

God has blessed us.

After the appointment, the family and I went back to Yorkdale mall to eat and window shop.  My nutrition today was absolute garbage as I waited out the appointment at a Tim Horton’s coffee shop.  As a result, I had half a box of Timbits, a large oatmeal cookie, a small chocolate milk, a glass of juice and a muffin.  UGH! I haven’t snacked that much in a coffee shop in ages.  To make matters worse, once we got to the mall, to celebrate the “good” news we ate out at Pickle Barrel.  I had a veggie burger along with a green salad and balsamic vinagrette.  Good choices huh?

Well I caved in for dessert and split with the wife a large Skor sundae! It was made with frozen vanilla yogurt and whip cream along with chocolate sauce. OMG…soooo good.  But sooooo bad for you.

I promise I’ll get back to eating well tomorrow.

Dinner was light: yogurt with half cup of granola and strawberries.  Dessert was 3 small boxes of raisins.

The kicker is… I didn’t work out today either.  I just did yard work for 2 hours or so.  It was strenuous… but not as balls out exhausting as any of the workouts with Tony or Shaun.

Tomorrow… tomorrow.  I promise I’ll take better care of myself tomorrow!

PS I’ve become addicted to Catan! This is the greatest game since Street Fighter or World of Warcraft.

Alright… almost didn’t do a workout today.  It’s terrible being aimless with no schedule.  At least when I was following the hybrid I always knew what to do on any given day.  Now, I second guess myself.  I think “Hmmm… maybe I’ve been doing too much cardio lately… should do some weight work… oh but that Stretch X looks appealing cause it’s DEAD EASY”.  Such are the thoughts that run through my head.

In the end, since I wasn’t up for any bar work, I opted for Shoulders & Arms.  Along with Chest, Tricep and Shoulders this is a nice workout in that it just requires the dumbells.  Very straight forward and basic.  To add a bit of a change, though, I decided to up the weights for most of my sets by 5 pounds.  This change, as to be expected, caused me to decrease most of the reps down to 5-6, sometimes 8 if I was lucky.  Also, during the tricep dips, rather than just doing them on a chair with my feet on the floor, I put two chairs together and did them while suspended between the chairs’ backs.

All in all, a pretty good workout.  My arms were pretty burned down by the end of it.  To celebrate, I ate THREE CUPS OF ICE CREAM!

HAHA! Just kidding.  I had my protein drink instead.

Got to go to bed early tonight as tomorrow the wife and I take Eli down to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto to get his hearing assessed.  Man, I am a bit worried not just because of the nature of the test and we find out the degree of his deafness but the damn G20 is setting up right now.  What that means is there is a ton of protesters and police down there.  UGH.  Thankfully, we go super early in the morning and we should be out of there hopefully by 1PM.

Alrighty, peace out! Keep eating right and working on those fitness goals!

Well, today was the first “free” day I’ve had since finishing the P90x / Insanity hybrid program.  So… to celebrate I did my favourite workout: Core Synergistics.  Got a good sweat on but skipped the cool down stretches.  Took some update pictures of me at 139 after the hybrid.  To be completely honest, I’m disappointed in how little my gains were.  I think the past three months have been more about maintenance than anything else (although, I do notice it’s a bit easier to lift the 30 lb dumbells / 20 lb dip belt now more than it was a the start which means I have gotten a bit stronger).

My goals were to hopefully get a bit bigger and more defined.  I would have prefered the latter more than the former.  In reality I got very little of either one.  To make matters worse, I KNOW WHY the gains are so little: it’s because of my lack of discipline with regards to my nutrition.  You cannot exercise your way to a 6-pack.  The abs are built in the kitchen.  This probably sounds all shallow and such because there is more to exercise and nutrition than looking good.  I know this.  But the vain side of me wants that end result in addition to being fit / healthy.

Hahaha…  the character Lester Burnham from American Beauty said it best when asked what he wanted from learning how to exercise: “I just want to look good naked.”

So here they are:

C’est la vie.  The good thing about fitness is that it’s a life long journey.  Although everything I’ve done is in 3 month blocks (with the exception of classic Insanity), I don’t plan on stopping my workouts just because this hybrid program is done.  And really, that’s the next goal — figuring out where to go from here.  I’ve said it before in previous posts but I really have to think long and hard about what my options are next as I’m getting bored with P90x / Insanity.  And boredom is a big reason why some people stumble in their fitness so I have to be extra vigilant in fighting it off.

I also hope to get a quick mini review up of the hybrid I just did some time this week so keep an eye out for that.

Oh…. one more thing.  This is a picture of Eli at his baptism this past week.  That little boy is my world.

It’s 10:30 PM and I am finally finished the hybrid!! Woot! Time to take a shower and hit the sack!