The Fitness Ninja

Very short entry today.  Just saying that instead of doing my Modified Angie, I opted instead to do the Cardio Power and Resistance that I was supposed to do yesterday.  This means the only workout I actually missed was the Angie… and I can tack that on at the end of the program.  I just didn’t want to work the chest and back muscles two days in a row (as C&B is what is on tap for tomorrow).  I did, however, also do Cardio Abs.  I figure working the abs two days in a row won’t be so bad.

Calories for today 1805… and that’s with me going out for Japanese tonight.  Man, I am really learning to love this SparkPeople calorie tracker site.

In other news, check this video out.  I’m part of the P90x fan page on Facebook and this was posted there.  Very inspiring.  I hope when the time comes that Eli will want to work out with me.  It’s a great way to bond I think.

Alright… I’m slowly putting things back in order.  AND, I’m in better spirits than I was on the weekend.  I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I may never get my old computer fixed and it’s time for a new one anyway (what with Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 on the way).  So my brother has helped me pick out some computer kits from Tiger Direct along with a new graphics card which I’ve been reading up on.  Should get it built within the coming month.  No rush as I am thoroughly distracted with Super Street Fighter 4 on the PS3 right now… so that along with Eli, work, looking up stuff for the computer, planning Eli’s Baptism and just maintaining the house has kept me pretty damn busy.

But fear not! I have not slacked on the workouts!  I had to rearrange the schedule around a bit this week due to taking my rest day on Sunday when I had my shit day.  So, yeah, I did Back & Biceps on Tuesday, Cardio Power yesterday and the Angie today.  I kinda liked the fact that I had two days in between Back & Biceps and Chest, Shoulders & Triceps…. my muscles were super sore and needed the extra recovery time.  Maybe next time I do a three month set up, I’ll place the recovery day in the middle of the week to facilitate more of this prolonged resting.  Mind you, today I’m still sore from Back & Biceps so I hope the modified Angie goes well.  Of all the P90x routines, B&B is the one I find the most strenuous.  Just too damn concentrated on one muscle and not enough recovery time.

The other thing I’ve been working on is revamping my nutritional plans so I can melt away these extra pounds I’ve accumulated a little more easily.  I’ve tried to keep the rules simple and easy to follow as I’ve read that small changes to the way you eat are often the ones you are most likely able to maintain.  So here they are:

1.  Stay away from the vending machine!  I’ve been able to resist the snack machine on the 2^nd floor of the building for quite some time but then I found my resolve waver over the last 2 months.  No more! I’ll try not to carry so much damn change on me all the time (not that that matters actually as this thing will take all sorts of bills).

2.  Do not eat from the group work table.  Seriously, with all the treats my co-workers keep putting on this thing, it’s become like a sugar / pastry buffet at times.  I’ll get my revenge though as I’m gonna drop some girl guide cookie bombs on it this weekend (my wife was obligated to buy them from our cute niece… but since she’s also on a fitness kick, no way we are gonna eat them – plus, they aren’t the chocolate covered mint variety! Haha.. j/k.).

3.  Do not eat past 9 PM.  This one was a rule I kept to for a long time but like so many other things that fell away with my complacency … it disappeared.  You might ask, “Why not 8?” It’s because I usually get home from the evening shift around 8:30-8:45 so I still need to eat dinner by then.  No way I’m gonna forego a meal (skipping meals is actually conducive to GAINING weight as it puts your body in starvation mode and lowers your metabolism).

4.  Limit myself to ONE granola bar per day.  I love granola… been having way too many of the bars though.  And that’s an easy way to pack on calories without noticing it as they are so small and easily eaten.

5.  Try to drink more water.   Not getting enough.

6.  Do not order desserts when eating out.  For some reason, I started doing this once I found out about the great mini dessert deal they had going at Kelsey’s Restaurant.  It’s like 3 samplers for $5.99 but the sampler is basically the size of a full on serving. UGH. NO MORE!

7.  Do not go up for second servings. 1 meal = 1 serving.  This one is hard to stick to as I can get so hungry after work.

8.  Do not gorge myself at my mother’s house.  And I used to wonder why I gained so much weight while living there.  It’s like rooming at a Costco / Convenience store hybrid.

Alright, that’s it for now! Hope your nutrition / fitness goals are going well!  And if not… then do something to get them back on track.

Life’s too short not being the person you want to be.

Peace!

Alright… foot has basically healed up to the point that I can do workouts on them again.  So today I decided to tackle the workout I missed Thursday of last week: Core Cardio & Balance.  I felt like I couldn’t give it my all because I was forced to do it on the main floor of my dad’s house which is an extension over his garage.  Basically, whenever I did any high knee jumps the entire  time, the whole house would shake because the extension would shake.  So I was trying to land as softly as possible.  It slowed those sequences terribly.  However, I did get through it and that’s the important thing.  On top of the workout, I also went on a brisk 20 minute walk today plus about 2 hours of casual strolling around the mall.  On the downside, I had a huge Easter dinner at Red Lobster with my family.  I don’t even want to know how many calories were in the lobster tail and shrimp I ate…. ugh.  I wouldn’t be surprised if I ballooned a few pounds at the end of this month (plus my dad’s house is just as bad as my mom’s house for having all sorts of snacks around it… like just bags of chocolate plopped literally in baskets all over the main floor and not just during Easter but ALL YEAR ROUND!).

In light of not wanting the house to collapse, I am going to change the schedule for this week.  Tomorrow I’ll tackle the low impact Max Recovery workout.  Then, upon getting back to my house I’ll do in the following order: Chest & Back on Monday, Max Cardio Conditioning on Tuesday, Shoulders & Arms on Wednesday, Plyometric Cardio Circuit on Thursday and then Modified Angie on Friday.  That will set me up well going into the first recovery week.

I also hope that this cold I am nursing does not get any worse as I do not want to postpone any of the workouts.

Oh, in other news, I’m seriously thinking of picking up a 25 lb kettlebell from Target here in the states for 60 bucks.  I don’t know if that’s actually a good deal or whether it is a good weight to start out with so I got to do some research tonight.  Hopefully it is as I  would really like to mix things up come next 3 month round with KB work.

Alright enough of my rambling! Peace!

My brother is trying an experiment with this blog.  He’s convinced me to move to a domain he’s registered and hopes to make some money with ads on a panel on the side.  Hope it works out… and that the advertisements aren’t too intrusive.  I dunno.  If it doesn’t work I guess I can always go back to this service.  It isn’t really a big deal to me but I think he’s using this as a kind of experiment to see how feasible it is.

As for my workout today, it went well.  I was super tired going into it because the baby was kinda extra fussy today.  Add to that the fact I am trying to keep up with housework and chores along with cleaning up after just baby stuff, I feel kinda run down by the afternoon.  Thank God my wife is here to help share the load (she’s amazing) as it makes things bearable (gotta give props to all those single parents out there doing it on their own).

I don’t really have much to say as I’m kinda half asleep right now.  I’ll check back in again tomorrow.

PS In getting back in my grease the groove system, I pumped out 75 weighted pull / chin ups yesterday (that’s total, not each).  Today I think I’ll only get 30-45 as I am so out of it.

Gotta say this about the “grease the groove” system… you need to work in rest days for it.  Its strength is in its simple principle:  work out with low reps, high intensity, strict form and never to failure over and over again throughout the day.  Problem is you can still hurt yourself if you overdo it.  This might seem obvious, but I find the soreness creeps in very slowly because the sets are set so far apart from one another (like there might be an hour between my sets or just a couple of minutes depending on when I pass by the door with the chin up bar hooked up to it).  However, the day after you can really feel it if you pushed yourself to say over a hundred weighted chin ups / pull ups during the previous day.

I guess the reason I bring this up is because I can feel the soreness from the chinups in my shoulders and back (particularly near the lower base of my left shoulder blade).  I think I will refrain from the system on my rest days (Fridays) and probably only implement it every other day during rest week.

As for Insanity, I did my duty completing Cardio Power & Resistance late this afternoon when I came home from work.  One thing I will say about this program, as much as I love it, I could not see doing the full set over and over again during the course of a year.  It’s just too high impact and I worry about the wear and tear it puts on my joints despite constantly trying to land “like a cat” whenever I do heavy jump sets.  I can feel a slight twinge sometimes in my right knee… the same twinge I would sometimes feel after a long strenous run.  I’ll finish this system once as it was intended  just to say I did it then heavily modify it in future iterations.

Prior to my Insanity routine today I did a suitcase carry (that’s walking with a heavy load in one arm which you switch over to the other arm when you get tired) for about 20 minutes as I hauled a large heavy bag of groceries from the bus stop to my house.  Why did I do this? It’s because I take the bus to and from work and decided to stop by and pick up some essentials at the local Metro Food Mart after my shift was done.  Man… cans of pork and beans and soup and boxes of cereal never felt so damn heavy.  (Interestingly, if you carry a heavy load in each arm I believe it’s called a “farmer’s walk”.)

In other news, we gave Elias his first bath today.  Seems water is his kryptonite as he screamed like the devil were out to get him during the entire ordeal.  Poor guy.  But he has to be cleaned! We put a premium on hygeine in this household!

In other “other” news, some of my friends are hopping back on the fitness bandwagon after taking a small break over the course of the winter holidays when they went away on vacation in the Philippines.  In addition to attending the gym again, I think they are hoping to follow this “meal plan“.  I hope it works out for them!

On January 18th, 2010 9:57 PM, Elias (“ee-Lye-us”) was born. 47 cm. 4 pounds, 14 ounces.  He’s a wee little guy.

Needless to say, it was a crazy day and night.  Barely got any sleep as the nurses kept going in and out of the room my wife and I were in.  Everything is fine though (wife is VERY uncomfortable as it was a c-section birth).

Went home tonight (the 19th) as I have some paper work and errands to do on behalf of the wife / family.  I’ll head back in early tomorrow morning to spend the day with the wife and child and probably sleep over again at the hospital.  If everything works out, we should all be home by Thursday.

In any case, upon getting home tonight… yes, I tackled Cardio Power and Resistance then took a shower and kept puttering around trying to get things ready for the baby.  Now, I am ready to collapse! Peace, see you in a day or two!

As the title indicates, I skipped my rest day today and plowed headlong into Cardio Power & Resistance.  Like I said yesterday, I have a feeling I’m going to be missing a few days of working out next week so I’m trying my best to get ahead of the curve.  What will take real dedication is to see if I can get up at 6 in the morning on Monday to workout before heading to the hospital.  If you’ve read some of my previous posts…. you know I have one hell of a time getting up early to exercise (I’d rather do it late at night than early…).

Today’s workout was pretty good.  I had dinner two hours prior to it but I didn’t totally stuff myself so I didn’t have such as sick feeling getting through the routine.  Dinner was basically a hamburger.  My wife ordered fries and I think I had 8 of her fries plus 4 sips of her Coke.  I’m doing my best to stay away from carbonated drinks and juices this year, and I didn’t feel like paying for a full diet soda when I knew all I needed was a few sips to tide me over before I got home to my precious Brita water filter (damn I love that thing… I never really used one till last year opting instead to stock up on bottled water whenever it was on sale at the grocery.  Then I realized [so late in the game I know], how much cheaper it was to buy filters in bulk from Costco and how much more environmentally friendly it was too).

Side note: The reason I don’t record on this blog everything I ate for the day is that it’s just too time consuming and strenous to try and remember it all at the end of the day.  Basically, whenever I eat anything in the day I try to go through my ‘Am I really hungry?’ and ‘Is this healthy for me?’ check.  Sometimes I fail, but I find more often than not I’m making pretty good choices thus far this year.  Tomorrow should be a real test as my wife and I are going to my mom’s for a baby shower and I’ve got her kick ass homecooking to contend with.  UGH!

But as I was saying… the workout was pretty good.  Now that I’ve been through it once, I kinda know what to expect.  However, I still keep a close eye on Shaun T. as I have some doubts as to the exact form he uses on some of the jumps (i.e. like which exercises require you to full touch the ground vs. just needing to squat back).  I’m dreading tomorrow’s pure cardio as of all the ones I’ve done so far, I think that routine is the hardest.

I really need to get a headband and that strap for my glasses.  Damn thing nearly flew off my face today and into the TV doing one of the explosive jumping sequences.

Oh and one more thing… my “grease the groove” system is going well.  Doing sets of 5 pull ups and chin ups whenever I go upstairs.  Now, I’ve found an old back pack and have thrown a 10 pound plate (hope to up it to 20) in there.  I sling on the pack whenever doing bar work to increase my strength.  Remember: Perfect form and always FRESH… never to FATIGUE!

Whew.  Man, these exercises don’t get any easier.  Even the warm ups are killer.  My calves were pretty damn sore from yesterday’s workout.  Thankfully, I was out for most of today with the wife going to different doctors and the hospital to have the baby checked up on.  Thus, I was able to stretch out those muscles and by the time I decided to tackle today’s routine at 8:30 PM, alot of the soreness had dissipated.  To our surprise (well, my surprise at least), the doctor said he would induce the baby early next week.  Very exciting!  Life around here is gonna change drasitcally.  I hope I can keep up with Insanity despite all the night feedings, lack of sleep, etc.  I’ll do my best in any case.

I love Insanity thus far and it’s intensity.  Strange thing though is I feel like the parts of my body that get the most benefit are the legs, calves and lungs.   Although this routine was billed as cardio power and resistance, I really didn’t see the ‘resistance’ part except on the few occassions that the sets included push up like exercises.  It might change later on, but I’m glad I’m at least keeping up with my own pull up program throughout Insanity.  I’d hate to come out at the end of these two months with awesome lower body muscles but an atrophied upper body.  Hahaha… that would be pretty freaky looking.

In any case, I had the blueberry EAS whey protein drink after the workout.  Again, not bad.  Very sweet and tart.  I only had half the bottle (21g of protein) mixed with water.  I figure I’ll get more mileage out of it this way with the other half saved for tomorrow.