The Fitness Ninja

Oooh boy.  Still going strong.  I can see the end to this hybrid program so I don’t want to stop now… and boy on some days do I want to stop, feeling stretched so thin between the baby, work and just keeping things maintained around the home.  I can see now why so many people let exercise slide by once they have a family.  It just feels like too much to stay on top of.

But enough of my belly-aching.

In any case, I was able to stay on track all throughout last week.  I finished strong with the Angie on Wednesday and Plyometric Cardio Circuit along with ARX on Thursday.  I actually split my time during the Angie and multi-tasked between working out and cleaning all three bathrooms in the house.  I’m a champ! Hahaha!  (Don’t worry, though, I made sure to disinfect the handles of all the equipment I used too).  And yesterday, I finally had a true rest day doing nothing.  It was glorious as it feels like forever since I’ve had one that wasn’t forced on me due to sickness or something else.  Felt good.  All I focused on was eating right (which I did… then dutifully recorded it on SparkPeople).

Today, I knocked Chest, Shoulders and Triceps out of the way early in the morning along with Cardio Abs.  Feels good to do it in the morning so I don’t have to worry or think about it for the rest of the day.  Wish I had the gumption and discipline to ALWAYS do it in the morning.

In Eli news… we finally got the little guy to a pediatrician.  And boy, are we glad we did.  Apparently, the eczema medications given to him by our family doctor were the wrong ones as they weren’t meant for babies.  My wife was furious when she learned this.  Needless to say we are looking for a new family doctor.  The pediatrician also prescribed a new bathing / cream regimen for the baby along with scheduling an ultrasound in order to check up on a soft spot on top of Eli’s head.  On top of this, the city hospital called and arranged his final hearing test to determine the degree of his deafness in one ear and, hopefully, what can be done about it.  What sucks is that the appointment is in Toronto during the upcoming G20 summit.  UGH!! All those agitated protesters and police… there’s no way I’m letting my wife and son go down there alone so I’ve requested the day off from work to accompany them.  Hopefully, it’s a smooth trip.

What freaks me out is this thing that the Toronto Police have acquired:

Friggin’ sound cannon.  Capable of causing hearing loss in order to deter violent protestors.

…

I got to keep a positive outlook.  Things could be so much worse (they could be better too… but I take solace in the fact that we’re doing everything we can to help him).

Alright, peace out.

Still staying strong… still doing fairly well on the whole new nutrition thing and of course keeping on top of the hybrid.

Except for last night as it I had a fight night party at my house for the Mosley / Mayweather super bout.  Had pizza and ribs and brownies and all sorts of crazy goodness.  Not gonna feel bad about it as that was my one splurge and I’m gonna keep going hard on the weight training and cardio.

Speaking of which, things this past week have been fairly smooth.  Because of the hiccup early last week, I had to re-adjust my schedule.  The Angie on Thursday saw me making a bit of progress.  Instead of doing my bar work in sets of 5 reps / 3 then 2 (totaling 10), I was able to do 7 then 3.  I’m hoping to be able to do 10 straight every time at some point without those 15-20 second breaks, and I know it will come but I just have to inch along in baby steps.  Friday saw me doing Core Cardio and Balance.  Nothing new to report there.  Thankfully, it’s a fairly light routine.

Yesterday, I almost did not do Chest, Triceps and Shoulders as I was pressed for time and pretty beat up after a day at work.  I vacuumed the house, puttered around cleaning up some clutter and spent some time with Eli so his mom could get a bit of respite.  In the end though, with only an hour before people were supposed to arrive for the party, I pulled it out and did it.  Interestingly, I did not follow along with Tony at all.  I did at the start of the dvd but whenever he decided to take a 30 seconds or so to yack about something absurd, I just moved onto a move I was familiar with, did the 8-10 reps and kept on going.  At times, what I was doing would intersect with the video but most of the time it was just on as background noise.  The end result was that I was able to complete the workout (sans the warm up and cool down) in under 40 min.  Not bad at all!  I did not, however, do Cardio Abs as I was already pressed for time.  I’ll tack that on to Max Cardio Conditioning today.  Thankfully, that’s a short Max workout relative to all the others and it shouldn’t be too hard (I say that now but I know I’ll be dying at the end of the workout hehehehe…).

Side note:  Thank God for Colleen.  I would not know how I could get by without her in raising Eli as I honestly think she does the bulk of his caregiving what with me needing to go to work.  Gotta give props to all those single parents out there who have done it on their own as I can only begin to imagine how completely draining (emotionally / physically) it must be.  Sometimes, in the haze of sleep deprivation, I wonder how WE are even doing it.  The answer is… because we must; it’s because we love the little guy more than our own lives.  That’s why we do it.

As for the party last night, it was pretty awesome.  Good friends came over, lotsa good food and laughter.  The fight itself was kinda “meh”.  Mayweather was the favourite going in and in true “Money” fashion he was as slick as ever.  I can’t stand the guy’s persona and all the shit he talks, but at least no one can ever blame him for not being able to back it all up.  He dominated Mosely after the 2^nd round.  Mosely looked jittery during the entire fight, like he was terrified to let his hands go.  If he just fought and roped Mayweather into a brawl rather than a boxing match (which he was able to do on a few occasions in some rounds), I think he would have fared better.  But Mayweather’s speed,  defense and evasiveness is legendary and it dominated Sugar Shane.  Too bad.  I like Shane but at 38 I think it’s time for him to toss in his gloves.

Now, they just need to come to some compromise with Manny and the dream match will be set.  As much as I love Pac, Mayweather will undoubtedly be the toughest test he’ll face.  When, and if, he overcomes Money he should just retire and enjoy his legacy (not to mention his millions up millions of dollars).

Prior to the fight, my brother brought over the previous episodes of HBO’s 24 / 7.  In true form, awesome, awesome music in there.  I leave you with this track from Eminem’s coming album. Gotta get this on the iPod for my running.

Peace!

Everything feels like it’s been out of whack for the past few days and that’s why I’ve been away from the blog.  I don’t even know where to begin really.  My head feels like it’s spinning from all these minor (and a few major) nuisances in my life.  Things like I feel I have no control over (and yet I probably do).

This was supposed to be a terrific weekend as I had Saturday off from work and the weather forecast was pretty good.  To be honest I don’t remember much from Saturday other than the wife, Eli and I went over to my mom’s house to have dinner with my parents as my dad was up visiting from Rochester.  As usual I stuffed my face with all the snacks lying around my mom’s house (she buys them in bulk at Costco I think) and her home cooked meal.  We got home late, around 10, but I was determined not to deviate off my schedule so down I went to the basement to knock out Chest, Triceps & Shoulders.  I was dead tired and sleepy going into it, but as usual once I got going things perked up.  I fell short a rep here and there on some of the sets, but it wasn’t too bad considering how tired I was.  The weights were pretty much unchanged from last week’s attempt.  Amazing how difficult any straight arm exercise can be even with something as light as 5 or 10 pound dumbbells.  Tony’s right in the sense that you don’t really need much more than that to feel the burn.

Sunday is when a lot of my real troubles began.  I think it was actually rooted in a discussion on Saturday night when the family was talking about HD TV and getting a HD box for the cable service we have.  I’m not a TV watcher at all preferring to get all my entertainment from the internet.  My wife, however, has a lot of shows she loves to watch.  Plus, there was the argument that our nice 48 inch HDTV which we bought a couple of years ago was wasting away in the basement as all it was used for was occasional gaming and the daily use of exercise DVDs.   So we decided on Sunday to overhaul much of the furniture in the living room and basement.  The wife and I carted everything back and forth to make space for the TV, I hooked up the HD box we got from Best Buy and then lugged the SUPER HEAVY OLD SCHOOL TUBE TV to the basement.  Fucker’s only 27 inches but I swear that thing is a 150 pounds.  It is BRUTAL to pick up.

Here’s the horrible part.  In moving all the electronics around downstairs and upstairs, I did something to FRY my desktop.  It would be too long a write up to tell you all the diagnostics and attempts I have made to get it fixed (and not that anyone would care), but suffice it to say I think the thing is totally screwed.  I can’t even get it to run in safe mode anymore and on the few occasions I can actually get it into Windows, I get hit almost immediately with a blue screen of death.  Reading up on the symptoms, I seriously think it has something to do with the memory.  I opened up the case and swapped some of the RAM from one slot to the other (I read on a site that might help *shrug*) but nothing has changed.  Friggin’ drives me nuts.  I was hoping to get a lot more use out of that computer.  Worst of all, the hard drive has a TONNE of files I’ve accumulated over the 5 years I’ve owned it (music, games, movies, documents, comics, anime, etc.).  Ironic thing is, I kept telling myself at the start of this year that I would purchase an external drive to back it all up at some point, using the Best Buy gift certificates I got from my birthday and Christmas to pay for it (these went instead to getting the HD box I don’t really care too much for).  Do I sound bitter? Yeah, I guess there’s a little bit of that in there too.  Last year I bought a stereo with the Best Buy gift certificates I accumulated.  A stereo I hardly use as I just plug into the iPod or laptop when I want to listen to music.

*Pounds head into desk.*

I was so upset and tired from trying for hours to get the computer fixed that I didn’t do Max Interval Plyo yesterday.  Felt shitty for not doing it, but already felt shitty from the computer thing so… *shrug* it wouldn’t have changed anything I guess.

To add insult to injury, for some reason I was compelled this morning to weigh myself.  I haven’t done that in a while and figured I should.

143 lbs.

FUCK.  I haven’t been in the 140s in I don’t know how long.  I was so pissed off… but in a way I kinda expected it.  Despite all the exercise I’ve been doing, I’ve been feeling a touch more sluggish recently during some of the routines and it’s because of this bit of extra junk in my trunk I think.  I can feel it around my abdomen.  But that’s me to a ‘T’… I sabotage all the hard work I do because I can’t resist friggin’ all the chocolate Easter eggs at work!  I’ve been opting for more desserts after eating out, pig out at my mom’s house whenever I go there, and I snack throughout the day at times I know I shouldn’t be (and when I’m not even necessarily hungry).

So… what am I going to do about it?  That’s a good question.  I hope to curb my eating but I need to set up a plan.  I’m too tired to write it out right now… I’ll list some of the pointers tomorrow.  But here is the end goal:

I want to be back at 135 by the time my son is baptized on June 20 and all the relatives are around.  That’s roughly a little under 2 months from now.  Gonna weigh myself once at the end of each week in order to keep a sharp eye on my eating patterns and goal.

Because my computer was fried, the wife and I left Eli with my mom and went shopping this afternoon for a) a small computer desk to fit into the living room and b) a new desktop computer.  Didn’t get either as a) Ikea had nothing we liked or would fit our budget / living space and b) my brother has found a better model to buy regarding the computer than what I had initially found.  Actually, he found a model at the store I was at but I didn’t have the details and want to look it over before committing to a purchase (as I’ll be out like a 1000 bucks for it).  Thank God he knows about computers as I can just go to him when I find my own understanding is lacking.

I got home and tackled my Max Interval Plyo.  Had to keep taking breaks through it as I felt I was just burnt out from everything that happened this weekend.  I’m glad I only have to that workout once per phase during this hybrid as I hate it with a passion.

There was tonnes of other small annoying shit that happened as well but I don’t want to recount those as I’m already starting to get pissed off again just writing all this (i.e. not being able to work out comfortably in the basement as everything had been moved around and the system I regularly use for working out was now gone).

I hope that whomever you are, you had a much more satisfying weekend than I did.  I also hope I get into better spirits as the week goes on.

Shit… just looked at all I wrote… sorry for the long as rant.

Wow…  I haven’t done Chest, Shoulders & Triceps in ages and I did this workout on Saturday night after my shift at work.  I remember starting Phase 2 back in November and realizing how much tougher the routines seemed over the Phase 1 P90x stuff.  It’s still brutally hard even now.  I find a lot of the push up moves I do falling between the ranges of 15-20 (with the exception of 1-handers which I can only do 10 of each side) and on this first ‘refresher’ day I decided to opt for weights in between 10-20 pounds mostly (10 for a lot of the straight arm stuff, using 30s for presses).  It was a barn burner and I felt sore in my chest and triceps throughout the today.

Speaking of which, most of today was spent lethargically travelling in the car.  See, a very close friend of ours asked us to be the godparents of her second daughter (we were, incidentally, also the godparents of their first daughter).  Thing is, she lives about 2 hours away.  The service was at 11, we needed to get there by 10:30 in order to talk to the minister about god-parenting stuff so we took off at 8 just in case we met with traffic.  Oh jeez I was beat as  I decided to do all the evening feeds last night as my wife was going to do the driving in the morning (figure she needed to be alert).  I was nodding off in the car on both the ride there and back…

Side note: regardless of how tired I feel, I refuse to sleep while someone is driving.  I have this weird fear that if I fall asleep, I won’t be “ready” for an accident if it happens.  Totally illogical I know as whether or not I am nodding off (barely aware of anything happening around me anyways) or if I am fully awake, I doubt I will ever be ready for the split second it takes for an accident to happen.  I think part of this stems from all the years my dad drove our family around.  The guy is notorious for not checking his blind spots.  He’s never gotten us in an accident but man oh man we’ve had some close calls.  To this day, whenever I am in the passenger’s seat I still double check the blind spot for whomever is driving when they change lanes.  That’s how paranoid my dad’s driving has made me about being in a car.

Where was I? Oh yeah, we got to the Church in plenty of time but it turned out we didn’t even need to speak to the minister.  Strangely, we weren’t even mentioned as godparents throughout the entire service.  It was a United Church (my family is Roman Catholic) so…*shrug*… I dunno.  Maybe they don’t have the whole position of ‘god-parent’ or maybe this minister just forgot? I don’t fully recall what the ceremony was like the last time we did this for our friend and her first child.  Fortunately, the service today was pretty good.  Maybe it’s because it’s such a small congregation or maybe it’s because it was United, but the minister was super friendly and “neighbourly” with all the parishioners.  The church itself was located right in between two houses in a residential district (you’d miss it if it weren’t for the steeple on top) and the hall inside was barely the size of my living room and kitchen combined.  It was *that* small.  He called on people by name throughout the service and chatted them up even during his sermon.

Why am I telling you all this? I dunno… it’s on my mind and it’s better to think about this than about the layoffs this week.  *Damn it!*

When my wife, Eli and I got home, I took care of some chores (garbage day tomorrow!) then crashed.  I slept for like THREE HOURS! RIDONKULOUS!  I am paying for it now as its 12:30 EST and I am totally awake.

I got up at 8:30 PM from the nap.  Dragged my butt to the basement at 9 to do Max Interval Circuit, proceeded to get by ass kicked by Shaun T., then had a very small dinner of an apple, protein drink and granola bar.  I was still super full from all the junk I ate at the reception after the baptism.

Another side note: The reception took place in our friend’s grandparents’ basement.  Their house is one of those old war time bungalows that probably sprouted up in the 50s.  Very crowded, small and musty… has a tonne of bric-a-brac everywhere… things you would envision old people owning [whatever this might be... too long a list to describe].  Thing is, *ALL* their decor dates back to the 70s.  It was surreal! I felt waves of nostalgia throughout the entire time I was there… heck, her grandparents even refer to the Internet as “a phone connected to the TV”.  Out of touch but very cute!.

Speaking of eating…. I HAVE TO REALLY RE-COMMIT TO MY NUTRITION.  My eating has gone down the shitter.  I’m gonna blame it on the stress I’ve been feeling at work.  I just find myself being able to justify more and more of the junk I put in my mouth (like candy, chocolate, donuts, cookies, chips) by saying “Oh yeah, I’ll workout like crazy later!”.  I know better and realize this is a lie.  You can’t out-exercise a shitty diet as there are just way too many calories in junk food.  Maybe I’ll start recording what I eat again… that kinda helps put my daily caloric intake into perspective.

I just don’t know.

Alright, enough of my rambling.   Peace out and good night!

PS I’ve updated my “About Me” page!