Making Progress

Missed posting yesterday, but I did manage to get up at 5:00 am on Monday for my next interval workout. Still couldn't bring myself to warm up by running; did 10 minutes on the bike before and after the workout instead. But the workout went well, maybe too easy. I'm just not burning as many calories as I would have expected by doing calisthentics. Also introduced jumping rope as my low-intensity interval exercise. Tougher than it seems, especially for a guy with two left feet. The DB snatches, however, seemed a bit easy. Might have to upgrade from the 30-lb. dumbbells. Maybe it's time for a 16 kg kettlebell.

Today I managed to get up again, this time for an easy four miles. Although my times are slower than they feel, about 30 seconds a mile slower. Chalk it up to running first thing upon waking, and the fact that I'm now paranoid on tripping over the disjointed sidewalk flags throughout my neighborhood.

My first week of the First Stage did show some progress, though. Sunday night I weighed 207.3 pounds with 11.3 % body fat. Now the previous week I'd measured on a Saturday night, so the comparison may well be skewed; if I'd measured myself after gorging on Saturday's Notre Dame game watch I might've seen no progress at all. But I'll try to measure on Sunday night from now on and get a better idea of how I'm doing.

Grow Your Wings, Then Learn to Fly

Got out for six miles on another amazingly warm November day. Nothing burns the calories like running. Managed to stay about 600 calories down for the day; even with Thanksgiving and its aftermath, I'm not too far over my budget for the week.

Saw a forum thread on sasukemaniac.com the other day, and I wanted to get down my thoughts. The poster was arguing that it's pointless to train for ANW with exercises like weighted rope climbs that aren't specific to the skills tested in Ninja Warrior courses. I disagree, and don't know these people well enough to mix it up in their debate, but here's why.

First, of course you need to train at some point for the actual challenges you'l face in competition. But every football player spends hours in the weight room and on the practice field in drills, even though no football game has ever required players to bench press or run through tires. Players do that sort of training in the off-season, for a few reasons.

First, the off-season's a time for recovering from the stresses particular to the competition. That doesn't really apply to a guy like me, who's training for something he's never done before. But for any regular athlete in the seasonal cycle of competition, recovery's an important consideration.

Second, the off-season's the time to build the base level of strength and endurance necessary to perform the skills specific to competition. You need to grow your wings before you can learn to fly. Not much point in scrimmaging if you don't have the strength to be competitive. And you can't build the strength to compete simply by going out and competing; you won't live long enough to get strong enough.

Third, adaptation's an important consideration for any seasonal athlete. I know I can only go four, six weeks at the most in a workout before I plateau, physically and mentally. That's why I've broken up my training not just into four stages, but also changing it up within each stage. Keeps me fresh mentally, and I buy into the notion that it stimulates more muscle growth and fat loss by challenging my body with different exercises every time.

With that, it's time to get ready for bed. Another week of 5AM workouts starts tomorrow, with another grueling interval workout. Turns out I misread the last one, and did eight sets of the same exercise. Even though I wrote these workouts, "DB Thrusters" can look a lot like "DB Snatches" without careful reading.

Diet Hard

So yesterday was the rescheduled rest day. And I know I need rest days. Everyone needs at least a day to recover. It helps you come back stronger.

The downside to rest days, however, is that you're not burning as many calories as you do the rest of the werek. Because you're resting. Yet you're used to eating a certain amount of calories each day, and it's not so easy to scale back on your rest days. Calories can creep up on you, and before you know it you're down to a thousand calories with dinner and dessert to go.

No problem, you say, just have a light dinner. This is where real life gets in the way.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so that's just out the window. Didn't even try to count calories for that mess. Even with the five-mile Turkey Trot, I knew I blew my budget.

But Friday was date night with the missus, and we simply had to try the new steakhouse that was opened by the sister of an old high school friend. And when they said they had New York Cheesecake for dessert, we just had to try it.

This is how diets fail.

The only thing you can do with a defeat is learn from it. I learned that I still need to exercise, even on rest days. And I did, burning about 500 calories in an easy bike ride with the 20-lb. vest on. But on rest days you have to watch your calories even more closely, because you'll have fewer in your budget.

And I'm learning that certain foods are just anathema to a diet. Like biscuits. 180-odd calories in each, and you can eat three without even knowing it. Hell, they come in packs of eight, and it's not like you can bake just one!

Another diet killer is American cheese. 100 calories in a slice, if LoseIt is to be believed. That grilled cheese sammich you had for lunch put you in a deep hole for the rest of the day.

But today I'm back on the schedule, and if I can watch my intake during the Notre Dame-Stanford game tonight, I should be okay today.

Thankful

Started Thanksgiving off with a 5-mile Turkey Trot. Kept pace with my 15-year-old cousin, who was running her first race that distance. So not a particularly intense run, but five miles is five miles.

Of course, then I proceeded to eat so much that evening that I couldn't log it all if I tried. Oh well, one day off the wagon isn't so bad. Fortunately we didn't bring home many leftovers, so I can get back on track today.

Getting the Thrust

Wednesday is supposed to be my rest day. Active rest, but rest. Sunday through Tuesday I Run, Lift, Run; Thursday through Saturday it's Lift, Run, Lift. Three days each of lifting and running, and one day of recovery. A prudent schedule, if a bit heavy.

And Wednesday's a good day to rest. On the weekends I have plenty of time to workout and nap as needed. But during the week time is tight, and by Wednesday I need a morning to sleep in or catch up after an inevitable late night. So I definitely should stick to the schedule and rest on Wednesdays.

But the success of any schedule rests in knowing when to depart from it. This week I have the traditional Turkey Trot 5-miler on Thursday, i.e., Thanksgiving. Then I've got three days off from work. So it made sense to skip the Wednesday rest and lift, then run on Thursday, and then take Friday off to get in an important recovery day as soon as possible.

But when you vary the schedule, it's harder to adhere to the variance. And that little bit of hesitation is the difference between getting up at 5:00 to workout or getting up at 5:45 and vowing to workout sometime later in the day. Guess which I did?

The punch line is that not until 8:00 tonight did I get to do my first interval workout. And it kicked my can, just in time for a 5-mile morning run.

The workout was eight two-minute sets, one minute intense and the next minute easy, though not totally resting. The intense minute was DB thrusters; hold a 30-pound dumbbell in each hand at the shoulder, then squat and come up fast enough to push the DBs straight overhead like a military press.

It's a surprisingly difficult exercise. You're not really pressing the DBs overhead; the explosive movement from the legs should do that. But you have to really work your arms, shoulders and core just to stabilize the DBs. And maybe 30 pounds was too heavy to do eight one-minute sets, but those are the weights I have. Got a great deal on them off of Craigslist, like $35 for the pair.

So I started, and the first set I cranked out 25 reps. Then did a minute of jumping jacks, then back to the thrusters. And proceeded to struggle to get fifteen each consecutive set. Some sets I don't think I got more than 12 reps. When I couldn't go on I at least tried to keep the DBs at my shoulders, and I never dropped them before time ran out. But it's fair to say I was worn out really early, and sixteen minutes never seemed so long. I was most worried I'd drop the weights on my foot or my wife's car; working out alone in your garage is not without its dangers.

But I did the workout, burned the calories, and for the rest of the year that's what counts. Once I'm in shape there'll be plenty of time to practice rope climbing and cliffhanging. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to rest up for the Turkey Trot.

Slow Going

Running day today. Did my four miles, though the time was unusually slow. Chalk it up to stopping at too many intersections; it was pitch dark out and I was about as reflective as a ninja on the roads, so I was a little more cautious than usual.

But the important thing here isn't so much the time as the effort. These runs are about fat loss foremost. I'm not racing anytime soon. The Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving will be just for the exercise; I'm in no shape to run fast anyway. As long as I keep at the workouts and eat right, things should go well.

Speaking of which, LoseIt! is becoming addictive. My favorite calorie-counting app has the ability to scan a barcode and instantly enter that particular item. It doesn't recognize every bar code, which makes me wonder what directory it's getting its information from in the first place. But it has made it easier to log some foods, and more interesting to log all of them.

Tomorrow's supposed to be a rest day. But with a 5-miler coming on Thanksgiving I think I'll power through my first interval workout tomorrow and put off rest until Friday.

O-Dark-Thirty

First day of "workouts" is in the books. And it went as well as could be expected.

Started with getting to bed before 10:00 pm, so I could actually get up at 5:00. I was working out by 5:45, thanks to two things: forcing myself to throw on the workout gear, so I was actually warm enough to even contemplate a warm-up jog; and downing my pre-workout beverage of eight ounces of iced coffee and two scoops of whey powder.

Here's the first day's workout:
1 mile warmup
Circuit (one set after the other, no rest in-between):

     20 Squat Jumps
     20 One-Arm Rope Rows
     20 Rowers
     20 Spiderman Pushups
     20 Bodyweight Squats
     20 Pullups
     20 Bicycle Crunches
     20 Pushups
1-mile run
Then repeat the circuit one more time

I was supposed to do a mile cooldown, but ran out of time before my duties as husband and daddy took over. Downed another serving of coffee-and-whey, though, and now I feel great.

The point of the workouts in this six-week First Stage isn't so much to train for specific ANW challenges, but to get myself in shape to train for those challenges. The exercises have some relation to ANW -- I'll do rope work and plyometrics of some kind in every workout. But my aim is to keep moving for forty minutes and to change things up every time, playing on the P90X idea that "muscle confusion" stimulates muscle growth and fat loss.