Happy Birthday, blog! In honor of Cranky Fitness, I give you cupcakes!Yes, I started this here blog exactly ONE YEAR ago today. I was planning on doing a whole retrospective, seeing where I was with resolutions from last year, putting down this year's ... and then today ended up being the best day for Brandon and I to use the snowshoes we got each other for Christmas. So obviously that didn't work out. Instead, I'll do it tomorrow (along with the official snowshoeing post with pictures!) when I a.) have time and b.) upload pictures off the ol' camera.HOWEVER, I will talk about today's scheduled workout which was a total body lift. We were talking over dinner about what we wanted to do when I remembered Charlotte's post about her January experiment and thought that the workout would be a fun one to try. So, we did, adding in one from his Men's Health as well.We did three of the four parts of the MH workout which was a dumbbell total body workout. You didn't count reps - just did as many as you could for 45 seconds, rested for a minute and repeated one or two times. We went through it twice. We did single db woodchops, an "arms out squat" - squat down while holding the db out in front of you ... as you squat, you press in on the ends of the db for resistance - and the "standing press out" - stand, holding ends of db - press db out while pressing in on ends of db. The last one which looked the easiest was actually the toughest. From there, we moved to the Shape circuit which seriously? Kicked. Our. Asses. We ended up doing it only once and not completely. The squat thrust with a row, once we figured it out, was a bitch, but doable. The dead lift to hip opener ... well, neither of us did the hip opener twist and Brandon struggled hard with it. :( The four count push-ups were fine, the single leg squats with the ball were ridiculously hard (probably because we're both out of our top hockey shapes) and the scissor lunges were okay. The sprinter (basically a variation on a bicycle crunch) killed us and we finished off with the plyo plank (weird). We figured if we hadn't done the squats from the MH wokout, we would have done the Tabata squats, but eh. Our quads were already sorepants by that point.Still, a good workout for both of us.LOTS MORE BLOGGING OUT OF ME TOMORROW.
Earlier today, well...like at 2 in the afternoon, we were in Rocky Mountain NP doing a bit of hiking around...in snowshoes! Those were our Christmas presents to each other and we figured we would try them out today. Hiking in snow, even in showshoes = tough. I tell you, I think of it like swimming. The extra force on your body and whatnot. What fun and what a good workout.
Then tonight we went to the gym to do a total body workout. We took a combo from Mens Health and Shape, and we basically crawled out of the gym. I'm not kidding. You can read girlfriend's post for what the workouts were, but the long story short is that we were hurting.
Oh well, it feels good. Snowshoeing is fun!
So far, so good into the new year. I've stuck with my workout schedule and eaten well. It's gotten off the exact way I wanted it to.
That being said, there's already some areas that I'm looking to improve on. As the girl said, last night, we went to the gym but due to being short on time + easing back into our workouts, we only did 15 minutes. I did 15 on the elliptical, which may not seem like much, but doing intervals on that thing are killers! But I'm already feeling like only 15 minute cardio sessions aren't really going to cut it, even if that was my plan for pretty much the entire month of January. I may need to re-evaluate what I'm doing and come up with a new game plan here in the next week or so.
But the important thing right now is I've been consistent in the fitness area of life so far this year. Sure, one week is easy. I've got 51 more to go!
In keeping with the idea of easing back into working out (for, as we've mentioned a zillion times over, we were total slackers in the last quarter of 2008), today was a short cardio day at the gym. Crazily enough, I actually changed my warmup from five minutes on the recumbent bike to 2:30 on the stepmill ... and I think I got more warmed up that way. Go figure. Anyway, stretched out and headed over the stationary bikes (a.k.a. BOREDOM) while Brandon hopped on an elliptical.Since we were sort of crunched for time (ze boy is off scorekeeping right now), we only squashed in 15 minutes of cardio. I went for the sport-specific setting, punched in a level, hid the time and the progress chart with my towel and started pedaling away. Oh, and if you're wondering why I cover said crap with my towel it's because watching it will make me go crazy. While I love me a good bike ride in the great outdoors, the stationary bike drives me crazy due to its boring nature. So, if I forbid myself from looking at the time just counting down the minutes and seconds until my workout is over ... things go smoother.So, the only thing I kept an eye on was my cadence/rpms. I was aiming for 90 and I'm guessing I probably averaged around 87 or 88 rpms, so yay. Eventually, I did look at my clock though and realized I had less than a minute left and almost felt sad that my workout was ending. I probably could have pushed myself a lot harder than I did today - not going to lie - but at the same time, it was nice to get into a rhythm on the bike and actually enjoy myself on the damn thing for once.Besides, I figure it's always better to be wanting more than wanting to never go back again.
Yes, 3 in a row. Go me.
Keeping it short since I'm sad the Vikings lost and really I want to turn to cake right now to feel better, but I won't. I worked out at the gym tonight. Warmed up in the steam room (literally, since my body was freezing since it's ass cold out here tonight) then stretched and did 15 minutes of the stepmill. I did various intervals, so it was definitely challenging. We then lifted a bit. 3 sets of incline shoulder presses 10 reps at 25 lbs and then curls...the same sets, reps, and weights. (I'm lazy and hungry).
More tomorrow. Go us.
Okay, since it's 10pm and I have to be at work in 8.5 hours, I'm going to keep this short.Went to gym. Warmed up, stretched, did stepmill intervals (ooooowwwwwwwww), did dumbbell incline shoulder presses and dumbbell bicep curls. Yay for working out. Yay for still attempting to make good food decisions. Boo for not hydrating as well as I should have today. More from me later as I haven't eaten in almost five hours and something to be determined from the fridge is calling my name.
So again last night my job decides to throw me another curve ball...this time a drunk passenger. Not good, as you can imagine. Luckily before the flight left we got him thrown off and arrested. Go us pilots! But anyway, this led to us being late into Billings, and therefore, a short overnight. Boo. But I woke up at 8, determined to work out.When I got downstairs to the fitness center, there's two people on the two treadmills. And of course, they aren't really pushing themselves. More just walking slow and talking. I decided not to wait and instead hopped on the stepmill. After 10 minutes, they finally left so I used the final 5 minutes of my workout to do the 2-3 run thing on the treadmill. It worked out pretty well.I think I'm making good food choices too...even though I am in an airport and it's not easy. Bah humbug.
One thing I wanted to be good about this year was making sure I got in a workout if it was scheduled despite any possible bumps that might be thrown into the proverbial road.Take today. Today, the plan for my workout today was to go to the gym and do cardio - whether it be the elliptical or the stepmill. Well, due to me catching up on sleep and sleeping in, lunch, errands and realizing ohcrapIhavetobeatDUin90minutes, I figured it would be best for me to stay home and go for a run instead.So I did. I did the same loop as yesterday, but did it a little quicker - 1.35 miles in 13:40 ... which means, I went down to a 10:07 mile instead of a 10:27 mile. While the time was good, I could tell I pushed myself just a little more than yesterday as I felt crappier. Still, I'm glad I got out there.Besides, I figured I may as well take advantage of the glorious 60 degree Denver day before it (supposedly) drops into the mid-30s tomorrow.
As girlfriend alluded to in her post below, the end of last year was not pretty in terms of working out. It's scary to think about how far we fell. But we have our game plan in store for the year. As T said, we're gonna get our schedules figured out for each month and pencil in when we are working out and what we are doing that day. We are also scheduling "off days" which are important as well. And as she also mentioned, if we hit our workout goals, we are going to reward ourselves with a "treat". I have never treated myself before for completing a workout, so I think this will be fun and rewarding. That being said, today was my first day to be scheduled for a workout. Yesterday was a crazy day as an airline pilot...blah. Today I was scheduled for cardio. As much as I want to push myself, I know it's not the best idea. The best idea, IMO, is to ease back into the workouts, especially the cardio side of things. Being that it's -20 in Fargo today (that's cold, even for me!) I decided on a 15 minute treadmill workout. Yes, the classic 2-3 treadmill workout. 3.5 walk for 2, 6.0 run for 3. In the final interval, with 45 seconds left, I kicked up the speed so I was sprinting by the end. And amazingly, I feel good. It feels good to get back into working out. I know T said we'll post the New Years Resolutions later, but I figure I'll say a few things of my own that I will focus on this year:- not beat myself up for missing a workout. Circumstances can happen, especially with my job.- know there will be setbacks- realize that it's not a short-term thing we're shooting for here- keep track of everything in a notebook (food and working out)This year you will see a new Brandon. A more focused Brandon. Life threw me a lot of curve balls in 2008 and probably will in 2009. But I am determined to hit them this year, instead of fouling them off like I did last year.
Happy New Year, everyone! Was your NYE celebration quiet? Crazy? Non-existent? Brandon and I had a nice dinner date downtown, rode the light rail back home (free!) ... and barely made it to midnight. We're party animals these days I tell ya.Anyway, since we've let ourselves go a ridiculous amount, we're resolving that 2009 be different. We've set up an overarching plan for the year, broken down the month of January to know which days we're working out and which days we're not, and will figure out exactly what we're doing week-by-week as we know our schedules (okay, as i know mine as brandon already has his). We've worked in off days to our workout plan - off days that, if we've done x workouts or x this, we get a treat. We're also working out a treat schedule as we think it's going to be good to reward ourselves. I'm personally looking forward to this as I've never really rewarded myself for workouts or what have you.I'm still working out the official Resolution Post and will probably post it in a few days on the *gasp* one year anniversary of this here blog. So, look forward to that - especially because one of the resolutions will concern this here bloggity blog.Anyway, to start off the year right, I've made pretty good food decisions so far today and have gone for a run - 1.35 miles in 14:06 for a 10:27 mile. It's not a pretty time, but I know I did that to myself. However, I actually felt good during most of the run, so that's an encouraging plus. :)
