Being Frustrated Again

I have a distinct feeling that I’m going to be disappointed with my weigh in on Sunday.  As hard as I am working I can tell from the way my pants feel, and how I look in the mirror that I haven’t slimmed down at all, perhaps it’s a direct result of not following through with my plan to do more cardio.

It’s been about three weeks since I’ve done regular cardio sessions during the week with my weight training.  It’s also been about 3 weeks from my last big movement in the scale, is this the Achilles heel in my present program which needs to be changed? 

Should I start to do more cardio and reduce my weight training, or back away the Crossfit classes and sessions?  I haven’t figured out what’s the most effective for my body. 

I believe in the principles of Crossfit, I understand the concept of activating your bodies metabolic pathways, and how doing short intense workouts activate the metabolic pathway which not only burns fat but stimulates muscle growth.  Is this what an obese person like me should be concerned about?

Is it necessarily important to active both when you need to lose over 50 lbs, if I was already 200 lbs, I would only consider Crossfit as I would only need to lose about 10 lbs of fat yet build muscle? 

I know endurance cardio works to lose weight; I’ve lost significant amounts of weight 3 times in my life now with straight cardiovascular exercises.  In this fourth attempt I’m trying to build muscle, yet where I am presently on the scale at 289 lbs is not a good place.  It’s better than 372 or 443, but it’s not a good place to be, not enough room from the 300 lbs marker, and still 39 lbs from 250 lbs. 

I also know the scale isn’t everything but when you are carrying too much weight it’s not good for your health.  Enough studies show that people with less body weight live longer than those with more body weight regardless of the composition.  Again if I were 200 or 190 lbs I wouldn’t be concerned about the scale, once I reach these numbers it won’t matter what I weight because how I feel and look will be more important.

As I type this I’m debating whether or not to go to Crossfit tomorrow morning for the WoD.  I probably will go because it’s two exercises 300m of rowing, and 2 minutes of kettle bell swings…I’m going…because I’m debating it…I’m going…fuck you little devilish fat guy you are no longer allowed to make decisions about workouts.

My diet this week has been good but obviously isn’t 100 %; I’ve got to get back to using the food diary every day.  I haven’t been over eating or binging, but I have not been eating regularly enough twice this week I went 5 or 6 hours without putting anything into my body, which made me feel like shit when I did eat.

I have one more day this week to give it my all, and then two days to figure out what my plan is for next week.

 Daily Recap

07/28/2011

Daily Recap

I started my morning with a 6:30 AM Crossfit class.  The prescribed WOD 4 sets of 2 squat cleans, with a 7 minute AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible) 4 dead lifts, 8 ring-dips or push-ups, 12 box jumps. 

Another first for me this week, my first go at doing squat cleans with weight.  It’s a difficult maneuver for me as my shoulder flexibility is still low and I can’t get my elbows up into the rack position fast enough.  The key to the squat clean is to get under the bar as fast possible, Brian told me that as the weight gets more challenging that newer people tend to a clean and squat, meaning they get the bar into the racked position before the squat. 

I did a couple of sets warming up with the bar, then 2 sets with 75 lbs.  My technique was good here, I then moved up to 95 lbs and my technique still was strong.  I could feel that I was getting the depth that is necessary in the squat portion.  My work sets started at 115 lbs.  I did two sets here, feeling pretty good I went up to 135 lbs.  I should have stayed at 115lbs. 

My first set of 135 lbs was good but I needed to spend more time regrouping between reps.  This is somewhat an unnatural move, but once you have the reference points as to what you should feel or where your body should be it’s not that bad, unless you are using weight which is too much for you.  My second set at 135 lbs and my last work set was not pretty. 

The video shows what happens when you act stupid.  Neither of the reps that I completed looked good, and between the two reps I lost my footing and rolled my ankle.  It still hurts.

A good squat clean here…

The Metcon portion of the workout was challenging, but had I used more weight with the dead lifts I know it would have required that extra bit of intensity that I’m always looking for, the thing that sucks with my short Crossffit tenure is that I don’t know what weights I can handle.  I was able to complete 6 full rounds in the 7 minutes; I was shooting for 5, so it was a good result.

It’s hard not getting ego inovled because the more skilled Crossfitters make you fell stupid especially when it’s a woman half your size and doing more weight than my big fat ass, yes I am a sexist pig and having a woman who weighs maybe 125 lbs doing dead lifts with 30 more pounds than this 289 lbs fat guy crushes my manhood just a bit.

After Crossfit, I went home took Benny Boy for a walk and then headed to WSC.  This was my first workout with Ali this week and I felt it necessary to do some chest, and triceps work today. 

Motherfucker…Ali apparently missed me or needed to just kill someone today because that’s what he did…

He had me warm-up with two minutes doing jump rope with a weighted rope.  We then went right into chest presses, I did two sets of 20 alternating dumbbell chest presses while laying on a resistance ball each of these sets were followed by 1 minute of push up position planks. 

I then was told to do flat bench dumbbell chest presses.  I started with 15 reps at 55 lbs, then 10 reps of 70 lbs, and 6 reps of 80 lbs.  In between each set I was again told to jump rope this time 30 unbroken seconds at a time. 

At this point I thought the chest was done, that’s when we moved into the studio where he set up cones.  They were setup roughly the same distance apart from each other, Ali told me to do suicides.  I of course thought he wanted me to do suicide sprints, on my first round of suicides I sprinted the entire way.  When I sprinted through the last leg of my first suicide he tells me to keep going. I looked at him like “what?”

I did 4 more suicides consecutively.  This was followed up with about 2 minutes of rest, and then I did 5 side shuffles along the same course as the suicide sprints.  At this point my heart rate was high, and I had to calm myself quickly to do a walking plank.  The walking plank involves getting into the push-up plank position then walking sideways until you are told to stop.

Ali had me do more chest work while lying on the resistance ball to do more dumbbell presses, push-ups, and cable flies.  In the hour session 40 minutes as dedicated purely to my chest, the remaining time was used to work my triceps, get my heart rate up, and do some light core work.

As painful as this session wash, and as tight as I felt walking out of the gym, I overall felt great from the two workouts.