04/21/2011
Waking up this morning on the floor was a nice surprise; apparently I rolled off the bed at some point last night, and spent a good portion of the night on my face on the hardwood. How do I know I was there for more than few minutes, the nice pool of dried salvia on the floor?
Sleeping on the floor didn’t help my already tight muscles. Walking to the bathroom this morning I’m sure I looked like a geriatric patient following a colonoscopy. My first order of duty was to go straight to the gym. Normally I would take Benny for a walk but the way I was feeling I knew I needed to get in the gym as fast as possible. I almost felt like an alcoholic who was thinking about taking a drink, but was able to find a quick AA meeting.
To tell you how bad I felt, the Washington Sports Club that I go to is in the basement of a building, so you have to take the stairs down to get to the gym floor. I took the elevator down for the first time ever, it’s clearly there for people in a wheel chair or someone with a stroller, and today it was used for a large man who was too sore to use the stairs.
I thought I was going to pick a different machine today, yet I just couldn’t pass up my lovely Arc Trainer, Mountain for the second time this week. I warmed up for 5 minutes with incline level at 5 and the resistance level at 40. In my mind I broke up the Mountain Program into 3 parts. The first 4 levels was my “tune up”, increasing resistance from 40 to 55, the next 4 levels was the building of my “sweat equity” I increased the levels from 60 to 90, the final 4 levels were “proof” that inside I’m a skinny guy, starting at resistance level 90 and incline level 10 I moved up to level 100 and I spent 9 minutes at resistance 100. I concluded by performing 9 sprints, and finished an entire hour of Arc Trainer. I can’t believe how a small impetus to go for any hour just one time is developing into a habit, of always wanting to finish an entire hour.
Click here for more detailed list of progression.
Today is my second full day of eating meals from Diet to Go. The meals are generally tasty; some of the items are atrociously bad as expected. My only issue is that there is not enough fresh vegetables, and fruit. Also because they give you caloric counts for the entire meal and not for individual components if you don’t like a particular item you don’t know how to adjust. The lunch this afternoon was Broccoli Cheddar Soup with Soft Pretzels, I didn’t want to eat the pretzels so I chose to eat the dinner they provided for Tuesday evening which was Turkey Meatloaf. The meatloaf was good but the yam puree tasted like a cinnamon stick smothered in my sweaty boxers. I didn’t eat it but had no idea how many calories I should consume to replace it so I didn’t eat anything else.
I did have a slight hiccup today, I left work a bit late which meant that by the time I got home, changed and headed to the gym I only had about 5 minutes to warm-up before my session with Ali. Normally I like to get a 15-20 minute warm-up, so I can break a sweat before my session starts. As soon as I got to the gym I jumped on the Arc Trainer turned up the resistance to 100, and the incline to 20. My goal was to go until I started sweating. After 10 minutes when I was just beginning to sweat, I knew had I had a another 5 minutes I would have been where I wanted to be, but I was already 5 minutes into my session so I got off and went to get my hands wrapped for boxing.
Ali focused today’s workload on the chest. As usual we began the session with 5 -10 minutes of boxing, then rolled right into a series of quick paced exercises. He had me start with an isolated dumbbell chest presses while laying on a resistance ball, I wasn’t just pressing straight up and down, he would tell me which arm to press and how many times, he alternated the movement sometimes I would use one arm, and sometimes both. We did these presses twice; in between the sets he had me hold a plank position for 1 minute.
The next 45 minutes were kind of a blur, we moved quickly between the cable machines, boxing, the TRX, the Reebok Step, and the medicine ball. I think the videos will give you the best idea of the types of things we did today.
At the end of the session I thought about doing some more cardio but decided I really needed a good stretch, so I took 30 minutes to stretch out. After the stretch I walked home, and thought about whether or not today was a successful day. It was a success in the sense that I feel I got the best balance of my professional life and my personal goals; it’s the first day I was able to find balance between work, and my weight loss.
I also thought about how I felt my workout was, it made me realize that before any type of aerobic type classes, or personal training sessions a sound warm-up is crucial. Again I have Sam to thank for this realization. In preparing for a personal training session if I can get my heart rate into the anaerobic levels before I start actually working I’ve primed my body to burn calories. If I don’t warm-up all the way then I’m wasting 15-20 minutes of a session in getting my body ready to work. As good as the session was I couldn’t help but think that the amount I had sweated wasn’t in line with previous workout sessions; I think there’s a direct link between my shortened warm-up and my lack of moisture. Okay so my shirt was wet, and yes it was dripping down to my stomach, but my boxers weren’t soaked through like they normally are, so to me today it was a slight hiccup, or a less than perfect performance.
I’m going to have to work extra hard tomorrow, to finish the week strong. Two days of recovery is exactly what I need, my body needs a break.