Buzz buzz buzz

Three hours after my workout today, I still felt the adrenaline rush. I can't say I've felt that way in a long time. So here's the run down:

Three sets of squats with a 35 pound dumbbell in each had. 21 reps, then 15, then 9.

Followed with three sets of squat jumps, also at 21/15/9.

Doing a weight bearing version of an exercise followed by the explosive equivalent is supposed to do wonders for power. I just read about this on the amazing site rosstraining.com. I highly recommend the site if you want to learn about no nonsense training. I've been using lots of ideas from there lately.

After the squats, I was feeling pretty good, and I thought I could use some more work to finish off the session. My legs were feeling a bit tired from the running and some other squat work that I did yesterday, so I decided to work my upper body a bit too.

So, I decided to do an intense series of dumbbell snatches with the 35 pound dumbbell. Gym Jones are the guys who trained the actors for the film 300. They've got the concept of a breathing ladder. What you do is any compound exercise in a set of one, then take one breath. Follow this up with a set of two, then two breaths, etc. This forces you to be very conscious of your breathing. You can't pant like a dog and expect to finish. I went from 1 to 10 and the back down to 1. That adds up to 100 reps. My friend Flynn calls this "The Jedi Mind Trick"

I got to my first set of 9 and thought to myself that there was no way I was going to finish the ladder today. But afterwards, I just did my prescribed breathing and kept going. My legs were shaking through out the back half of the series. When I finished, I was a heap on the floor, but a happy heap.

I showered and got back to my desk and for the next three hours, I felt like I could wrestle a water buffalo. It's nice feeling badassed.

Competitive?

So, here's the update to the Advicepig/Nervda 1391 challenge. You can see our progress at this link. You can see all of my runs downloaded off of my GPS watch at nervda.motionbased.com.

I am currently ahead by 4.11 miles. It's really gotten me running much more regularly. I know there have been times that I've rousted myself out of bed early and grabbed the dog for a run just to have the satisfaction of retaking the lead from the AP.

All of this running leads up to one of my other goals for this summer/fall. I intend to run the BAA Half Marathon in under 2 hours. I've run this race every year since 2003. I ran it in 2:03:28 in 2004. I just registered for this year's edition of the race this morning.

1391 mi.

So, my brother IMs me this morning.

-Wanna race?

-Sure. Half marathon?

-No. 1391 miles. That's the distance from my house to yours.

That's just like him to think big. Really, really big. We both have the same GPS running watch: the Forerunner 205. This is how we're going to track our progress. I've started putting together a Google spreadsheet that you can follow along with.

I think the most miles I've ever run in a year is 475. I think we're looking at a three year long race. The winner gets a beer. A single beer of the loser's choice.

Let's hit the road, bro.

Up to the bar

As a kid, we all did the Presidential Physical Fitness Test. Even then, I never managed one measly pullup. At zero pullups, that placed me squarely in the 0th percentile. I was much better at math than at P.E.

In salute to the 98 lb. weakling in me, I've set the goal of doing one pullup. Yes, just one. I'll worry about more reps after I get that first one out of the way.

I'm doing a lot of lat pulldowns on the cable station at the office gym and doing partial jump pull ups every time near the pullup bar. I'm making progress. I can actually pull myself up 1/3 of the way now, as opposed to not being able to budge at all, when I set this goal 6 weeks ago.

Of course, it gets easier as I lose weight. I weighed in at 199.0 this morning. So that's down another 0.8 pounds this week. I'm right on target for 185 on October 1.

Sweet progress

I'm just back from the gym. 100 burpees in 9 minutes and 23 seconds. Brutal and satisfying at the same time. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on my way out of the gym. I looked like a fuzzy tomato.

It feels good to make a goal and reach it. Now it's time to think up a new one. I think I'll continue to do 100 burpees once a week to keep up the conditioning. Maybe I'll start doing them outside and do a sprint between each set and figure out a time goal for that.

Also on the progress front, I snuck under 200 lbs. at my weekly weigh in yesterday. 199.8 is under 200. Take that, math!

Burpees

Another goal that I set for myself early in the year was to be able to do 100 burpees in 10 minutes. I know what you're thinking. "Nervda, what the hell is a burpee?"

A burpee is a calisthenic and cardio exercise in one.

1. From a standing position, squat down, touching your hands to the floor.
   
2. Kick your feet out to a pushup position.
   
3. Do a pushup.
   
4. Bring your feet back to the squat position.
   
5. Jump straight up in the air.
   

Can't visualize it? Here, have a look.

I'm not nearly as smooth as that guy.

The first time I tried to do burpees, I just did 50 as quickly as I could. It took me almost 9 minutes. I thought I was gonna die. I've never had my heart racing quite so hard. And I've done some seriously difficult workouts before.

I knew that without planning, this challenge would beat my ass down. So here's the approach that I took.

In order to do 100 in 10 minutes, I would do sets of 10 reps. I would do 5 sets of 10 until I got under 5 minutes for 50. I did this workout once a week. It took me 6 weeks to get under 5 minutes. Then I'd add one set of ten and do that amount until I average under one minute for each set for two consecutive workouts. This way, I wouldn't bite off more than I could chew.

My first burpee workout was in February. Today, I did 9 sets of 10 burpees in 8:33. I probably could have pushed out another set of 10 and hit the target, but I held off. I think I'll go for the 100 next Tuesday.

36,600

The only workout that I do daily at this point is doing 100 pushups. That's it. That's the whole workout. It doesn't matter what type, or how many reps per set. Just get 100 done every 24 hours.

I made this my new year's resolution this year, to make it through one year with 100 pushups per day. This is an excuse proof resolution. You don't need to go to gym. All you need is a floor.

I was talking with my cousin the other day and he said that he hadn't worked out when he was working in London last year, as the gym was too expensive for him. I said, "Pushups are free, bitch."

I'm trying to do as much working out as possible with as little equipment as possible. This crazy pushup idea really got me moving down this path. Check out bodyweightculture.com for lots of amazing workouts that you can do without any special equipment.

I've had this resolution before. I kept it up all the way through 2002. I'm not really sure why I stopped. It's an easy thing to implement and gives really great results.

If you're thinking of starting this program, pick three times a day that you can devote to doing pushups. Here's an example program:

On a Sunday, test yourself and see how many pushups you can do in one set. Let's say that this number is 20. Your set for the week will be half of this number. So every time you do a set, do 10 pushups. Do as many sets as necessary to reach 100.

Every morning, do as many sets of your target number as it takes to get to 50. Do it again when get ready for bed.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Before and After

Summer's finally here. A friend of mine and I are challenging each other to a summertime physical transformation. I've got a couple of different goals for this summer and I'm going to blog them. It'll be a way for me to be accountable for my activity.

Goal #1: To get my weight under 185 pounds. That's a great milestone weight for me. That's what I weighed when I finished high school. As an adult, I've reached that weight one other time, in the fall of 2004.

I'm back on Weight Watchers, tracking my daily food intake. I've also really stepped up my workouts. I'll write separate entries about some of my new workouts as part of the process.

I started out the challenge weighing 207 pounds. That was three weeks ago. This morning, I weighed 201. I'm moving in the right direction.

Anyhow, that picture above is of me starting out the Team Hoyt 5K last Thursday night. I look so composed.

The picture below is me at the finish line. I look decomposed:



Two quick things to note. That's Jasper chasing me in! You can see his hand and shoe just off of my right hip. Number two, I'm actually airborne. Sweet.