Archive for March, 2005
Ow! My Butt!
Just do lunges and deep bodyweight squats for a while and you too can have a sore butt. Man, those glute muscles really have lots to do with your ambulatory functions, and yet, they’re so overlooked. Besides that one little machine folks use at the gym (and by folks, I mean mostly girls), there’s not a lot of focus on getting your butt muscles stronger.
But, if doing lots of lunges is any indication, these muscles are obviously very necessary for running and other movement activities, so it stands to reason that you’d want to really work them harder.
Lunges, in case you haven’t done any, are when you take a good long step forward, and then dip your back knee down until it almost touches the floor. Your front knee shouldn’t go past the tip of your foot, aka your front shin area should be in a straight line. You can do walking lunges, where you take a step, dip down, get up, and take the next step. Or you can do standing lunges, where you take the step, dip, get up, dip, get up, etc.
Or, you can do backward lunges with a twist. Take a big step backwards, dip the back knee towards the ground (same stuff as the forward), but then, when you twist, you turn your upper torso towards the forward knee and then some, with your arms outstretched kind of like you’re a karate master, until you can look over your shoulder at whoever might come up behind you. (Finding a picture through google might help).
I’m finding that doing this calisthenics and cardio only program right now is really exciting. Coupled with re-learning something the other day, I think I’m going to nail this weight now. Want to know what I re-learned?
Eating sugar tells your metabolism to go into fat-storing mode. I don’t know the chemical reasons behind it (or I forgot them), but I buy it. One thing I haven’t cut out much over the last several weeks is sweets. So, armed with this little ditty, I think I’m going to have even more success.
My first goal to that effect: one week with no added sugar whatsoever. (If a nectarine has sugars, so be it, but no cookies or whatever). Then, if I can do a week, I’ll go for two. Then a month. So, today’s day one.
Now, get out there and try this lunge business. Do some bodyweight squats, too. Use your stability ball and lean against a wall with the ball between you and the wall. Dip down until your thighs are parallel to the ground. Hold it there five seconds, and go back up slowly. Repeat 15-20 times.
Between that and the lunges, see if you don’t report some “OW” of your own. : ) It’ll be the good kind, okay?
Kid’s Play
This is kind of a “rough post” of something I’m throwing around in my head. I was trying to think of all the various ways adults could look to kid’s play as a way to get even more physically fit. Follow with me, eh?
Tag
Imagine running, stopping, turning quickly, and chasing each other at sprint paces. This seems like an excellent plyometric extravaganza. Throw some mixed terrain into the experience (like do this on a wooded trail) and you’ve got lots of muscles engaged in the activity.
Monkey Bars
Built right in, you’ve got chin-ups, dips, core work, shoulder work. Heck, you can do Iron Crosses, right?
Dodgeball
Same as tag, really, but with a throwing element, to give the arms a lot more work.
But what else? I’m missing lots, aren’t I?
–Chris…
Sneak More Into It All
I was coming up with little ways to burn a few more calories here and there. Here’s what I have. I want you to give me a few more. And I’m talking neato tricks, not: “go cycling.” Yes, we KNOW that’ll help. Let’s get tricky.
Do you know that 10 minutes of brisk walking (I mean brisk, not so slow that butterflies can land on you) gets your metabolism churning again towards fat burning? 10 minutes. Okay, that’s a little longer than your average pee break at work, but not so long that the boss comes looking for you. (If you’re a commercial pilot, forget I mentioned this. Stay in your seat!)
When I watched a DVD last night (see below post on UFC), I did it standing up and jogging in place for most of the duration. Sure, not a treadmill, but it had to have burned a few more calories than when I was sprawled on the couch. Heck, I even shadowboxed with some of those fellers. (I won, of course).
How about throwing an extra 10 pounds into your backpack when you’re out on a day hike? Or 45 pounds if you’re a monster. That’s a sneaky way of getting your body to do more.
Don’t eat everything on your plate just because it’s there. I do this in the caf when they make me wrap sandwiches. I noticed that about 50% of the wrap is just “extra.” It’s wrapped around the layer that’s holding the food, but it’s not really *doing* anything for me. So, I pull off the extra, and that must be what? 60 calories?
Side note: this comic who plays some role on the Sopranos once said that his diet involved NOT eating the ice cream on the lid when he opened his Ben & Jerry’s. He said, “That’s what? Fifty calories right there. Huh?” I loved that guy.
I dunno. I’m sleepy. What else do you guys have for me? Get creative. Get fun. In fact, let’s get into all the fun ways we can burn a few extra calories instead of the same old gym stuff? What have you done, or thought about doing, that is just off the wall, but might be helpful?
UFC and Stuff
I was never into pro wrestling. I appreciated that the folks doing it were athletes, even though their stories are scripted. For whatever reason, I could read superhero comics until the cows came home, but I thought wrestling was too “fake and scripted” to have it haul in my attention. But again, those folks doing it are definitely athletes. (Steroid issues aside, I guess).
So, the other day I rented one of those UFC DVDs from Blockbuster. You know about these? They are mixed martial arts fights, meaning that the fellers can punch, kick, elbow, and grapple each other until they win either by technical points, a knockout, or putting the other person in submission. I was curious to see Randy Couture fight.
First off, Randy is 40. Yep. 40 years old, and fighting these dudes in the heavyweight division that are often 20 years his junior. Oh, and he’s the champ.
Now, the DVD had something like nine bouts on it. It started with the lighter fellers fighting and grappling, and immediately, I found what DIDN’T appeal to me about this stuff. When folks grapple, it looks a lot like they’re doing something else. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. But not exactly what I wanted to see.
Another thing about this specific DVD. Randy didn’t fight. 14 seconds and the fight got called because the other guy poked Randy in the eye in such a way that they had to call it, give the other guy his belt, and everything was over. Talk about a ripoff.
However, there was this one really great overall theme. The guys who did lots of good physical fitness training on top of their martial arts training invariably won the fights. If a guy had plenty of muscle, he could almost always just outmuscle the other guy who was using all kinds of techniques.
That’s certainly something for me to file away for another time. Anyhow, if you get a chance, check out one of these fights just to see someone doing something very physically taxing. Definitely not pro wrestling, and kind of interesting in a way that boxing isn’t always.
Go Old School
Get a jumprope. If you haven’t tried jumping rope just lately, pick one up. Why, I gave it the ole college try this morning, and was pleasantly surprised.
This morning, I started enacting my heavy-weight-loss-focused efforts, which involved intense bouts of calisthenics, calorie burning efforts, and slightly more moderate weight training. Here’s what I did.
Jump rope for warming up. (30 seconds)
Pushups 20
Dirty Dogs 20 a side
Crunches 100
Flutterkicks 30
Leg curls 30 (for hamstrings)
Stability ball squats 30 (against wall)
Jump rope (30-60 seconds)
Run 1 lap
Jump rope 1 minute
Run 1 lap
Pushups 10
Crunches 50
Flutterkicks 100
Jump rope 1 minute
Run 1 lap
Jump rope 1 minute
Run 1 lap
Row 10 minutes
Bike 10 minutes
Run 10 more laps.
Then, I switched to cable weights for a while. If you’ve been doing strictly dumbbells lately, try cables for a change. I found them dynamic, and just generally an interesting switch up. I did a full body workout, but with nothing like the amount of weight I’ve been throwing around. Oh, and I skipped chinups, as I still have some neato shoulder pain to contend with.
Notes about purchasing a jump rope. At home, I have this one with really good handles, with foam and a weight to them, etc, and actual fabric rope. It’s crap. It’s horrible, and it makes me jump horribly. What worked best for me were those plastic macaroni-beaded jumpropes you had way back in gym class, or the kind where the rope is some kind of plastic like the kind you use for keychain crafts in scouts. To measure what height you need, step dead middle of the jumprope, and the end of the handles should be about equal to your armpit. For me, this is something longer than 9 feet, it appears, as the 9 foot jumprope I purchased wasn’t exactly perfect.
My heart was HAMMERING when I did the jumproping segments, and the reason I kept doing 30-60 seconds at a whack was that I couldn’t handle any more. I was dying. So, when I find something like this, I work at it more and more. I like getting up to a level where it feels easy cheesy to accomplish.
I really enjoyed this workout. Doing calisthenics based work, especially throwing in all the heavy calorie burning stuff I was doing, really made me feel like I was accomplishing something. I felt the closest I’ve yet felt to those training scenes in movies, like when you see Rocky working his head off on the speed bag or football dudes training so hard their shirts are black from sweat. Why this appeals to me is an unknown, but maybe that’s primal.
Do you all want that? Do you like your workouts to leave you feeling like you REALLY did something?
3-Something AM
Isn’t it neat that when you finally get a really good sense of which direction to take, everything starts reinforcing it? When I was doing calisthenics this morning, especially jumping jacks, I noted a weird sensation I haven’t had since I started this whole fitness thing. I felt the fat and skin on my body kind of moving around independent of all my firm muscle tissue.
It was kind of gross, really. It just felt like there was all this excess still left on board. And yet, it’s all still there, just aching to come off through hard efforts. I’m excited in a way, because it’s one of those areas where it’s really hard to see myself as “at a good spot.” Instead, I’ve got nowhere to go but forward.
(For some reason, I’m really thinking of Fig while writing this, because her mindset seems similar at times).
I now have a clear target: to make my body NOT wiggle like that when doing stuff. I want to be an all-over rock. Think Fight Club bodies. That’s what I’m thinking, only not so extreme. Let’s not be silly, here. Maintaining that level of fat percentage is difficult, to say the least. But I can do much better than where I am now.
My efforts are going to branch out all over the place. The only overlying requirement is that I have fun and that I try to shred calories while maintaining my bodyweight-level strength and power in the interim. That means I can jump rope, row, bike ride, play dodge ball (still want to do this badly), oh.. what’s that called? Running! Ah yes, a little bit. But all towards shredding those pounds and dumping in the recycle bin.
Yessuh. Amazing where your skull leads you at 3:43(ish) AM.
A Little Tour
If you’re getting my posts from newest to oldest, there’s a whole lot of pictures below this post, showing the place, and a few of the folks who live there. People tend to ask me questions about our house, so I thought I’d offer up a quick visual tour of most of it. I didn’t show you the kid’s bedroom, because that seemed kind of creepy for whatever reason. Otherwise, what follows (in newest to oldest post order) are some shots of the digs. Enjoy.
111082967188718826
The Bathroom. (Well, we have one). 
111082961491678978
The Kid’s Swing.
111082959415689690
Towards the Bedroom.
