Stepstone Journal

[stepstone]

I just posted some basic fitness information in the Introductions section. Now, I will share my most immediate fitness interests.

I overdid my exercise recently with various cardio workouts all within one week. This was capped off by my first game of ultimate frisbee -- with people who were all half my age. It lasted 1.5 hours and we didn't have many subs. I learned that this is an excellent fitness sport, as it essentially mimics running interval training, except you get in dozens of stints rather than 10-20. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is what knocked my body about a whole week later. Add biking, rollar-blading and rope jumping that week and again it's clear that I over did it. Anyway. I'm beginning to work back from here after taking it easier this past week.

In the future, I would like to be able to go harder like this without suffering the whole body pain later on.

I have realized that I have a problem preparing food for myself. Fruit and veggies are fine, but my protein intake is off. I rely too much on protein power. My basic problem is that when I prepare meat, I normally like to cook more than I plan to eat so I will have left-overs... But I love the taste of meat so much that I tend to begin overeating and sneaking bits from the fridge. I guess this is just a discipline issue however I've let it become a problem. Okay, I'm crazy about meat.

Second main issue now is that I've come against limits in my body-weight workouts. I call this weight-training but I only use a 25# dumbell, plus a few lighter ones. I mean: Push ups and pullups, etc. I've hit a wall with my pushups. I can't seem to get past 30 max. I was hitting 8 pullups which I consider better performance but still I've hit a barrier.

I should note that I have an ongoing sleep problem. I mostly deal with it... I can go into this later.

I just read that it's normal to come to a limit with our weight training. The article says that I must begin doing squats or dead lifts to shift to 'anabolic', then my other muscles will grow. Long ago I accepted the claims for squats, the whole 20 rep thing for hardgainers. I believe that philosophy. Anyway. It means that I need to start going to the gym, which I don't particularly like. It's nothing really I just committed to in-home workouts, for various reasons.

I'm also dealing with a new lower back problem. My trainer helped me setup exercises for pre-gymnastics training, as I believe that gymnasts are the strongest type of athletes, or at least the most overall in condition athletes. I didn't necessarily plan to do gymnastics but I felt to head in this direction. This meant lots of stabilization exercises, which I gained a new appreciation for. These are very tough! But I think very, very worthwhile. Anyway. After a while, I realized that anything involving my obliques (like stabilization planks) results in lower back pain. My research suggested that I'm one of those types of people who does not automatically engage the inner abs which form a support system for the spine--and an important research study showed a high correlation between this and lower back problems. I then began to do the basic exercise to develop this inner ab, which is pulling in your belly button and holding. However, it seems that this also contributes to the problem instead of reversing it. I don't know if I'm extra vulnerable for some reason. I do know that in the past when doing squat training and dead lifting, I did not have this problem. I did have a minor slip on the ice one recent winter which gave me some lower back pain, but nothing so bad. So, I'm a bit hung up with this back pain problem now. At the moment it is gone, but I have been taking it easy lately.

Another item... I watched a recent YouTube video which suggests that my energy problem may related to my nutrition. I might not be "cycling" my carbs properly.

Finally, I'm not sure how much time I should put into working out each day. I tend to shoot for 1:20 hrs, mixing things up here. I normally will settle for 1:00. But I enjoy doing sports so this mixes things up. Some day, if I feel tired or dragged, I will try really hard to do a minimum of a 1:00 walk with a moderate hill section.

I forgot to mention in my introduction that my fitness hero is Jack La Lanne. He recently died at 96 or so. His videos on YouTube are priceless and are an endless source of inspiration to me.

 

[stepstone]

I noticed that some people here use Fitday to track things... How important is this. I record my exercise workouts but not in details. Also, I don't think I need to track what I eat. But I'll look more into this.

 

[stepstone]

I will use this thread to post the more minor things that I learn about staying fit.

I recently learned that the controversy about how much water we should consume rages on. Many claim it is a total myth that we need 8 extra glasses per day. After skimming several articles, my action plan is to drink a few extra glasses per day but to not worry about it so much. However, drinking while exercising seems more important. We should let our sense of thirst be our guide yet be sure to have water around when we are working out. While water cannot contribute any energy to our system, if we are dehydrated we can feel "tired" (?) so it's best to error on the other side and sip away.

I also learned that "core development" is likely also a myth. I was a believer in the article by the researcher suggesting that lower back pain is closely correlated with a lack of a "normal" autonomic contraction of the inner ab muscles. Anyway. I would have to dig up the article refuting that idea.

 

[Goldfish]

I noticed that some people here use Fitday to track things... How important is this. I record my exercise workouts but not in details. Also, I don't think I need to track what I eat. But I'll look more into this.

Depends on your goals and your ability to accurately choose appropriate foods every time you put something in your mouth. I've never kept a food diary, but through trial and error I've figured out what works for me.

If you're keeping an exercise journal here (which I assume you are, hence this thread), then you should record your training sessions: date, possibly time, and every exercise, set, rep duration etc in detail, in order of completion.

 

[stepstone]

On the food issues, I have dramatically improved how/what I eat in the past year, but it remains a serious challenge. I totally have my weight under control now, though I fear an explosion in my weight if I let my guard down for a moment.

I have almost completed my discovery of three veggie combos that I can make a batch of at the beginning of the week and have on hand all week. One is a broad mix of fresh veggies with black beans. Another is more root veggies where I mostly steam everything and make a soup. I've realized that I'm not taking enough fresh green leafy veggies, so I need to develop this third dish. Luckily, I live next to a market... I've never actually prepared all three dishes ahead of time in one week, so this is my challenge.

My second largest challenge is to find sources of protein. I rely too much on protein powder. I know it's easy to just buy turkey, tuna, eggs. But still I slack off on providing myself with protein. Part of the problem is that I like meat so much that I tend to overeat it.

I often leave town every 2-3 weeks for 3-4 days each time and this always throws my diet and exercise off. I'm driving so I could use the cooler more to pack out food.

Beyond this, I know knowing about coordinating what I eat with the type of exercise I'm doing. And really this seems too advanced for me now. I simply need to focus on provisioning for now. I need to supply myself and prepare the foods I need so I can eliminate this as a basic requirement, or reach a level where I'm basically eating very well. But it's WORK to shop and prepare this food. (Neighbors have the same problem and we've talked about having a dinner once a week where we have fun and prepare lots of food together for the week but we haven't acted on this.)

I do use the method of eating every 3 hours, though not religiously since I achieved my weight loss goals. But still I think this is a good eating strategy.

 

[stepstone]

As for the exercise journal, I go through phases where I track... but I guess mostly to establish some baselines, figure out what my capacities are. Then I forget it for a while. My main goal is to MOVE IT each day, to do something, to do some exercise. If I feel tired, I will just do a 1 hr walk. But normally I try to do something every day. For example, yesterday, I was more active than usual, as it was the weekend. While cleaning the house, I causally tested my limits on several body-weight and #25 dumbbell exercises, as part of an experiment on how to break my rep limits. Then I spent 2.5 hrs biking but took a break to toss the softball and Frisbee with a friend. Today, I feel tired because I don't wind down before going to bed and I had a incorrect call at 11:00, so I'm dragging it today. But the local team will likely play Ultimate Frisbee tonight, which I've discovered to be a great workout, so I may go... but they play quite late.

Thanks Ryan. It just goes to show that a little encouragement and good information can really stimulate some people to push forward.