Chris' Fitness Journal

Rest Day

itsguamboy — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:04:32 +0000

Day 4 was a much needed rest day. My body is incredibly sore. I literally had to roll out of bed to get myself going. All parts of my abs were sore. Lower abs, upper abs, obliques…everything. My arms shoulders and traps and back are so sore too. There is probably only one muscle in my body that is not sore. =P I did roll with the homies to 24hr to get in some rowing done. Rowed a total of 2500m. It got the muscles loosened up a bit and I was able to stretch a little. It felt good.

Diet:

Breakfast: Oatmeal (1/2 cup oats), 3 blocks protien powder, string cheese, 18 almonds.

Lunch: 1 block broccoli, 1 block mushrooms, 1 block string beans, 1 block carrots, 4 blocks chicken all cooked in EVOO.

Dinner: 1 1/2 rolls sushi salmon w/cali roll and yellowtail w/green onion

2x A day… what the hey?!

itsguamboy — Wed, 13 May 2009 16:41:02 +0000

I got owned yesterday. It was so bad, I don’t think I can even blog about. The day started at 5am. Woke up, prepared my meals and had my 4 block breakfast. Such a bad idea by the way. Headed to the academy, had what I thought was a pretty tiring warmup, then proceeded to have my body get the living crap beat out of me. Eric’s message of the day was about squats and how it is one of the most powerful, basic movements we use in our every day life. Most of our every functioning movement of our body involves using all the muscles associated with the squat. For our warmup we had the big block run where at each corner we did squats. For each corner we incremented the amount of squats by five. So at the end of the warmup, we’ve done 50 squats plus the lap around the block. I was tired by then already. So yea, I got the message… be strong in the squats. The workout for the day I thought was pretty rough. My body is still getting used to being pushed this hard so I’m having a hard time with all the movements. It was in teams of 4 doing 3 rounds of: rows, 25 pushups, 25 ball slams, 25 straight leg raises on the hanging bars. It was fun to work as a team, it really did push me even harder knowing I had team members waiting on me. My rowing has been getting better, I can tell I’m generating a lot more power with less work. On two of the rounds on the row, Eric stood behind me and watched and cheered me on. I was pretty motivated when he told me I had a really good race on the row. The pushups in the first round were easy, I wish I could say the same for the latter. I noticed when I got tired, I took a wider stance as far as my arms go. This is bad, I need to maintain form and keep my abs and core tight moving as one all the way to the ground. You get more power when the hands are in the correct position, just around your chest and not too far wide. The ball slams owned me sick. One thing I have to learn is to stop being inefficient with my movements and take advantage of the natural physics involved in the movement. So with the ball slams, using the downward motion to rest my arms as I slam the ball down and using the ball’s momentum coming back up to help me thrust and push the ball all the way to the top from the squat position. I don’t think it was the weight of the ball being a problem, nor the form of the movement being so off, but more so just not having that core strength to do the movement efficiently and effectively. In time we’ll see if I get better with them. The last part of the set were the leg raises on the bars. From a stable starting position we had to move our ankles/feet all the way to the top of the bar as high as we could. This for me was so hard. My abs have never been so sore. I probably had maybe two good attempts and the rest of the movements became a swinging leg lift. I have to work on my core and abs so I can keep my body stable and do the movement correctly. So yea, 3 rounds of each one of these exercises owned me sick. Lesson learned? Don’t have a 4 block meal an hour before crossfit.

My 2nd workout for the day were 20x100m sprints with 45 second rest intervals. I think I nearly died, no joke. My breathing was a problem throughout the whole exercise. Yes, I’m sprinting but I need to have a breathing rhythm to make sure my body is a lean clean running machine as I sprint. I made sure I had running shoes for the workout, I think this helped a little. I was averaging 16.5-17s at the start of the heat, but by the time I reached 10, might have been even sooner, my times dropped to the 20+ second range. I think I had a 23 second 100m in there. This needs to improve. If I want to smoke people down the basketball court, I need to get quicker. I was a little surprised that I endured 20 rounds of this, and it has given me a little motivation knowing that I can do it. It sure wasn’t easy though.

Diet:

Breakfast: 4 blocks oatmeal (roughly 3/4 cups oatmeal according to the charting), 1 block protient powder in oatmeal (1/4 scoop ), 2 eggs, 1 string cheese, 4 blocks almonds (roughly 16 almonds with the nuts I had)

Lunch: Salad(w/tomato, broccoli, mushrooms, avacado), left over salmon.

Dinner: Zelo’s Pizza and salad! (I’m pretty sure I went over my block schedule here, I felt completly filled more than usual)

Recap:

* Push-up form needs to be more stabalized. I have to check for the correct hand posisiton to generate the most power out of the movement.

* Ball slams need to be a more fluid movement. I need to use the natural physics of the movement to generate greater efficiency.

* A stronger core will help with straight leg raises. If I begin to swing, I need to stop myself and do it all over.

* Get into a breathing rhythm when running, breathe and pump the arms for momentum and push hard with my legs all the way through.

** PS: My body is sooooo efffin sore

Day 2 and then some

itsguamboy — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:01:20 +0000

Day 2 kicked my ass again. 7 rounds of 5x squat thrusters and 3 pullups. It seems manageable, but by my 4th round I was done for. Reflecting back, I think what is going to help me the most so I can get the most out of the workout is proper technique. No matter how tired I am, I have to pay attention to the small details to make sure I get the proper technique down. In the long run, this will improve my strength, time, and overall power generated from the workout. So for squat thrusters, I need to really focus on keeping my elbows up, back straight and locked and really driving back up and thrusting the bar over my head. I think I have the squat part down. I know I get good depth in my squat because I can really feel my muscles by my glutes working. They’re very sore today, along with pretty much all the muscles in my body. I only did 175lbs. Standar for men is 195lbs. 175lbs felt light, but by the 4th round, I was really feeling it. I think one thing I really need to look at and maybe work on is exploding with the hips up. At crossfit, I’ve noticed everyone talking about the power and strength of the hips… I really need to utilize its power.

For the pull-ups, the first 2 sets where okay, after that they were killing me. I tried to pull up, but my muscles aren’t there yet. One motivation for losing weight is so I don’t have so much weight to pull-up. Watching Jose do his rounds as I transitioned my sets, I saw him flying with the pull-ups, utilizing the kippling (sp?) technique. I need to learn the basic movement so I can actually improve my time and still do the pullups.

Diet was pretty good for the day.

Breakfast: Milk, 3 blocks of mixed fruit (apple, pineapple, and grapes) , string cheese, 12 almonds, and a zone bar. I was on the train, and my food choices were limited.

Lunch: Deli slices, 2 blocks avacado, 2 blocks almonds, an apple and a slice of toast.

Dinner: 4 blocks salmon, 4 blocks salad with sliced tomatoes and light balsamic vinagarette, and 12 almonds.

I notice that I stick to only almonds as my source of fats. I probably need to switch it up and find something else that I like.

Recap:

*Learn kipp pull-ups

* Need to utilize more hips in my movements

* Focus on technique with lifts – speed and time will come gradually

Consistency makes for results

itsguamboy — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:08:55 +0000

I need to make sure I’m accountable for all of what I eat and I need to document workout times to show improvement. I’ll be blogging everything on here the most I can.

I had my Body Fat Index measured and I came in at 24%. Pretty damn high. I also weighed in at 179lbs. The goal is to bring this way below 20% maybe in the 13%-18% range.

My first workout in the regular crossfit class was a 5k run. I was not ready for it, yet I still got it down. Bolstering a whopping time of 34min, I managed to complete the run with no real injury. My shins were hurting throughout the run though and my knees didn’t feel all that great either. It wasn’ the fact that I was tired to run, my breathing was good; I had a good rhythm, it was just my shins and knees. So much impact on them both, making the workout really tough for me. I probably need to invest in some good workout shoes. Something I can run in, and still do my workouts.

The diet has been better. Vanessa put me on a 14 block meal plan/day. So the breakdown for meals are 4 block breakfast, lunch, and dinner with 1 block snacks between break and lunch, and lunch and dinner. 4 blocks does feel like a lot of food. I think where I’m cheating myself on my diet though is the snacks. I’m probably eating too much, my snacks feel like 2+ blocks. The only real way I can make sure I have the appropriate amount of food is by preparing the night before. Usually I’m scrambling during the day to figure out what I’m going to eat. By preparing the food the night before, I won’t have to scramble to find food in the first place. I’ll know I have the correct portion as far as blocks go, and lastly it would just save me time to enjoy my food instead of having to rush to pickup food, then eat it, then get back on the clock for work.

Along the lines of fitness and health, I think i’ll also be blogging about my skin condition. My dermatologist is pretty adamant about me having sensitive skin. With really disgusting rashes all over my body, I was sure I had some kind of disease, or even viral infection. My skin would be so itchy and so uncomfortable throughout the day. It aggrevates me so much and it just makes my life miserable. I think I’m pretty sleep deprived because of the itching too. I wake up around 3-4am just having an itch episode. It doesn’t help me any better the fact that I sleep around 1-1:30am sometimes. If I want to improve my health, I need to rest. The body rebuilds itself during sleep. Having better sleep fuels you for the next day. Being fully energized and having complete rest would increase my productivity at work and in crossfit. Its a two-fold benefit. So reflecting back on this, I think the goal is to shoot for 7.5-8hrs of sleep. With the meds my dermatologist has been giving, I find myself not scratching at night, and my rashes are slowly going away.

Today is going to be a great day!

Recap:

* Need to purchase food scale to measure correct portions for zone diet.

* Prepare meals the night before for the next day

* Sleep by 11pm to get atleast 8hrs of sleep

Hello world!

itsguamboy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:50:08 +0000

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