A Few Random Thoughts

I had a few thoughts swirling around in the ol' Mind Grapes after the workout this morning. They aren't really connected at all but I wanted to post them.

• Stairs give me nightmares. I hate them. A lot. Football stadiums have more stairs than basketball arenas. I hate stadiums.
   
  
• I enjoyed doing the work on the football field this morning for a couple of reasons. First, the yard lines and goal lines are great for setting miniature goals for each sprint or activity. It's hard to push myself when it feels like I have so much further without end in sight, but I can amp myself up to finish strong when a goal is in front of me. The full field suicides at the end of the morning were a perfect example. I felt as though I got stronger as I got closer to the finish because I was getting over the mental hurdle that I had built for myself. Second, I was running on the hash-marks next to the sideline. I was able to gauge my stride length and keep a consistent pace when my feet started dragging. Last, we did some agility exercises that reminded me a lot of football practice. Took me back to a positive place where I had successfully done the whole "lose a second person" act before.
   
  
• Those full field suicides? Total distance: .625 mile or 2.5 laps around the track.
   
  
• Don't ever go ice skating. My company did a team building event ("Fun Team Event") at the ice skating rink at Centennial Park last Thursday. My ankles are still sore on Tuesday. It feels as though I am running and jumping on 2 ankles recovering from a mild ankle sprain. Going to enjoy the rest day tomorrow.
  
  
• I weighed myself this morning. Down to 357 from 365, so almost 10 pounds since the January boot camp started even with the snow storm taking a week away. Awesome!
   
  
• This morning made the decision final…No "State of the Union Drinking Game" for me tonight!
  

Back to the grind on Thursday.

Snow much for last week…

Well, I was really looking forward to getting back in the groove of things for a second consecutive week. Mother Nature had different plans. The weather reports turned out to be very accurate. My prediction was that we would be snowed in for Monday and Tuesday and the roads would be in good enough condition to resume normal schedules starting Wednesday. I made it outside to exercise both Saturday, for touch football with friends, and Sunday, for one of the weekend workout routines posted online. I thought I was going to be in a good position to resume Boot Camp after sitting at home for 2 days.

As we all know, my road forecast turned out to be wildly optimistic. Step It Up followed Cobb County Schools closing policies and we were forced to cancel all classes last week. Naturally, cabin fever set in and the diet turned from grilled chicken and veggies to whatever I had in the freezer. Somehow, I actually lost a few pounds since I last weighed myself. After this morning's workout I was down to 360 even.

This morning's workout was rough. We partnered with another camper and one would do an exercise while the other ran the perimeter of the basketball gym then the partners would switch. After probably 4 exercises, I was beat. I focused my energy on the jogging portion to at least get a good cardio workout but resistance exercises were a lost cause.

What does it feel like I always say? Get back on the horse. My diet is always better on days that I exercise than off days, so I really want to get in a good groove for the next few weeks. Hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate this time around.

Holidays – 1, Paul - 0

Vacation

A lot has happened since December 17^th, post-test day for our last boot camp. Two college graduations, Christmas, New Years, Sarah's birthday – that's quite a bit of celebrating to cram into two weeks off work! It's not rocket science to guess that I fell off the wagon a bit. My mom was gracious enough to buy me the bathroom scale I wanted for Christmas, despite her embarrassment and reluctance to give a scale as a gift. The holidays did some damage, as since Christmas I fluctuated between around 365 pounds depending on food and beer intake the previous couple days. At 365 lbs., the two weeks vacation made me gain back the few pounds I lost last month! Oh well, it's time to jump back on the horse and get back into it.

I reflected a little bit and realized how important structure and a routine are to my continued success. I spent most of my two weeks vacation in the Atlanta metro either at my family's or Sarah's house, but not at home. I was home so infrequently that I don't think I went grocery shopping once! Another routine buster was Sarah being in town from grad-school in Boston. I love her to death and we had a blast this holiday season together, but having a "guest" in town means that I wasn't doing a good job keeping to my newly learned Step It Up habits. Don't confuse me, that's not her fault in the least; I need to learn how to eat well outside of my apartment or work and make time for exercising.

Boot Camp v2

The great news is that Ryan is ready to whip me back into shape. I had my nice little sabbatical, but I'm ready to get back to work on my goals. We reported back to boot camp on Tuesday. This camp's pre-test results were expectedly a step backwards from my first post-test, but I am still better than my original pre-test!

Exercise	Pre-test	Goal
Fifty-Fives (55s)	10	12
Regular Pushups	24	30
Assisted Pushups	??	TBD
Regular Dips	??	TBD
Assisted Dips	??	TBD
Sit Ups (in 1 minute)	22	30
Planks to failure	55 sec	1:15

What are Fifty-Fives and where did the Mile run go? We did not test the mile run because we were forced inside due to weather. Instead, we tested to see how many time's we could run across the width (from sideline to sideline, not baselines) of the basketball court in 60 seconds, named "55s". Ryan remarked that to make the Whitefield HS varsity basketball team you must make at least 16 (8 times down and back). I need Ryan to remind me what my scores were for those exercises labeled with question marks; I will update when I hear back.

After we got done with our pre-test, Ryan was delighted to learn we still had 15 minutes left. He introduced some exercises to the newbies and we moderate ab work. Never one to let a step go un-stepped on, we ran stadiums around the gym for some cardio to finish up. After 2 weeks of inactivity, those did not go over well. Ouch.

Wednesday was a little warmer - a balmy 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit – so we were out on the field. Even after 3 weeks of camp last month, this was my first non-test day outside. After our usual warm up, Ryan had us jog and sprint several distances to warm up our legs in the cool weather. First twenty yards. Then thirty. Then forty. I'm going to let you all in on a little secret: When you are the slowest runner on these "warm up" sprints, there's not a whole lot of recovery time between when you get to the line and Ryan tells everyone to go back the other direction. I was pretty fatigued by the time we were done. I guess that means I need to get myself in shape where I'm not always the slowest, right?

The first real workout day was definitely an attention grabber! We went heavy on our upper bodies, doing lots of pushups and dips. Throw in 30 yards of bear crawls with pushups every five yards and cap it all off with crunches and burpees/squats separated by 30 yard sprints, and you have a recipe for some tired campers. As hard as Wednesday was, it felt good to get back in the saddle again.

Thinking back to my first "first day", I'm already ahead of where I was then. It's tempting to look back on the holidays and get frustrated that I made poor choices that jeopardized my goals. I'm trying not to look at it that way. I prefer to think during my first boot camp that I took 2 steps forward. My vacation took me one step backwards, but I'm still one step ahead of where I was. My goals are still in front of me and I'm moving back in the right direction again.

And the envelope please…

The "results post" deserves a little bit of a backstory. Follow me down the rabbit hole…

My company-wide Christmas – ahem, Holiday – Party last Friday was last week near the Mothership in Birmingham. It's always a good time for what it is, but a raucous event it is not. Now, the Atlanta office is no stranger to a good time. The local contingent decided we should have a separate Tacky Sweater party in addition to the main party, but this one with lots more booze or at least a willingness to let loose a little more. One problem – the party was last night and our post-tests were today! Saying that I am proud of myself probably is an understatement, but I was able to show considerable restraint to stick to H₂O last night. More than one co-worker thought I'd crack, but I would have hated to ruin 3 weeks of hard work for a night of partying. Besides, I'm heading to the best town on earth, Athens, GA, tonight for a graduation party. I've got lots more reasons to celebrate now than I would have if I was miserable this morning.

So, how far did three weeks of early mornings and busting my ass get me? Turns out, a long way! Let's go to the results! % Change in the Green shows where I met my goal, and red means I missed the mark.

Exercise	Pre-test	Goal	Post Test	% Change
Mile Run	21:12	18:00	14:00	-34%
Regular Pushups	20	30	29	45%
Assisted Pushups	5	N/A	7	40%
Regular Dips	8	15	10	20%
Assisted Dips	4	N/A	11	175%
Sit Ups (in 1 minute)	15	25	20	33%
Planks to failure	35 seconds	45 sec	58 sec	66%

Hopefully you noticed the improvements in every category, even if I didn't quite make my goal. These goals were always going to be a bit of guesswork since I had no idea what progress I could make in 3 weeks. I want to give myself a big pat on the back for that Mile Run time! For the pre-test, I was dog tired by the second lap , struggled to even keep putting one foot in front of the other, and my back barked at me the entire way since it wasn't used to carrying that sized load for so long. What a difference a few weeks make! I wasn't able to jog the entire way, but I paced myself lots better and used better strategy to navigate the track. "I'll walk this ½ turn, then jog the straight-away and the next half turn" was common in my head this morning.

My other goals are a bit of a mixed bag. They were:

• I will attend every boot camp session – A resounding checkmark! This was my number one priority, since even a tiny amount of exercise each day is better than what I was doing.
  
• I will keep an honest food log every day – I give myself a C because I did "passing work" but didn't do a superb job. The majority of my meals made it onto Twitter, but I did not do a good job snapping photos of my meals to show the portion sizes. There were also some cheat snacks or adult beverages on weekends that didn't make it online. The last few days I've fallen off the nutrition wagon a little bit with the holiday festivities and stress.
  
• I will lose 10 pounds – I lost 5 pounds during this camp. Now, I didn't meet my goal but I'm not dejected either. The point of starting this endeavor was to not only lose weight, but also make lifestyle changes and become "healthy" again. I definitely have started that uphill battle with more results, quicker, than I would have ever guessed. Remember, muscle weighs more than fat and my body composition is definitely changing by replacing fat with muscle. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the pounds melting away is just around the corner in the next boot camp or two.
  

See you guys at the mini-camp on Monday and then the full camps starting in January. Click here if you're interested in registering. The more the merrier.

 

The Agony and the Ecstasy – Weeks 1,2, and 3

At the end of each week, I planned to do an entry titled "The Agony and The Ecstasy" about our different workouts and how I was holding up. Unfortunately, it took us a little while to get the blog set up, not to mention work has cranked up a bit the last two weeks, so I'm going to combine the first three weeks into one post.

Why name this blog series "The Agony and the Ecstasy," you ask? Going into the program, I knew that SIU Boot Camp was going to test me physically, but, even as quickly as the first week, it became obvious I would see results right away. I wanted to let you guys know how the hard work was paying off.

The Agony

First of all, I want to stress that Ryan knows he has campers with all different fitness levels. He's preached since Day 1 that we should push ourselves at our own pace. The exercises we do really can be scaled up and down in intensity levels. When we do pushups, for example, I do them the normal way until failure and then switch to assisted to finish the sets. This was mission critical for a guy like me who got winded walking a few blocks or climb a flight of stairs before I started camp.

*BEEP BEEP BEEP* 4:45am *BEEP BEEP BEEP* 4:45am *BEEP BEEP*. Holy cow, waking up at that hour stinks. The first week I fought drowsiness and concentration at work. Ryan assures me that you get used to it, but I'm not sure I'm buying it yet. He does have a tendency to tell little white lies to get the best performance out of the class. Little fibs such as, "You only have one set left," when he really meant "You have one set left until we do another exercise!" and "We'll play a game tomorrow" when what he meant to say was, "Tomorrow we'll run around the gym in a different pattern!" It's all for the best because, like rolling out of bed at an hour before the rooster crows, Boot Camp is mostly mental. I appreciate Ryan tricking my mind into thinking positively.

Ok, so what happens when we actually get to the gym? We start each day with a warm up jog, some plyometrics and calisthenics to actively stretch our muscles. Don't sleep on these warm up exercises; I felt like I was going to die on my first day and we'd barely started! Another secret about Ryan, I don't think he's ever met a stair that he didn't want to see climbed. Luckily he let the "newbies" warm up with a light jog while the veterans run the bleachers. My luck ran out the second week.

After we're all warmed up – and sometimes tired too – it's time to get to work. I liken the workouts to a "variation on a theme." We never do an identical workout, but we do the similar exercises every day. Faster, slower, more reps, higher intensity, etc. Every workout is up tempo, moving from exercise to exercise with minimized rest and/or running between stations. Every day is a full body workout but each day may emphasize a different body part. I only have one real objection. Going from sedentary to working out five days a week, it seems like a true rest for each of the muscle groups may be warranted every once in a while. That said, a normal boot camp is only 4 days a week so I think this would mitigate itself in a regular scenario.

I know potential campers have one question on your mind. "How sore am I going to be?" You're going to be sore. I was working muscles that hadn't been used regularly in 5 years. The first week is when most of my soreness affected me the most. The first Wednesday and Thursday were the absolute worst days with full body soreness. Only the faint memory that working out again helps alleviate soreness by getting the lactic acid out of your muscles kept me going. The first Friday morning we did lots of calf work. It took me a few good steps to be able to hobble around my apartment on Saturday and Sunday. I re-learned that ice is my friend very quickly.

The Ecstasy

Man, those paragraphs wear me out just reading them! Never fear, the physical and mental benefits have already been huge.

By far the most exciting part for me is the mental and emotional changes. My general mood improved and energy levels skyrocketed. After those first few days struggling to stay awake at work, I get to work full of energy in the morning with a little bounce in my step. This never happened before. My ideas at work seem better and solutions to problems come easier. Part of that is less alcohol consumption but I also attribute a lot of it to a better self esteem and a better mood.

Speaking of self esteem, I feel so much better about my body, even after only three weeks. Even though I wish I had shed more than five pounds by now, I know my body's composition is changing. Heck, even after one week my friends were complimenting me on my improved appearance. Clothes don't seem to "shrink" so much after coming out of the dryer anymore, either. Funny the different ways I would rationalize weight gain in the past, right?

Physically, I feel confident that I am reaching my exercise goals. We'll find out on Friday morning. I noticed improved flexibility after the first week. Putting on socks and tying my shoes used to seem like such a chore with this big ol' gut in the way. That's all changed already.

My favorite physical accomplishment came just this Monday. We've done bear crawls a couple times now and I've struggled mightily. Ryan has photographic evidence so maybe he'll post those online, but man, bear crawls have been a killer. On Monday, I owned them! There's no better feeling than doing accomplishing something I couldn't physically do before. The best news of all is I'm just getting started so there will be plenty more where that came from!

I Will Step Up

One of the first things Ryan did was ask us for two goals for the camp. I firmly believe the best goals or targets are measureable and defined in an affirmative voice. By this I mean that I prefer to say, "I will have perfect attendance at boot camp" instead of "Exercise more frequently." More frequently than what, my old habits? I hope that you can see the difference in the two types of statements. The first sentence does not leave any wiggle room for me to skip a workout while the second does grant that slack. By defining my goals in such a way that they are measurable, it is easy to notice if I start to falter.

Really, there are two major goals I want to achieve in my first boot camp. I already spilled the beans on my first goal, "I will attend every class of boot camp." My biggest hurdle is always physically lacing up the shoes and deciding to exercise. Once I'm actually exercising, it isn't such a grind. The thought of working out is worse than working out. Just mix in a sprinkling of 4:45am wake up calls and that's a recipe for re-setting the alarm and rolling over. I'm more interested in my attendance than intensity levels because I know my competitive side will make it worthwhile once I'm there. Besides, any exercise is infinitely more than I've done for the past 5 years.

My second goal is, "I will keep an honest food log every day." The biggest problem with my previous "diet", and I use that term loosely, was that I had no idea what I was consuming. There wasn't a single iota of concern that even though I had already eaten a big lunch and dinner, whether or not I should reach for the snacks while watching TV. It seems I've read countless times that the first step to correcting your food intake is to start monitoring it, so that's my plan only with more healthy foods. I quickly grew tired of the pen and paper log Ryan provided us and had an epiphany. "I always have my phone with me… why not use Twitter to keep my food log and post pictures of everything I eat?" So Paul's Food Log was born a week ago, 12/3. I've done a surprisingly good job remembering to post each meal and snack, but if I forget pictures that means I've already eaten! In case you were curious - and serious nerd alert here - I am using so many hash tags because I want to build some software to read the Twitter feed and dynamically create a printable food log that's in a more traditional format. If I wind up building this, I would extend it so that all SIU campers could tie a food log Twitter account into the program.

The first day of Boot Camp was the pre-test, which included the mile run, pushups, regular and assisted push ups, regular and assisted dips, sit ups, and planks. For those unfamiliar with the name "planks", men from a Greek house may more affectionately refer to these as "Boes and Toes." The idea is to support your body weight on your elbows and toes while keeping your body flat as a board (or plank) making for an intense core/abs workout. Anyways, my pre-test results are as follows:

Exercise	Time or Reps
Mile Run	21:12
Regular Pushups	20
Assisted Pushups	5
Regular Dips	8
Assisted Dips	4
Sit Ups (in 1 minute)	15
Planks to failure	35 seconds

It's foreign to me to move my exercise goals to the backburner, but then again I'm doing a lot of things differently this month. These take a backseat because they're actually signals that I'm meeting my two major goals. I was unsure of how to accurately estimate how much progress I could make in only 3 weeks time, so we'll find out at the end of next week whether or not I'm a good forecaster.

• I will lose 10 pounds
  
• I will finish a mile under 18 minutes
  
• I will do 30 regular pushups
  
• I will do 15 regular dips
  
• I will do 25 sit-ups in 1 minute
  
• I will hold the plank for 45 seconds
  

Long term health is the major driver for me doing Step It Up. My lifestyle was not sustainable; there are no other ways to describe it. Below are my long term goals.

• I will weigh 266 pounds (100 pounds!)
  
• I will get off the recently prescribed blood pressure medication
  
• I will get my cholesterol and blood pressure back into the "healthy" zones.
  

Wow, those goals seem like a pipe dream at the moment but, as the title of this post says, I Will Step Up! I hope you will follow along on this blog to see how far I've come and encourage me to realize these goals.

 

Welcome, aka The Backstory

Hello! My is Paul and I am a new camper to Step It Up Fitness' morning Smyrna Boot Camp. Ryan Byers is my class' fearless leader, up bright and early at 5:30am each morning, at Campbell High School each and every weekday. I am a 23 year old IT Consultant that graduated from the University of Georgia last December who lives and works downtown. I'd like to take a minute to explain a little about me so you all know my motivations for joining SIU's boot camp.

I always grew up a big kid, and I jokingly blame my dad for it because when I was an infant he would make my bottle and just throw it in my crib whenever I cried for it. Needless to say, he was probably waking up frequently. It didn't help matters much when I was diagnosed with Legg Perthes Disease in first grade and treatment included restricted activity. All things considered, my childhood consisted of overeating without as much exercise as normal kids have.

This all changed when my doctor cleared me to play football in high school. The year round work outs and practices melted the pounds away and I packed on muscle. Responsibility to my teammates and coaches were a big reason for hitting the gym each day. [Un?]Fortunately, I burned so many calories each day that it didn't matter what I ate, and I took full advantage and never learned to curb my food intake. At my lightest I weighed 220 pounds and was pretty strong. The transformation to my body was really incredible.

After high school, I enrolled at UGA and tried to keep getting in the gym, but it is now clear that holding myself accountable wasn't as much of an incentive as I hoped. I joined a fraternity and did what most college kids do: drink beer. A lot of beer. Again [un?]fortunately, I still did well in my academic pursuits, graduating with two degrees. I was having the time of my life and didn't see many negative consequences (at the time) for my actions. So for the past 4-5 years of my life, I partied, ate whatever I want, and only infrequently exercised during things like intramurals pick up games. It's not rocket science to know that what I was doing to my body was not sustainable and going to have pretty huge ramifications.

In the middle of October, I learned about Step It Up through the Groupon they ran. It always nagged at me how I'd let myself go. I was worried about my weight and blood pressure but hadn't stepped on a scale in months. I debated all day whether or not to do it until I went out with some friends for beers after work and hesitantly brought it up. They were all supportive, and I made it home with enough liquid courage to click the "Buy" button and give this boot camp thing a try. A week or two later I decided to register for the camp that started on November 29th, thinking I would have a month to gradually build up basic endurance. Instead of that happening, I sat around for a month. Oh well.

That leads me to, "Where are you today?" On November 18th, I went to the doctor for my first full physical since football some 5 years ago. I am only 5'8''and had ballooned to 366lbs! Blood work showed all three of my cholesterol levels were on the wrong side of healthy, and my blood pressure was high, though I forgot to get my exact numbers. We both agreed that weight loss and nutrition would cure most of what ailed me. When I mentioned boot camp to the doctor, he prescribed a light blood pressure prescription to prevent me from stroking out but cleared me to start the boot camp.

Ryan (our instructor) and I got to talking after a few days of working out after he saw that I was committed to turning my life around. He approached me with the notion of blogging about my experiences clawing back into shape and I loved the idea for a few reasons. One, of all the approaches that I've used to lose weight in the past, responsibilities to others has been a success factor. So now in addition to being held accountable to my boot camp-mates, now I will be held accountable to the entire internet! Second, my writing skills have gotten stale. I read some early college papers and think, "Where did that writer go?".

My apologies for the long-winded introduction, but I hope you come back to track my progress. I have a few more posts planned out discussing my goals for the weeks to come and showing you what it really is like to Step It Up, so check back often and comment!