Fitness Update: Lessons being learned 7/23/2021

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 So I have been at the "Insanity" fitness videos for the past month or so (Click on the Amazon product ad above for more into about it). While they are designed to be done 6 out of 7 days, I am lucky to get in as many as five, more often, three or four, but I have tried to make up for some of those missing days with a 30-minute workout I found on YouTube, or a routine with various weights I have at home. This is mostly because my double-work schedule often means that if I am home and not working, I must chose between sleeping and doing anything else in the world, and sleeping is the thing that most needs to be done.

That having been said,  I have discovered a few things:

Initially, my cardio was stronger than my muscles, meaning my legs would give out before my cardio reached its peak. The muscles have been catching up a little bit, though, or else my cardio has gotten a little worse.

I need to do squats and other leg exercises with weights, because on pure body weight I am just not getting the power I need.

About 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through a set, I find my self flagging. I can dig in and do the move great about 3 or 4 times, then I fall out again.

Judging by my push-ups and chest presses, much of my chest size must be fat, not muscle.

My serratus anteriors are starting to show definition, if you look real hard.

There is a layer of fat around the middle of my torso. It juggles on my back when doing things like "floor sprints" and "in-and-out abs. It is still there, but it is "jiggling' just a little bit les, like it is becoming more solid.

My weight can vary as much a 3 lbs a day!

My weight was getting just under 200 lbs, when I went to a wedding. The next day I was at 304lbs. I could not get back under 200 lbs until just yesterday, after a couple of days in which I spent most of the daytime in bed, asleep, after working overnight shifts. Maybe that weight was just bloat from eating?

As the program goes on, I am using a pair of Indian clubs I have by carrying them in my hands through the warm-ups and some of the regular exercises. I started after the first week, and have been gradually increasing the number of sets I do with them in my hands. They combined weight is barely equal to my daily weight fluctuations, but it does add just a bit of resistance to the movement of my arms, particularly if I hold them at the ends of the handles during certain moves. I consider the number of times I pump my biceps and shoulders when jogging in place, doing the "Heisman, or jumping jacks, that little bit of resistance must be accentuating the work out here just a little bit. Eventually I will move up to wearing my steel gauntlets, which I did the last time I went though a hardcore period of these workouts.

But these workouts alone will not get me back to anything near my top physical shape, I don't think. For that I have to get back to serious weight training, fighting in armor, and doing kickboxing, BJJ, or both, five days a week. For that, I will have to quit one of my jobs.

Stay tuned...

Fitness Update: Actual "Worst Shape of My Life." Part 2

 ...but before I tell you exactly what happened, let me describe just a little bit more of my fitness journey. Bear with me, it won't take long and everything else will make more sense.

I had started fitness training (mostly weights) from the influence of a friend of mine whom I would later start dating. I found that it very positively affected my fighting in the Society for Creative Anachronism. I later took up Brazilian jiu jitsu, competing in 50 matches, and then full-contact medieval armored combat, going to world championship competition with the USA team for three years.

Here is possibly the most epic match of my competitive grappling career:

With each of these new challenges I found myself experiencing more means by which to gain strength and endurance and reached new levels of fitness. At my peak I was doing some form of training or fighting five or six days a week. My weight ranged from just under 180 lbs to a bit above 190 lbs depending on what I was training for.

In addition to the SCA armored combat and the BJJ, the training I did included weightlifting, running, Crossfit, kickboxing, Insanity videos. and various bodyweight exercise drills.

Then I tore the ACL in my right knee:

I still trained, but I was unable to fight, and when I got my knee surgically repaired, I was unable to train in certain ways until I was fully healed.

Then I tore my rotator cuff (sadly, no video of this exists). This again limited my training, as there were things I just could not do with my shoulder after that.

Then other "life stuff" got in the way and my weight ballooned to over 200 lbs. I took pictures of myself. I can "suck it in" with the best of 'em, but when I released my belly, I honestly looked like the fat guy with skinny arms.

When I decided to get back to training, I started the Insanity videos again. This time, however, I could actually feel the fat on my torso jiggling up and down when doing any routine that involved having my hands on the floor. It was disconcerting. But progress was being made. I would wear my steel gauntlets  and padded gambeson while doing Insanity videos, getting a little extra resistance and sweat in my workout...and then my room got hit with the "Order to Repair/Vacate Order"....and that brings us up to date.

So, after the yoga, and looking at my bathroom scale not making the number go down below 205, I started up with the Insanity again.

I determined that my muscles were not as strong as my cardio. They would get too sore and tired to continue before I would get too out of breath to continue. I felt the jiggling of the fat in my chest and my stomach when doing running and jumping things, and again I felt the fat around my torso bounce up and down as I did "floor sprints" and other hands-on-floor exercises.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT POST AND FIND OUT!

Fitness Update: Actual "Worst Shape of My Life." Part 1

 So, if you have been hanging on, waiting for the answers to the questions left behind in my last post on this blog, wait no longer. The answers are here:

I was unable to keep up a diet and exercise regimen to maintain my fitness gains from Pennsic 2019. Let me tell you how it went:

I got back from Pennsic and returned to my 80-hours-a-week two job schedule. this left me with little time for any kind of working out, as there were only two days a week that I was able to put together more than two hours at a time in which to sleep. It was all I could do to put on armor for the Tuesday night fighter practice.

Then, in late November, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development put my room under an "Order to Repair/Vacate Order" for lack of a fire escape, which my building manager tried to parlay into a de facto eviction. I had five days to get my stuff out of the room before it would be locked,  I took the week off from work and spent it packing and moving stuff into storage spaces while running around to lawyers and community activist groups and Housing Court to figure out my rights.

I was able to move in with my GF for a while, but by the end of that week and all the carrying of boxes and running up and down stairs, I had gone from about 225 lbs to under 215! My cardio and strength was up, and though I was an emotional, sleep-deprived wreck, I was pretty fit!

Then I had my shoulder surgery. It had been planned for months, and I needed it, because there were things I just could not do with my right arm anymore, like swing a sword or lift a drink to my mouth without sticking my elbow out sideways like John McCain.

That surgery, of course, meant that I could not fully operate my arm until the physical therapy brought it fully back. I was using the stationary bike in my GF's house and doing all the required exercises, but I still had to keep the arm in a sling for several months.

Spring, 2020 came, and with it, the COVID-19 shutdown. This prevented the local SCA from having any more fighter practices, but I kept things active by going outside every Tuesday and  conducting a "virtual" fighter practice on Facebook Live. I posted the videos on YouTube weekly, and you can actually see my arm go from being in a sling to being able to do pushups over the 15 weeks that I did this.

Here are all the videos in a convenient YouTube "playlist" and the first and last in the series:

SCA Virtual Fighter practice YouTube Playlist

 

I did have to  move again in July, and then again in October. The last time I was able to find an apartment of my own in which I could keep almost everything I had placed in storage. This required another massive move of stuff, including up and down stairs. By the time that was all done, I was down to 205 lbs.

For better or worse, during that summer I had been furloughed form one of my jobs, so I was able to do all this moving and even get in a workout once or twice a week (usually either an Insanity workout or some 30-minute, total body workout I would find on YouTube. I should start reviewing those...).

But shortly after moving into my new apartment, I got the call from the job that furloughed me that they needed me back part-time. So from then until now I have been working 60-hour weeks, with occasional weeks in which my "full-time" job would not have work for me for a day or three.

So I was back to not working out. I could not find the time, and even the weights that I used to have did not seem to have made it to my new home. I developed a routine for my shoulders at my night job, but it really was not anything that would give me cardio or visible muscular gains.

So I stumbled on some beginner yoga DVDs at a local thrift shot, bought them up, and, in February, when my "full-rime" job had barely one or two days a week for me to work, used that available time to do one DVD after another (And yes, I do intend to review those).

So that is my first tome doing yoga as a regular Thing. I have had enough experiences with various fitness, dance, martial arts, and movement programs to be able to recognize how each of these disks trained in a different way. They sent my body into positions I had forgotten I could o, and now no longer could! They al got my body out of its stiff, weak place and awakened unused muscles. It was a great way to bring a body that had been simply standing all night, sitting all day and sleeping in between back to the world of Being Active. One particular program even had a series of exercises deliberately hitting the shoulders in a way that my repaired shoulder specifically needs to be hit!

I also went running a few times. My leg muscles needed work, but I felt that my cardio was still good for the distance.

So after a few weeks I figured it was time to get back to something more intense. So I pulled out the old Insanity videos.

Now, I had gone through two or three periods of doing the Insanity program pretty seriously. but I never got far enough along to move to the upper level. Still, I could measure my relative fitness by how good I was at keeping up with the cardio and strength demands. So I did the "fit test" and came  in with numbers that were comparable to what they had been in the past, if a little lower on most of them. Then, the next day, I did the first workout...

TO BE CONTINUED!