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!