Month: April 2011

R6 Insanity:Asylum 1.2 – Strength (Not My Problem)

Today was a welcome relief after yesterday kicked my ass and waking up this morning feeling like I slept in a garbage compactor. My back was sore all day, I presume that was the bear walking. However, today brought a day of strength, using dumbbells (and in my case kettlebells) and a pull up bar. Strength has never been my issue so strength endurance days are not usually that tough. Today was no different. The workout was enjoyable, went quickly and gave me a chance to repair my tattered self respect after yesterday’s fiasco. Although I could have used heavier weights, the workout allows you to work as hard as you need, not necessarily as hard as you can but still get the benefits you are training for. There is no use of the skip rope so my temper was in check, and the agility ladder was thankfully rested for the day. I am glad there are pull ups too however they are few and far between. It is a fun whole body workout, nothing too specific and still gives you a feeling that you actually did something instead of going through the motions to fill the time while your instructor comes up with another aerobic combo to bore you with. I certainly don’t feel as wiped out as yesterday but I feel that the next workout may be a return to humility for me.

Meanwhile, I will enjoy having kept up with the on screen crowd.

R6 Insanity:Asylum 1.1 – Speed And Agility

What can I say, I feel a little humbled writing this. The fit test was fine, but today after Speed and Agility I feel like I did the first day I did insanity which is to say I am wondering how I am going to make it through if every day is like this.

Rather than try Shaun T at this time, I realized that I would have to be at least 20lbs lighter if I was going to try some of the stuff I had read about. However, the lure of the shiny box was too much and halfway through Kenpo (which I now no longer find fun, but rather boring) decided that I would put the Plyometric Insanity disc in and see what the big deal was. Ten minutes later my heart rate was at around 160 bpm and I thought my heart was going to explode. Shaun T’s warmup had reduced me to a quivering mess and as I lay on the floor soaking in my humility I realized that indeed I was looking at the future.

A large part of the success of Insanity and Insanity:Asylum I think is the warmup. It truly is a warning of what is to come and I am certain that for many, halfway through the warmup is the time they decided that Insanity isn’t for them. I remember feeling defeated because the warmup seemed too hard for me. As I finished the warmup for I:A I felt that same familiar feeling of defeat washing over me. However, I figured that I had conquered everything that BeachBody had thrown my way so far, there is no reason I couldn’t do this. I was (almost) right. The Speed and Agility workout is tough, it’s variety and speed and control and everything I was looking for. In fact, it was the content I was hoping for to vindicate my choice to spend the money. So the details, let me just say I didn’t do the full workout. I wasn’t able to keep up with everything and although I never pushed pause and I started every exercise I finished around 50% of them.

The bear crawls were the easiest part for me but also the part that I think caused me a very sore back for several hours after. The agility ladder agility moves are also pretty simple but the problem is that the compound movements require concentration, accuracy and patience to master. Speaking of patience, the warmup is in fact the part I had the most difficulty with. The problem is that I cannot, and have never been able to skip with a rope. I was quick to decide that the rope they included was garbage, turns out in fact that it was the user that was the problem. I bought a nylon rope to replace the one they shipped and as I  became slightly more proficient with the stupid thing I was quick to realize that the one they had sent was exactly what you need. Apologies, then, to the brains at BB.

The warmup then was the most frustrating and humbling exercise I have come up against since the first time I did Turkish Get Ups with the 45lb Kettlebell. That was a frightening evening, and day 1 of I:A was just as frightening as I came face to face with my own lack of competence! However, as I tell my girls at gym on a daily basis, it’s OK to be scared, but do it anyway!

R6 Insanity:Asylum 1.1 – Fit Test

The Athletic Performance Assessment was not too bad, I managed to keep up with the participants even though the in and out abs progressions really kicked my butt. Each move is done for 60 seconds, the count is by reps even though for some, one rep is all the way to the end of the ladder and back!
Here are my results:

Agility Heisman – 8
In and out progression – 25
Pull ups – 25
Mountain Climber Switch Kicks – 70
Shoulder Touch Pushup Walk – 7
X Jumps – 24
Moving Pushups – 5
Agility Ladder Shuffle – 12
Agility Ladder Bear Crawl – 5

I will probably be doing day 1 workout later today since I was supposed to do the fit test last night. My parents and sister are in from out of the country so time may be a premium but I am going to try and stay on track.

This is going to be fun!!

Round 6 – Day 1 – Insanity: Asylum (Plus Some KB and Crossfit!)

April20, 2011

It’s time!!

19th June 2009 I started P90X. I had owned the DVDs for a while, had done P90 with Tony (the gentle, less annoying version) and was aching for something to change my life. That something was me! It seems odd to me that I should have suddenly decided to do this and where it has led me, but just like Baz Luhrmann says:

The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
on some idle Tuesday.

The same thing applies for anything, troubling or not, that changes your life. You don’t always plan for it, sometimes it just happens.

I have to admit, when I started I was coming off a good summer in the gym and I was a little full of myself:

Let me just say that I consider myself to be in decent shape. I can do a hundred pushups, a couple hundred crunches and a handful of full extension chinups without much effort. However, I am a static athlete. Most of what I do is with free weights and my strength is very limited to the range of motion. So even though I can bench close to 400lbs and shoulder press over 275lbs I am not necessarily “fit”.

However my sentiments were correct. I was strong, but I was not fit. Nor was I particularly healthy. After round 1 of P90X I was impressed both with myself and with Tony’s program. It wasn’t until I tried Insanity that I was once again surprised by the quality and care put into the workouts. I am prepared to be impressed again and I have to admit I am a little giddy with excitement. I will be back later, after the Athletic Performance Assessment!

 

R5 Is Over – Exciting Times Ahead. Insanity:Asylum Finally Arrived!!

DONE AND DONE...
Done and Done!

Yesterday was the last day of the RKC Rite of Passage. It wasn’t the best heavy day I have ever done but it was a relief and a real sense of accomplishment to finish. Now at least I can pick and choose my KB workouts and throw a little spice in there.

Second, this morning I weighed in for Biggest Loser at work and won the month, not only that but I am now 239.8 which is a total of 52lbs down. Add that to the 39″ waist I discovered the other day and I am really hitting the marks here!

Third, and the really REALLY big news, Insanity:Asylum arrived last night!! I watched the fit test (or as Shaun prefers to call it: Athletic Performance Assessment) and it didn’t look super tough but I have already got an issue with the stuff they send you. The skip rope is terrible. Whoever decided to use a plastic rope instead of a leather or rope (go figure) is an idiot. So I will be going to Wallymart this afternoon to pick up a nice speed rope I saw there not too long ago. This means that today (time permitting) will be R6D1 – The IA Fit Test.

So the package included a crappy rope, an agility ladder (to put on the floor), the DVDs, a wall calendar and a couple of resistance bands. The big deal for me at least is that the program is 30 days long but in their infinite wisdom, Beachbody have recognized that a lot of people who will be buying IA will have already done one or both of P90X and Insanity. Therefore they have put together another 2 30 day calendars, one integrating IA with P90X and one integrating IA with Insanity. Good call BB! Not only that, they will no doubt rope in the few renegades who may go straight to IA and squeeze some more BB$ out of them!

I am seriously looking forward to the Fit Test this evening before I go coaching. It is only about 25 minutes or so and I will be ready to start day 1 of IA tomorrow.

HOWEVER!!! I am going to try and dilute the 30 days of IA with some KB workouts, I am hoping to stretch it out to 60 days with the inclusion of some Crossfit / pullup workouts also. It’s not that I don’t think it will be hard enough, but I don’t want to lose my KB skill set or my pullups during the process. The biggest problem I had with Insanity was that there was no back work involved so I found myself doing extra chin ups when I could in order to get the balanced workout I wanted. Whatever I do, the day 1 workout will no doubt be a rude awakening as I move towards more mobility once again.

 

R5D64 – Medium RKC, Insanity Asylum And Hello 39″ Waist!!

Today, the 18th, apparently Insanity:Asylum goes on sale on the Beachbody site. I have found a Facebook group where “coach Todd” is reviewing it one day at a time. Since my package still isn’t here I will have to make do with the review of day one.

There is more to come, so go to the Facebook page and “like” the page!

Medium day was OK, I have managed to get over the shoulderblade pain from last week by taking 3 days off which is unfortunate since this week is the 2 month weigh in for Biggest Loser at my workplace. Hopefully I will win this month and at least win my money back! I am almost done the RKC and as a continuance I have several DVDs of advanced KB routines to keep my interested in KB work while I start Insanity:Asylum. I am very excited, I am sure I have already said that, but the idea of being able to transition so smoothly into the next workout is a huge weight off my shoulders. I think after heavy day this week that may be it. If not, there may be one more week to go. Either way, the KB workouts have really made a difference in my physique and my strength. Especially in my core where I am notoriously lazy, the KB workouts have really tightened me up and caused me to go below 40″ in my waist for the first time in a very long time. Even when I was 252 for the wedding, my pants were still a 42! So you can imagine my surprise when I measured in at 39″ yesterday!

I imagine I won’t have time to work out today, but at the same time, spotting back tuck on floor is as much of a workout as you would need, talk about combining speed, strength and quick reflexes into a workout!

R5D63 – RKC Light Day Outside. Shipping Details.

Today was the first time I was able to go out on the deck and do my workout with the chin up bar outside. I just love to work out in the afternoon sun, it is very calming, but at the same time very invigorating. Also, the chin up bar I have out there is higher and wider than the one indoors and so creates a much better range of motion for the chinups. It was RKC  light day, so the workout was pretty quick, however I managed to develop a pain behind my shoulderblade which I assume is a part of nerve impingement in my neck. It comes and goes, just one more thing to deal with while I wait for my package to arrive. I got a note from Beachbody that my package had shipped and it should be here in 1 week. It’s very exciting, let me tell you!

At the end of last year, this is what the deck looked like. I don’t have big plans for it this year other than to try and extend the chin up bar on the left and secure it with something better than a chain nailed to the side of the decking. I am also going to be making a jump up box of 24″ since at various places around the deck I can go from 14″-10″ of height. Having a sturdy box will be great however I am not certain I won’t bang my head on the upper deck. Even if I do, the lower deck extends past the upper, I will just have to place the box away from the overhang. Those bars are yellow for clarity in the picture, in fact they are both black. One is a plumbing pipe, about 1.5″ thick. The other, longer one chained to the supports is the top pipe of a chain link fence which is at least 2.5″ thick giving me a grip workout at the same time.

R5D62 – Grass Fed Beef and Chest Day

Mark’s Daily Apple had a good article yesterday about the benefits and differences with grass fed beef. We all know, to some degree, that the massive feed lots don’t produce the healthiest meat and that grass fed is the way to go but what does it really mean? Some of the things we tell ourselves and each other are ingrained but can use some inspection, and MDA does a great job of that on the beef front. The whole article can be found here and the link to Mark’s blog is here. I like his site because he often takes time to answer questions that most of us find relevant and in a simple way. The guy could be taken to task about his past with the Beachbody supplements thing but then again, read his site for a while and you will quickly realize he knows his stuff! I also found a cool article on making sausages…

I also find it amusing that when I speak with people about not eating grains and tell them that their diet is the same diet they feed cattle to make them gain 800lbs in a few months the little light goes on over their heads. Doesn’t mean they will stop eating donuts, but at least it gives them food for thought.

Yesterday was chest day and I found myself thinking that my workouts are a bit one dimensional at the moment. I am really enjoying the KB challenge but it does leave a bit to be desired on the variety front especially if you don’t take the time to do something interesting during your variety days. Maybe it is because I was so excited about yesterday’s news regarding the Asylum or just that since I was sick I have been only doing the RKC and not adding extra work. Maybe I am getting excited at the prospect of spring and the fact that I am going to be able to work out outside and do my sprints around the 600m track that is my neighbourhood I am not sure. What I do know is that I need to get my creative side going again and maybe get back to picking the WOD as my variety day so I don’t lose my Crossfit touch. For my chest day it was pretty sad actually, I did a few chest presses with the KBs (45 and 70) plus some pullovers and then did 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 on the bench with 205lbs. It wasn’t a lot of work, but since I was coaching and was short on time, it worked out fine. I should have done dips and some tricep work too, I will have to address that at a later date.

R5D61- I Know What Happens Next! I’m Going To The Asylum!!!

Heavy day was pretty good, I seem to have a different way of doing the clean and press with each arm, however, my dominant (and therefore I assumed smarter) arm doesn’t seem to get it as well as my left. In fact, my left arm is quick, mobile and always gets the clean and press exacly right, no forearm banging, no off centre weighting… I don’t get it. It appears that my right side is more of a pull up clean with my traps rather than my left side which is a lift with the legs and then rotate around the bell after pulling back like starting a lawn mower. I am not sure why they are different but I am starting to have more respect for my left arm in the cool side of the body contest.
But that is not the big news, I got an email today saying that “INSANITY:ASYLUM IS HERE!”. Yes, I am super excited that the arrival of my Asylum package should coincide approximately with the completion of the RKC Rite Of Passage. It also means that I am going to have to work the KBs into my Asylum workout schedule, no matter how hard it is. Even if it means just a few swings, snatches and clean and presses a day. I am pretty stoked, mostly because it means I will be getting back into some cardio work which I am occasionally a fan of but also because the Asylum promises to be a bootcamp type sport oriented workout. That sounds like my cup of tea. We will have to see, but P90X was as described, Insanity I think lived up to the hype so I am cautiously optimistic about the new regime. Not only that, but I think it will give me some much needed mobility work in training for the Warrior Dash 2011 which is coming up July 9th. I have to admit the timing couldn’t be better, I was starting to suffer a little from the anticipation of the  90 day wobble where you get to the end of the 90 days, if it is P90X or whatever, and wobble in your workouts due to the lack of structure you suddenly find yourself in. Not this time though. Even though this is my 5th round of 90 days, it still is difficult to set yourself up for the start of the next round so as not to lose momentum.

 

Paleo, It’s Pretty Good. In Other News, Cats Go “Meow”.

Today FitDay decided to publish an article on the Paleo diet. Now I am a big FitDay fan and obviously enjoying the benefits of the Paleo diet so I found this particularly interesting. The article, however can be summed up as follows:

The Paleo Diet, it’s pretty good.

I was hoping for a little more, but they seemed to get the spirit of the thing correct while not pissing anybody off or risking having someone mail them an envelope of veal or even worse, a mean face carved into the side of a summer squash.

More into the spirit of sensational news stories about our health, the Brits are again leading the way by claiming that we can now get human milk from cows. Apparently they have been putting human DNA into cows (any volunteers for that job?!) and getting breast milk. I can only envision a herd of 3000lb breasts wandering around a field but that’s because I am really a 12 year old boy.

Next in my inbox was something I swear I have seen before, lots of pictures of what compromises a “fit” body. I am sure this came up some time ago, only because I remember the graphics involved. It did spawn an interesting conversation about what we as fairly sedentary office workers would consider to be “Fit”. We came up with the decision that it is how you are able to move your body around your space. Not how much over your bodyweight you can bench or shoulder press but rather how able you are to get around and do what you need or want to do. I am very happy that the notion of fitness seems to be graduating towards being “less vulnerable and more durable” as Tony likes to say out in the real world. I know there are people out there who want to hang on to the past glory of muscle heads and steroid freaks but as the population ages we are only going to see more of the movement towards less “dangerous” and more functional fitness.

As for personal news, this past weekend at one point I weighed in at 239lbs. I know I was very light, I hadn’t eaten and so it was not a clear reflection of where I am but HOLY CRAP! It was back in September of 1999 the last time I was in the 230’s without sickness being the cause.

It has been the kind of week that drains you of all your faculties, no emotional, physical or mental energy left. I still haven’t got rid of the 3lbs I gained last weekend during my “Hey I am under 240″ celebration. That buffet at Golden Griddle sure did a number on me. I was 241 this morning and am looking forward far too much to going to Marché tonight to expect to be any less tomorrow. I also am under the impression that the spate of weight loss was indeed a freaky cycle and that it has been exorcised by the mountainous breakfast of last weekend. Still, I can expect to at least remain where I am for a while, and then when the planets align again, down it will go. I just hope that I can keep my eye on the target of being 225 by New Year.

Needless to say, that 225 never transpired, but then again what did I expect not really knowing what my body was doing with the food I was giving it? Even I am not arrogant enough to proclaim that I will reach that milestone, since 225 would take me back to before my weight records began in earnest sometime around 1997. From what I can recall, I left University around the 195lb mark. I know the following year I ballooned as my life took awkward turns and twists leaving me in a place I would rather forget. I was up around 300 within a couple of years and even after I got that under control I still never made it back under 245. So we are in fairly uncharted territory, and yes, I am aware that I am painfully obsessed with my weight, not only that, I have discovered an alarming personality flaw… I can’t stand really fat people.