Something Beats Nothing Every Time – Page 24 – Extreme Home Fitness From P90X to Crossfit to Russian Kettlebells – Proof that at any age you can still give it the beans and be your own hero!

Weekly Now?

Last week ended well as far as exercise goes.

Wednesday I did 5 rounds of Chelsea plus a 20 minute Ab workout at gym.
Thursday off
Friday I did an all around 95lb Oly lift with combinations of DL, Clean and Squats
Saturday I did most of my FIRST EVER BODY BEAST workout. It was chest and tris and actually, I hate to admit it but I actually enjoyed it.
Sunday I took an hour of walking stairs with bins ranging from 10lbs to 60 lbs as I moved all the crap out of the garage upstairs to a store room.
Monday off
Tuesday I did another Oly lift day with everything but very fast and with only 75 lbs to increase the cardio component.
Wednesday I did Millenium Bronze, a workout that I invented on the drive home from work as follows:

Millennium Bronze

100 each:
Jump rope
Jacks
Crunches
Pushups
Squats
Military
VSnaps
Box Jump
Power Crunch
Burpees

I think the Silver and Gold will have to be harder by degrees, I am thinking something like this (since it’s really aimed towards my kids at gym)

Millennium silver

100 each:
MK Switch
Squat jacks
Bicycle Elbows
Ultra Wide Pushups
Pop Squats
Diamond Pushups
Single Jack and Jills
Double box jumps
Layed out power crunches
Pushup Burpees

Millennum Gold

100 each:
Arms up MK switch
SDHP with KB
VSnaps
Chinups
Pushups double shoulder touch
Pop Squat 180
Bar Leg Lifts
Double Box Clears
Bicycle Bicycle Vsnap
Plyo Pushups

Sore Doesn’t Cover It

Paleo mince pies will make it all better…

I am not sure why but since last week I have had extreme soreness in my lower back. It may have been from the hip stretching I didÂ due to the walking I did last weekend but whatever it is I am in agony. It does get better with time but it’s agony whenever I haven’t moved for a while.

Wed – off
Thurs – off
Fri – Mini basement bootcamp – half of our old regular bootcamp full body
Sat – I think this was double under practice day which doesn’t sound like much but it was 25 minutes of non stop jump rope and pain as i whipped my toes with the heavy plastic rope. I had to work the time change from midnight an dit lasted until 5am then most of the day troubleshooting problems so…
Sunday – off
Monday – conditioning with the kids 55 reps of military, vsnaps, pushups and squats. It was supposed to be century club but I miscalculated and we only did 1-10 which is 55 not 1-10-1 which is 100.
Tuesday – 95lb bar (since my soreness is still fresh in my mind):

5×5 deadlift
5×5 deadlift with hang clean
5×5 power clean
5×5 deadlift with power clean

Wednesday – Today, I think I will do bootcamp at gym again. Either that or a short KB workout before gym if I have time.

I won the Biggest Loser for the month at work, but only 2.5% loss for the month which is way behind the curve. I should be at 5% per month. Weight still 256 but falling slowly.

My challenges?

Currently my exercise volume is low and my intensity is lacking, mostly because I seem to be nursing a lot of soreness and niggling shoulder and knee pain. I will be trying this week to address the volume part, the intensity may have to wait.

Roasted Sausage And Onion Bake With Mushrooms

I don’t think I am a chef by any standard but my mother taught me from a very young age that cooking doesn’t have to be complicated and if you have an idea, that’s all you really need. That is why I end up eating things like this.

Costco Italian Sausage – 5 hot 5 mild
6 large white onions
2 med cans of tomato sauce – plain, everything else has sugar in it
1 box of Campbells (or whoever you like) Â “stock first” stock – whatever flavour you have handy
Italian seasoning, kosher salt, black pepper, minced garlic

Brown the sausage, chop the onions and throw everything in a baking pot (a deep pan specifically for stewing or roasting)

Bake at 350 for up t0 2 hours depending on how long your onions take to cook. Slice them thinner if you want them to cook faster. First hour you can leave it covered to make sure the liquid cooks the veg, after that open it up to thicken the sauce.

About 30 minutes from the end, throw in some sliced mushrooms and you have an amazing low sodium, zero sugar high protein dinner.

Expanding and Increasing

I thought it was time to increase the weights and add a little variety. I am not bored, but I am definitely knee deep in a rut of Olympic lifts. I really need to start doing bootcamp workouts with the kids to get us all back into the habit.

Thursday – Off. Swimming seems to put paid to my workout efforts on Thursdays, it’s just at a really awkward time for me.
Friday – Pre-Coaching:
5×5 deadlift @95
5×5 Clean @95
5×5 deadlift @135
3×5 deadlift @185

Saturday – Painful back so rested.
Sunday – working but I will try to get the Kettlebell workout in that I have been craving:
@45lb KB
5×10 sumo deadlift high pull
5×5 Clean each arm
20 swings, 10 pullups
5×5 clean and press each arm
30 swings, 20 pullups
5×5 snatch each arm
40 swings, 30 pullups

5×5 Clean, Clean and Press, Snatch
50 swings, 15 pullups

My shoulder seems to be a little better this week and the painful kneecap issue seems to have gone away. I am taking Webber Naturals Joint Ease Glucosamine and Chondroitin that I picked up on sale at Costco a couple of weeks ago and I think that is helping a little. 3 caps a day for 1500mg Gluc and 1200mg Chon.

Baby Steps Towards Consistency

Monday – 35lb ball clean and pullups x100
Tuesday – Deadlift, clean, front squat repeat 50x
Wednesday – Deadlift, clean repeat 50x

Shoulder seems a little better but not because of physio but rather last night I reached into the passenger foot well in the car to get something and I got a massive stretch cramp in my shoulder / trap area. After an hour it felt better and this morning my shoulder feels better than it has in ages. Weird, I guess there is a muscle in there somewhere that is forcing the joint into a painful position. I will investigate and try to replicate the stretch tonight and see if I can fix myself.
I am thinking of trying to get some kettlebell workouts in, I miss that workout and I think it may do my shoulder some good, not the press necessarily but the stretch from the swings. My weight is slowly coming down, but at 258 I am still at least 25lbs over where I want to be. I hope that staying consistent will bring me back in the next month or so.

And People Wonder Why I Eat Paleo

Oreos as addictive as cocaine…

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/oreo-cookies-addictive-drugs-like-2458182

Sugar Kills…

http://nancyappleton.com/141-reasons-sugar-ruins-your-health/

http://www.eathugger.com/68/why-sugar-kills-you-and-how-to-avoid-it-without-going-crazy/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2096088/Pure-white-deadly-No-cocaine-sugar.html

Suck it up buttercup, protein, veggies, fruit, nuts and seeds… and if you want, a little dairy.

How do you start? Grab a handful of self control and a goal.

The Last Few Workouts

Thursday – 30lb shoulder cleans with medicine ball, 50lb deadlifts with heavy bag, 95lb deadlifts with barbell. 10 each x 10 rounds.
Friday – Off
Saturday -Â 30lb shoulder cleans with medicine ball, 50lb cleans with heavy bag, 95lb cleans with barbell. 10 each 10 rounds.
Sunday – 100 deadlifts 95lb barbell sets of 10. 100 shoulder cleans with 30lb med ball sets of 10.
Monday – Off
Tuesday – 50 deadlifts @95lbs. 50 deadlifts @ 135. Plus a little clean practice at 135lbs. Shoulder still problematic.

For the rest of this week I need a pullup workout, a dip or chest workout and a HIIT bootcamp workout plus 1 or 2 135lb barbell workouts.

My basic plan for now without gym workouts looks like this:

Deadlift / Squat Day
Clean / KB Clean and Press Day
Pullup and Dips Day
Multifunction HIIT / bootcamp Day
Plus whatever I can manage on my 3 gym days which at the moment is 1. Very Little and 2. About To Change.

If I can get to a point where I can do 2 days of HIIT at gym with the kids then I can start to work more aggressively on adding more weight to my deadlifts and maybe squats. I don’t think I want / need to exceed 135lbs for my clean and press at this point especially with a hurt shoulder. It will also give me what I consider the Absolute Minimum for consistency and that is 5 days work out of 7.

Time to stop talking and start doing…

A Word About P90X3 and Summer WOD Pictures (of the workout!)

As you all know very well I am a very big P90X fan, so much so I am actually a Canadian Beachbody Coach. However, the rumours surrounding the release of P90X3 have me a little worried. For a start, the big THING is that it’s only 30 minutes. Now, I have done a LOT of P90X and P90X2 workouts and for the most part after round 1 they are usually only about 40 minutes. I tend to shorten the warmup a little but I don’t listen to Tony ramble on, I skip to the next movement or even better skip ahead and then catch up while he and his pals rest and hang out looking cool and making pseudo sexual jokes about chokes and oil. My hope is that this next iteration is exactly that, as I always say to my kids at gym, More Work Less Talk! There should be some changes, I am guessing that they saw the Tapout XT video series and decided that was exactly what P90X needed, a little butt kicking MMA conditioning. So I am cautiously optimistic and I will happily ignore the 30 minute spiel and hope that it doesn’t include the warmup or cool down so they will be basically the same amount of work with less “50 years old” chirping from good old Tony.

For myself I am WAY behind where I wanted to be a few weeks ago but I am feeling OK. I wanted to have been to the Crossfit box at least a handful of times by now which I haven’t. I had hoped to be doing the gym conditioning with the kids which I haven’t either mostly because of my very sore shoulder which I have half a mind to go to the clinic to get referred for xrays or an ultrasound because it’s still hurting like hell from 2 weeks ago when I did dips at the gym with the kids.

Speaking of the kids, here are a few pics of the workouts they are typically doing at the moment. So for those of you following along at home (ex-gymnasts) keep up if you can!

Home Bootcamp

I am trying to get back into the multifunctional workouts so last night I inadvertently did half a bootcamp, only doing 1 round of each section instead of 2. It’s the same workout that I think the kids will do tonight. It took me 35 minutes and I was bagged at the end, just goes to show what horrible shape I am in at the moment.

x2
10 regular pushups
10 military pushups
10 sphinx to plank step or drop
10 pushup side hold
10 pullups

x2
20 shoulder crunch
20 leg up crunch
10 full situp double twist
10 side crunch
10 hanging leg raise

x2
20 Air squats
20 step back lunge front kick
20 belt kicks
20 front lunge
10 pullups

x2
20 shoulder touch
20 hip touch
10 spider each side
10 knee to elbow each
10 knee to opposite elbow each

x2
20 single leg knee raise
20 super skaters
30 second chair pose
20 side lunge
10 pullups

10 pushup step out
10 clap pushup
10 plyo pushup
10 pushup side raise leg raise
5 Worlds slowest burpee with clap

Basic and Light

For the past week or so I have been doing my regular olympic lifting, anywhere from 65-105 reps total. Last week I was able to do a day of just deadlifts at 135 which left me very sore indeed and so I decided to scale back a little and go back to 95 lbs until I am a bit more stable. So this weekend I did just cleans at 95 lbs and did 5-5-5-5-10-10-10-5-5-5 for 65 reps at 95 lbs. It really doesn’t sound like much but it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be. I have also added a little kettlebell swinging and/or some pullups. Last week I did 10 sets of pullups to see what my output was like. Well I only managed 65 total but at least that is 6.5 per set average. It is getting tough again with coaching 3x a week and trying to work out on the other 4 days plus squeeze a workout in at the gym either during the day or before I coach to make it 5x a week but time is such a challenge. That’s part of the reason I am getting back to my basic lifts, making sure I do deadlift, clean, pullups, bench, ring dips and squats during the week. My combo / bootcamp workouts will just have to wait for the time being until my back settles down a bit more and I get my capacity back up to scratch.

I am hoping to get back to 100 rep min workouts with 135lbs and multiple movements by October, but the way my back is at the moment, that may be a bit ambitious however I think it’s only sore because of how much I am doing. I can’t really gauge how well I am doing according to my pain level but rather by my capacity for work and that’s why the basics are so necessary as a yardstick.