Tag: crossfit

Thanksgiving Throwdown

I did something this morning that would have befuddled me from a year or two ago.  I participated in a Crossfit competition.  This was Celebration Crossfit’s Thanksgiving Throwdown – my partner, Winston, and I squared off against five other teams, and we had zero shot of winning anything.  We were there for the workout and the fun.

And it was fun.  I particularly enjoyed the farmer’s carry – that’s one of my favorites.  We finished tied for last place.  Our team, Hurricane Bernabe, did not embarrass itself.  And I got a Saturday workout and a t-shirt out of the deal.  Good times! Continue reading “Thanksgiving Throwdown”

Not the fat guy!

The 6am crew at Celebration Crossfit showed up for our Halloween WOD – pictures were taken, yadda yadda.

I’m a shadow of my former self.  More than anything, what strikes me is that I don’t look like the fat guy in this picture.  I am the fat guy in this one, but I don’t look like it.

These people – they make it fun.  50 pounds to go, and I’m not sure I can do it without them.

Onward!

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The Hard Part

I get up at 5am, pretty much every day.

I do Crossfit, which looks insane if you’ve never done it before.

I’m also running – did 15 miles this week on top of the Crossfit.

People look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them all of that.  Especially when I say “5am”.  I might as well say 2am; most folks seem to think they are equivalent.

But here’s the thing – that stuff is actually not so hard.  Yes, it is hard work, and it hurts sometimes, and sometimes I don’t want to go.  But runner’s high is a real thing, and you can get it after non-running workouts, too.  Exercising becomes addictive, and you go because you like to go, and you get up early because that’s the time you’re ready to go.

No – exercising and getting up early is not the hard part.  This is the hard part:

Meal Prep

About 14 meals here, including breakfasts.  10% – 20% of your progress will come in the gym.  The other 80% – 90% comes in the kitchen.  Prepping all of this is a pain in the ass, but it is done, and I’ll eat right this week.

Lets go get it…

Functional Fitness

I tripped on my run this morning.  Pretty hard.

When possible I try and run on the shoulder of the road rather than the sidewalk.  The sidewalk “panels” can raise and buckle based on the ground shifting or tree roots.  And this morning I hit one of those little lifts with my foot with about half a mile to go in my four miler.  Just like that, I was on my way down.

Then something curious happened.

My abs engaged, and my hips fired forward, and my step cadence increased, and before I knew what happened, I was back on my feet and running.  My hands had not even hit the ground.  Now, I know that I did not look graceful (there was a car at a nearby stop sign that almost certainly saw me – wonder what they thought), and I know that I’m a clumsy oaf.

But I also know that I was able to quickly engage my body in such a way that I did not fall down.  And I could feel it happening.

Seems like a silly thing, I know, but my core is stronger than it has ever been.  My balance, which I suck so badly at when we work on it at the gym, is improving.  And I was able to divert disaster in a way that I’m convinced I could not have done even six months ago.

I learned something this morning.  Functional fitness doesn’t just mean picking up heavy things or running away from something or jumping over something.  It also can mean remaining on your feet when there is every reason to bust your ass.

Onward!

I love squat day

The one time in my life when I semi-seriously lifted weights, the guy that was teaching me had been a Division 1 football player in college.  He was legitimately beasty.  And his lift was the back squat – he worked on it, and on our squat day (at Gold’s Gym in Newport News, Virginia) people would come and watch him squat.  He pushed me, and he taught me the technique.  I fundamentally understand the back squat movement in a way I don’t most of the other things we do, because I’ve done it before.

We also don’t do it much in our gym.  Crossfit focuses a lot on the front squat, and I’m sure there are good reasons for that.  The front squat is much harder because of how you have to hold the bar.  It requires a good front rack and a lot of grip.  None of that on the back squat – put that sumbitch on your shoulders, drive through your heels, down and up.

We’ve had a drop-in working at Celebration Crossfit for the last few days – Dave from New Jersey.  Dave from New Jersey looks kinda like Superman.  He’s about 6′ 3″, six pack, runs faster and lifts heavier than everybody else.  This morning, for squat day…

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…I was working with him, and that’s a good thing.  Going heavy is easier when you’ve got somebody there that just assumes we’re adding weight.  And I just decided that today was a day I was going to push more than my body weight.  Some days are not the day – today was the day.

squat-day

305!

After I get through the weight and the half marathons this winter, maybe my next goal is going to be to squat something absurdly heavy within a year.

Squat day!

Progress Pictures – about 20 weeks

Hi there!  It has been awhile, and you probably thought I had fallen off the wagon.  That would have been a fair thought – it has happened before.  BUT – nope.  Just got busy.  And yesterday, for the first time in awhile, I took some pictures.

5-months

So, as of Saturday morning I’ve lost 43 pounds, and things have been going well – more on that later this week.  So my first reaction when I looked at the front-facing picture here was disappointment.  I still look like a really fat guy.

But then it hit me – this isn’t the end, this is the middle.  And this is also why we take pictures.  So I went back to the original set I took and:

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YIKES I WAS FREAKING ENORMOUS

No, seriously – wow.

So, obviously, you can see that my gut is significantly smaller.  The overhang at the bottom is more pronounced, largely because there is less pressure to hold the whole thing up.  My boobs haven’t changed much – I’m very self-conscious about my boobs – and that little roll under my arm is still there.  You can really see it in my face, and particularly my cheeks.

So … progress is being made.  These pictures both make me feel good about what I’ve done and also let me know that I’m still enormous and have a lot of work to do. Which is what they are designed for.

I deliberately don’t suck anything in on these pictures, though I do a lot of sucking in in my clothes.  And my wife doesn’t like that I don’t smile in these pictures, even though that could make them cheesy as hell.  So, for reference, and until next time:

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Goals

They say that setting goals is important, and communicating them is equally important.  In that spirit, lets talk about goals.

Back in February I turned 38, and on that day I weighed 314.8 pounds.  Which is not as heavy as I was back in 2012 when I started this blog, but still much heavier than I was in 2013 when I ran the Ragnar.  Now, I know that a healthy rate of weight loss is about one pound per week.  And I also know that BMI and other models indicate that I’m at least 100 pounds overweight for my height, if not body structure. (FTR, I don’t like BMI, either.).  In two years, I will turn 40.  There are 52 weeks in a year.  I’m 100 pounds overweight.  I want to lose about 1 pound per week.  These numbers seemed to work too well, and led to the following goal:

I will have lost 100 pounds by my 40th birthday, and I will do that by losing, on average, 1 pound per week beginning on my 38th birthday.  I will establish benchmark weights for each week along the way, and I will weigh myself weekly and track against those benchmarks.

The goal-setting model I have learned in my business career is called the SMART model … goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.  That obviously informed the articulation of the above goal, and I think I hit everything.  The goal is:

Specific – I articulate numbers and timelines and even expected rates of loss

Measurable – We’re weighing ourselves here, so that’s easy – and I have a benchmark to track against.

Achievable – After having lost the weight I did in 2013, I’m convinced that this is very possible.  Even after it has been achieved, BMI will consider me overweight, if not obese. Physically, if I want it I can get there, no question.

Realistic – Different animal.  I do think this is realistic, but will require a big change in how I do things.  I have not missed a weekday workout since mid-May, so that habit is coming along.  And I’m doing well with food, though that will be my downfall if I have one.  I can change how I eat, and in that sense, it is realistic.  What I worry about more is how realistic it is that I will keep this weight off once I lose it.  That’s a topic for another time.

Timely – Specific start and end dates, with specific check-in dates.  Time isn’t an issue.

So … that’s the goal.  It is a big one, and I guess I’m nervous having it out there.  I started off with a bang and immediately gained weight after my birthday.  From that 314.8 in February, I got as high as 322.6 in late March.  That’s when I made the decision to start Crossfit, and so far, that has really turned things around.  The exercise itself of course is very good, but mostly it has helped me focus on my food consumption.  No formal tracking process this time – I’m just working hard to make good choices.  So far, so good.

As of this week, I’m 1.2 pounds (so just over a week) behind schedule.  In order to be back on schedule I need to lose 2.2 pounds this week – but I’ll take anything over 1 pound just to make progress.  I’ve lost, on average, 1.9 pounds per week for the last 12 weeks, and until I get caught up anything over 1 is a successful week.  Once I get caught up, I’m as happy as I can be with 1 pound a week.

Pound a Week

W-i-i-i-d-e Load

I find it remarkable, after losing 25 pounds and feeling good and starting to really see results, how a quick picture, taken when you aren’t trying to look your best, makes you realize that you still have a large way to go.

Pictures taken this morning, and they’re pretty badass, but if I look this big now, how in the hell must I have looked 25 pounds ago?

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This is a paused front squat – got to get down into that position and hold it for 5 seconds, then stand up.  The pressure on my wrists to hold the bar was the most painful – I ordered some wrist wraps today.  Now, to focus on narrowing the load.

I’ve got a big ass, is what I’m saying.  I mean I’ve got junk in the trunk.  Big.Ass.Wide.Load

Progress Pictures

I didn’t go away, and I didn’t stop with the CrossFit (though it would have been fair to get that impression) – I’m finding life is busy.  That’s a good thing.

So I took some progress pictures.  The first round, for comparison, is here, taken about 2 months and 20 pounds ago.

New pictures:

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I’m not totally sure what I expected.  I know that I’ve lost about 20 pounds, and that everything is feeling slimmer.  My clothes are fitting much better (in fact, my go-to pair of pants is now too big and will shortly be retired, and today I’m comfortably wearing a pair of pants I haven’t worn in months), and I’m starting to get comments from people noticing that I’m getting slimmer.  I had to take a flight for work last week, and I had zero trouble with the seat belt, which is different than when I had to fly in February.  I also know that my strength and endurance have grown dramatically during my workouts – I can do things now that I couldn’t do two months ago.

All that to say, I don’t need the pictures to know it is going well.

My first reaction to these pictures is that I expected to see a more obvious visual difference, and I don’t see it like I expected to.  On closer examination, though, there is a clear improvement.  My face slims first, and between that and the haircut / beard trim you can really see it there – and then the other obvious place is the side view.  My gut is not bulging like it was, particularly at the top, and the flabby stuff at the bottom is, if anything more flabby, which means that I’m losing some of the hard fat that was stretching things out.  So any disappointment was unfounded and silly, and these show clear progress that reflect how I feel.

I spend a lot of time imagining what this is going to look like in two more months and twenty more pounds.  Or, even better, four months and forty pounds.  I’m excited for it.

Onward!