Finding my Path

[fio_smiles]

Newbie rebel-in-the-making here, I've posted an introduction thread, and I'm going to try to start tracking my personal goals here, I'll try and join a 6 week challenge when they start up again, but in the meantime... I've had a look around, and here's the training that I'm starting out with, with some stuff I already do.

• Pole Fitness
  • I've been going to a weekly class (Thursdays) doing this for about 15 weeks, once a week, and it rocks, I laugh when I can't do it right and wear my bruises proudly.
  • Typically on Thursdays -- except I'm going to be travelling for a month and will miss this -- going to talk to my teacher about what exercises I can do while travelling that will help -- any advice from others welcome.
• Push-Up Challenge
  • I want to get to the point where I can do a good 20 push-ups, I can't do any right now.
  • Read this post about Proper Push-Ups, and have started tracking my "Wall Push-Ups"
  • Every second day / 3 times a week is the goal here.
• Plank Challenge
  • A Plank A Day Keeps The Doctor Away
  • OK, I've had back surgery on a damaged disk several years ago and need to get my core really engaged, this seems doable.
  • Trying out the 30 Days of Plank Challenge, I know I'm probably not going to make each of the days in order, but I'll try each one and if I can't then I'll do the previous day and repeat until I get to the end, eventually.
  • Goal is to get to 5 minutes eventually, but to try this 5 times a week at least.
• Personal Stair Challenge
  • I work on the 4th floor and typically get the elevator, I want to walk up those stairs at least once a day, and get to the point where I'm not panting with effort doing it!
  • Tracking the number of times I do this a week, or a day if I get adventureous and do it more than once. Goal is to get to 5 times per week at least.
  • With my travelling coming up, I'm going to track any prologued stair climbing, i.e. more than a single flight.
• Flexibility Challenge
  • With all the bad-back stuff, my flexibility sucks.
  • Read the How To Touch Your Toes post, and going to follow the instructions.
  • I'll measure the distance I reach down to at the start and end
  • Goal is to be able to touch my toes easily!

I'm going to be travelling for a month, and will miss my Pole class and my usual weigh-in group, so I'm reading up on Hotel Workout stuff to get ready.

[fio_smiles]

Week of 12th October 2015:

• Pole Fitness

   

  Week of  | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri  | Sat  | Sun12th Oct |  -  |  -   |  -  | Done! |   -  |   -  |   -

• Push-Up Challenge

   

  Week of  | Mon   | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri   | Sat  | Sun12th Oct | walls |  -   |  -  |   -   | walls |  -   |   -

• Plank Challenge

   

  Week of  | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri  | Sat  | Sun12th Oct | D1  |  D2  |  D3  |   -   |   ?  |  ?   |   ?

• Personal Stair Challenge

   

  Week of  | Mon  | Tues  | Wed | Thurs | Fri  | Sat | Sun12th Oct | 100  |  100  | 100 |  100  |   -  |  -  |  -(cont)   |  -   |   -   |  -  |   86  |   -  |  -  |  -

• Flexibility Challenge

   

  Week of  | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun12th Oct |  x  |  -   |  x  |   -   |  x  |  -  |  -

Notes:

• Started on Monday, so most things have their day 1 then!
• Tuesday - already feeling it in my shoulders from doing the pushups against the wall, although shoulder probably isn't the right word, ok, went a looked it up, it's my Deltoid, not painful but definitely a sense of being used!
• Kinda want to do more.... but it's only Tuesday! I feel like I should be diving into lifting weights and running a gazzilion miles, and crunching every 20 minutes... but that's burn out talk.  But I think it might be too light.
• Wednesday - felt good and excited about doing these! Still thinking of adding in some Cardio -- maybe Zombie run? Pole tomorrow!
• Thursday - food fail maybe? details below. Didn't get my pushups or plank in Pole was super awesome but left me wrecked.
• Friday to Sunday - weekends always are hard for me -- I look after my mum and generally don't do as well, I did go swimming on Sunday, but didn't do much else.

[fio_smiles]

Updated my grid with my details on what I did towards my challenges, feeling really happy with myself in general, but with a nagging suspicion in my head that I need to do cardio, or weights or something!

 

Going away for a month next week means I'm not really planning on finding a gym until after that -- but am I just making excuses? Maybe I can try for a day pass in somewhere to try it out again.

 

Most of the gyms here are pretty generic, the one I am most likely to join is very generic, but it also has multiple locations I can use, one near my mum's house at the weekend, one near work that I could walk to in 15 minutes and one about a 10 minute drive from my house.  But since I'm a newbie really, what do I need from a gym? Should I just go to the one 5 minutes from work? The nice thing about the chain one is that they all have swimming pools, which I really like. I just don't know really. I know weights work, and when I did go to a gym many years ago I was super excited by the gain in strength on what I lifted -- but I hadn't got my diet sorted so I was really struggling, and the food plans he was giving me... well I didn't use them, or stick to them, or generally pay them any attention.

 

I don't know.

 

[fio_smiles]

Thursday update: I was doing Pole today and had some extra stairs due to a power cut... so I didn't get my plank or wall pushups in.

After Pole I went for a long walk with a friend and all of a sudden I was exhausted and yawning and weak.

 

Reviewing what I ate, and I think I didn't have enough food, so I had a little chocolate, less than half a bar in the car and shortly afterwards I felt better.

[super_mac]

Hey Smiles!
I love how organised your log is, I'm definitely going to take some pointers from this! I was wondering what do you want to do in the gym? Would you be interested in weight training or classes or? Cause I suppose that would really make your decision easier. I don't know much about different gyms myself though, in fact I just picked mine because it looks snazzy and has a sauna.   I don't think you're making excuses about waiting until next month. If you can't use it for an entire month that would just be wasteful, especially since you're doing some workouts at home! Anyway good luck.

[fio_smiles]

Friday to Sunday -- not great days. Some excuses, but I need to plan better for this.

 

Hey Smiles!
I love how organised your log is, I'm definitely going to take some pointers from this! I was wondering what do you want to do in the gym? Would you be interested in weight training or classes or? Cause I suppose that would really make your decision easier. I don't know much about different gyms myself though, in fact I just picked mine because it looks snazzy and has a sauna.   I don't think you're making excuses about waiting until next month. If you can't use it for an entire month that would just be wasteful, especially since you're doing some workouts at home! Anyway good luck.

 

Cheers!  I'm interested in weight training, and possibly a class -- feeling quite self-conscious though, so it'd have to be something I love!

 

The log is easy enough to set-up, going to post my layout for next week here soon.

[fio_smiles]

Week of 19th October 2015:

• Pole Fitness

  Week of  | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri  | Sat  | Sun12th Oct |  -  |  -   |  -  | Done! |   -  |   -  |   -

  Not going to track this until I'm back in Ireland again.

• Push-Up Challenge

  Week of  | Mon   | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri   | Sat  | Sun12th Oct | walls |  -   |  -  |   -   | walls |  -   |   -19th Oct | ?     |  ?   |  ?  |   ?   |   ?   |  ?   |   ?

• Plank Challenge

  Week of  | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri  | Sat  | Sun12th Oct | D1  |  D2  |  D3  |   -   |   -  |  -   |   -12th Oct | ?   |  ?   |  ?   |   ?   |   ?  |  ?   |   ?

  After last weeks failure to complete, I'm going to try D3 again and go from there.

• Personal Stair Challenge

  Week of  | Mon  | Tues  | Wed | Thurs | Fri  | Sat | Sun12th Oct | 100  |  100  | 100 |  100  |   -  |  -  |  -(cont)   |  -   |   -   |  -  |   86  |   -  |  -  |  -19th Oct |  ?   |   ?   |  ?  |   ?   |   ?  |  ?  |  ?

  I'll get Monday and Tuesday done here, but not sure about Wednesday to Friday in London? I'm guessing maybe the Tube will help??

• Flexibility Challenge

  Week of  | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun12th Oct |  x  |  -   |  x  |   -   |  x  |  -  |  -19th Oct |  ?  |  ?   |  ?  |   ?   |  ?  |  ?  |  ?

  Looking forward to this again.

Notes:

• Staying positive after a bit of a wasted weekend, but I do have the beginning of a cold

[fio_smiles]

OK.... bandwagon was fallen off.

 

I went on vacation to San Francisco, and I was not on my plan.

 

Things that went well:

• I did use steps instead of escalators and elevators wherever I could. I counted them outloud, typically doing 40-60 steps 4-5 times per day, between trains and airports.... this was good.
• I did some hikes in Yosemite, and hit 27000 steps on one of my days in San Francisco!

 

Thing that didn't go well:

• I didn't do any planned hotel workouts. Nada. Nothing as I thought I would do. I really need to print them off and not use lack of internet as an excuse.
• My food choices were not great. Some days were ok, but I had far too many fries.

 

Now? I'm eating a nice bowl of chopped fruit, and I have 5 days left in NY, going to print out the workout I wanted to do, and get my daily stuff above moving again.

 

A bit anxious about gaining weight, I've lost weight every single week since mid-June... and I know that it's very very possibly/likely that I have gained weight, I won't really known until I get home, but trying to eat better this week.