Sisyphus's daily to-do

[The Most Loathed]

04/03/2014

bodyweight: 203.8

 

workout: concept II 30:00 - 7,250 m -  resistance 2 

 

notes

day one of deload - pilates got pushed off to Saturday on account of weather tonight. I rowed at home then did soe foam roller and lacrosse ball work.

[The Most Loathed]

<--Do you see me?

 

04/04/2014

bodyweight: 202.6

 

workout: still on deload

16K swings and presses

30 minutes of movement (not quite yoga, not quite not yoga)

[Guzzi]

Hey! A photo! Very cool

It's hard to "loathe" you for your insane clap-push-up-burpees though when you have a nice picture.

[The Most Loathed]

It's hard to "loathe" you for your insane clap-push-up-burpees though when you have a nice picture.

I guess I just have to try harder

[IslandGirl_Becks]

Deload is tough when you have such a regular, high-intensity routine!

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

[The Most Loathed]

Thanks buck, agreed. I feel so lazy. I'm almost done though...almost done

 

04/05/2014

bodyweight: 203

 

workout: pilates

 

04/06/2014

bodyweight: 202.5

 

workout:

kettlebell juggling for 15 or 20 minutes

jog 3 miles

 

notes:

• Saturday was International Tabletop day so I taught a bunch of new people Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne
• juggling was just for fun. I learned from Jeff Martone's H2H kettlebell so it's much shorter, less graceful movements than the actual jugglers I've seen on youTube but it's a fun way to play with the weights
• The run was intentionally not timed, it was about getting started running for the season, not about pushing myself. Thank goodness too because I immediately got a stitch and had to jog that off.
• I spent the entire rest of Sunday in the kitchen preparing meat and veggies to get me through the first half of the week.
• I emailed the lady organizing the kettlebell meet in June, I'm going to lift with 24's. I will hate myself on that day.
• Today will be game night with Brian. Tomorrow I get to get back down to business and the weather is fantastic so I'm headed back out to the garage gym.

[The Most Loathed]

04/07/2014

bodyweight: 203.5

 

workout: off

 

notes: 

I'm glad deload week ends today. It was nice to have the time off but I miss my routine and I'm seeing my mobility decrease because without my workouts I don't go through full ranges of motion and without weight added, my ranges of motion are shorter. That said, I think the time was good for me and I will try to remain true to the strategy of deloading periodically.

 

Stuff you don't care to know!!!!!

 

I made New Year's Resolutions this year and I recently posted my April Update to Facebook:

It's time for the monthly Resolution Check in:-Bodyweight <= 198: 202.5 this morning. I'm looking forward to cracking 200 soon.-Compete at the World Kettlebell Championships: I'm still planning to hit the April 2015 meet. In the mean time I've signed up for long cycle at the AKA/IKSFA Michigan Open Championship. -Remain injury free: so far, so good-Read 20 books: 5 down, I'm falling behind a bit. I've redoubled my efforts this month.-Play 250 board games: 140 down. I have nearly 50 distinct games played. I'm starting to wonder if I can pull off 100 distinct games this year. I've played all of the easily accessible games so that second 50 will be tough.-1+ Adventure Race - No progress. I'm probably just going to let this one go.-2+ Orienteering Races - no progress. It's cold and I'm unwilling to go out and run in it.-No debt other than the house and car by the end of the year: good

Here's what's going on in this post:

• bodyweight - I've been posting this here so you know what's up for the most part. This year is the, hopefully, the end of three consecutive years of weightloss. I've lost 20 pounds per year including this year, I had set my sights on 90K with the option to choose to go further if I got there and felt i could. Well, at this point my sights are on 85K. I occasionally dream of 80K but I don't think I'm going to make that a project. I think I'll hit 85 and be sick of it and hold that. I'm going to define 85K as between 185 and 190 lbs any given morning that I weigh myself. 
• Compete in the World Kettlebell Champtionship - I made this goal before they announced the meet this year. The past several years it has been held in Chicago in October. After making this goal they announced that it is moving to Cincinnati and that they are splitting the events out to different date and that Long Cycle won't be until 2015. That irritated me, what's more a few of the WKC folks felt the solution was that I should just do biathalon in August instead. I don't really like Biathalon but I'm not above saying I should work on it but I'm not going to change gears completely from February to August and then go compete, I'm just not that confident in my kettlebell and don't feel like sucking that much. The good news is that now I'm headed to the mid-Michigan open in June which is a very amenable compromise. It's also near a family member that I used to be very close with but haven't seen in several years so i may make it an annual thing so I have an excuse to go visit her
• Remain Injury free - I get hurt about twice a year. Last fall was pretty epic. I still have an abdomnial muscle that is deformed from the injury and I still have the narcotics in my medicine cabinet that I had to use to be able to sleep for a couple weeks.I don't like pain meds and very rarely use them but I was in so much pain that simply trying to stand made me nauseous. i don't want to do that again. Pilates and some of the other lighter stuff I do is an attempt to avoid a repeat.
• Read 20 books - i like reading fantasy and sci-fi novels but if I don't think about it i won't get it done. In 2012 I really committed to this are read 50+ books. I have backed off that because I need to balance it with other things I want to do but 20 is a solid number.
• Play 205 boardgames - this would be one of those other things I balanced the books against. I really enjoy boardgames and there are tons of them out there, I own nearly 70 of them myself. I play most weekdays at lunch as well as Monday nights with a friend of mine. My wife will occasionally play one but not often. She has some new work friends that are into boardgames though and her familiarity with games (through me) has served to make it easier for her to become social with those people. It also gives me an excuse to play more games .
• Adventure Race - I've participated in two adventure races, each were about 8 hours. i'm slow and bad at them but it's a random challenge. i did one solo (something they rarely let you do) and one with a partner but I can't get him to commit to a second. I'm prepared to drop this resolution.
• Orienteering Races - I like orienteering, it like running but fun. I'm a sissy and don't do them in the winter but it's time I get booked for a couple and get out there. I really recommend that if you can find a local club (use google) that you give it a try. the intro courses are easy, the community if friendly and welcoming and the time commitment is trivial.
• No debt other than house and car - My wife and i have made major moves several times (a different Monday post) and the debt accumulated on credit cards. In addition I still have a student loan that I'm paying off. We recently did a review of our finances and i found out that my wife was holding a lot more credit card debt than I realized. She indicates that it's from the moves. I wanted to get rid of it all so we have a plan in place to do that this year. We make a ridiculous amount of money so there is no reason for us not to live debt free and have a surplus. We have two cars (because we're Americans and that's what you do) and I've tried to suggest that we get rid of mine. it's paid for, it's all but useless when we get a lot of snow and I don't drive it much. It's seven or eight years old and has 60K or so miles on it. She's not comfortable with that. In addition she's eyeing  a new car. I told her that if we pay off her current car, sell my car, I get the current one, she can have the new one. There is the caveat that we never buy a car on loan again.  Assuming this goal plays out as expected, I plan to owe on our house and a new car at the end of the year. Then I plan to push us to play double on the car and house each month starting next year. Then we'll start making plans for the surplus.

So those are the goals I started on before I found Nerd Fitness. I'm going to continue on them as before. I will use NF to focus on the more granular bits of the workout goals. I'll try to bring a little from some of the other goals here just to add a little color to my life.

 

[The Most Loathed]

04/08/2014

bodyweight: 202.6

 

workout

20K long cycle 10:00 72

 

notes

• welcome back from deload week - I decided to test my 20K long cycle and hit 72 pretty solid reps. My shoulder mobility is better but not where it needs to be. This time felt tougher than the two sets of 7:00 I previously did probably both because it was the full ten minutes and also because I haven't done any solid training in the past week.
• I didn't feel awesome coming out of that so I did a few sets of toes to rings mixed with 24K X 2 sumo deadlifts as cooldown
• Last night's game was Terra Mystica - content warning - this game is super hard to understand

[KB Girl]

I really love ticket to ride!

Glad your deload is over.. Great that you switched to 24! On your 10 minute result; definitely a good score. That it felt harder than 2x7 has nothing to do with the deload week- that actually should make it easier. It's just that 7 minutes is only half of 10. I know I sound crazy but that's the truth.

[The Most Loathed]

The only copy to TtR my wife and I owned for years was Nordic Countries. It would have hurt your brain to here us mangle the names of very major towns in norther Europe. The version I taught on Saturday was Europe which I love the board of but hate to teach because it has more quirks that any other version. I was promised games on the new Asia maps which include team play and a new mountain scoring mechanic but we ran out of time. Above all though, the new map that I want the most is the new Netherlands expansion. It has double routes everywhere and you can use them both in 2-player but there is a new money mechanic added that makes it worthwhile to get there first. 

 

With the Long Cycles, the thing that I liked the least about yesterday's set was that even before seven minutes it was starting to feel tough, tougher than when I did the 7 minute sets. Also, when I did the seven minute sets, my second set felt as good as any set ever. My rack was going good, my posture was strong, yesterday I struggle with something trying to twinge at minute three because my posture wasn't as solid. I think working around that midset added to the fatigue factor that started to bug me later. 

These are all minor gripes, I got to go out side and play with kettlebells and successfully swung 2 20K bells around for two minutes. It wasn't my best set every but it was pretty good and I should stop complaining.

[KB Girl]

Haha I get it though! You should hear me complain sometimes Not all sets can be equally good unfortunately. And maybe you were a bit stiff/ lacking range of motion. Np np. You should put up very nice numbers!

 

I didnt even know there was a netherlands expansion. I need to get me some of that! Typical that it has something extra to do with money  I do think netherlands has probably the best train system in the world? irl i mean.

[The Most Loathed]

I took this picture today, it's my driver's license photo from three years ago next to my work badge from a month or two ago. When i showed my wife she laughed. 

[Guzzi]

Damn! That's one hell of a difference. I hope you're very proud of your accomplishments. I mean, I don't think that other guy could do clap-pushup-burpees.

Holy Hellfire. Well done.

[The Most Loathed]

I'm pretty sure he couldn't. He just wanted to do 10 burpees consecutively without succumbing.

That is apparently the difference that 35-40 lbs makes in how a face looks.

[Guzzi]

Did you do any exercise back then?

[The Most Loathed]

Oh absolutely. I was already down 30lbs from my high of 270~275. I had done powerlifting and strongman in the 260s. The rare privilege of saying that I've pulled a quarter ton off the ground, multiple times. I ruptured a disc in my lumbar so bad that I have permanent damage to my left sciatic nerve. It was after all that when I started with kettlebells. At the time that this photo was taken I could do nearly 120 (bad form) kettlebell snatches in ten minutes and worked out 3-5 days a week.

 

Since then I found a trainer who did a lot to help my mobility and flexibility then I set out on this road to kettlebell competitiveness just to give myself an excuse to finally lose weight. Giving myself a weightclass removed all the excuses that I had in my head about why losing weight would be tough or make me weak or whatever. The weightloss in the last couple years has largely spun out of that.

[Guzzi]

Sorry, I think you said that before... My memory is shot to pieces (too many painkillers)

That's amazing, especially to think that you had such a bad injury and look where you are now. Really makes me wonder what's possible for me. This time next year I'd like to be able to take part in the Open, just to be able to complete the wods. I'm not sure if that's attainable, but you never know...

[The Most Loathed]

Taking part in The Open is 100% attainable. The up and down sides of The Open are that everyone can take part but they really misrepresent the place of the everyman in them. You have to know you won't be in the top 10 or 100 or maybe even thousand and that's ok. In your case, coming back from trauma, the joy of the party is often all you need but if you have the need to be number one, you're going to face serious challenges, more mental and emotional than physical.

 

This video is still uploading but when it loads, for you:

When I moved here I sold off most of my barbell weights to prevent myself from lifting stupid heavy weights again, nothing above 300lbs I told myself. 

I've not deadlifted in over six months on account of weather and Laura won't let me deadlift in the house (as it sounds like I'm tearing it down)

Today I scrounged every weight plate I had and worked up to a single 400lb pull, five pounds from double my own body weight (I had the five in me, just not enough plates)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ICbnMn8dDSVHBvUmV1WmxVU3M/edit?usp=sharing

[Guzzi]

Nice! That's a good pull, you definitely had more to give there. Kudos! I can't believe you did that after a 6 months hiatus. Verrrry impressive.

Yeah, I can understand the No Deadlifting in the House rule, lol! I'm looking at getting an oly bar and the F-in-law suggested I could use their attic for lifting. Errr.... I don't think you want that. Hehe!

With the Open, I'd like to be able to take part purely for the sake of taking part. I wouldn't expect anything more than that. Just to be able to look at a wod, and NOT think, how can we modify that? That would be nice.

[The Most Loathed]

04/09/2014

 

bodyweight: 203.4

 

workout

1 hour to work up to a deadlift of 400lbs

1 hour TRX Class (one more remaining)

 

notes

• The first workout reminded me very much of my powerlifting days. It didn't feel bad at all but it also didn't feel like a modern workout for me
• The second workout the TRX instructor still got stuck with the middle aged newbie and me. To his credit he did a great job modifying the workout to get us both. He found exercises that each had a basic version and plyometric version. I spent an hour jumping and bouncing and swinging. He did at one point have me attempt renegade rows from the TRX, something he'd never seen done. I was able to find it but it's more of a feat and less of an exercise.
• Now to figure out this guild thing.

[The Most Loathed]

Per conversations with folks I'm going to leave this battle log sitting here for now but transition posting to my challenge log. I'll refer back here between challenges and to roll up results.