Hoxton does less.

[hoxton]

Okay guys this is my Second challenge, my first one being hugely successful in everything except the goals that I set.

 

I learnt that in trying to do everything at once you actually get nothing done.

That not having clear and concise goals to aim for you get lost along the way.

And that having a day off is important.

 

At the moment I am dealing with some tendonitis in both of my elbows and my left wrist so my strength training is taking a back seat this challenge in the hope that things will be a little better at the end of it.

 

So here go, challenge No:2 Hoxton Does Less

 

Goal 1: Spend 30 minutes training to be awesome.

 

In the mornings I usually spend half an hour thinking about good reasons why I should stay in bed and NOT get into my freezing cold bathroom. This challenge I am going to use this 30mins to Stretch, Strength Train and Massage.

 

My Sub-Goals are:

1)To gain better flexibility in my lower back

3) To gain better flexibility in my hamstrings

4) To get a stronger core

5) Hold a deep squat for time

6) To work out the many knots in my arms, shoulders and upper back.

7) Improve pushing and pulling strength.

 

Here’s How:

 

Flexibility.

 

Last challenge I followed Erin Motz’s 30 Day yoga Challenge in order to find my tight spots. I am going to use her 15 min sessions to work out these tight spots.

Most important is the lower back.

 

So the first routine I will follow is:

Mon  - Random Erin Motz Routine (Decided by a throw of a D30)

Tue   - Back (Day 8)

Wed  - Random

Thur  - Back (Day 8)

Fri     - Random

Sat    - Back

Sun   - Rest

 

After I can get into a full wheel pose without too much difficulty I will switch my attention to my hamstrings.

 

The second routine is:

Mon     - Random

Tue     - Hamstrings (Day 16)

Wed    - Random

Thur    - Hamstrings (Day 16)

Fri       - Back (Day 8)

Sat      - Hamstrings (Day 16)

Sun     - Rest

 

Strength.

After completing my 15mins of yoga I am then going to either practise the Hollow Body Hold or Deep Squats. I will do this on alternating Days.

 

So:

Mon - Hollow, 

Tue - Squat, 

Wed - Hollow, 

Thurs - Squat

Friday - Hollow, 

Sat - Squat Test

Sunday - Rest

 

For the Hollow Body hold I will aim to hold for a minute, then i will add a fish hold and after that a forearm plank.

 

For the Squats I will do 10 on Tuesday and Thursday and on Saturday I will do as many as I can, aiming for 3 Sets of 50

 

 

 

Goal 2: Lose my beer belly.

 

Abs are made in the kitchen apparently, so i’m going to put this to the test. I’m going to go onto the Dukan Diet and get myself down to the lowest safe BMI I can. I’ve no idea how long this is going to take but I imagine at least 12 weeks.

 

Anyway here is an outline of what I’m going to do.

 

Week 1: Planning Phase. + No Alcohol

Do the research, purge my house of any dangerous foods, create a meal plan for the whole week, stock up, record my starting weight and BMI.

 

Week 2: Attack Phase. + No Alcohol

This is a Protein Based phase which is pretty gnarly. I will need some resolve and planning to survive this (hence Week 1)

 

Week 3 to Week 6: Cruise Phase + No Alcohol

Alternating Protein days and Veggie days, until I reach the BMI i’m looking for, or I can see my abs.

 

My BMI currently is: 24

A healthy BMI is between 18 and 25 for someone of my build and age.

 

 

Goal 3: Pee More.

 

I have been told that drinking water is good for you, i’m not convinced, but i’m willing to give it  a shot.

 

I have downloaded an app which buzzes me and encourages me to drink water, I will follow it’s instructions for this challenge and see if I feel any better for it.

 

 

Goal 4: TV time is Re-hab time.

 

In order to help my elbows and wrist heal up Im going to do two things.

 

Read books on massage.  I have set myself the goal of reading “Self Myofascial Release†it’s basically a manual on getting tight muscles to relax.

 

Massage my arms and do the re-hab movements whilst I watch tv.

 

Hopefully this will help me in my massaging endevours to be a totally relaxed type of guy.

 

Scoring is going to be incredibly simple each thing is worth 1 point.

If at the end of this challenge I can:

 

get into a full bridge, 1Point

touch my toes, 1Point

get into a full squat and hold it for 20 seconds, 1Point

hold the follow body1min, 1Point

and fish hold 1min, 1Point

and plank 1min, 1Point

have visible abs, 1Point

eliminate dry mouth when waking up, 1Point

have eliminated the majority of knots in my upper back, shoulders and arms 1Point

have read a book on massage. 1point

and 

eliminated my wrist pain 100,000,000,000 points.

 

 

Top score is 100,000,000,010

 

here we go!
 

[hoxton]

Ok today was a Back Yoga Day plus a Hollow Body in final form, held it for 58 seconds, so close!

Managed to get pretty comfortably in and out of Camel Pose with my heels flat, which is nice and a serious improvement from last week, looking forward to attempting bridge!

 

I also found that doing this pose:

 

I was a lot tighter on my left side, so I will add this to the end of all my routines in the hope to balance this out.

 

Also, my wrist does not like the constant planking, shifting from down dog to plank, so i'm going to swap down dog to dolphin and and plank to forearm plank.

[hoxton]

Woot, finished "Self Myofascial Release"

 

Turns out it was only 48 pages long, one of the wonders of ebooks is that they don't have a thickness.

It didn't really cover much more than I already knew, offering only the brief dip into triggerpoints.

 

Anyhoo, 1 Point to me.

 

I've ordered a copy of the "Trigger Point Work Book" which is a slightly more hefty tome (300 or so pages) and will probably take me a fair bit longer to conquer. Hopefully there will be some useful information in there.

 

Must have knoledge

 

[hoxton]

Just had a trip to the physio, good news, tedonitis is getting better. Better news, I got the green light to start strength training! (in moderation) 

 

F$%K Yeah.

 

 

In light of this I will be adding Aussie Pull-ups, Resistance band pull downs, Push Ups and Resistance band pull ups to my training. My aim for this is to do 1 more rep each time. I'll get some starting reps up next week.

[hoxton]

Got into full bridge today, only managed to hold it for a second before lowering slowly out of it.

 

Still working on the advanced hollow body form which is a killer, held for 58 seconds. Just 2 shy of the mark!

 

Next time... 

[Jill Beat]

A really good one for self-myofascsial release is yoga tune up balls, and the book to go with them - The Role Model by Jill Miller.  I got to meet her at a workshop last fall and she was awesome! 

[hoxton]

Ohh Cool, I will definitely check that out, thanks.

[hoxton]

Feeling good today!

I managed to get into bridge again, took a photo. It felt like my head was much further away from the floor than this!

 

 

also managed to hold the Advanced Hollow Body form for over 60 seconds! 

 

 

which means it's time to start adding in the Arch Hold

 

[hoxton]

Okaaaay week one is done!

 

Took a photo of my squat distance.

 

 

I can now hold a squat with my legs this far apart. Woot!

So it's time to start working the feet together. With the aim of having the heels touching and still being able to squat a full range of motion.

 

Water Consumption.

 

 

Room for improvement there...

 

Points so Far.

Read Self Myofascial Release - 1point

Hold Hollow Body 1min - 1point

 

Monday sees things jacking up a little as I get on the Dukan Diet and also start strength training again (in moderation)

 

[Jill Beat]

Whooo!  One week down! 

 

For that bridge, it looks like shoulder flexibility might be one of the things you could train separately from just the bridge hold.  If you have a bar to hang from, sometimes just hanging with your arms above your head is a good stretch - the further apart your hands are, the easier it will be.  

 

I'm super curious, what are those stickies on the wall behind you? They intrigue me! 

 

Love the Kuzco gif! let's crush week 2! 

[hoxton]

Thanks.

Ill definitely check out shoulder flexibility.

The stickeis are for my kite surfing school. Its a course I have designed, every blue sticky is a trick and each trick is connected by a piece of string. From the top down It shows you what pathways you can take from super simple tricks to the uber complex.

The idea is if you are struggling with a tough trick you can follow the pathway back through the easier tricks and find where the problem lies. Fix the foundations and everything else falls into place.

[hoxton]

Righty, First day of dieting.

 

Weight: 79kgs

BMI 22.3

 

Starting Pics

Front

 

 

Side

 

 

 

 

and the graph to plot progress is up!

 

[hoxton]

Alrighty, managed a 1min10sec Hollow body followed by 20sec Intermediate Arch Hold.

 

Also found out that elbow planks do not help my tendonitis so i'm scrapping that from the challenge in favor of proper planks.

 

Also found a better way to hold the hollow body that creates more tension in the upper stomach, happy days. 

[Jill Beat]

I LOVE that sticky note chart!  I teach aerial hoop and think that might also be a good tool for me to use *reaches out, puts idea in pocket*

 

I also love the nerdy progress graph.  Might have something to do with my engineeriness  

[hoxton]

Thanks! for me it's all about the visuals, 

[hoxton]

Killer day today, absolutely knackered. Managed to get further into Wheel Pose, but it's still a little "oval".

 

Have kite surfed 3 times in the last five days and my hollow body and arch hold have suffered because of it.

 

Managed to do 50sec Hollow

followed by 10sec Arch

 

Ahh well, no wind until saturday, so will have plenty of time to rest.

[jaex]

Morning workouts are great!  I find the number of excuses in the morning is just one (I want more sleep) while there are so many possible excuses in the afternoon (need to do chores, long day of work, etc.).  And it wakes you better than coffee.  I also find that when I do something active in the morning I am more motivated at work.

 

I bet you'll see a difference soon with all that stretching!  Keep up the good work

[hoxton]

Arrhg! Super angy!

 

I put weight on my wrist today in my yoga session (something I have been doing six days a week for the last month) and suddenly got nasty shooting pains right in the joint.

 

I've overdone it, again. I think it might have been trying to push into bridge too hard, bugger.

 

Anyhoo, that means more wrist resting.

 

I will modify my stretching routines to avoid any wrist weight bearing for the rest of this challenge. That's four weeks (which should be plenty of time for it to sort itself out.)

 

Sorry Erin guess I won't be completing your challenge this month. :/

[hoxton]

And Weeks 2's results are in!

 

Fat Loss.

 

Did really well, a full 7 days (didn't cheat a single day) of protein only Attack Phase.

 

Lost 1.5kg in all, not sure why I went back up at the end of the week, but i'm sure it will come back down again.

 

Going forward into alternating days of Protein + Veg (God I miss veg) then Only Protein.

 

the book sais that I should now start walking for an hour a day. I would say that in any one day I probably walk way over that anyway so i'm going to add in 6 songs worth of skipping. This should burn some excess calories nicely.

 

Still no idea how much I really want to lose, but I can't see my six-pack yet so i'm going to keep going.

 

Bridges.

Pushed too hard and tweaked my wrist. Bugger.

 

Have changed from Erin Motz's Yoga Challenge (which involves a lot of planking and wrist pressure) to a non planky stretch routine. 

 

Will continue to work on back flexibility using Bow Pose.

 

 

Water.

 

I am drinking more water, definitely, i'm just rubbish at recording it. 

 

Time to step up and be more organized.

 

 

 

Massage and reading.

 

Going well, although to get through the whole of this new book i'm gong to have to start finding some more time to dedicate to it.

 

Going in to week 3 - Mini Challenges.

 

6 songs worth of skipping on non-work days..

Hit 2 liters of water per day and RECORD it on my app.

Put aside 3 dedicated hours of reading.

Tv time is stretchy time. Lately i've been doing my massage and then stopping, I'm going to use the tv time ti stretch more.

 

Here we Go!

[jaex]

I wouldn't worry about the bump in weight at the end of the week; your body fluctuates day to day.  Sorry about the wrist.  I hope it heals up soon with a little bit of rest.  Overall looks like you had a pretty good week.  Keep it up!

[HanShotFirst]

Looks like you've been going pretty strong yourself bud. Your thread is a tad more interesting than mine to boot.

 

I'll be getting into yoga when I get back from the UK next month.

[hoxton]

Looks like you've been going pretty strong yourself bud. Your thread is a tad more interesting than mine to boot.

 

I'll be getting into yoga when I get back from the UK next month.

 

NIce, yoga's good for everything, how are you enjoying england? Its especially rainey down here in Cornwall at the moment. 

[hoxton]

Mini, update.

 

My weight is going back up. I hit 77.5kg at the weigh in this morning, grrr.

Have not cheated once!

 

Managed to hold the Advanced Arch Hold for 30 seconds yesterday, woot!  Looking forward to doing the full minute.

 

Have not skipped once this week, must skip more.

 

Am going to try cut out snacking entirely, even though its allowed in the dukan diet, it's not reccommended and this may be where I am falling down.

[jaex]

Those arch holds look tough!  Congrats on doing it for any amount of time!

And I wouldn't worry too much about small weight changes.  Weight changes day by day and can vary more than you might anticipate.  Just look for a pattern - is your weight consistently going up, staying the same, or going done.  

[hoxton]

Thanks you're right about the weight, it is going down, but it seems to like going up first.

Anyway I have declared war on snacking and will be not indulging at all this week and see how it goes.