Spanzor's daily battle log - Learning to Lift

[Spanzor]

Hello to the Nerd Fitness Rebellion, please allow me to introduce myself as I join your ranks.

 

While I am not new to Nerd Fitness, I am finally taking the plunge into joining the rebellion to assist my latest attempt at working out and overall fitness. While I am no stranger to being active (played soccer and ran track throughout high school), working out outside of going to a sports practice has always been difficult for me. I can't count the number of times I've tried to start a new workout routine. Well that is going to end today. I decided that I need to make the change to my life to become someone who is fit, and to do that I need to become someone who works out. Following high school, I started to gain a lot of excess weight, partially since my eating habits never caught up with the fact that I stopped playing organized sports, and partially because who eats well in college? For a long time, running seemed to be my only option for trying to lose that weight, however I quickly realized that running can get very boring. Gyms had always been intimidating, especially since I had never lifted before I went to college. Upon discovering NF, I tried following many of the bodyweight workouts, but always found myself wanting more than what they've offered. Although I have little experience with lifting, what workouts I have done have always given me the satisfaction of a good workout. 

 

Where I am today: I am a 5'11" male weighing ~230lbs. I'm a recent college grad (and as a result, unemployed), also recently moved to Florida from upstate New York (hooray for sunshine year-round).  I have already begun the process of changing my habits and diet to allow me to level up my life. My diet in the last 3 years has seen more vegetables than the first 20 combined. I make a majority of my own meals and rarely have fast food, but recently have fallen into the habit of making meals that look better than they are healthy (all of the cheese), or ordering pizza at least once/week (half of a large pizza in a single meal is no problem).

 

Where I want to be: While my weight itself is not of much concern to me, I know that i can stand to lose some weight. Right now, I'm shooting for the 200-215lb range. My main goals are to trade my excess belly fat for increased muscle mass. Once I have started lifting, I can come up with more specific goals for what weights I want to hit, but for now I want to strive for lifting my body weight in at least one lift (from what I can tell, deadlift will be the first lift I hit this in, as most people seem to lift more with this than any other). For now, my primary goal is to establish a habit of going to the gym and working out 3-4 times a week. While running is by no means my cup of tea, I also hope to be able to eventually complete a 5k. For now I'm shooting for a sub-30 minute time.

 

How I hope to accomplish these goals: I've started tracking my caloric intake using MyFitnessPal. For now, I do not have a gym to go to since I am waiting until I get a job to add that expense. So in the meantime, I am going to build the habit of working out 4-5 days/week. I have 2 sets of dumbells (15lbs & 25lbs) that I can use for home workouts, so I'll alternate 'heavy' workout days with active recovery days. Active recovery will be spent as a combination of a couch to 5k running program, along with yoga and other mobility exercises.

And of course now I have all of you rebels to keep me honest and on track.

 

So this is me, anything I forgot I'll add in later posts, or feel free to ask me. Here's looking forward to a good rebellion!

[Spanzor]

My first challenge has been posted here, and I will post main challenge updates there. Main goals will be habit-building so that in the future I can concentrate on improvements in my workouts. Gotta lay a good foundation to build myself up from.

 

The weekend was mostly uneventful, so far I've kept up my calorie tracking up, hopefully that habit won't drop off in the next week as I've always done in the past. From what it says, I seem to hit my calorie goal (~2600) pretty consistently, so in a future challenge I may make it a goal to better monitor my macronutrients to ensure proper mass building/fat cutting. 

 

Weekend Workouts included two-days of using the C25K app for runs on a treadmill (my apartment complex finally renovated their fitness center) and one day of a home dumbell workout. Today was a second dumbell workout, which I just completed.

 

Friday: C25K

2.1 miles in ~28 minutes

Saturday: Push day

Goblet Squat - 3x10x25lb

DB Bench Press - 3x10x50lb

DB Push Press - 3x10x50lb

Push-ups - 3x12xBW

Plank - 1min

Sunday: C25K

2 miles in 28 minutes

Today: Pull day

DB Deadlift - 3x10x50

DB Lunge - 3x10x50

DB Bent-over Row - 3x10x50

Reverse Crunch - 3x10xBW

[Spanzor]

My battle of the day: Workout before or after my job interview? Currently on the east side of the US its only 9:30am, and with my interview being at 2pm, I have plenty of time to get a half-hour sweat session in before hand. Problem is, I'm a little too excited/nervous to even think about a workout right now. I should have the whole afternoon after the interview, but I don't like leaving things for later (I have a bad track record of not doing things later).

[Spanzor]

That little struggle turned into frustration after going to the interview and having a great sit down with HR, then was told the engineer who was going to conduct my technical interview was off site today. Frustrating to be asked to come back in another day merely because someone else can't schedule properly. *sigh* more updates will be posted after that phone call tomorrow.