ArgSki and the Journey to Sparta Pt. I

[ArgSki77]

So new year, new goals. The big thing looming which I have been looking forward to for a long time and was one of the main reasons I started my fitness journey is a Spartan Race. I intend on running in the Boston Sprint race in the middle of June. That means that I have 6 months to get into fighting shape for that event.

 

In order to do that, I have 4 overarching goals that will continue up to the Spartan and beyond likely.

• Drop weight, definitely below 300lbs for race, stretch goal of 280lbs
• Continue strength training specifically upper body and core
• Learn to run - minimum 5k distance, stretch is 10k
• Don't get injured

The next few series of challenges will be smaller sub-goals that will contribute to the greater cause hence the part 1 of this challenge.

 

For this current part challenge, I am going to make strides towards all of these 4 main goals with a setup that has them as sections my challenge goals will fall under.

 

Weight/Food

Track, track and track again - Track 7 days per week - I seriously do so much better when I track everything. When I only do like 5/7 days in a week, I am not mindful enough on those brake days and end up just putting back 5000 calorie days like they are nothing and ruining progress. No skipping out on little snacks here and there. Everything that goes in my mouth goes in the tracker.

 

Hail Hydrate - Drink 100oz of water per day - Staying hydrated helps me cut down on cravings and hunger. I cover this most work days with my 40oz nalgene at my desk. I easily drink three of those per day when working. But looking at weekends, not sure I had more than one or two glasses of water per day over the weekend. Need to change that.

 

Strength Training

Keep Calm and Lift On - Keep up current strength work - Two times per week FIT classes with the bench press and deadlift focuses. Use weekend sessions for overhead, squat, and other supplemental exercises and conditioning.

 

Up and Up - Integrate more upper body work - Looking to increase upper body strength with certain movements that I am not currently comfortable with. Things like pull-up and dip progression as well as grip strength will need improvement if I have any shot at doing things like monkey bars or rope climbs. Not sure how to really grade this yet.

 

Abzzz - Do core work 3 times per week - Looking to build up some core strength more than what I get from squats or other main lifts. Adding in some small ab sessions at the end of workouts or at home on rest days will suffice for now as supplemental work.

 

Running

C25K - Do C25K 3 times per week - Feel like a good intermediate goal for Spartan would be a 5K race. There is a race near St Pattys Day that I am leaning towards doing. Starting C25K now would be a good prelude to that. In the balance of training...I would sacrifice a lifting day for a run for this challenge...gasp!

 

Injury Prevention

They See Me Rollin' - Foam Roll 3 times per week - Foam rolling seems to significantly help out with knee soreness. Interesting discovery is that tight hips may be a culprit to the knee pain. Trying to change a bit of the focus to hip flexors and glutes to see if I can work out those spots to relieve some knee stress.

 

 

Sup? - Take supplements every day - Currently stacking Glucosamine to help with joints, Max Adrenal for hormonal support, and Max Capacity for focus and strength boost. Previously max capacity was just a preworkout but going to go with that as a daily from now on as the focus is helpful regardless of the gym. Working with an expert with range of supplements, she recommended that as it continually builds over time so the occasional preworkout usage does not ever reach top potential.

 

 

Hope you all join along for this journey. Its going to be quite the trip...Sparta is approximately 4700 miles from my front door so its going to take a while...buckle up!

[Laghail]

Following along again, and not just for sushi pr0n.

Okay, sushi pr0n is a decent chunk of my expectations, but lets not cheapen this by quantifying how much.

A lot.

[RedStone]

WUT WUT! Follow follow follow, watching watching watching!!!! (Especially to see how the running goes... I'm a month behind you! Planning on a trial 5K in April maybe...) YOU GOT THIS!!!

[jonfirestar]

Oh you totally got this! Following along again! I really like your goals.

[iatetheyeti]

Hey! I'm in kind of the same boat as you, I'm training for a Spartan Sprint at the end of July

 

...and I hear you on the hydration struggles!

 

Following along  

[jonfirestar]

13 hours ago, ArgSki77 said:

Hail Hydrate - Drink 100oz of water per day - Staying hydrated helps me cut down on cravings and hunger. I cover this most work days with my 40oz nalgene at my desk. I easily drink three of those per day when working. But looking at weekends, not sure I had more than one or two glasses of water per day over the weekend. Need to change that.

 

I have the same problem. While I'm at work I am good at keeping water on my desk and drinking plenty during the day. When I'm at home.... not so good.

[CourtnieMarie]

yassss!! love the plan. very similar to mine obviously (when i finally get a challenge up).

 

let's run and lose weight and lift weights and foam roll togetherrrrr!

[ArgSki77]

Weight/Food

Track, track and track again - Track 7 days per week

Tracked yesterday...ended up working late and then grabbed takeout food. Still managed 2616/2600 calories so pretty spot on. Protein is still hovering in the 140-150g range which is a bit low for me. I try to stay on a protein amount of what I think lean body mass is which would mean 180ish grams per day. Looking to get that up. Also lunch was leftovers from the weekend and was surprisingly higher in calories once I put it in the tracker than I originally guessed. For today, I replaced the leftover green bean casserole with some simple roasted green beans to bring the calories back down a bit.

 

But here is some bonus meal prep content!

Spiral ham dwindling down with roasted veggies

 

Accidental blueberry crepe - Was making kodiak cakes and added too much water and was out of mix so batter was really thin...poured it in the pan and put blueberries, let it cook all the way through and then rolled it up.

 

Hail Hydrate - Drink 100oz of water per day 

4 bottles yesterday at work so 120oz

 

Strength Training

Keep Calm and Lift On - Keep up current strength work

Up and Up - Integrate more upper body work

Gym this morning for bench day. Really solid workout. Covered both of the above goals.

 

3x(70,80,90%) for main bench strength set. Hit a solid 230lbs triple for my 90%. Trying to stay a bit more modest in my training weights because I would get more benefit working off of not quite my full max. So in past weeks Ive been guessing a 260 max bench but have been failing reps on like 5x85% and other sets so I am now toning this back a bit where I am training on like 97% of that max and with those weights I get full sets but they are still challenging.

 

Accessory was two groups: axle floor presses and barbell rows then dips and ring rows. Big milestone though...finally able to move from parallelette pushups to doing actual dips with banded assistance. For a while even using bands was not enough support and was blowing up my shoulders. After a month or so of the deficit pushups, it seems like I have enough stability in my shoulders to not have pain when doing full dip movement. I was able to do 3 sets of 8 with no pain. Now just got to work on reducing the band tension over time.

 

Condition is increasing in the new year because we can do so much more "fun" conditioning when we have groups of people actually showing up in big numbers. Today was two 5min AMAP sets with a partner. Basically partner B did their workout while A completed their reps and you cycled back and forth

Round 1:

Partner A: 3 KB Press per arm - 18kg

Partner B: Heavy KB Swing - 32kg

Round 2:

Partner A: 2x(50' Sandbag Carry - 1 Sandbag Bear Complex - 1 Sandbag Burpee)

Partner B: Heavy Jump Ropes

 

Abzzz - Do core work 3 times per week 

Not much specific on this front. There were some abs(RKC Planks) during warm-ups but not enough to count as an abs focus.

 

Running

C25K - Do C25K 3 times per week

Not likely to start this during zero week because of Monday holiday and such. Would like to get out before that once though just to get a bit of legs under me and do some judgement on pace. Probably going to run the Tufts track sometime this weekend because dreadmills are the worst.

 

Injury Prevention

They See Me Rollin' - Foam Roll 3 times per week 

Got to the gym early and got some time in to try and losen my legs which were still sore from skiing on Monday. Feeling much better now.

 

Sup? - Take supplements every day

Taken

[ArgSki77]

2 hours ago, jonfirestar said:

I have the same problem. While I'm at work I am good at keeping water on my desk and drinking plenty during the day. When I'm at home.... not so good.

Yeah I actually got a new HydroFlask bottle for Christmas with this goal in mind. It has become my go-to carry around the house and gym bottle in the hope it becomes as second nature as using my bottle at work.

[ArgSki77]

15 hours ago, Laghail said:

Following along again, and not just for sushi pr0n.

Okay, sushi pr0n is a decent chunk of my expectations, but lets not cheapen this by quantifying how much.

A lot.

I've been restricted to two times per month for cost savings...but I have broken that the last three months since setting that rule. So there will inevitably be more sushi in the near future.

 

2 hours ago, iatetheyeti said:

Hey! I'm in kind of the same boat as you, I'm training for a Spartan Sprint at the end of July

 

...and I hear you on the hydration struggles!

 

Following along  

Welcome aboard!! Which Spartan are you doing in July? Sprint?

[raptron]

yeeee!

[RedStone]

ACCIDENTAL CREPES!!! Love it. And they look beautiful. And delicious. And pls put them in my face. I'll have to make those on purpose sometime!

[ArgSki77]

2 minutes ago, RedStone said:

ACCIDENTAL CREPES!!! Love it. And they look beautiful. And delicious. And pls put them in my face. I'll have to make those on purpose sometime!

My go to for kodiak cakes is equal parts water and mix. Accidentally put 2/3 cup water and 1/2 cup mix...just in case you need to do what I did on purpose.

[CourtnieMarie]

congrats on making it to banded dips!! that's awesome.

 

i really should try kodiak cakes sometime.

[ArgSki77]

15 minutes ago, CourtnieMarie said:

i really should try kodiak cakes sometime.

Yes...highly recommend. I just find them to be a quick and easy(and tasty) protein and carb source. Plus they also make new flavors of the protein pack ones now, peanut butter and chocolate...they may or may not already be in an amazon box on the way to my house. And they have gluten-free mix for the SO...but its not the protein pancake type.

[CourtnieMarie]

7 minutes ago, ArgSki77 said:

Yes...highly recommend. I just find them to be a quick and easy(and tasty) protein and carb source. Plus they also make new flavors of the protein pack ones now, peanut butter and chocolate...they may or may not already be in an amazon box on the way to my house. And they have gluten-free mix for the SO...but its not the protein pancake type.

ooooOOOOoooo! sounds good to me. we are pretty good at protein intake anyway that a non-protein but GF version wouldn't kill us  

[doctorake]

17 hours ago, ArgSki77 said:

I cover this most work days with my 40oz nalgene at my desk. I easily drink three of those per day when working. But looking at weekends, not sure I had more than one or two glasses of water per day over the weekend. Need to change that.

 

This, this so much!

 

 

Also I find for planks to do one right before going to the bathroom at work to be beneficial, good ab work.

[RhiaWolfe]

Following! Got quite a lot of goals for this month! Love it! Keep this up and you'll definitely make it to your Spartan Goal! Love the breakdown! 

 

I need to hydrate more to keep cravings at bay... right now I"m just trying to avoid bad foods though.

[ArgSki77]

24 minutes ago, RhiaWolfe said:

Following! Got quite a lot of goals for this month! Love it! Keep this up and you'll definitely make it to your Spartan Goal! Love the breakdown! 

 

I need to hydrate more to keep cravings at bay... right now I"m just trying to avoid bad foods though.

Thanks for following along!

 

I find that lots of goals keeps me more focused than just a few. If I do light easy challenges then I end up straying in other aspects of my life that end up negatively impacting things going well. Like when I put all my focus on lifting and skipped out on nutrition for a few challenges, I put 15lbs on all my lifts but also 20lbs on my body...womp. If I do small seemingly attainable goals that cover a much more broad range, I find I will stick to them better.

 

I did a purge of all the leftover desserts and crap that were from the holidays. Coworkers are enjoying all the candy and junk today and I am just here eating my meal prep containers

[CourtnieMarie]

18 minutes ago, ArgSki77 said:

I did a purge of all the leftover desserts and crap that were from the holidays. Coworkers are enjoying all the candy and junk today and I am just here eating my meal prep containers

WHOA! that would be so hard for me. GO YOU!!!

[ArgSki77]

3 minutes ago, CourtnieMarie said:

WHOA! that would be so hard for me. GO YOU!!!

Luckily it was some stuff that was like on the fence of whether I would eat it or not. Some candied pecan popcorn cluster things, some crappy flavors of chocolates, and a box of yodels(that pained me...who doesn't love hostess junk). I already cleared through all my favorites but I know if those were sitting around the house I would likely eat them despite the fact I don't really even like them.

[CourtnieMarie]

1 minute ago, ArgSki77 said:

Luckily it was some stuff that was like on the fence of whether I would eat it or not. Some candied pecan popcorn cluster things, some crappy flavors of chocolates, and a box of yodels(that pained me...who doesn't love hostess junk). I already cleared through all my favorites but I know if those were sitting around the house I would likely eat them despite the fact I don't really even like them.

sames. so seriously good job getting them out of the house into your co-workers hands

[iatetheyeti]

3 hours ago, ArgSki77 said:

Welcome aboard!! Which Spartan are you doing in July? Sprint?

 

That I am. Figured it was best to start with that one seeing as it'll be my first OCR!

[RhiaWolfe]

1 hour ago, ArgSki77 said:

Thanks for following along!

 

I find that lots of goals keeps me more focused than just a few. If I do light easy challenges then I end up straying in other aspects of my life that end up negatively impacting things going well. Like when I put all my focus on lifting and skipped out on nutrition for a few challenges, I put 15lbs on all my lifts but also 20lbs on my body...womp. If I do small seemingly attainable goals that cover a much more broad range, I find I will stick to them better.

 

I did a purge of all the leftover desserts and crap that were from the holidays. Coworkers are enjoying all the candy and junk today and I am just here eating my meal prep containers

 

I guess I can see that. For me, more goals makes me feel overwhelmed. I have to go small... at least for right now. 

 

Way to go on resisting that temptation! I know if I had candy around me right now I probably couldn't resist. I want chocolate so badly! lol. 

[Broba Fett]

This is madness!