Haico and the quest for ultimate rock star fitness.

[Haico]

My name is Haico. This is me:

I’m from The Netherlands, 29 years old. Acoustics/electronics R&D engineer by day, recording studio entrepreneur & rock star by night. Other hobbies: working on my classic car, road tripping, snowboarding and doing general nerdy stuff. I've been struggling with fitness/weight for the last 10 years. I was in an a rather difficult relationship for the last 4.5 years. It left me insecure about myself. At one point I stopped caring about my health. Now, "waking up" and reinventing myself, I realise that I DO care about my health and general fitness!

Why NF?

I'm an long-time internet friend of the beloved site admin Spezzy. I read about her tranformation on this website about a year ago (still in the relationship I mentioned earlier). I was inspired and started to make some changes in my life. I changed my diet, started a beginners running schedule and tried several other fitness activities to find out what "works" for me. This is important to me, as motivation was and is my biggest enemy. I did lose 20 lbs. The big gut is now a smaller gut.

August 2011 (198 lbs) ---------------------> Juli 2012 (178 lbs)

Still a gut though! The progress halted here. I made some mistakes: I didn’t set goals, I didn’t keep track of my progress and I never applied any structure in my training/fitness/diet regime. That’s why I decided to start fresh! It's time to establishing some good habits. So I got myself a nerdy avatar (I figured some a Dungeons & Dragons TV-series reference will confirm my nerdicity) and here I am: going public with my goals.

Personal goals:

1) Improving my physical appearance.

Method: "Appearance is a consequence of fitness", right?! Over the last year I found out I like explosive full body strenght work-outs the best. I recently attended a kettlebell training session. Loved it! Also, I must maintain a healthy diet.

How to track: Objective: Measuring myself & weighing in. Subjective: Doing justice to the wife beaters I sometimes wear on stage.

Reward: My mom promised to buy me a nice suit.

2) I'd like to work on my stamina. Endurance is important to me as I like to run and jump around while I am playing live on stage. Trust me, rocking out on stage is quite a sport. The stages are hot as hell, you've got (in my case) a heavy bass guitar on you. Then, the audience loves to see an energetic show, but they think you suck if they hear you missing a note. So you've got to stay focussed during the whole gig.

Method: I used to hate running, I kinda like it now. I don't like it as much as inline skating or my latest love: a racing bicycle.

How to track: My dad is -although he's a bit old- a trained cyclist. I know he's a lot faster than I am. If I'm able to keep up with him during his "normal" 3-hour bicycle ride, I know I achieved something.

Reward: ?!? I haven't figued this one out yet.

3) Getting my shit back together. I'm great at procrastinating AND biting off more than I can chew. It goes without saying this is a bad combination. I have a HUGE to-do list and this is stressing me out. I must do the chores on the list. When I'm done, I must find a new balance between work, hobbies, fitness, responisibitities and friends.

Method: Break the list in small sub-lists. Set deadlines for each sub-list to be finished. I'm thinking about closing my home studio for customers. It's just too much. That's a bummer.

How to track: Visual inspections of the list.

Reward: Mental fitness.

The overall goal is to counteract my insecurities.

I'm not going to give myself a time limit on each of these goals. This is like a year plan to me. I'm going to break these goals into smaller goals, make them into NF 6 week challenges.

Fitnesswise I want to focus on both strength and stamina. I guess this makes me a Ranger. I'm looking forward to participate on the upcoming 6 week challenge period. Whoohoo!! I see that the current challenge ends on the 17th of September. Does this mean the next challenge starts on the 18th??

Thanks for having me.

[DanielWallen]

Haico,

I'm very impressed with your thoughtful goals, tracking, and reward system. Keep doing that, and it will take you far. It took me a long time to figure out the importance of goal-setting and tracking progress, and that will pay dividends for you. I just got out of a toxic relationship myself, so I can certainly relate with you there -- don't you feel much lighter now that you're out of it? I certainly do, large burden lifted. I wish you the best with your goals. What kind of band do you play in?

-Dan

[Haico]

Thank you Dan! Writing my goals down was quite a big step for me. I do feel a lot lighter now the relationship is over! Toxic is a good description. Eventually I wasn't a good influence on her either. I'm grateful for the time we had, but it left me a mess. I've got to work on myself if I ever want to embark on another romantic adventure.

Because I of my inability to say no to musical project proposals, I was given the nickname "the bass wh*r*". I've played almost everything from church gigs to obscure Black Metal. I currently play in a musical play orchestra (preparing my 5th musical), a Thrash Metal band and a band with Rock 'n Roll originals.

[rubyhellcat]

I like the way you "formatted" your goals. This is a good idea and I think I am going to use this to set up my goals to make more sense.

[Siferiax]

-Dutch high five- Why didn't I see you earlier?!

Looks like you got some nice goals going!!!

For the "I feel overwhelmed and procrastinate" I TOTALLY get it. Been there, done that. Gave up on to do lists.

For me what REALLY worked is making a "Today I will..." list. Just put down what you'll do TODAY, preferably realistic and maybe only making a list for stuff that just takes a portion of your day, instead of planning everything.

It's going great for me so far. When I get home from work I pop open that list, do the stuff on it and then know I can just relax/do whatever for the remaining time

When you make a challenge thread, let me know, I'll be keeping my eye on you!

[Haico]

- Dutch high 5 -

I just posted my challenge 5 minutes ago.

http://www.nerdfitness.com/community/showthread.php?17988-Haico-s-1st-challenge-The-Jason-Bourne-way

Thanks for the advise. I'll make "Today I will..."-lists.

[spezzy]

<3!!!!