Monday, March 7, 2011

I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now, When I was Younger

Today was a strength day.  It was some hard work but time in between each set for me to think.  For some reason I remembered when I first started working out.  A little about me, I’m a nerd.  I like reading, playing video games, reading comics, and other nerdly things.  If it wasn’t for the fact that there was plenty of backpacking and a great cycling program in my boy scout troop, I wouldn’t have been very active in my younger years.  
So when I finally realized that I was starting to get overweight after high school I joined a globo-gym and hired a personal trainer.  I learned about the nautilus machines, was introduced to the hack squat machine, and lunges in a rack.  There was the calf raise machine, bench press, and the lat pull-down machine.  As I look at what I was doing compared to now I wasn’t lifting smartly, my form was off, and I was stuck in the 3 sets of 10 mode no matter what the workout.  On top of that I was working my muscles in isolation which is rarely how they work in the real world.  They work with each other so why work them separately.  The exercises that I knew were limited and the amount of variety I had was not that great.  This lead to me not enjoying working out.
Fast forward to now.  I’ve read Starting Strength and have cleaned up my form so that I’m doing my lifts correctly.  I’ve gone from hack squats and lunges to proper squats, walking lunges, dead lifts, press, push-press, jerks, cleans, and snatches.  I’ve introduced kettlebells, jumping rope, sprints, rowing, burpees, and box-jumps.  I’ve learned countless others that allow me to slap together a workout that will not only push my strength but my endurance as well.  I’ve gone beyond the three sets of ten repetitions.  I’ve come a long way and still have far to go.  Weights that seemed impossible years ago, hell three months ago, I’m now moving with far greater ease than I would have ever thought possible.  
The whole point of this isn’t to lament what could have been but to celebrate how far I’ve come.  I could have kept doing the same old things but instead I kept searching for new and better ways to do things.  With a bit of knowledge, hard work, and the willingness to stick to it (probably the hardest part of the formula) you can make great fitness strides in a far shorter time that you would have ever thought possible.  
I was thinking about my poor burpee performance from yesterday’s Filthy 50.  I figure burpees are like pull-ups.  You’ll never get better at them if you don’t do them.  So, tomorrow I’m starting the 100 day burpee challenge.  It works like this.  On day one, you do one burpee.  On day two, you do two burpees.  On day 50, you do 50 burpees and on day 100, you do 100 burpees.  If I miss a day I have to make it up on the next day.  There’s no pushing the workout to the next day.  I imagine this will suck around day 50 or so but I’m really hoping to see an improvement in my burpees.  
 Today's workout:
7x5 Press
95, 105, 115, 120, 125, 120, 120
7x5 Bench Press (dumbbells)
55, 60, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80

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