Category: Self-Improvement

Yesterday, I did a lot of bending over and squatting down to keep my joints from siezing up.  Yes, I’m quite sore, but not in a “not able to move” kind of way.

I think several things helped prevent it.  I hit the hot tub after I lifted yesterday, and I made sure to move through a range of motion in my legs quite frequently and got up from my desk to walk around a lot.

Today was a swimming day, and I got in a good workout.  I also soaked in the hot tub after I swam.  I think the frequent soaks will help prevent enough soreness to interfere with range of motion even if it doesn’t prevent it entirely.  That works for me.  I don’t like not being able to move well, but a little pain is all right.

I’ve dropped back from the longer, slower swims to the shorter, more intense swims.   I think my goal for swimming this winter is to try to get that mile in, but do it in less than half an hour.  So basically, I’m going to be pushing at a fast pace and keep adding distance to keep my workout at about a half an hour for swimming.  It seems to work out well for me.  I can do a mile in 40 minutes now.  Shaving off ten minutes in eight months is a lot, but we’ll see.  It’ll be fun to try, anyway, and certainly it’ll do my body good.  It’ll also keep me interested, which is definately the important thing.

I love it when I can work out right after working at the gym.  I can’t always do that — teaching and such.  But when I can, it’s great.   All that’s out of the way and the day is hardly touched.  Today’s a planning day at my real job, and I’ve got a buttload of proposals to write.

Heh… I just called freelance writing my real job.  I guess I’ve arrived!  That feels pretty good.

Today was leg day.

I always done a full body workout three times a week as my weights workout, but something’s been niggling at me to start doing splits instead.  This means that you only work upper or lower body, and you’ll do more exercises per body part.

I’m a bit nervous about how my legs are going to feel tomorrow, as I got out of that workout shaking so hard it was difficult for me to get on my bathing suit.  After a workout like that, you bet I soaked in the hottub before I showered and dressed in street clothes.  Places hurt that ordinarily don’t, which means there were muscles I wasn’t working.  The axillary exercises I’ve added are gonna add up.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not much of a fan of what they call “spot work”.  You really do want to treat your body as the integrated system that it is.  This means big compound exercises.  But your body adapts to any stress you put on it, so if you do something different, that means you’re doing something you’re not adapted to.

There are people on both sides of the strength training fence that like to jump up and down about their exercise being the best.  “Free weights are for sissy poseurs who are only working out for cosmetic reasons. For functional strength,  you’ll need to do body weight exercises.”  or “Body weight exercises only take you so far.  After you get to a certain level of strength, pushups and other body weight exercises are really only cardio.”

A)  Anything is better than nothing.  Never get so damn bogged down in the idea of the perfect workout that you don’t move your butt.  That’s always the really important thing.

B)  Bodies adapt to a specific stress.   If you go real hard core with bodyweight strength training, you bet you’re going to be better at it than a weightlifter who doesn’t do much bodyweight stuff.   There are few (non-triathlete) runners who can keep up with me swimming.  It’s because I swim a lot. My body knows what to do, my muscles are trained for that specific movement, and I do it often enough that I’ve adapted to it. Even though I swim well enough that I’m considered pretty good and reasonably fast by almost any standard, I can’t translate that into running. I never run.  If you’re worried about all-around adaptation, go for the Crossfit stuff.  It’s pretty good.

I’m already starting to feel creaky in the thighs and butt. I find myself glad that tomorrow is a swimming day.

I’ve been throwing in some self-indulgence after a workout lately.  My gym has a good whirlpool, so after a hard workout, I soak for awhile.

I should probably be doing it for no other reason than soreness prevention, but I’m really doing it because it feels good.  I don’t always have time after a workout.  On days when I’m teaching computer classes, especially if I’m also opening at the gym, I’ve barely enough time to get in a short workout on the weights. Forget a good swim and a soak.

I kind of wish that the end of the day would be a good time to work out.  With my schedule and basic personal rhythm, morning workouts tend to get done.  I’ll blow off an evening workout.  But the wonderful relaxation I feel after a hard swim and a good soak in the hot tub would definitely be conducive to a good night’s sleep.

Thing is, if I work out in the mornings, I’m considerably lesslikely to blow off the workout, which is more or less why I do it.

Question for the female swimmers, how in hell do you keep a decent manicure?  I’m finding that for the most part, my nails are softer and polish peels right off.  I’m not talking long daggers here, but nicely-filed shortish fingernails.

The expression BMI gets thrown out a lot lately, but it seems to me that very few people — either health professionals talking about weight, or people who talk about the fact that skinny is a lousy metric of health understand very well.

BMI means Body Mass Index. It’s a height/weight ratio. That’s it.  It doesn’t measure what the weight is composed of (muscle, bone, adipose tissue, water bloating or anything).  It’s just what you get when you step on a scale.  Most adult male athletes would be considered overweight or obese by BMI standards.  Clearly this is a measurement that leaves much to be desired.

It was developed somewhere between 1830 and 1850 by Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian scientist who was trying to develop a discipline known as Social Physics. This was basically the study of Man by means of statistical measurements.  Because many of his theories were not well thought of by his peers, the discipline of sociology supplanted it not long afterwards.

Quetelet did work in the public health sector, where his formula of BMI was applied to issues of health of the day.  Thing is, these measurements were used to establish an average based on the 1840-1850 set of measurements he took.  “Average” was then taken as a baseline for “acceptably healthy”.

Friends, barring cancer, almost anyone reading this is far healthier than the average person of the 19th century.  Our mothers were better nourished while we were gestating.  Our medical care — even if it was sub-standard, was better than was even available then.    Losing a child has gone from something routine that most mothers faced to something unusual and unexpected.  I have a friend who’d be facing death in childbirth in the next few weeks if it weren’t for obstetrical advances.

I wanna chuck the BMI for one reason: It’s bad science. It’s a statistical measurement based on environmental conditions that no longer exist compared to conditions we no longer find desirable.  We’ve got better ways to measure health now.  Let’s use ’em.

There are a lot of reasons swimming is not the world most popular form of cardio.  It’s expensive (hell, I got a part time job at a gym just so I could use the facilities instead of having to pay out of pocket for them!), it’s time-consuming (you won’t get a good swim in for under an hour, what with the getting to the gym, changing, showering, etc.), and it’s difficult.

Yes, difficult.   If you come to me bragging about how your father tossed you in the water when you were five and now you’re like a fish, I’ll laugh at you.  You probably don’t have the technique down to swim laps comfortably or effectively.

That last seems to be the biggest sticking point.  I’m trying to think of cardio that’s more technique-based than swimming and frankly I can’t!  Though I’m sure a Helpful Reader will point one out.

No-one would say that I’m a poor swimmer – prolly not even those Total Immersion folks.  But there are still techniques I don’t have down, even averaging three miles a week.

I’ve decided I’m spending the summer becoming fluid with bilateral breathing.  When doing the crawl[1] I usually breathe on every fourth stroke.  That’s always breathing to the right for me.  It’s lousy technique.  And it occurs to me that if I’m swimming a mile a week[2] with bad technique, then I’m practicing bad swimming.

So now I’m forcing myself to breathe every third stroke and switch sides every single time.  I’m clumsy as hell in the water right now and feeling like a dork for waiting as long as I have to force myself to use proper technique.  As a martial artist, I should know better.

Martial artists are usually cautioned in one way or another not to train their non-dominant side to be stupid.   You’re constantly drilling so you can lead equally well with your dominant or non-dominant limbs.

When I go to Virginia Beach this summer, I want to try to swim from the pier at 14^th Street down to Rudee Inlet[3].  Open water swimmers really should be good a bi-lateral breathing so they can compensate comfortably for surf conditions, current and that sort of thing.

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[1] The stroke isn’t freestyle, it’s the crawl. Most people use that stroke in freestyle events because you want to use the fastest stroke possible in said event, and the crawl is fast.

[2] I break up my laps with three different strokes to use different muscle groups and try to avoid a rotator cuff injury.

[3] The challenge won’t be the distance.  I swim farther than that every workout.  It’s the fact it’s open water.  Very different from a pool!

I got my lazy ass into the pool for the first time in a week today.

After my gall bladder attack, I just didn’t feel motivated.  I even asked the doctor if working out was okay (secretly hoping for a “no” and an excuse not to).   He laughed and said that as long I was not in the middle of an attack I should be fine.

So, no excuses.  I swam.

They keep that pool too damn warm in the summer.  I know they do it because of the people in aqua fitness and aqua therapy rehabs that just cannot take the cold.  Dandy.  In the summer, competition pool coldness is fine with me.  Ah well.  I wouldn’t want it to be too cold for people that really need the water workout and the warmth, anyway.

I had oatmeal for breakfast in my new lowfat diet.  Since I’ve been having oatmeal for breakfast for the past few months, this was not exactly a huge change.  I’ve been using powdered milk as creamer instead of half-n-half.  I like half-n-half better, but I’ll be goddamned if I buy those stupid low-fat “products”.  I’m not bloody well going to buy low fat cheese.  I’m just eating nonfat yogurt and gonna be done with it.  It’s summer, the produce is good.  There’s plenty of real food I can eat — I love fish, turkey and chicken.  Salads are my friend.  Strawberries are almost in season.  I make a mean beans and rice.  I bet I can come up with a really tasty yogurt-based salad dressing, too.  I’m a great cook and don’t need to fall back on fake food.

Thank God I can still cook in wine.