Exercise/Fitness Log

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jennypenny
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jennypenny »

I'm struggling with goals. It's hard to have more than one without short-changing them both. Do you think it's worth it to rotate between goals regularly? Like spending three months on getting faster, three months getting stronger, three months on endurance, and then three months on flexibility and new skills? I wouldn't ignore the other three categories for 9 months of the year, but I would only focus on drastic improvements in one at a time. Maybe it could be shortened to two month intervals? I'd probably add a break with a fast between each interval.

@Chad -- Cool. Something else to add to the list with football, beer, and MMA. :D

jacob
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jacob »

Just started month 2 of Max:30. Initial performance with the new month was shameful as usual.

It's funny how every new month is like a punch in the face to the thought that I thought was in pretty good shape.

I'd estimate them as follows in terms of [my] perceived hardness:

Running 10k: 80%
Insanity month 1: 100%
Insanity month 2: 200%
Max:30 month 1: 250%
Max:30 month 2: 350% (it's as if you set out to do a 10k and conk out with a DNF after 8 minutes, more or less.)
Insanity Asylum: ???%

I need to pull out some physiology graphs to see if the age excuse really is valid. In particular whether max BPM and VO2max do go down with age. I'm definitely finding that I simply can't follow the program without overtraining. Month 1 took me two months to get through and I DNS'ed on 25% of the planned days.

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jennypenny
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jennypenny »

jacob wrote:I need to pull out some physiology graphs to see if the age excuse really is valid. In particular whether max BPM and VO2max do go down with age.
It does, but it should be a gradual tapering. If you feel like you've hit a wall, or you're losing capacity at a rate you can actually feel/see, it's time for a physical. Something as minor as anemia can have a significant effect on your VO2max.

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jacob »

I'm not losing capacity as much as I'm punching above my weight and not progressing as fast as intended. The commercial "two month plan" might be a 3 or 4 month plan for me. I can still smoke my age group. We'll see what happens in 4-8 weeks. I'll probably finish this one, start Asylum, and make yet another whiny post about how "hard" this stuff is.

Jack Jones
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by Jack Jones »

Just started this program:

https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/exercise.html

I'm in decent shape already, but I'm finding it hard to run with the days being shorter. Going forward I'll either do the above or go running every day.

enigmaT120
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by enigmaT120 »

Jack Jones wrote:Just started this program:

https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/e4/exercise.html

I'm in decent shape already, but I'm finding it hard to run with the days being shorter. Going forward I'll either do the above or go running every day.
Ditto on the short days. The reason for the season is nigh -- Dec. 21 is the solstice. I am trying to avoid driving in the dark as I can't see well enough, so it's not easy to just get home before dark. I don't mind running in the dark much, but not up in the woods where I live. I lift weights more (OK, I soloflex) in the winter, and do Taekwon Do forms for about 45 minutes in place of running. And I'm still bicycle commuting when I can.

theanimal
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by theanimal »

I just finished month 1 of Insanity Max 30 today. Youth is on my side and I did not have the same problems with the first month as Jacob ;) . It's definitely much harder than Insanity, but my body quickly adapted into it. During the last week of month 1 (this past week), I was able to complete 2 of the workouts without maxing out (i.e. going for the full 30 min w/o a point of failure). So I'm pretty happy with that. I'm looking forward to month 2.

I like this so much better than regular Insanity. The warm up and cool down is short and there is practically no stretching. You basically jump right into it.

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jacob »

Good work! I'm actually just 1 week ahead of you into Month 2 now. I've had to restart Month 1 several times because of colds and flus and simply being exhausted and DNSing, so the first month actually took me 5 months. I'm wondering if I'm at the point where I'm overworking it and lowering my immune system or whether I've just been unlucky. That's a real thing, so that would mean that I'm getting too old for this level of intensity :(

In any case, I'm far from completing the 30 mins w/o maxing. I've increased the Month 1:Cardio from about 11 minutes to 18:27.

My weak spot in Insanity was strength-endurance, but for Max:30 it's definitely VO2max.

Chad
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by Chad »

jacob wrote:That's a real thing, so that would mean that I'm getting too old for this level of intensity :(
Getting old sucks. This is the last year is the first time I've really noticed it. Takes me and extra day or two to recover from heavy a leg day. Of course, it doesn't help I sit all day for my job.

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jennypenny
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jennypenny »

From NYT ... After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight Contestants lost hundreds of pounds during Season 8, but gained them back. A study of their struggles helps explain why so many people fail to keep off the weight they lose.

From the article ...
The results, the researchers said, were stunning. They showed just how hard the body fights back against weight loss.

“It is frightening and amazing,” said Dr. Hall, an expert on metabolism at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. “I am just blown away.”

It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes.

Researchers knew that just about anyone who deliberately loses weight — even if they start at a normal weight or even underweight — will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends. So they were not surprised to see that “The Biggest Loser” contestants had slow metabolisms when the show ended.

What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.


It's an interesting control group because they lost the weight through diet and exercise (not just diet) which included a significant amount of strength training. I also thought the dramatic decrease in leptin was interesting. I've never been a fan of weight-reduction surgery (or any 'optional' medical procedure to be honest), but further reading suggests that surgery, as opposed to diet and exercise alone, has much better long-term results. I didn't know that.

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jacob »

Hmmm ... I'm not convinced that the Biggest Loser loser strategy is very intelligent from a health perspective. Clearly that [BL] strategy is optimized for TV more than anything else. Take a bunch of untrained obese ppl who like to eat and have them undergo elite-level training volumes while on a starvation-diet in order to lose 100-200 pounds over the course of just a few months all the while the producers are tempting them with cakes and other "challenges". What could possibly go wrong? :?
Mr. Cahill set a goal of a 3,500-caloric deficit per day. The idea was to lose a pound a day. He quit his job as a land surveyor to do it.

His routine went like this: Wake up at 5 a.m. and run on a treadmill for 45 minutes. Have breakfast — typically one egg and two egg whites, half a grapefruit and a piece of sprouted grain toast. Run on the treadmill for another 45 minutes. Rest for 40 minutes; bike ride nine miles to a gym. Work out for two and a half hours. Shower, ride home, eat lunch — typically a grilled skinless chicken breast, a cup of broccoli and 10 spears of asparagus. Rest for an hour. Drive to the gym for another round of exercise.
Dude is exercising 7 hours a day on a diet of egg whites, toast bread, chicken breast, broccoli, and asparagus that I guesstimate to be between 1000 and 1500 kcal per day. He's working harder than a 24 year old NFL player while eating less than a concentration camp victim. No wonder that his metabolism reacts the way it does. The body wants to live!!

I feel sad for those participants whose metabolism was screwed over for the sake of good TV but I doubt they are very representative of general weight-loss strategies/healthful living strategies (e.g. compare to weight watchers, ... ).

It seems reasonable that it should take about as much work/time to take the weight off as it took to put it on. That is, if one overeats by 200kcal/day (gaining 20 pounds of weight per year) and under-moves by 100kcal/day (a 20 minute walk) (gaining 10 pounds of weight per year), then much like financial debt, that needs to be paid back using proportionate response such as under-eating 100kcal/day and over-moving by 200kcal/day. This would then take off 30 pounds over a year. This also means that it would take a decade to lose 300 pounds. That certainly wouldn't make for good TV but it seems like a reasonable time frame.

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Ego
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by Ego »

Dragline wrote:... intermittent hypoxia (going hard until you can't breath as the subject does) is one of the catalysts for autophagy that we talked about elsewhere. I think I need to start doing that and see what happens.
I've been swimming a lot lately and purposely doing half-lenghts of 4-stroke per breath rather than my normal 3-strokes to induce hypoxia and autophagy.

I've also got the pull-ups back to the high 30s. Shooting for 40 on a regular straight bar by June. I realize I can do more on the non-straight-bar pull-up station at the gym because I can wrap my thumbs around the end of the bar. Grip strength is still my nemesis.

Twenty-four years ago I damaged both ankles playing basketball and hadn't touched a ball since. A few weekends ago I wandered into the gym and jumped into a pickup game. I was surprised at how fast some of the skills came back. I'm only 6' tall, 160lbs and got stuck covering one of the big guys 6'5", 250. I had fun pushing him around :lol: (getting pushed around) but I felt like I did okay, all things considered.

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jacob »

Finished Max:30 today!

I went from 13:26 on the test to the full 30:00 minutes, so that worked out as promised. I felt 75% spent at the end-point and could probably have gone further. Unlike theanimal I did not manage to max out a single work out during the time when I was doing them. If I blame age it means that I'm officially old, so I'm going to blame theanimal instead. Like, WTH dude ... relax, you make me look bad :D

As mentioned above, Max:30 is much harder than Insanity. This is accomplished by turning almost everything into a plyometric compound move. Max:30 is also more strength oriented than Insanity and it focuses a lot more on upper body work which is good because push-ups is one of my weaknesses(*). A lot of the sets are diminishing triangles (I'm sure there's a technical term for this) in which the next set is an easier exercise e.g. one goes from narrow to wide plyo pushups to narrow plyo to narrow to knees down narrow/wide to knees down slow to knees down holds.

(*) Due to studiously avoiding most chest exercises after reading that too much bench pressing eventually leads to saggy man boobs, which is why the original body builders (Steve Reeves era) avoided them. Not sure if that's true, but look at Arnold now. Anyway ... I'm pretty pathetic in that department and could barely pass basic Army requirements.

In comparing results, Max:30 resulted in much better cardio and added somewhat more body strength than Insanity---I note that Insanity already kicks ass compared to most other things. The almost constant soreness (from knees to rib cage) experienced in Insanity was a non-issue with Max:30. I didn't get as shredded as on Insanity likely because workouts were shorter and thus didn't burn upwards of 1000kcal/workout though they still caused enough muscle damage to leave me hungry all the time. Personally, I don't think the max-out strategy was effective for my level of initial fitness (which was still rather good). Initially Every workout felt like some sports-event where I went all out to the max point when then left the last 17-20 minutes in a hot mess of going to failure repeatedly. However, around week 6 when max times got into the 15-18 minute, it felt like I levelled up and the strategy started working for me. I could easily imagine a rookie maxing a 5 mins only to spend the last 25 minutes in frustration and not getting as much out of it compared to Insanity where one can jump in and out w/o pressure.

cmonkey
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by cmonkey »

@jacob, So what's the list of things that you have completed ? (Max:30, Insanity, etc...) How many more left to do?

FBeyer
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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by FBeyer »

Great! Jacob is completing one tough exercise routine after the other, and I've had 14 days off of kettlebells because I slept funny on my shoulder and tweaked it in my sleep. I'm even thinking of starting all the way back from Program Minimum :oops:
FML

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jacob »

@cmonkey - Insanity Asylum ... and maybe P90X to compare.

@FBeyer - Maybe your dreams or nightmares are more interesting than mine ;) :?

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by theanimal »

:lol: I'll take your blame.

Before I became a devoted follower of the Church of Shaun T, I started with Tony Horton. I've done P90x, P90X2 and P90X3. Totally different workout than insanity, obviously. It is much more strength focused, especially on the upper body. With P90X and P90X2 you'll be able to do a ridiculous amount of pushups and pull ups, though your cardiovascular level will decrease. I didn't find P90x3 challenging at all. Like Max 30, it was shrunk down to about 30 minutes and wasn't very challenging, at least for me. P90X2 requires more equipment, so I'd probably just recommend P90x.

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Jacob said: It seems reasonable that it should take about as much work/time to take the weight off as it took to put it on. That is, if one overeats by 200kcal/day (gaining 20 pounds of weight per year) and under-moves by 100kcal/day (a 20 minute walk) (gaining 10 pounds of weight per year), then much like financial debt, that needs to be paid back using proportionate response such as under-eating 100kcal/day and over-moving by 200kcal/day. This would then take off 30 pounds over a year. This also means that it would take a decade to lose 300 pounds. That certainly wouldn't make for good TV but it seems like a reasonable time frame.
I think a faster, yet still moderate, approach could work. A 300 lb. person, unless completely sedentary, is already doing a good deal of strength training just hauling his own body around throughout the day. I would figure out what he would weigh if his muscle mass was a reasonable percentage of body mass, and lower his calories to that level. Then I would have him start on a program of daily moderate exercise towards total calories burned equaling his new dietary intake level. So, if new calorie level was 2400 per day, then goal might be steady improvement towards ability to hike 24 miles in one day. In terms of debt analogy, which I think is rather apt, my own personal calculation is that every lb. of fat I wish to lose is the equivalent of 10 hours work because walking 1 mile burns about 100 kcals and a moderate pace is about 3.5 miles/hr. If I can earn $20/hr at the margin then each lb. is the equivalent of $200 debt, so being 100 lbs. overweight would be the equivalent of having $20,000 in debt. If somebody who already had money wished to prioritize weight loss, they could simply quit their job and start walking for 8 hours/day. That's kind of what I did to finally get my post-baby weight off, but 100 lbs might be more daunting.

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by jacob »

After more or less abandoning the church of Troy Jacobson ("If you're gonna puke, puke to your right"/"You'll pass out before you die"), I think I've gonna stick with the church of Shaun T ("Dig deeper"/"You're not gonna die") for another few months. I'll try out the church of Tony Horton after building a pull-up rack out of 2x4s using kreg and mortise and tenon joinery. This would also be required for #asylum.

If anyone has some P90X DVDs they want to swap, let me know?!

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Re: Exercise/Fitness Log

Post by black_son_of_gray »

jacob wrote: A lot of the sets are diminishing triangles (I'm sure there's a technical term for this) in which the next set is an easier exercise e.g. one goes from narrow to wide plyo pushups to narrow plyo to narrow to knees down narrow/wide to knees down slow to knees down holds.
Sounds similar in concept to drop sets.

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