Fitness Catch-All

S0LIDARITY wrote:

There's a tea-drinkers thread on here, but it's beyond my expertise. A common complaint for people new to tea is that it tastes bitter. This comes from burning the tea leaves with water that is too hot. I recommend letting the kettle whistle then pour your water into your mug and let it sit for at least 60 seconds to cool off a bit. Then steep 3-minutes and take a sip, if it's too weak let it go another two minutes and try again.

Depends entirely on the tea. Black tea generally wants water as close to boiling as possible. Green tea wants water that's a good 30 degrees (F) off boiling.

@Jonman, I was aware that Black tea was harder to burn. Didn't realize it was a 30F difference between Black and Green burning though.

S0LIDARITY wrote:

@Jonman, I was aware that Black tea was harder to burn. Didn't realize it was a 30F difference between Black and Green burning though.

I lied - it's nearer 60 degF.

S0LIDARITY wrote:

My Bio-121 professor taught me that caffeine is only activated as a stimulant with adrenaline in your bloodstream. So if you're bored on the couch and already tired, caffeine isn't likely to get activated.

Thanks for the teavice.

That makes sense, about the caffeine and adrenaline, I can see how that would work.

I've actually started my drawdown. I'm off sodas and energy drinks now, tomorrow, day three, will be the hardest (in my experience). I think that we (I) may get addicted to the chemicals in the fake sugars and I actually start to really crave that dirty dishwater taste of a zero calorie monster after three days. I've also started mixing in a little decaf at my wawa coffee stop. (Anyone else love wawa? I need to get a job there so I can buy stock in the company, it's currently privately owned). I'm down to two cups a day, trying to drink that first cup as late as possible in the day. I'll be punching infants and nuns in a few days...

Nice to see the goals being posted here. Let's do some stuff!

I'll always pick Sheetz over Wawa. Wawa is much better than most gas-stations though.

EDIT: Also thanks Jonman. That's a pretty good quick guide. I always thought White Tea was more delicate than Green Tea. I don't think I'll be picking up a thermometer soon though. I'll wait until I'm brewing loose-leaf tea for that.

AndrewA wrote:

2. Start lifting 2 days a week. I mean real lifting, not the moderate weights that I do with my skip circuit. (Skip is brutal, but focuses on cardio and resistance over raw power.) I particularly need to get going on leg work since it translates directly to my sport of choice: ultimate frisbee. My schedule once warm weather hits will probably be: 2 days ultimate frisbee, 2 days skip circuit, 2 days proper weights. Not sure how to split up the normal trifecta of muscle group workouts into only two groups.

Either I meant to reply to this and spaced or the internet gremlins ate it. I'll be amused if I skimmed past my own post.

What does a skip circuit consist of? As in, what exercises, how many, that kind of detail. Breaking up a lifting cycle into two days isn't hard, you just do legs and upper body on different days. Given your other workouts seem leg intensive, I'd do leg day immediately before your rest day. Upper body can probably be whenever. It may seem counter intuitive to only lift once a week with each major muscle group, but given the amount of redundancy in your week, it shouldn't be a thing.

Lose weight and get under 200 lbs. (I am currently around 215) I am changing this from losing weight to losing inches off my waist. 2 notches on my belt and I will be happy. I guess that is a couple of inches in total. I think that this will come out naturally with me running more and working out now that summer is approaching, plus me eating healthier and really cutting down on the snacking. I want to get this done by mid-summer, so that I have the rest of the summer to make it a habit and hopefully stay there over the winter.

Run 800 km (about 500 miles) in 2013. I have set this as a goal in Runkeeper as well as signed up for the 500 Mile Club here on GWJ.

Do the Army Run half marathon with an average pace lower than 6:30/km. This is in the fall, so this summer I am going to get serious and set up an actually training plan and stuff.

Finish the Spartan Run without injuring myself. What with my 500 Mile club plus some weights I am going to start doing a couple of times a week, I hope to be able to do this. The Spartan Run is in June, and is only 5km (with obstacles and lots of mud.) I m already running 5km pretty easily, so it will be just a matter of taking my time at the obstacles and not rush and end up hurting myself.

Start a lunchtime running club at work. i have a friend at work who wants to go running with me at lunchtime. Not far, probably only about 5 k, 3 times a week.

Skip circuit is 10 weight stations that you go between, with high intensity skipping as your "rest". So, 1m weight station, 5s break, 1m skipping, 5s break, etc. After going through all 10 stations you take a 1 minute break, and then repeat the circuit. The stations (in the order that I attack them) are:

Pushups
Wide rows
Weighted Situps
Bicep curls (full range and bottom half only)
Triceps (dips and overhead extensions)
Planks (one arm + one leg and star)
Legs (Squats and lunges)
Bench press
Upright rows
Quick straddle and burpees

If I've listed two activities for a station it is because I do one of them on my first time around, and the other on my second.

Given the relentless nature of the class, it's impossible to do your max weight - you're going for a full minute and fatigue becomes a factor. I'm generally pressing my limits every time, and can manage more weight as time goes on (in the same way that someone only doing 8 reps with rest will advance their performance with time).

Hmm...fitness goals.

1. Swim 1k.
Having missed out on everything but the "swim a few lengths of breaststroke to avoid drowning" as a kid, I'm literally learning to swim. I'm picking 1k arbitrarily - I'd consider ~825m in a sprint tri meets this goal too, but I suspect I won't enter a sprint tri until I'm really confident I can do the swim. What would make me confident? Probably a 1k...

2. Sustain a lifting program.
I've false-started on lifting so many times it's ridiculous. I think mainly because I don't really enjoy lifting itself. Sure, PRs motivate me a little, but the actual activity of lifting leaves me pretty cold. I'm therefore left with nebulous health benefits to sustain my enthusiasm, which they typically don't. Not sure how I'll fix this one.

3. Get back into running shape.
I've put on about 5lbs/1" of belly fat and cut way back on the running since starting my new job 8 months ago. As a result, my runs tend to average 8:00 min/mile. I'd like to get back down to 150lb-ish and 7:00 min/mile pace. I know how to do this - it's a question of whether my injured achilles will sustain the miles of training needed.

4. Ride to work at least 1 day per week.
I have a heavy mountain bike and 7 miles commute. With decent showers and lockers at work, it works out pretty well if I can (1) get myself organized and (2) leave work in daylight.

5. Yoga
I feel better if I get a couple of yoga classes in each week. Sadly my fave yoga teacher moved to California and I haven't found a good replacement.

6. Do a couple of big endurance events
I'm not sure which ones...El Tour de Tucson is pretty high up on the list of candidates though.

AndrewA wrote:

Skip sets

Then I would advise you to do that before your heavy lifting days. It sounds like it's easier to recover from than recover during, if that's clear.

Theoretically, you'll go skip, legs, rest, ultimate, skip, upper body, ultimate. Thus your legs recover on a rest day, as that's likely the only non-lifting day for them where they get no strain, and your upper body recovers on an ultimate day, which should be the closest to a second rest day for it as you've time for. Since you have a life and a schedule, that probably won't be your actual agenda, but keep a light recovery day for the muscle group used after each lifting day. It may still be a significant overload for a single week, but you'll know that real sudden like about week two.

Weight wise, squats and lunges should probably be your primary leg activities, with two or three more focused, less difficult exercises thrown in. If that's too little, add some form of clean and press, or snatch. Upper body might focus on bench, rows, and pull ups, with curls, tricep extensions, and shoulder press added in to round matters out. If you want to add difficulty, consider forward and reverse flyes, doubling bench (dumbbells if you're already doing barbells) or bench variants like inclined and decline.

-posted with the assurance you'll take this as seriously as one does with all internet sourced workout advice.

Right now I actually do my hardest work-out of the week the day before I play ultimate. It hurts my performance a little bit right now, but I frequent tournaments a lot and I'm trying to simulate that weariness. It's common that I attend 5-6 tournaments a year which consist of 4-5 games on Saturday and 3-4 games on Sunday.

I'm not sure how to prepare for this without just playing in more tournaments.

OMG this video is pretty hilarious!

Moar fitness goals...

1.) Work on burpee/close-grip pullup pyramid circuits. Right now I go from 1 to 5 reps and back down to one, then do it all over again with 30 second rest periods. I want to either go up to 6 or seven reps at the top of each pyramid, or add an extra pyramid at the end (maybe just to 5 again, to make it max-effort ladder) climb). This is my Saturday workout, and I use it when I have 2 consecutive days after to rest, as it leaves my glutes, quads, and various back muscles nice and sore.

2.) Establish a progression plan with my circuits. Other than the above workout, my other two weekly circuits are bodyweight, full-body workouts. I do two upper-body pushes, two upper-body pulls, to core moves, and two leg moves done in circuit fashion. I've been haphazardly increasing the reps per set as I go, but I need to start recording what I do and try to implement a more structured progression plan.

3.) And I need to run more.

Wanted to post on my impressions on my recovery tights that I bought. I've used them 4 times now, typically wearing them 12 hours at a time.

1. They are super comfortable. I wore them under jeans twice and no one noticed.
2. They're fun. I felt like a super-hero in a childish way when I first put them on.
3. They're not small enough. I ordered small, for my 5'11" 160lb frame, should have gotten XS apparently. They're almost 6" too long and not quite as tight as I had hoped.
4. They work for me. I felt less muscle soreness the next day after sleeping in my recovery tights.
5. I'm probably going to get a more serious 2XU or Zoot pair post-tax return.

I also tried out my running tights yesterday in a frisbee game. They saved my legs from a couple of scrapes, but they were too warm and too restrictive. I felt like there was extra resistance when I was sprinting. The other team also had 3 guys who were faster than me, so maybe I was inventing an excuse. They were too damn warm. I felt like I was overheating every time I came back to the bench after playing 3-5 points.

Today was a failure by my measure. I went over my max for squats, but nearly biffed it on my next-to-last rep. The last rep was a struggle. I think I'll stay on 275 Wednesday. Overhead press was down to 105 because I couldn't do 115 on its own. Obviously this lift by itself is not enough to keep making progress. I've nearly run full-steam into the wall I hit when I got to my maxes on this program before. Deadlift at 310, was only able to confidently pull off 4 of 5 reps on one set. My back was too unstable to keep going.

NSMike wrote:

Today was a failure by my measure. I went over my max for squats, but nearly biffed it on my next-to-last rep. The last rep was a struggle. I think I'll stay on 275 Wednesday. Overhead press was down to 105 because I couldn't do 115 on its own. Obviously this lift by itself is not enough to keep making progress. I've nearly run full-steam into the wall I hit when I got to my maxes on this program before. Deadlift at 310, was only able to confidently pull off 4 of 5 reps on one set. My back was too unstable to keep going.

I've had the same problem with squats. For overhead press, adding in whatever pullups (assuming you aren't doing them already) I could do (not many) has helped kick-start my overhead progress again. Sort of the same theory as the benchpress/barbell row. One helps the other. At least that has been my experience.

NSMike and Montalban, since you mentioned press/squat and pullups this was yesterdays CFFB workout:

3x5 squats @ 295

5 rounds:
1 press
1 pull up
1 press
3 pull ups
1 press
5 pull ups

press @ 135, took me just over 9 minutes for the rounds but the rack and the pull up bar aren't near each other.

Bah and bah again. Victory tastes of ash, air is bitter, and... my phone autocorrected ashe to sidhe which is pretty cool. But otherwise all is futility and despair. 5 lbs off my pr goal.

mindset.threat wrote:

NSMike and Montalban, since you mentioned press/squat and pullups this was yesterdays CFFB workout:

Interesting to see what CF entails. So you did a round, then a squat set, then kept alternating? I can see that as great for football, since you're concerned with speed/endurance and not just weight.

Miashara wrote:

all is futility and despair.

Technically this is correct, although the alternative is even worse.

Montalban wrote:
Miashara wrote:

all is futility and despair.

Technically this is correct, although the alternative is even worse.

Not sure where you're going with this.

Well buggeration.

I sliced up my heel over the weekend, which not only screwed my plans to spend the weekend hiking and soaking in hot tubs with my girlfriend, it's potentially going to screw my next race, if not next two races.

It's going to be a couple of weeks before I can run on it, which puts a half-marathon in a month and a full marathon two weeks after that in serious jeopardy. I was behind in training for the marathon anyway and not being able to hit it like the fist of an angry god for that final month means I just can't get my mileage up to that distance.

Jonman wrote:

Well buggeration.

I sliced up my heel over the weekend, which not only screwed my plans to spend the weekend hiking and soaking in hot tubs with my girlfriend, it's potentially going to screw my next race, if not next two races.

It's going to be a couple of weeks before I can run on it, which puts a half-marathon in a month and a full marathon two weeks after that in serious jeopardy. I was behind in training for the marathon anyway and not being able to hit it like the fist of an angry god for that final month means I just can't get my mileage up to that distance.

Ran into a similar situation in 2010. I was training for my first marathon and I developed ITBS in my left knee. I had already paid for the Marine Corps Marathon in October and here I was in August looking at needing to take 2 weeks to a month off of running.

I tried everything I could until it got to the point where I had to stop running. I had to come to terms with the fact that I wasn't going to make the run. I started swimming and biking, while biking I wanted to yell at the runners "I'm really a runner but I'm injured".

At least you have your tri training to fall back on and I'm sure you have somewhere you can swim right?

Good luck.

Jonman wrote:

I sliced up my heel over the weekend, which not only screwed my plans to spend the weekend hiking and soaking in hot tubs with my girlfriend, it's potentially going to screw my next race, if not next two races.

While I do feel for your struggle, I also feel that I am owed an embarrassing story regarding the origin of this mangled heel.

S0LIDARITY wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I sliced up my heel over the weekend, which not only screwed my plans to spend the weekend hiking and soaking in hot tubs with my girlfriend, it's potentially going to screw my next race, if not next two races.

While I do feel for your struggle, I also feel that I am owed an embarrassing story regarding the origin of this mangled heel.

If only there was one. I misjudged my footing stepping into the hot tub, and caught my heel with all my weight on that foot on the corner of the plastic grate that covers the filter.

It was particularly galling as we'd gone out to the San Juan islands to spend a couple of nights at a hippy retreat, and I did that about 30 minutes after arriving there.

Ahh, I had a similar experience playing sand-volleyball in college. I trotted off the sand to chase a loose ball and caught my heel with all my weight on the corner of some freshly-dried sidewalk. I didn't run back then, but I was hobbled for a couple of weeks.

Is this common?

My wife and I have been training for the Sarasota Half Marathon in March and this past Saturday, we ran a 15K. I could tell when we were starting that she was running too fast, but she really wanted to catch up with the 11minute pace runner, so I kept up with her. By the end of the race, I was dying (we haven't really been running that long, and we've been trying to pace ourselves). I finished, which is awesome, but I have been having a lot of trouble since.

Our training schedule has been short (4-5 mile) runs during the week and distance runs on the weekend. I'm finding that I can barely make it 5 miles without feeling really bad. Before the 15k, these runs were nice and easy.

Am I just taking too long to recover or what? I really need to be able to train because the Sarasota Half is on St. Patrick's Day.

JillSammich wrote:

Is this common?

My wife and I have been training for the Sarasota Half Marathon in March and this past Saturday, we ran a 15K. I could tell when we were starting that she was running too fast, but she really wanted to catch up with the 11minute pace runner, so I kept up with her. By the end of the race, I was dying (we haven't really been running that long, and we've been trying to pace ourselves). I finished, which is awesome, but I have been having a lot of trouble since.

Our training schedule has been short (4-5 mile) runs during the week and distance runs on the weekend. I'm finding that I can barely make it 5 miles without feeling really bad. Before the 15k, these runs were nice and easy.

Am I just taking too long to recover or what? I really need to be able to train because the Sarasota Half is on St. Patrick's Day.

Clarifications:
(1): Are you running 7 days a week?
(2): What's your weekly mileage at?
(3): Is there an obvious reason for fatigue? e.g. not sleeping well, fighting off a cold, eating poorly
(4): What's been your longest run before the 15k?
(5): Have you been being kind to yourself since the 15k?

Before you answer all of those, I would posit that the simplest thing to do is simply take a day or two off, then get out for a 5 miler and see if that makes a difference. You say that you were dying by the end of the 15k - I suspect that you simply ran your stores of energy dry, and haven't replenished them. Eat well, get lots of sleep, rest up and you'll bounce back in no time.

1 - we run 3 days a week: Tues (5 mi), Thurs (5 mi), and Sat (long run)
2 - We have been running between 18 and 20 mi a week. On Saturdays, we've made it up to 10 miles.
3 - No obvious reasons that I can think of... Our diet is mostly brown rice / chicken. Other than maybe stress from school. I'm trying to graduate and train, but that was still going on before the 15k.
4 - Our longest run before the 15k was 10 miles... wait, I think I said that before.
5 - I slept quite a bit the sunday after the run, and we ran a mile, but we didn't run Monday at all.

Seriously, the only thing that I can think of is that we shaved about 30 - 45 seconds per mile off our time for the race. Maybe we over-did it. I just can't take much time off because if I do, we'll never make it the full 13 miles in March. We're doing another 5 tomorrow morning, so hopefully I can do that without feeling like dying. You're probably right though... I probably just need to baby myself for a little while.

Being a beginner runner is really frustrating.

Jonman wrote:
S0LIDARITY wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I sliced up my heel over the weekend, which not only screwed my plans to spend the weekend hiking and soaking in hot tubs with my girlfriend, it's potentially going to screw my next race, if not next two races.

While I do feel for your struggle, I also feel that I am owed an embarrassing story regarding the origin of this mangled heel.

If only there was one. I misjudged my footing stepping into the hot tub, and caught my heel with all my weight on that foot on the corner of the plastic grate that covers the filter.

It was particularly galling as we'd gone out to the San Juan islands to spend a couple of nights at a hippy retreat, and I did that about 30 minutes after arriving there. :(

That sucks. Hopefully it heals very quickly and you can get back to it.

I've been hitting the gym but not even close to enough. My excuses are very weak that I don't go but I find enough excuses that I only go a couple times a week. That being said, I just picked up Power90. I should have it tomorrow and pretty excited about it. Despite the loss of 25 lbs (currently sitting at 194, 5'9" or so) I am not all that in shape. The Power90 said it was more like a beginner's P90X and a good place to start for someone in my shape. I get fatigued pretty easily so really looking forward to trying this and sticking to it. No excuses as I can do everything right from home!