OMG - Swim the swim and swim

Today I was in the gym again swimming.

I finally found my stride.  After some warm up followed lengths working on my technique a little, and a few trying to get front crawl going, I just started swimming.  People were mulling around a little, and I didn't really want to stop, so I didn't.  Then I continued not to, and just kept going, and going, and going.

I don't know how many laps I ended up swimming, but at one point I attempted to recount them in my head and counted at least 10, so I'm guessing somewhere between 10 and 15, but it could have been more.

I have swum 10 continuous laps before (500 yards), but this time was different.  I swam the entire set breast stroke, and at the end, I stopped only because my foot was starting to feel a bit off, not because I was gasping for breath.  If not for my foot, I think I could have continued on for some time.  They weren't small slow kind of lengths either, they were good solid strong lengths.  Not race-horse speed or anything, but not a snails pace either.  I only wish I'd had a lap counter to tell me how many and at what pace.

The realization yesterday or maybe before, I forget, that when I was pulling up, I was doing so poorly, seemed to relieve me of a great deal of tension in my stroke, and now I'm pulling up more effectively, I'm dropping down more effectively, so the whole stroke feels more relaxed and even.  My leg motion is still all over the place, but, I'm improving it slowly.

with 2012 on the doorstep, I'm hoping that I can keep it up in the coming months.  At least it has the advantage that it's indoors and very low hassle.  I keep my bag in the car mostly, lay my towel out on in the back to dry, which as long as it's above about 40, it does, so mostly all I have to do is stand up, open the front door and drive to the Y.

I really need to get back into yoga class though.  Yoga improves both my core strength and perhaps more importantly my posture.  Too many years tense and hunched over a keyboard has left me rather round-shouldered.  My grandmother warned me of such, but of course, I was young and did not listen.

Swimtastic

Got in the pool again today, it was awesome.  I swam 500 yards non-stop breast-stroke at a reasonable pace, not too crazy, not too lazy.  I had to pause because another swimmer needed to double up in my lane, but then I kept going.  It felt good to be able to swim that far in one go at something other than a snail's pace.  Once I stopped for a bit, I decided to start working on my stroke for awhile.  My leg action is kinda messy yet, and way too wide.  I'm not retracting my legs well, and that's slowing me down a good bit.  So, I worked on that for a bit, and that actually seemed to help a good bit.

I paused for a breather, and noticed a lady two lanes over swimming breast stroke very well.  Looking at what she was doing, I could see that her stroke pulled her higher out of the water, then she seemed to drop down and glide very effectively under.  I realized that like anything else, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Pulling higher inherently caused her to drop down lower, and thus swim faster.  The motion of pulling up created a natural gravitational potential which then pulled the body down harder and more quickly into the glide position.  I gave it a go, and it did seem to be more effective, though of course, more work.

I've also realized that I'm arching my back too much pulling out of the water, and after a few laps, my back starts to hurt.  When I pull up arching my back less, I get better form, and swim faster.  It also means I don't have a killer back-ache after about 4 laps.  I guess doing so means I'm not creating a situation where I'm creating poor glide by having my hips almost level, and my head upright, causing a shape that is not very slippery, I'm imagining kind of a right angle bend between my thighs and my shoulders.  I guess it also means I keep better forward motion between glide parts, instead of using the pull to just lift my head up, I'm using it to direct my torso into a rising line, and therefore still moving forward instead of snaking my back which seems like a good idea, but is resulting in me coming to almost a dead stop.

Overall, I'm guessing I did at least 20 laps, so not too shabby.

Christmas is now over...

Thank goodness too. Schedule got all kinds of messed up. I managed to get in the gym here and there, but nowhere near enough. I have managed to get in today and Monday. I had my wife take a video of me swimming breaststroke in an effort to help improve my stroke. I thought it had helped, then I was in the pool today, and it felt like I was swimming well, but apparently not. The lady in the lane next to me seemed like she was moving pretty slow, and it turned out I was moving at about the same pace. Slow. I'm so tired of being fat right now, and I'm tired of not being able to find the time to sort it out. I guess an hour in the pool about four days out of seven is just not having any impact at all. Feel like I haven't been eating crazy lately too, but the weight is just sitting on me not going anywhere. Add to that the further insult that my knee just doesn't seem to be getting better. I've considered going back to the doc, but it's almost January, and the last time I went to the doc in January, I went to physical therapy for awhile, then the weather got really bad, and the schedule got messed up and after a few missed appointments due to weather, they were closed etc., and another with the doc, I just didn't continue going. The reality is that my knee is massively better than this time last year, but, it's still weak, and almost seems more creaky not less. I failed to go to Hawk Mountain this year at all, and that makes me pretty sad. Ben of Ben does life went from 270lbs, and in three years had done a couple of Iron Man events. I started at 270lbs, I'm now at 250lbs, and I'm certainly nowhere near an Iron Man. I talk about a triathlon, but at this point, I can't imagine actually being able to complete anything like that. I can't run, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to, I just don't see how that could be possible. After a year of on again off again exercise, and eight weeks of pretty good swimming attendance, I'm still just as fat, and though fitter, still not what I would classify as "fit".

Long week, but managed to swim

Managed to swim again today. Did pretty good. Didn't have as long as I'd have liked as it was getting toward the end of the day and the Y closes at 7pm on a Saturday, and I didn't managed to get my butt into the pool until 6. Still, got about 40m in there, so not too bad. I pushed the last 50 yards out in 1:19, so I'd count that as a pretty good success for the last week or two given how much I haven't been in there due to the hackathon etc. Still seems like I'm not getting as fit as I'd like to as quickly. In fairness though, it maybe that I just have an unrealistic expectation. I can't say I'm exactly turning the laps around at the same speed I was six weeks ago, even when not trying for a fast lap, so I'm guessing my overall fitness has increased, but not close to where I had wanted it to be. Not much I can do about it but press on.

Some more swimming

Got into the gym yesterday and today, though today was brief due to the current hackathon, it was exceedingly good.  I feel like I am starting to get more breath again, and am able to dial it up a notch.  My breaststroke is almost making sense, and I can feel the water moving by me faster.  I seem to be at the other end of the pool much quicker.  Perhaps it's just that I'm tired and time always seems to pass more quickly when the attention wanders.  Backstroke today was pure awesome.  I feel like I'm starting to relax more, and finally my feet are doing something other than being a dead weight behind me.

The whole kick when I'm on my side thing turned out to be a winner.  Each lap, I've been stopping the main stroke before reaching the end, and turning onto each side and just kicking.  It seems to have helped immensely.  Much improvement in the position of my legs, they seem like they might actually be assisting in propelling me now, and my butt doesn't feel like it's hanging to low in the water.

My final length today, I pushed hard, and it felt like I positively flew down the pool (at least compared to other laps).  I'm hoping to get a bitchin lap counter for Christmas, them I hope I'll be able to get a better bead on how well I'm actually doing!

Finally Back in the Water

This has been a long week, and I've tried to find time almost every day to get back into the pool, just wasn't to be. Today was almost worse, so much going on so many fronts, but I did finally manage to steal away for a bit to swim. Was in the pool maybe 40 minutes today, it was interesting. I'm finding I'm starting to relax a lot more, and it's not such a panic to swim, I'm almost relaxing and simply enjoying the sensations. No panicy breathing, or sudden gulps or anything. I wasn't swimming real fast, but it was a good session.

Swimming Today

Swimming again today!  Swum ten laps (500yrds) continuous at the start today, which is unusual for me.  Swam the first five all breaststroke, then alternated between breaststroke and backstroke for the last 5.

After that, worked on drills mostly.  Swam a couple of lengths just doing breaststroke kick.  Tried to do 3-4 kicks head down at a time.  Was really interesting.  There were times I think I was faster swimming like that than doing a regular stroke!

Tried some more front-crawl, less successful than yesterday, but at least interesting.  I think I discovered definitively today that the problem isn't the head out of the water so much as it is the breathing.  It almost seems like I have too much breath.  I can't seem to breath out enough underwater without pelting my face with bubbles so that when I rotate for a breath, I don't still have to breath out.  I tried this on breaststroke, gliding until I actually had blown all my breath out, and it was far too long.  Either I have to figure out how to breath out more underwater, or take less breath, or something, I don't know.

I was hoping to walk a bit afterward, but I was having such a good time in the pool, I didn't have time left.  I must have been in the pool over an hour!

Triathlon on my way, maybe?

Went to the Y today, primarily to swim. My daughter came with today, and my wife was out with her family. After about a hour in the pool doing mostly drills, and trying to swim front crawl, which I actually managed for a few laps. I got out of the pool, showered up quickly and went to find my daughter. She was reading as usual, and I messages my wife. She wasn't back yet, and my daughter wanted to finish the last chapter of her book, so I figured I might as well walk a bit whilst I was waiting. I figure I must have swam about 1500 yards, and ended up walking just shy of 4km, so a pretty workout all in all. I guess all I'd have to do is spend about 30-40m on a bike at a good intensity, and that'd not be a stone's throw away from a mini triathlon! I know I used to fairly easily hit 18mph on a bike, event when I was bigger, and faster when I I was in shape by a good bit. Used to do a 30 mile ride with the bike club in the UK every week, and it was in the evening so I couldn't have been more than two hours, and I know we used to move at good clip, easily 24mph in a pack on e level. I certainly felt I could have done another half hour of something, I wasn't particularly out of breath after walking. In fact it's one reason I don't prefer to walk that much anymore, I'd run if I could, but my knee still won't take it.

I hate the YMCA

I hate the YMCA. Yes. I do. They have a crap website that only has the pool schedule as a download as an Excel file - yeah that's nice and accessible, and they change it every three or four weeks. I have about a dozen copies of this file on my system now, because most everywhere else just has a web page with it on. I go down there today, and of course, I looked at the wrong schedule version, so the entire pool, bar one solitary lane, is being used by the high school. Okay. Two things here. Why the hell do I pay a membership for a "gym" that "has a pool", when it kinda only has a half a pool. The pool is occupied just about the entire half of the day during the week at this time of year! It gets better, the local YMCA group has a few locations, the location that's nearest me, other than being plain nasty, has virtually no regular pool access at this time of year at all! Maybe two hours in the entire day open for general use. And, why is the High School using the YMCA pool at both locations!! (different high schools albeit). They have a football field, and a hockey pitch, and a tennis court, and an auditorium even, why don't they have their own pool? My elementary school in the UK had its own pool, we only went to the nearest pool to do swim exams. My High School in the UK had a pool too. Is there another pool I can belong to that is indoor? According to Google, not, though they don't even list the YMCA under a search for swimming pools! You'd think there'd be a website for that...

Swimming w00t

I swim this morning again. Really beginning to get somewhere it seems, well, at least in terms of continuous swimming. I think I swam 500 yards without stopping, and at least double that besides. Worked on my breaststroke turn for the first time. A few incidents were plain amusing, total mistiming leading to spluttering as I nearly gasp a lung full of water! I worked with a pull buoy for the first time today. It was hard. Really hard. It also doubly showed up my leg problem on breaststroke. Clearly I'm going to have to spend a good bit of time working on that, it's kinda sad how far I was pulling to one side. I also tried to kick with the other kick pattern, as in backstroke. Not a total disaster, but pretty bad. Lots of kicking, not much motion, but some at least. I did discover though that if I kick when I'm on my side, it seems to work okay. Not sure what's up with that. Worked on my wave motion a bit too, trying to pick my head up more gracefully and dip it up under instead of smacking it back down. All in all not a great improvement in time, I ran a 1:25 when I timed it, slightly faster than the previous, but not by much, still slow. Gotta figure out a way to get the chlorine smell out of my nose though. It's more than once I end up snorting water. I'm also noticing a weird breathing pattern on breaststroke that's being a pain. Can't seem to get my head out of the water cleanly so I'm not blowing water in front of my face when I rise. I was hoping to get to Yoga this morning, but I really just wasn't up to driving down to King of Prussia to go to Yoga. Didn't sleep well the last couple of nights, so a few minutes to hold up between dropping my daughter at school and leaving for the gym was a welcome respite. My new swim shorts arrived today too, they are nice, much shorted without being obscene. Much less likely to get pulled off when I push off and less material to get bogged down with.

Moar Swimming Yo

I swam more today. I gave my corrective lens goggles another shot, they seemed to work better today once I had them seated well, they didn't lose their seal. I can at least see the clock vaguely now, they are certainly a far cry from actual glasses. In awesomeness, I did manage to swim 100 yards without stopping once. Prior, I have only swum 50 without pausing, and I was only planning on doing 75 today, but I got to the top end of the pool, and it just seemed silly to stop there, so I came right back down. My right leg is being stupidly lame too. I'm doing some one leg exercises to help get it working better. It's not even kicking well right now, so it's pretty crappy. I also worked on my form for the glide portion. I'm not flat in the water yet, my back end is dragging. I also found that if I actively dip my head into the water instead of just crashing it back under, that gives me better streamline too and therefore better speed. After 45 minutes, I timed 50 yards, and I was still around 1:30, but that's not too bad yet I reckon.

Swimming

Went swimming yesterday, was pretty good. Took some time to get warmed up. Always seem to start slow. I think I'm still getting used to the idea of swimming, I mean really swimming. Did at least manage to get a couple of good turns in yesterday though. My push off is getting pretty good too. Pity my actual stroke is still kind of crap. I have noticed that my kick seems unbalanced too. Figures, most times when I'm done, my left leg aches, whilst my right doesn't. With my knee problems, it seems that I'm favouring my left leg in the pool as well as on land. Kinda sucks. Still, was good to swim.

Health

Whilst I appear to be struggling to lose weight qua weight, I am getting much fitter it seems.  I checked my BP and pulse tonight, and whilst my BP wasn't as good as last time, it was still good, and my pulse was... 57.  That's almost getting back down to heavy exercise levels of a decade ago.

Just gotta make sure I get into the Y or similar tomorrow!

Swimming win

Black Friday.  I hate crowds, and I hate getting up early, so I sure as heck wasn't going shopping today.  I did however get to the Y, which was open thankfully.  I swam, I swam a lot.  It felt really great, and I just kept thinking, I've been in the pool awhile, I should probably get going, then thinking, nah, I think I'll just do another lap, or two.  Not only that, but I was moving today.  Most of my laps after I got warmed up were at a good speed (at least for me), I timed one and I hit 1:30 for 50 yards.  Nothing earth-shattering, but 15 seconds faster than my previous best efforts.

I've noticed a lot more when I'm swimming too, especially today.  Swimming is one of those wonderful contradictory sports.  The harder you try, the slower you go.  The more you relax and let it happen, the faster you go, and the easier it is.

I don't know if this is really true, but it felt like when I kick on a breaststroke, if I slow my leg action down a bit, so it more closely matches my swimming speed, I seem to get better results.  Kicking with a more even action, pushing all the way through the kick, pushing water back with my lower legs at the tail end of the kick seems to really help.  I've also noticed if I stop concentrating on my stroke so hard, and think more about the water around me, notice how buoyant I am when I don't struggle, I swim much more effectively, and with less effort.  The human body is something like 80% water, we mostly float if we don't struggle.  Just letting the water support my body in the middle part of the stroke, relaxing but keeping a good form, really seemed to help.  Of course, I'm still slow as molasses, but, it's an improvement.

I think I'm still struggling to find enough breath to really move more quickly.  I know when I concentrate on better movement, pull myself slightly more forward into the stroke, push forward more aggressively into the glide, I go a good bit quicker.  I just can't keep it up for more than a few strokes before my breathing can no longer keep time with the stroke, the time my head is above the water is much shorter, and I'm still not that great at clearing my mouth for an in-breath before I rise.

At some point I'm going to have to figure out how I can tackle front-crawl, though today, I was actually moving faster than the fellow in the lane next to me, who was swimming front crawl.  I liked that.

Moar

Went walking on Monday, it kinda sucked.  The gym was packed with kids, and the track was really busy, including one lady who ran into us at one point.  We barely managed 30 minutes.

Managed to get in to swim this morning.  It was interesting.  It was busy as usual, and in double trouble, I ended up swimming in the last lane, which was doubled up, and next to the wall.  Swimming that close to a wall for me is a pretty bad idea, and I had a good 20 minutes of frustration until my compatriot left, and I had the lane to myself.  At that point I managed to work on my stroke a bit, and managed to get some good laps in, at least for me.  I finally timed myself, and I'm doing about 1:45 for 50 yards.  Pretty slow, but it's a starting point at least.  I can do 50 yards in one go, though at the end of it, with how I'm currently swimming, I'm pretty beat at the end of the 50.  Still, it's double what I'd managed previously at anything like an active pace.

I've started noticing a significant improvement in my lung function.  I'm hardly ever out of breath in normal life, and I'm noticeably stronger.  Stairs, which were previously a horrible nightmare, are barely noticeable, at least ascending.  I can now sit against a wall without pain for a half hour, working on my laptop.

What's more, my blood pressure is now way down from the previous perilously high level, it's actually within normal range now, well within.

I swam more today. Well, I swim today, it felt more like the first time I swam. It felt less like I was struggling, and more like I was swimming.  My fellow non-American, Alistair had given me some tips earlier in the week, and challenged me to swim better.  I like challenges.  I also realised that perhaps trying to work with front crawl might not be the best starting approach.  I'm paddling around right now doing exclusively breast-stroke and back-stroke, so I finally decided I'd just work with those, instead of tethering my learning exclusively to the one stroke I can't even begin to swim at the moment.

I started looking on Youtube for some breast-stroke tutorials, and found this guy who ended up in the Marines.  He's totally nuts, but is demonstrating breast-stroke out of the water, and with great commentary to boot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMoJVla31tc&feature=relmfu

His talk through is pretty exuberant, and either you hate it, or love it.  Either way, it certainly grabs attention.

I swam today for possibly the longest I have yet, and I swam well.  Well, much better than before.  I managed several full lengths swimming full breast-stroke, ducking my head on each stroke, with something other than abysmal timing, or perhaps more precisely, no timing whatsoever.

Before I started swimming again, I had a pathological fear of having my head under water, pretty much whatsoever.  Even a shower could be traumatic if I got it at the wrong angle.  There was no way in hell I was just going to get in a swimming pool and start ducking my head in and out of the water and swimming perfectly.  After about what I'd guess is three weeks, I'm finally comfortable enough that I got my head under and back up repeatedly without panicking.  Even if I swam like crap, that is a huge victory for me.  Add to that the fact that I seemed to be moving almost twice as fast as three days ago, and it was a good day.  The tripple bonus was that after watching the videos, my backstroke was massively improved also.  I saw the flags above moving by much faster that I had previously other than perhaps when I had the pull buoy (is that what they are called?).

Of course, I'm a crazy loon, can't have enough of a good thing, so when I finally got out of the pool, and landed my butt in my car, I was triumphant, but utterly exhausted.

We're ordering delivery tonight.  I deserve it (plus I didn't have energy left to got to the store and buy food, and it was way later than it should have been because I was splashing around in the pool like a happy fool a little longer than I probably should have).

Swimming!!

Today I went swimming again.  It was the first time in the pool I didn't have to pause at the end of every 25 yard length.  I managed to do 50 yards with only enough pause to turn around at the one end (I can't do a proper turn yet - far from it).

It felt really good not to be so out of breath.  I ended up pushing a bit harder as it appeared to me as if I wasn't working hard enough if I wasn't out of breath at the end of 50 yards.

I'm not going to win any medals anytime soon that's for sure.  My swimming form is still so abysmal, I must look like a proper idiot thrashing around and moving so slowly.  My truly lousy posture probably has something to do with it, hopefully something more regular Yoga can help fix.

Trying to stay on the Horse

I got into the gym in some form all three days this week so far.  Went swimming on Monday, hit a new Yoga studio on Tuesday, and swam again this morning.

I got a coupon for the Yoga studio, Stillpoint Yoga in King of Prussia, from my Amazon local email.  It was a really good deal, and for $30, it seemed like a good idea.  I got a chance yesterday to go down there, so I took it.  It was a pretty awful drive as it's in the wrong direction with the rush hour, but it was well worth it.  I think it was the first class I've taken on the East-Coast that was a good balance of physical and spiritual, which for me is very important.  It was hard work, and that's half the point really.  I always feel better after a solid Yoga session.

Swimming is going well enough.  I am starting to get more comfortable in the water, less panic when I pull my head up from having been underneath the water.  I'm still not comfortable enough to breath doing front crawl yet.  I can't seem to hold my breath for toffee, barely managing 30 seconds at the moment.  My legs sit in the water like lead weights right now too.  I got a float on Monday, at I was able to move so much faster.  My kicking action has always been really weak, so somehow I have to improve that and get my legs up so my body is more level in the water.  Trying to at least make sure that my front crawl has the right axial movement around my body center so when I finally have the courage to breath, I can do it right.

I haven't lost an ounce of weight in the last three weeks though, which is a bit discouraging.  I do feel much better though, and that is the big win I'm truly looking for.  I think I'm going to try to step up my regimen though, try and get out for a walk later today if I can, though it's raining pretty good right now so it'll have to be inside.

Went to the pool this morning.  It was later, so it was fairly quiet, which for me was a pretty good thing.  I really needed to chill out a bit this morning.

I only had limited time, so I did 500yrds, and then headed into the sauna.  Tried to site quiet for awhile, meditate a little, get some composure back.  Everything around has been pretty damn stressful lately, so I figured I might as well spending a little time trying to reset my internet nutso-meter.

Felt pretty good, the swimming is getting easier.  I'm still pretty panicky about breathing in water, and to a level that it's seriously impacting how well I can swim at the moment, or any prospect for improvement.  Gotta just let go really.

Swimming

I went swimming this morning.  Managed a pretty solid 950 yards.  I know it's not huge, and I can tell you that it was pretty slow.  The ladies in the two lanes next to me, who certainly weren't swimming fast were passing me left, right, and centre.

I forgot my goggles, so I was a bit less relaxed than I would have liked as the water was splashing my face, and I couldn't do front crawl at all.  It did mean I got to think about my backstroke a bit more.  I know I'm slow for a few reasons: I'm out of shape, so I can't stroke fast without stroking out, I'm not pulling consistently with both arms or keeping my stroke even so that my velocity remains as constant as possible.  I keep ending up bumping into the lane barrier to my left, which is a bit disconcerting, and that doesn't really help either.  I'm still struggling to keep everything working together too.  My leg motion is more like a drowning person than a swimming person.  It's erratic, uneven, and more or less useless short of keeping my afloat somewhat.  I'm either flapping wildly, or alternating between barely any movement, and a kind of leg tweaking that is pretty silly.

I never could propel myself with my legs.  Maybe I can get someone to look at what I'm doing so wrong.

My breast stroke seems like it's improving.  Everytime I notice my shoulders being taught, which for me, is a near-constant state of affairs, I try and relax.  I'm also trying to increase the speed at which I move my hands back through to the front after a stroke in preparation for the next one.

More tomorrow I hope, maybe I'll even remember my damn goggles next time.

Fitness Goals

My current fitness Goals:

Walk 5K - check!
Run a 5K

Touch my toes - check!
Achieve the Tittibhasana yoga pose

Do a Sprint Triathlon (750m swim, 15K cycle, 5K run, I think)
Run a Marathon
Maybe do an Olympic Triathlon

Goggles

After a few days of swimming, it became painfully clear that there was no way I could swim well without a pair of swimming goggles.  I never had goggles when I was younger, I hated them and they never seemed to work very well for me.  Might have something to do with the fact that my parents were cheap-skates when it came to most things.

I popped on Amazon.com and had a look, and swim goggles are much much cheaper today than I remember them ever being.  I found a pair that had good reviews and put them on order.

I got them late yesterday, and donned them for my swim this morning.

It made a huge difference.  I mean massive.  I wish I had ordered them sooner.  I'm not sure I have the best kind for indoor swimming, I really had no idea what I was ordering until I started doing more research on swimming in general, so I just ordered something that didn't look ridiculous, wasn't too expensive, and got good ratings.

I discovered today that I can actually swim a front crawl, kind of.  I have a lot of work to do to make it effective, but I'm at least at a starting point.  I've added one more thing to my ultimate list of fitness goals (I'm gonna post on that in a bit).

Two Weeks Ago

Two weeks ago, I was at the gym with my family, and I was feeling pretty grumpy.  Things at work have been kinda ticking me off, so I figured it was a good time to blow off a bit of steam.  Normally I try and walk for around 45 minutes, which ends up being around 4k.  Some days I'll push a bit and go to 5k.  That day, I decided to run a bit.  I've run a bit here and there, but not so much because of my knee.  I felt pretty good, so I ran a number of laps at a pretty good clip.  I found that running slow was worse as I bounced up and down more, so running faster seemed to stress my knee less.

Well, that was sort of true.

It turns out that my gait is still pretty off, and running ended up really hurting my left knee.  My right knee is the troubled one, so that was a bit surprising.  It seems that all this time of over-compensating, combined with then running hard really stressed my left knee.  I spent the next seven days or so doing very little else other than laying/sitting in bed with my knee up, and for the first few days, with ice on it as much as possible.

When last week rolled around, I was getting pretty sick of just laying in bed, but I couldn't exactly pop down to the gym for a walk.  Walking around the store was enough to send me back to bad with an ice pack on my knee.

I was talking to our PM at work Geoff, and he suggested swimming.

Swimming and I have had a love-hate relationship since I learned to swim when I was less than ten.  I learned to swim fairly young, and had some good training in basic swimming, diving and rescue techniques.  One of the schools I went to growing up had a nice pool, and swimming training was part of the core curriculum there.  I did basic diving, then retrieval from the bottom of the pool (it was a fairly deep pool), and rescue techniques: how throw a line to someone properly, how to reach someone with a pole and ultimately how to tow someone in the water.  Then I hit my mid teens, and I started to really hate the pool.  Kids would mess around in the pool, and splash water, and I really really hated that.  It led me to abandon swimming entirely.  I didn't get back in a pool until about five years ago.  A guy I worked with had a pool in his back yard that was a good size rectangular pool, so we hung there a few times, and I swum a bit.  Then again, no pool until maybe this summer I think.

Last week rolls around, I'm getting cabin fever, itching to do something active, and I really have no choice other than swimming.  I grab my swimming trunks and head to the Y near us with the best pool(s).  I couldn't swim for long, and I sucked way more than I remember sucking, but I really enjoyed it!

Since then, I've been going down to the pool almost every day.

What I'm not going to talk about much

I'm not going to talk about one big thing much: Weight.

The W word for many is the evil force in many programs.  So much focus on losing weight, that health ends up suffering for it, and we start to measure our worth by the number at our feet every time we step on a scale.

Measuring by weight is a real problem.  Many athletes in prime condition would be judged to be obese by normal BMI calculations.  An Iron Man participant at my height frequently weighs 230lbs.

I am doing my best to ignore the number on the scale.  The numbers that I try to make matter to me are, I think, better indicators of health: resting pulse, body fat percentage and waist size.

I know waist size isn't exactly all that much better than weight or BMI, but for a guy who likes clothing, it is a big deal for me.  I'm not shooting to be really skinny, but I do like to have some choice at good clothing stores, so maintaining a waistline that allows me to buy good clothing is an important factor.  There's nothing more depressing for me than walking into a store, looking at some beautiful shirt, only to find they don't have it, or anything else much, in my size.  Ultimately people do judge us on how we look, and I prefer not to look slovenly or slobbish, so finding good clothing that's easily available is pretty critical for me.

Resting pulse is fairly obvious; this tends to drop with higher levels of fitness.  This is something that's kinda not going as well as I'd hoped right now, but more on that later.  Body fat percentage is now easily measurable by a good set of bathroom scales.  These days they come with some nifty electronics that measure the resistance profile of your body, which tells you how much of your body is fat.  The scales we have have this feature, but lately, it's kinda been on the fritz, so I'm not sure what to do about that.

For the record, I started this journey at 270lbs, my lowest so far was 234lbs, and I'm hovering around 248lbs right now.  My waist size has dropped from a 42" to a 38", so I'm now in the upper band of what most good clothing stores carry in most looks.  My shirt size is still mostly an XXL, so above what you can frequently find.

I'm gonna post body measurements once in awhile, but not often.  I'm not counting calories, and I'm not counting pounds, at least not on a daily or weekly basis.  What I am counting is exercise.

What I've done since then...

Since January when I finally went to the doc about my knee, I've phased in and out of exercise routines.  The two things I've found that had the most staying power were yoga and walking.

Initially walking pretty much sucked with my knee the way it was.  The track at our closest Y is up three flights of stairs, and the elevator only goes up two of them.  The walking wasn't too bad, but climbing and descending the stairs at the start and end was pretty bad.

After I saw the doc, she sent me to PT, where they diagnosed me with a bad gait.  My feet and knees weren't tracking correctly, putting uneven pressure on my knee joint, and causing it to creak, and to hurt.

I started trying to walk better with the help of the PT folks, and things improved.

The one exercise that has had the biggest impact overall is Yoga.  I love yoga at this point.  Every week I find time to get to a yoga session or a few, things improve.  The gentle, but fluid and active movements in yoga seem perfect to help strengthen the muscles in my body, and especially those in my leg.  Ankle, calf, knee, thigh and hip.  It's also helped put some much needed flexibility back into my system.  Since I can remember, I have never been able to touch my toes.  Today, I can just about touch my toes with a straight leg.  For me, that's a huge deal.

Yoga has helped me in other ways too; it's meditative movement and breathing has taught me how to relax and how to identify which parts of my body are tense.  I'm not mindful enough yet, but here and there I catch myself with tense raised shoulder, and I take a moment to drop them back down again.

Introduction

This blog is a place for me to talk about my health and fitness.  I'm starting this as a 30-something programmer who was a very active youth.  I moved to the US in my early twenties, and somehow, things just dropped off.  I've hit the gym once or twice over the years, but this spring, it got to a bad place where I could barely use my right knee on anything but level ground.  I could no longer hike and climb even the simplest trails on Hawk Mountain, and this made me quite sad.

The doctor X-Rayed my knee and found nothing major wrong, she prescribed some Physical Therapy and a good dose of Yoga.

This is where my latest fitness journey began, and I hope, where it will continue from.