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
Saturday, October 29, 2011
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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