So, some of you may be wondering where the hell I’ve been.
It has been over a week since I’ve been at boot camp; I have a combination of excuses and reasons as to why. I’m just going to list everything here, and you can decide which days are valid and which days I was just lazy.
Monday, July 18: Was sick; couldn’t breathe at all through my nose, had a sore throat, and had a cough that burned my chest like it was on fire.
Tuesday, July 19: Still sick. Throat no longer sore, but the nose and cough were still intense and painful. I just didn’t feel like I could breathe well enough to endure what I knew a running day would consist of.
Wednesday, July 20: Feeling better, but really weak from not being able to sleep due to runny nose and cough. At least my chest was no longer on fire.
Thursday, July 21: Just lazy, really.
Monday, July 25: Central air unit out at my house. My home is a billion degrees. I don’t have the money to get it fixed until Friday; so I’m staying at Ted’s until then. It takes over twice as long to get to boot camp from Ted’s as it does from my house. It also takes over twice as long to get to my work from his house; so it is highly impractical for me to go to boot camp when staying there.
Tuesday, July 26: See above; but I did go on a run this morning. Also, I think I may have a solution to the not being able to get to work on time after driving back to Ted’s from boot camp to get ready thing. I may be able to just drive to the gym that I belong to near my house, and get ready there. Hopefully, that will work out and I can go to boot camp Wednesday and Thursday this week.
So, I’ll be honest. Even though I had some pretty valid sounding reasons up there, the truth is I’m beginning to feel burned out. I’m falling behind on the push-up challenge and I just don’t feel motivated to get to class. I hope that all it is going to take is just getting up and going a couple of times, and I will get the inspiration back. I hope that I’m just in a funk from being sick last week. I hope that I don’t give up.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Push-up Challenge
So I mentioned in Monday's post about the push-up challenge SGT Ken is running on dailyburn.com. Everyone has been killing it; and nothing motivates me more than good competition. Except for maybe shame. This challenge is a little of both.
When the challenge started, I set a goal for myself to do 100 push-ups per day. When I saw everyone smoking me like I was sitting still at that rate, I increased the goal to 200. That's still not good enough.
I want to try to get into the top 10 and stay there. In order to do that, I'll probably have to do between 300 and 600 push-ups per day (obviously, this is over the course of a day; not all at once). Today I've done 600 so far. I'm going to try to make it to 1000 to get securely in the top 10. Then hopefully I can go back to a maintenance level.
Most importantly, my push-ups are counting toward the Nashville Platoon in the competition with San Francisco. We're determined to beat them, even though they outnumber us by a lot...I think we can do it, too.
My friend Jimmy O and I wrote a cadence for the Nashville Platoon to get us fired up. Jimmy wrote the second verse, and all other verses were penned by Yours Truly.
Hey have you heard the word on the street?
They say San Francisco can't be beat
So Nashville, get down on your toes and hands -
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER WE'LL BEAT SAN FRAN
Pecs and tris burn, they're on fire
Take 'em deep and push 'em higher
No we don't stop we don't rest
We're Nashville's best at START Fitness
Hey, San Francisco, strong and proud
You think you're the number one platoon around
You're gonna get a surprise real soon
'Cause you haven't met THE NASHVILLE PLATOON
We are Nashville, we're mighty and mean
And we're an unbeatable push-up machine
Don't be fooled by our difference in size
WE'RE STILL GOING HOME WITH THE PUSH-UP PRIZE
HOOAH!
When the challenge started, I set a goal for myself to do 100 push-ups per day. When I saw everyone smoking me like I was sitting still at that rate, I increased the goal to 200. That's still not good enough.
I want to try to get into the top 10 and stay there. In order to do that, I'll probably have to do between 300 and 600 push-ups per day (obviously, this is over the course of a day; not all at once). Today I've done 600 so far. I'm going to try to make it to 1000 to get securely in the top 10. Then hopefully I can go back to a maintenance level.
Most importantly, my push-ups are counting toward the Nashville Platoon in the competition with San Francisco. We're determined to beat them, even though they outnumber us by a lot...I think we can do it, too.
My friend Jimmy O and I wrote a cadence for the Nashville Platoon to get us fired up. Jimmy wrote the second verse, and all other verses were penned by Yours Truly.
Hey have you heard the word on the street?
They say San Francisco can't be beat
So Nashville, get down on your toes and hands -
COME HELL OR HIGH WATER WE'LL BEAT SAN FRAN
Pecs and tris burn, they're on fire
Take 'em deep and push 'em higher
No we don't stop we don't rest
We're Nashville's best at START Fitness
Hey, San Francisco, strong and proud
You think you're the number one platoon around
You're gonna get a surprise real soon
'Cause you haven't met THE NASHVILLE PLATOON
We are Nashville, we're mighty and mean
And we're an unbeatable push-up machine
Don't be fooled by our difference in size
WE'RE STILL GOING HOME WITH THE PUSH-UP PRIZE
HOOAH!
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday BFT
I know; I’m behind. I’m going to post about Monday and Tuesday in two separate posts, so I don’t have one long blog that no one will read to the end (I know what the internet has done to people’s attention spans; in fact, if you’re still reading this, you’re probably well above the average).
On Monday we had our Basic Fitness Test (BFT) for July. I felt good; I felt fresh; I was ready for it.
My results:
Push-ups, two minute drill: 70 reps (last BFT: 51)
Crunches, two minute drill: 170 reps (last BFT: 149)
1 Mile Run: 8:48 (last BFT: 8:50)
So I improved on everything, which means I scored 300 again. I’m pretty proud; I’ve come a really long way. My competitive nature keeps me pushing, and having the BFTs every so often are a great way to see my progress.
On a different note, Sergeant Ken has started a push-up challenge on dailyburn.com. It’s both an individual challenge and a group challenge. There will be one male and one female overall winner for the participants who do the most push-ups, and START Fitness Nashville is competing against START Fitness San Francisco for which group can do the most push-ups as a whole. This should be a lot of fun!
I set my goal for at least 100 per day. Yesterday I did 100; today I’ve done 120 so far. I’m going to do 30 more to make it a solid 150.
I thought that was great until I saw Sergeant Ken’s posting of 990 and Jimmy Olander’s posting of 1010 for the first day. Now I feel like a weakling.
But seriously, a thousand push-ups in a day? That’s borderline mental illness, I’m thinking.
But team Nashville is going to win.
On Monday we had our Basic Fitness Test (BFT) for July. I felt good; I felt fresh; I was ready for it.
My results:
Push-ups, two minute drill: 70 reps (last BFT: 51)
Crunches, two minute drill: 170 reps (last BFT: 149)
1 Mile Run: 8:48 (last BFT: 8:50)
So I improved on everything, which means I scored 300 again. I’m pretty proud; I’ve come a really long way. My competitive nature keeps me pushing, and having the BFTs every so often are a great way to see my progress.
On a different note, Sergeant Ken has started a push-up challenge on dailyburn.com. It’s both an individual challenge and a group challenge. There will be one male and one female overall winner for the participants who do the most push-ups, and START Fitness Nashville is competing against START Fitness San Francisco for which group can do the most push-ups as a whole. This should be a lot of fun!
I set my goal for at least 100 per day. Yesterday I did 100; today I’ve done 120 so far. I’m going to do 30 more to make it a solid 150.
I thought that was great until I saw Sergeant Ken’s posting of 990 and Jimmy Olander’s posting of 1010 for the first day. Now I feel like a weakling.
But seriously, a thousand push-ups in a day? That’s borderline mental illness, I’m thinking.
But team Nashville is going to win.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
300
No, not the movie. Guess again.
If you guessed that this was my current weight, then you are no longer my friend.
If you guessed that this was my score on May’s Basic Fitness Test (BFT), then you’re right! I scored 300 out of a possible 300. I am very proud of myself.
We are doing the BFT for July on Monday. I’m not sure what to expect from myself, but I hope to improve on everything. I’m not going to set myself up for disappointment by putting specific numbers on my goals, because I just don’t know how much I’ve improved since last time. I’ve missed a lot of classes, so I don’t know what to expect. I’m hoping to at least score 300 again, though.
It’s getting difficult to blog about boot camp, because I feel like I’m saying the same things over and over. It’s tough; it hurts; it’s awesome; it’s working; it’s worth it. All these things are true, every time. I need to think of new and creative ways of expressing these sentiments.
Currently, my big challenge is nutrition, but I am finally taking serious steps toward correcting it. I’m using SGT Ken’s Savory Survival Guide as a guideline. I’m not following it to the letter; I’m making substitutions here and there. For instance, last night instead of having baked chicken and brown rice with steamed vegetables, I had baked fish and brown rice with a tomato, herb, and olive reduction. So, the substitutions aren’t cheating; they’re just changes based on what I have in my kitchen and what sounds tastier. I have been doing a great job staying away from the chips in the break room at work (bringing a healthy snack with me helps a lot). I am keeping a food journal, so in case I don’t see any progress in a week, I can show SGT Ken what I have been eating, and he can hopefully tell me what I’ve been doing wrong.
Tonight is trivia at the wingery. I’m trying to plan what I am going to do; I do enjoy my wings and beer, but I can abstain in order to meet my goals. I normally have a couple of good beers, a side salad, and eat about half a medium wings plate (splitting it with Ted). Sometimes we start with an appetizer of fried pickles. It’s a lot of food. A lot more food than I should eat. So tonight, I’m thinking I’ll make my dinner at home as prescribed by the SSG, and have one beer (I dismissed the quit-drinking-for-good idea and switched to really-watching-out-for-overdrinking) at trivia. If I find that I don't have time to cook before time to leave, I will have a side salad and something that looks relatively harmless on the menu. Regardless of what I wind up doing, I will write everything down. That is my challenge for this week.
If you guessed that this was my current weight, then you are no longer my friend.
If you guessed that this was my score on May’s Basic Fitness Test (BFT), then you’re right! I scored 300 out of a possible 300. I am very proud of myself.
We are doing the BFT for July on Monday. I’m not sure what to expect from myself, but I hope to improve on everything. I’m not going to set myself up for disappointment by putting specific numbers on my goals, because I just don’t know how much I’ve improved since last time. I’ve missed a lot of classes, so I don’t know what to expect. I’m hoping to at least score 300 again, though.
It’s getting difficult to blog about boot camp, because I feel like I’m saying the same things over and over. It’s tough; it hurts; it’s awesome; it’s working; it’s worth it. All these things are true, every time. I need to think of new and creative ways of expressing these sentiments.
Currently, my big challenge is nutrition, but I am finally taking serious steps toward correcting it. I’m using SGT Ken’s Savory Survival Guide as a guideline. I’m not following it to the letter; I’m making substitutions here and there. For instance, last night instead of having baked chicken and brown rice with steamed vegetables, I had baked fish and brown rice with a tomato, herb, and olive reduction. So, the substitutions aren’t cheating; they’re just changes based on what I have in my kitchen and what sounds tastier. I have been doing a great job staying away from the chips in the break room at work (bringing a healthy snack with me helps a lot). I am keeping a food journal, so in case I don’t see any progress in a week, I can show SGT Ken what I have been eating, and he can hopefully tell me what I’ve been doing wrong.
Tonight is trivia at the wingery. I’m trying to plan what I am going to do; I do enjoy my wings and beer, but I can abstain in order to meet my goals. I normally have a couple of good beers, a side salad, and eat about half a medium wings plate (splitting it with Ted). Sometimes we start with an appetizer of fried pickles. It’s a lot of food. A lot more food than I should eat. So tonight, I’m thinking I’ll make my dinner at home as prescribed by the SSG, and have one beer (I dismissed the quit-drinking-for-good idea and switched to really-watching-out-for-overdrinking) at trivia. If I find that I don't have time to cook before time to leave, I will have a side salad and something that looks relatively harmless on the menu. Regardless of what I wind up doing, I will write everything down. That is my challenge for this week.
Friday, July 1, 2011
To the Newbies
We have a lot of new folks joining us at START Fitness in Nashville. This post is to answer the many questions I know you all have.
Yes. Yes, it is worth it.
- Yes, it's supposed to hurt there.
- Yeah, there too, probably.
- Whoa, dude...I'm not sure it's supposed to hurt there. You might want to get that looked at.
- No, it doesn't ever get easier to get here by 5:30 in the fucking morning.
- Yes, I know it sucks.
- No, it doesn't stop hurting.
- Yes, it does get better.
- Yes, you still have to pay attention to what you eat. I'm not doing so hot with that part yet; but I'm getting the hang of it now.
- No, it never gets easy.
- Yes, you will see a change if you stick with it.
Yes. Yes, it is worth it.
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