Fickle

So call me Fickle but I've taken a break from the swimming. I had a decent routine going but 2 things got my mind off of it. One is...I'm fickle. I didn't see incredible results within a month so I got bored and tried some other exercise routine. Since I didn't feel that I was sweating while in the water, I felt that it was useless. So I started doing more treadmill/exercise bike/stepper routines for cardio. Trying to put in about 45 min each workout. An even stronger that I put the swimming aspirations on hold is the great warm sunny weather outside. I have my great basketball shoes a ball and a court that I enjoy playing on. So why not take advantage of all this until the gloomy wintertime comes around and I have to stay indoors for exercise. At that point an indoor heated lap pool will be perfect. I will still jump in the pool every now and then but not the 4x/week I was doing.

I also got annoyed with lifting weights. For the longest time I was rarely using weights for strength training. Instead doing traditional exercises such as pullups and pushups dominated my routine. Why I got sucked into lifting, I do not know. It seems so unnatural and isolating muscles can not be a good thing. Sports, fighting, killing a wild beast with your bear hands; common denominator? None require just one muscle used at a time which is exactly what using weights and machines usually does. So I picked up an exercise band with little handles on it. It has good resistance and is lightweight. It can be used in a multitude of exercises for strength and flexibility training. What I like most about it is the dynamics of a stretch band. The more you pull, the greater the resistance. That couple with the natural instability of rubber forces me to coordinate various muscles at a given time in a dynamic fashion. After only a couple workouts I notice different parts of my body feeling a bit sore, proof that those muscles are being used without being "targeted" durin the exercise.

Changing a workout routine is great as it keeps things interesting for my ADD mentality. It also forces my muscles to constantly "think" and work together for the various exercises. Most important fact is that I am continuing to push my body and burn calories while developing a strong core which will come in handy for any sport I may partake in.

Oh yeah diet: blah, blah, blah. Veggies, fruit, fiber, minimal sweets. Too much alcohol and some questionable late night food a couple times a week.

On one last note, I have decided to give up alcohol altogether for the month of Ramadan. Not a sip, not a glass of white wine with my fish dinner, not a beer while watching football....none. I'm not sure if my purposes are religious but rather to detox my body and my poor fatty liver. I hope that a month of detox is a great lesson and will lead to moderation in the future.

~FlexE

Let's get competitive

Finally bought some new basketball shoes and a ball this weekend. I've been starved for competition and late night drunken ping pong matches don't really cut it for me. It is absolutely ridiculous to workout so much just for the sake of working out. I want to see results not just in the mirror but also on the court, any court. Basketball, tennis, soccer...bring it! What I'm going to TRY to do is be active everyday. All this talk about allowing your muscles to rest every other day is lame. Did Hercules have a strict Monday-Wednesday-Friday lifting schedule? Did Achilles only go jogging on odd numbered days and relax at a spa on the weekends? No, they did not. But FlexE you're not some great heroic mythological figure, you are just human. Um, clearly you are not able to grasp the potential of my athletic prowess. Ok, I'm getting ridiculous here but you get the point.

So I am going to try to go swimming in the morning before work and play ball on those same afternoons and on the other days continue my 3x/week lifting schedule. I might even combine legs and chest or back and legs, etc to make it 2x/week. I prefer to spend the majority of my time outdoors competing. It drives me to be better and makes me feel great. Even if I lose, knowing that I gave it a full shot just motivates me to get back on the court and do better. I want to speak of a past triumph regarding basketball but maybe it's better said on a different post when I have more time to get into it.

Hope this blog is motivating some of you to get out there and be active too. Hopefully I'll put up some "after" pics in a couple months that will motivate me and the readers alike to continue a healthy lifestyle.

~FlexE