Official Workout/Fitness Thread (Re-born)

[NbdyBeatsTheWiz]

^ trust me I do. Goes great in a smoothie too!

I recently bought a house and am looking to turn my garage into a mini-rec center. Anybody done it in the past and have any advice to pass along?

[dobrojim]

Did a nice gentle 30 mi run/walk this morning out in the horse country starting
in Leesburg and out towards Waterford on some mostly dirt roads. Good VT100
simulation. Other in the group did more. I felt comfy with 30 and feel good
enough now to possibly, possibly run tomorrow too. A little over 6 hours.
It was nice but it was also hot. Good training either way.

Vermont 100 in 4 weeks. Woo-hoo!

[dobrojim]

proud of my 12 yo this morning

she ran a 5K. Didn't quite win an age-group award
but finished strong. I love it.

That said, she's now a hoopster. She has
3 games this week with her summer select team.
FIrst game (last week) her team blew out the opp after falling
behind at the start. All the girls on her team can
play. This is really good experience for her. Coach
is playing a 10 deep rotation. luv it.

She inspired me to hit the track in the late morning (hot.humid)
for a sesssion of intervals. Trail running tomorrow. 3 weeks to VT100.

I have a friend that's running the Western States 100 right now.
It's the mecca of ultras. Sounds like he's doing great. He's through
44 miles on a sub 24 hour pace.

edit - he's through 47 miles.

another ultra guy I know described this as a distillation of the soul.
RIght on.

[dobrojim]

bump

just thought I'd give everyone a heads up on this

THU I leave to drive to RI en route to VT on Friday.
Saturday morning at 4 am I start running/walking.
Sometime on Sunday I will hopefully be finished the 100 miles
and still sorta on my feet and semi-ambulatory. Then all
I have to do is make it home safely. Then I can watch
the rest of our SL team victories!

as I said in the last post, I consider this a
distillation of the soul.

[nate33]

Good luck, dobrojim. I don't know how you do it without getting hurt.

[Kanyewest]

^ trust me I do. Goes great in a smoothie too!

I recently bought a house and am looking to turn my garage into a mini-rec center. Anybody done it in the past and have any advice to pass along?

I got my bench press for like $30 at Modells after Christmas, although it was a pain to assemble. I have to say I don't use it much since I don't have a spotter and I'm scared that I'll injure myself.

[W. Unseld]

A. I need a food that will fill my fat a$$ up at night. Protein shakes/yogurt aren't doing it. I might have to go the sleeping pill route--assuming my wife will watch the kids for any night episodes.
B. Whoever wanted to start their own home gym go to www.rosstraining.com I think there is a whole section on that.
C. Counter intuitively, I play better basketball when I've taken a few days off. I still feel like cr*p for the first 15 minutes or so but I notice that I feel lighter on my feet and less achey with the time off. Ironically it was tennis that proved this, laying off asphalt courts for two days helped immensely.

[Zonkerbl]

Home gym in garage: 100 lb punching bag. Fun! Cardio! No need for a spotter!

Wicked body blast workout: Heavy bag, situps, jump rope with weighted rope, one set each four to six times. Yeah buddy. If you really want to go nuts add some kicks.

You can hang it from your ceiling with a big macho looking chain, or you can get one of the stands, but you need the big honking stands that you can weigh down with 45-lb weights, otherwise it will jump around too much and you can injure your wrists that way. For the same reason don't bother with anything less than 100 lbs.

Oh, and be sure to learn how to wrap your wrists and knuckles properly.

You can just set a timer and whale on it, or you can do something like:

Jabx3 cross starting with right x10
Jabx3 cross starting with left x10
Cross-jab-body-body starting with right x10
Same thing starting with left x10

Roundhouse to kidneys right x10
Roundhouse to kidneys left x10.

That's about two minutes.

Then do two minutes of jumprope (sixty jumps both feet/sixty jumps alternating feet x2).

Then do sixty ab bicycles/40 unweighted crunches/20 weighted crunches/whatever your favorite ab workout is.

Try not to rest too much between. See if you can do the whole cycle in under eight minutes.

Start out with repeating that cycle three times, see if you can work up to six.

[Kanyewest]

A. I need a food that will fill my fat a$$ up at night. Protein shakes/yogurt aren't doing it. I might have to go the sleeping pill route--assuming my wife will watch the kids for any night episodes.

Eat foods with more fiber, especially fruits, veggies, and nuts; I would suggest preparing for such snacks in advance- http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-f ... ds/NU00582

Sometimes hunger is signaled by being dehydrated. Make sure that you drink water and sometimes that cure hunger.

Try to eat slowly and eat smaller portions and stop eating once your no longer hungry.

Make sure you aren't starving yourself too much and that you eat enough meals- at least 3 and ideally 5. If you eat regular meals that your metabolism will speed up and your body won't store as much fat. Again snacks can be your friend, if they are healthy.

[dobrojim]

Good luck, dobrojim. I don't know how you do it without getting hurt.

Oh it surely hurts

read this sometime you're bored

http://www.restonrunners.org/success-st ... a2003a.php

but I know you mean injured which is different. The answer is to not
push yourself. One step at a time. RFP = relentless forward progress

that's the answer

[pancakes3]

that was a damned interesting read, dobro. i'm sure you've said this before but what's your 100miler time? how much time is spent running, and how much walking? how long do you stop at each station for? A-bradford's recap made it seem like a glorified (understatement of the decade) 31 hr hike whereas i'm sure linda's 27 hr time was a significantly more grueling.

knuckle pushups are a ton harder than regular pushups.

[dobrojim]

My time according to MY watch was 29:46 so as far as I'm concerned,
I finished with a solid 14 minutes to spare and got an official finish.
According the the real race officials, I finished in 29:51 which is still
good for an official finish being under 30 hours.

A great deal of time is spent walking, especially on anything that
even resembles a hill. You must be disciplined about pacing yourself
in such a way that you can always summon a reserve of energy from
somewhere. Because there pretty much is always more to do.

A good brisk walking pace for me is 15 min/mile on flat ground.
In theory, this means that if I just tried for that, I could finish in
a very respectable 25 hours. As you can surmise, it doesn't quite
work like that.

I've done the JFK 50 miler 10 times. 9 of those times I finished with
an actual time between 9-10 hours. Last year at the hundred I made
it to Camp Ten Bear (which you got through twice, 47 & 70 miles) the
first time in about 11-11.5 hours. Got back to Ten Bear at about
10 o'clock at night (18 hours elapsed time, the race starts at 4 AM).
I thought I was about where I should be and had a potentially good
time within reach. But my quads were so trashed that I could not
summon any motivation to run and ended up walking about 90-95%
of the last 30 miles. This took nearly 12 hours. During this time,
as long as I could look at my watch and do a rough calculation that
I still had time to get an official finish, I was fine with that
and I felt no need to run. At the last aid station, 2.2 miles from
the finish, I went through it a few minutes after 9AM on Sunday morning.
They pleasantly informed me that I only needed to do a couple 20
minute miles and I would finish with 8 min to spare. Normally that
would not seem difficult in the slightest. However in this instance,
the realization that for the last several hours, I had not been doing
20 min miles struck me soundly and gave me an adrenaline boost.
So I rallied enough to finish with a bit to spare.

I think the discrepancy in my time vs the official time might have
been due to my finishing, then my friends getting me to go back
and run across a second time so they could photograph it. I was
the second the last finisher in the race. Nearly a third of the
starters drop out without finishing.

In some ways the slower folks have it harder for the simple reason
that they are out there longer at it. My friend who is in no way a
runner (thinks we're all crazy- he's right) said that as he watched
a number of the finishers much earlier than I, (the winner did it in 16 hours),
he said some of them looked like they could have done another 50
no prob, others barely crawled across the finish line. It's all over
the map in terms of what it takes out of a given runner. At least
from outward appearances. 100 miles is 100 miles either way.

FWIW - the course involves 14 thousand feet of elev gain AND loss
(starts and finishes in essentially the same place). There is not a lot
of flat ground covered. 30 miles of 'single track' trail and 70 miles
of dirt roads. Normally you run the downs and flats and walk the ups.
There are a couple of relatively short sections of paved road as well
but they don't amount to much in the big picture.

In certain ways a 10K is harder due to the absolute necessity to
run HARD the whole time. Ultras aren't like that. You can walk
whenever you feel like it and no one calls you a wuss.


Faster folks probably gain some of their advantage by
blowing through aid stations more quickly, there are 29 of them, in
a hurry so a half min to a min saved x 29 adds up. I need to
pause and think when I get to one so I remember to do what
I need to do while I am there.

[HeatInOhio]

P90X. The program is the real deal and whips you into shape in no time. I'm currently on my 10th week of the program. I'm 6'2" and started at 260 lbs (not pure fat, I've been lifting off and on for many years). I'm down 27 lbs and two pants sizes in just 10 weeks. After I complete the first 90 days, I'm going to take a week or two break then do another 90 days.

There are about 12 different CDs (each about an hr long) that you rotate in different cycles 6 days a week. There's weight training, cardio, kenpo, yoga, core etc... etc... it works your entire body. I never considered a home workout program until I saw physical changes in my wife after just two weeks. I proceeded to investigate it online and saw many 90 day transformation videos on youtube and other sites and that convinced me to try it. I recommend it. You don't need much either, a $30 pull up bar and some dumbbells or bands and a lot of effort.

[willbcocks]

One thing that works to fill cravigns is no calorie drinks, particularly coffee and tea. Both are sweet, have astringents that keep a lasting sensation of in your mouth, suppress appetite, and take time to prepare and consume.

Recently I've been having coffe after breakfast and then in the mid afternoon. Freshly prepared black, 2 cup Italian Moka pot version each time. Once I settle down I'll get an espresso maker, a nice grinder, and a whirley pop popcorn maker for roasting beans once a week, and make wicked espressos a couple times a day.

After dinner, I fill the tea pot with fresh leaves and just keep drinking tea until its time for bed. Tea, like coffee, has the added benefit of helping with digestion if you drink it after meals. I usually have fermented pu-erh or ulong tea, as both are pretty flavorful and astringent.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Home gym in garage: 100 lb punching bag. Fun! Cardio! No need for a spotter!

Wicked body blast workout: Heavy bag, situps, jump rope with weighted rope, one set each four to six times. Yeah buddy. If you really want to go nuts add some kicks.

You can hang it from your ceiling with a big macho looking chain, or you can get one of the stands, but you need the big honking stands that you can weigh down with 45-lb weights, otherwise it will jump around too much and you can injure your wrists that way. For the same reason don't bother with anything less than 100 lbs.

Oh, and be sure to learn how to wrap your wrists and knuckles properly.

You can just set a timer and whale on it, or you can do something like:

Jabx3 cross starting with right x10
Jabx3 cross starting with left x10
Cross-jab-body-body starting with right x10
Same thing starting with left x10

Roundhouse to kidneys right x10
Roundhouse to kidneys left x10.

That's about two minutes.

Then do two minutes of jumprope (sixty jumps both feet/sixty jumps alternating feet x2).

Then do sixty ab bicycles/40 unweighted crunches/20 weighted crunches/whatever your favorite ab workout is.

Try not to rest too much between. See if you can do the whole cycle in under eight minutes.

Start out with repeating that cycle three times, see if you can work up to six.

Zonker, is the reason you had Bas Rutten as your avatar because you are Bas Rutten? As I read this post in my mind I could almost hear Bas' accent to your words. I'm surprised you didn't have the phrase "Everybody's got an El Guapo."

Seriously, I like hitting the heavy bag. Haven't hit it in months since I became a member of a new gym. The 24hr fitness I go to doesn't have a heavy bag like my old gym does.

Hitting the bag for me is almost as fun as shooting the basketball. (Too old and fat post achilles rupture to even think about running in another game. I just shootaround as my warmup to my workout).

Zonker, I know you can take a joke. Wrapping your hands when you hit the bag--whimpy.

Back at the old gym I would alternate from the heavy bag to the double bag. That's my absolute favorite. Once I get a good sweat going and I get loose, then I work in power shots on the heavy bag. Instead of counting my reps, which I am really not good at, I try to go by time. In competitive fights they fight rounds of several minutes. Me, I just try to do my best at simulating going all out for just a minute or two, and resting after that til I catch my breath. I do this several times. At the end of hitting the bag I feel great.

The bag is tremendous, Zonker. I am glad you posted about it.

Just like when you inspired me to get a bike (broken a the moment, but will get back on soon); you're inspiring me to go back to my old gym from time to time just to hit the bag.

[Zonkerbl]

Haha! Yeah, wimpy, but also will keep you from getting bursitis, so it's worth the man shame. I experimented with just using MMA gloves but I would still mess up my wrists without the wraps underneath.

[willbcocks]

After years of hating to run and never having the disciplien to keep up going to the gym longer then a few weeks, I've been going to the gym 3 times a week for the past 3 months. Half of those times are pure running on the treadmill, half are working out with a couple mile run warmup and a mile in between power sets.

Doesn't seem like a lot of running, but I have been smashing the personal records I, uh, set in middle school. 5:26 mile last week, 3 miles in 19:10 this week. And these have both been on treadmills, so I think if I could find a nice day and a track after another month or two, I'll be able to break 5:00 on the mile.

I've made a c ouple of observations during this time. First, when starting off a fitness routine, the goal should be to increase your energy and feel better. This is how I started with the running and it turned it from a chore into something enjoyable. If I was hurting, I'd stop, take a rest, and run some more later, then savor coming back from the gym and having the endorphins make me feel like a million bucks.

Before I'd always started lifting weights first, but would never have the energy and would quit quite soon. This time, I started lifting a month and a half in and always run in between lifting exercises. It really seems to increase my energy and motivation.

Other observation is that I don't think I would have been successful had I not completely changed my diet. Smaller portions, tons of vegetables, black coffee for snacks, a small, expensive, bar of dark chocolate in the mid afternoon, then tea at night. This has got to be responsible for more than half the boost in energy.

[dobrojim]

That's pretty fast running willb. You should get out to some races.
With times like that you would be in consistent contention
for age-group awards depending on the size of the race.

At my advanced age (53), I almost ran a 6 flat mile a little
over a week ago. This after consistently doing track workouts
for the last 5-6 weeks. My best mile ever was about 5:43
and my best 10K was 39:39.

Few people of any age can run a mile in the low 5s or better.

[willbcocks]

As a 26 year old, I don't think age group awards are going to work in my favor unless I go the Yi Jianlian route. It'll be fun just to compete against my score. My dad said he ran in high school, I think his best was a 4:30 or something, so in theory I could shoot for that, but I imagine getting shaving off the seconds gets harder as your time improves.

I always had the best mile time in my year from 1st grade to 7th grade, when running the mile consisted of never training and going out once a year in PE. Got a 6:08 in 7th grade, then never ran again at school and hadn't beat that time until a month ago.

[fishercob]

I may have turned a corner last night. I've whined in these parts for a while about these nagging lower body injuries that I kept getting over the past five years -- ankles, knees, hips. Nothing serious enough to require surgery, but major enough that I needed to spend a ton of relative time in physical therapy fixing anything. I'm way too young and fit (relatively speaking) for this to happen.

So I started working with a trainer a few months back in an effort to gradually build myself back into shape to the point where I could work out hard, play basketball, etc., without getting hurt. A few weeks into the workouts, it was clear to the trainer that I had a bunch of small muscles not firing. He didn't know where and what the source of everything was, but he suggested something called MAT -- Muscle Activation Techniques (or Therapy).

So I've been seeing the MAT guy for three weeks, and the dude is just brilliant. Worked for an NFL team at one point, has a keen understanding of kinesiology, connective tissue, neuro-physiology, physics, etc. Well, last night we finally found something and he was able to "turn on" this small muscle in my hip.

I had heard from him and others that the benefits can be instantaneous, but hadn't thought much of it. Tales of people with chronic shoulder pain having it immediately relieved when they got their feet fixed, etc.

Well, I worked with my trainer immediately after my MAT session and had the best workout I've had in as long as I can remember. And then last night I had the greatest night of sleep I can remember!! Contrast that with my workout Monday where I had to stop so much because of random pains in my knees, shoulder, wrist, etc.

Here's hoping this continues. I may just be able to finally get in shape to chase Dandridge around once his calf heals...