I’ll get there

Weight this morning, 249.6. Hooray! sub 250!

Workout 24K snatch 1minute work, 1 minute rest
22/0
0/22
15/7
7/15
11/11
9/9, 2/1
6/6, 2/1
at this point my form was coming apart and I figured I was risking my health to keep going.

Today’s numbers
D: 9
WQ: 6
WI: 9
EA: 2
R: 9

Greek Food

mm, Greek Food, too bad I didn’t order any, that smells delicious.

Last Night
10 minute Burpee test -57

1 leg straight-leg deadlift 16k 5/5
Renegade Rows 16K 5/5 
5 sets

Yesterday’s Scores
D: 8
WQ: 5
WI: 5
EC: 2
R : 7

Today’s Scores
D: 9
WQ: 0
WI: 0
EC: 3
R : 8

My quads are still sore from a couple days ago, I’ve been surprised by how the soreness has lasted but the intensity hasn’t been bad. 

Yesterday’s workout gets generally low marks. The 10 minutes of burpees was kinda just something I wanted to ge a number on, I’ve never really tried anything quite like it. My heart rate was in the 160s for the first five minutes then would hit about 170 and each set (I did them in sets of 5 for ease of counting) so I’d rest a moment before doing more.

No planned training for tonight, I need to do school stuff. 

We did get a toaster oven to get us by until we get the oven issue sorted out. It’s head and shoulders above the toaster oven my folks have always had. We can cook a 12″ pizza in the thing. Tonight we’ll try grilled cheeses in it. Speaking of food, the bit of bad weather caused me to choose to work a half day so I did egg sandwiches for breakfast but I forgot to bring my fruit for lunch. I’ll probably get into the mixed nuts later just to buff the brain for work.

Monday Morning Weigh-in: 251.0

Lower than I expected, I was worried about hitting 253.  I’m waiting for the GREAT PLATEAU that  know will come.

Todays ratings: (may be adjusted later in the day if I feel the need)
D: 7
Of course, I don’t anticipate deviations, I’ll push this number down if it becomes neccessary
WQ: 0
No planned workout, defending on evening plans I may do something really light in which case this will be pushed up
WI: 0
Even if I do and evening thing, it will be very low intensity
EC: 2
Just walkin’ the dog
R: 6 
I’m a tad sore today, those swings did a good job on me.

Objective measures of subjectivity part II

While working out today I came up with the idea of using a 1-10 scale to try and quantify subjective measures that I think van be tracked to get an accurate picture of the quality of my training.  I came up with five measures that I’m going to try and follow.

…but wait there’s more…

I’ve come up with a few goals that can also be quantified. I’ve placed all of them on one spreadsheet. The idea will be that I’ll track them all for a few months and it’ll all be at a glance. It’s easy to throw it into a line chart and see if I can see any correlations. So, here’s what I have:

objective measures of subjectivity

The workout
32 K 2 hand swing X 20
16K Reverse lunge with a press X 10/10
24K Row X 10/10
5 sets

Flutter Kick 50/50
2 sets

Time 31:15
Avg HR 159
Max Hr 177
It was in the upper 160s a lot of the time, as the workout wore on I was taking longer and more frequent breaks. I did my best to not break midset but during the lunges I found I occasionally had too.

I’m forever trying to think of what should be added to a training log to improve it. I came up with and idea while I was working out that I think I was to try and see if I find it useful. Chris is a big fan of the part of a training log where you write down how things felt, how your physically feeling, that kind of thing. Stephen does a bit of this too. Part of the challenge, as I see it, is that unless you have a regular process of review, this effort is wasted. If you do have a regular process fo review it is often wasted as well given that you may easily be comparing apples to oranges from day to day. It occurred to me that there have been a large number of experiments done in which people rated their own exertion level and they were found to be relatively accurate. The flip side is that there have been simiar experiments on diet, they’ve typically had the opposite result.

So, I’m gonna try to experiment with using a couple one to ten ratings. These are completely subjective and prone to being misleading but it seems like a thing to try. I’m trying to settle one what measures to use but so far, this is what I have come up with:

• Diet – how much did I stick to my intended meal plan. This means that whatever dietary philosphy I am following, am I doing it. So today, for example, I had pancakes and bacon for breakfast, pretty much all dietary plans would say this a is a bad thing, however it’s a nice thing I do for wife and myself most weekends and it was intended. If I were to go have a dozen cookies later, that would be a major ding.
• Workout Quality – This is how I feel the workout was planned and executed. If I didn’t get into the areas I meant to or if I really overbuilt the workout and had to throttle back, this goes down.
• Workout Intensity – This is probably the oddest one. I don’t want this one to always be high, I think I’ll shoot for an average of about 7. I think this one may be an indicator of when I overdo things. It may also encourage me to get in light workouts more often.
• Extracurricular activities – This one will be the lowest of all. Most days it’ll be about a 2, which is what I’ll give myself if I do nothing other than walk the dog. If I did something else, relatively physical, it goes up.
• Recovery – How do I feel from previous days. Am I refreshed or feeling sore?

There wil be another component to this later but for now I’ll try and jot down my scores.

Diet: 7
Quality: 6 – I had to take more rest than intended
Intensity: 7
EC: 3
Recovery: 6 – my glutes felt a bit wore out, I think they got over stretched yesterday from me sitting cross legged on the floor yesterday.

shoulda, woulda, coulda

I was thinking of doing a workout last night but the oven went on the fritz and the rest of the evening was spent on that. We’re gonna have to have someone look at it. So no workout.

bodyweight is 253.0

Home is where the sweat is

24K kettlebell
Snatch 10/10
Burpee

Did a  ladder with the burpees up to 5, which means 5 sets of snatches too

Jerk 5/5
Squat 5
5 sets

Twitchy

Got some weird twitch that started in my tricep last evening and doesn’t seem to have stopped. It’s intermittent and doesn’t bother me in any kind of meaningful way.

dunno if training is on for tonight or not but if not I may at least do 20 or so pushups and try to shake this thing.

Food today was well behaved, I ate only what I had planned, I need to work some salad back in, just for vits and minerals.

probably more to add later.

Tried to do a bodyweight workout

I have trouble stretching bodyweight stuff into a full workout, unless there is room for tumbling, crawls and etc.

Bodyweight portion
Burpee X 1
Mountain climber X 1/1
Supine Bicycle X 1/1
done as a ladder from 1 – 5 and the back down to 1 again. It ended up being a lot more hip flexor intensive than I had expected. I should have seen it coming but didn’t.

32K swings 3 x 25, 19, 6
My grip was getting exhausted and I didn’t want to see what happens when the bell leaves my hands and hits the door jam behind me.

Plancks Front, Side, Side, Back X 2 for a 15 count each.

took about 20 minutes total. Ihad  a heart rate monitor on for the first part but took it off after the bodyweight. The result of that was that although I was quickly and thoroughly winded, I never even got to 170. I would have liked to keep using it if I had some for of a split type function.

Today’s food has been and egg sandwich, 6 pirogies and some pasta with toast tonight along with some coffee during the day.

The last thing I will say on diet theory for a while

I’m always surprised by how contentious the whole thing is.

First, I saw a hilarious episode of the Honeymooners last night called Boxtop Kid where Ralph wins a contest telling Slim-o bread how he lost a bunch of weight on the bread, which, of course, he did not. I can’t find a clip of it or I would share it.  That aired in 1954.

Second, and this was really the only thing on the topic of diets I had intended on mentioning this weekend, I have learned something interesting about myself with regard to eating. I am a terrible bored eater. I’ve spent a good bit of effort in the past couple weeks separating what happens when you think of food and have a hunger response to it versus when you are actually hungry and have thoughts of food. The result of that little exploration has been interesting for me. I think that learning the difference is imperative for me.

Working a desk job gives me all the opportunity in the world to get bored and forage for food all day long. I’ve done well to just stick  with the food I have on hand and drink plain Lipton tea. I’ll just try to stick with that method to control it over the next couple weeks and see how I fair.

Oh, I guess this really is last. I’m pretty happy with my drop so far, it’ll be interesting for me to follow.

and that’s it