<p>Nice brisk 5K walk today. And I do mean, brisk. 41 degrees, sunny, with a steady 20 mph breeze. Wind chill down around freezing, in fact some of the puddles in the park still had a layer of ice. Broke out the neon yellow Brooks Nightlife jacket for the first time. Marmot base layer top and bottom (this stuff is incredible). Stretchy running pants. Thin long-sleeve tech t-shirt. And the Brooks jacket (thin, but wind proof). Fleece gloves and a fleece beanie cap. Just about perfect. I got a little warm on the hills, but unzipping the jacket a bit was just the ticket. Zip back up at the top of the hills when the wind hit me.</p>
<p>I decided to just enjoy the sunshine and some great iPod tunes and not try to push the pace hard. Just a nice steady 3.5 mph walk.</p>
<p>I’ve survived two days of wine, turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, creamed onions, and pie… and I weighed the same this morning as I did Thursday morning before all that. I reckon that’s about as good as it gets when it comes to eat less/move more over Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>“Svetlana” has moved back to Prague, where she is posting new workouts. Last week’s theme was James Bond 007 workouts. There’s some great stuff that I’ve gotta try: commando pushups and James Bond Lunges. But, I need our resident burpee expert, Chintzy, to test out this *Burpees Are Forever workout *and let me know how it is.</p>
<p>There are three burpee variations in the workout:</p>
<p>OMG. This is just staggering. Just like a regular burpee except that the whole thing is done on one leg. The pushup is done on one leg. Then, you hop to the squat position on one leg. Then jump in the air on one leg. Land on one leg. Then, jump sideways over a bag, switch legs, and do another one legged burpee. I can do the one-legged pushup, but then I’m frozen. I can’t even make a move to hop to the next part. Crazy.</p>
<p>Do the pushup with the legs spread wide. Then jump up and do a jumping jack jump, with legs and arms spread. Then, back down for the pushup with legs spread. I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks brutal.</p>
<p>Here’s the actual [Burpees</a> are Forever Workout](<a href=“Burpees Are Forever Workout - YouTube”>Burpees Are Forever Workout - YouTube). Four three minute rounds for a total of 12 minutes. Each round is 50 seconds of each burpee with 10 seconds of rest. And, here’s the kicker. You have to sing “Burpees are Forever” to the tune of Diamonds are Forever after each round, so try not to get winded! Incredible.</p>
<p>FAIL for me today. Got up at 5:30 to go over to the Gold’s gym for a 30 minute workout before we made the 9 hour drive home to TN. Drug myself out of bed into the cold and discovered that the gym wasn’t open! Turns out it didn’t open until 8 today. So-sat on my butt in the car all day.</p>
<p>Our Y opens at 7:00 AM on Saturdays I think. I’m surprised that Gold’s isn’t open more hours. The point of standalone gyms is to be open when it’s convenient for their customers. There are several places in my area where they are always open.</p>
<p>Went to do weights this afternoon. I checked my log and I haven’t done weights since the tenth of November. What was interesting was that I was able to do what I did before and, in some cases, more than I’ve done before. Perhaps a well-rested body can perform better than a stressed body, even with a layoff.</p>
<p>One minor headache is that my PDA is partially broken. It’s a GPS/PDA that I bought in 2003 and it has a stylus for writing and I record my weight workouts on it. The GPS is always on now which means the power will drain in about an hour. They don’t make them anymore unfortunately.</p>
<p>I’m just the opposite. I could barely lift the 30 pound dumbbells tonight. I squeeked out 10 reps in the stability ball bench press, but it was ugly. Might have had something to do with a glass of wine at dinner.</p>
<p>Holy cow. Svetlana is something else. I think she’s a different species. Those shoulders! Those abs! And she has other attributes as well. My oh my.</p>
<p>Are you kidding? I can’t do that workout. I could do the one-legged pushup (maybe about three of them), but I couldn’t even initiate the one-leg move to a squat, let alone the one-legged jump. I am in total awe of the one-legged burpee. I can’t even relate to the difficulty of that. I mean, a combo of a one-legged pushup, a one-legged squat, and a one-legged plyometric jump. Oh, my. I can probably do the other two burpees (I haven’t tried yet), she’s doing 24 of each of those three burpees in 12 minutes. I would struggle to do 24 reps of one burpee. Those things are killer.</p>
<p>She does have an exercise in one of the other James Bond 007 workouts that I can kinda do. This is really fun:</p>
<p>She’s got another one: your basic lunges with a side twist, but the side twist is holding both hands out like gripping a pistol in a Bond movie, and gong “bang-bang” during the twist. Clever way to make a hard exercise fun.</p>
<p>I went to the Y to drop off racquets to be strung and to do weights. I normally only go to the YMCA on Sunday morning to play tennis but wasn’t playing this morning. The weight room was quite busy. I think that the big draw was an aerobics class that is held next to the weight room - the class was quite full. I guess the weekend after Thanksgiving is a busy time at gyms. There are two glass doors between the two rooms and some of the guys were obvious and others were trying to be discreet about peeking through the doors in between their sets. At any rate, it looks like the women are a draw for the men.</p>
<p>Had a great workout, bumped up the weight on a few exercises and only ran into arm issues on two exercises. I was able to walk over to the rack and pick up the 75 pound dumbell and do my side pulls on both sides. It didn’t bother my arm with the tennis elbow. I don’t do that exercise very often - I don’t often use the freeweight section of the YMCA as I have them at home and it’s often very busy around the dumbbells.</p>
<p>I’m getting the new (to me) racquets strung with a soft multifilament this time. These racquets have heatshrink sleeves on them to bring them up a grip size. These sleeves weigh about 20 grams and should provide much more shock and vibration absorption without changing swingweight. They should be overall far more arm-friendly than my current setups at the expense of static weight. If they do feel much better, then I will look at changing my setup. This would involve selling my old stuff and replacing it with a smaller grip size or I’d have to shave down the handles on my old stuff so that a sleeve would fit.</p>
<p>I currently use Poly which is stronger and lasts longer than nylon but is tougher on the arm. I can go with nylon now that I have five frames and don’t have to worry so much about not having a racquet when I break strings.</p>
<p>No. Stand straight up with heavy dumbell. Pull the hand without the dumbell towards the floor lifting the other arm. Then go back to standing straight up. Good to do with a mirror so that you can see that you’re not tilting.</p>
<p>Wow, idad, I really like watching those exercise clips! I wonder how many calories I’m burning sitting here watching that girl sweat?</p>
<p>I used to do many moves similar to these when I was doing yoga regularly ten years ago, and what I remember is that it was much easier for us flexible little women to do these moves than the big, buff guys. I did have pretty good core strength, but it was more about hip and hamstring flexibility than strength. That one-legged squat, for example, requires very flexible hamstrings (among other things, judging from the rippling ab muscles I see on Zuzana, or is it Svetlana?). I remember the strong guys in my class, puffing and grunting and working much harder to do the moves, maybe because they were less flexible, especially in the hips and knees. So, if it’s any consolation, I’m betting you’re probably strong enough for all these lunges and commando moves.</p>
<p>Wow, idad, I really like watching those exercise clips! I wonder how many calories I’m burning sitting here watching that girl sweat?</p>
<p>I used to do many moves similar to these when I was doing yoga regularly ten years ago, and what I remember is that it was much easier for us flexible little women to do these moves than the big, buff guys. I did have pretty good core strength, but it was more about hip and hamstring flexibility than strength. That one-legged squat, for example, requires very flexible hamstrings (among other things, judging from the rippling ab muscles I see on Zuzana, or is it Svetlana?). I remember the strong guys in my class, puffing and grunting and working much harder to do the moves, maybe because they were less flexible, especially in the hips and knees. So, if it’s any consolation, I’m betting you’re probably strong enough for all these lunges and commando moves.</p>
<p>That’s interesting to read. As the heavy spouse of a fit Marine, I sometimes wonder what people think. When I was thin, I suppose the assumption must have been that we had a better family dynamic? However, I maintained my weigh through cigarettes and drinking alcohol; which was doing a lot of damage to my marriage. So was my untreated depression and, again, just like kicking cigs and stopping drinking alcohol, dealing with that resulted in weigh gain. </p>
<p>To answer the assumption: No, I don’t feel badly that I’m heavy and my husband is fit. It’s just who we are at this point in our lives. Plus, I’ve never found guilt or feeling badly to be a positive motivator for changing my body. </p>
<p>It’s an interesting comment on another level…which is that I’ve never been thin and mentally healthy at the same time. I’ve lost weight by punishing my body but, of course, that weight always comes back plus it brings some friends. I’m lucky that I’m tall and carry the weigh fairly well and I"m lucky that Mr PMK finds me very attractive at any weight but I cannot deal with this back pain anymore and weigh loss is supposed to help.</p>
<p>So, I’m off to the pool yet again…where I’ll float around, do my stretches and laps and think more about how to have weight loss as a goal without thinking in negative terms of the way I am right now. It took me a long time to learn to love my inside and my outside, I don’t want to lose that with the weight.</p>
<p>I find it oddly reassuring to see someone with 007% body fat sweat like a pig and pant like a dog, just like I do when I work out. It gives me hope that even an ol’ fat guy is doing OK in the workout department.</p>
<p>I appreciate the confidence, but I have neither the leg strength nor the flexibility for one legged squats… yet. I’ll get there. I have a lot of patience. My lateral squats are slowly getting a little better… that’s also a one-leg dominant squat. I’ll get there. Heck, this time last year, I couldn’t do a pushup, 20 seconds of plank, or walk to the mailbox without getting winded. Now, I’m doing burpees and T-pushups and rear-foot elevated split squats.</p>
<p>Guys definitely have flexibility “issues”, especially in the hips. It’s also tough because a body weight exercise, like a single leg squat, is lifting a lot more weight.</p>
<p>Just think about losing five pounds. I don’t care if you have ten pounds or two hundred pounds to lose, you have to start by losing five pounds. So why even worry about anything beyond that?</p>
<p>Five pounds should be attainable goal. Then, you have a major win under your belt that you can use to power on thru the next goal. You are already well on your way, going to the gym.</p>
<p>Those are interesting observations, pmk, and hard-earned, I’m sure. I recently read one of Geneen Roth’s books, which opened my eyes to the reflexive, unthinking assumptions I make about people based on their weight. I really recommend her books.</p>
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<p>That is really interesting. I associate certain kinds of thinness, especially among middle-aged women with mental… unhealth. It seems like another obsession. Maybe it’s better to think of an “ideal” weight for your body, which may not be “thin” at all.</p>
Haha. You’re joking, right? I’ve been trying to do this my entire life! Sometimes I think it’s harder to be a little overweight – you can always put off the self-discipline required to lose weight another day.</p>
Incredible.</p>