<p>BC:</p>
<p>I forgot to say: Congratulations on the 179! Sounds like it’s 5-pound party time, to me! It wasn’t that long ago when you were just hoping to get in “one-der-land” as they say on the Biggest Loser. And now you’ve passed that and tacked on 20 more for good measure. You’ve gotta be so happy…</p>
<p>I got a double in today…</p>
<p>Did about 15 minutes on the elliptical and some shoulder rehab stuff around lunchtime. I was sore from my workout last night and my legs felt heavy…</p>
<p>Then tonight after work, I did another 15 minutes on the elliptical, 75 KB swings (3x25), 3x10 on the lat pulldown and 3x10 on the upright row machines. Finished with some flexibility and mobility work…</p>
<p>good for you hops. I had to look up what an upright row machine is. Looks like that would be a good core exercise.</p>
<p>Feels strange for me to go five days now without weightlifting or core. I can’t remember if I missed a few days with a cold last spring, but it could well be going on a year since I’ve skipped a week. I’ve felt really strong in my workouts the last two weeks, going heavier, but I was also starting to be sore all over, especially with all the furniture moving on top of my reguarl workouts. Mostly good sore, but also a good time to take a little break and recover a bit.</p>
<p>The biggest problem I had with taking a few days off (or a week) is that then I struggle getting back into it. All of the sudden, it’s like “well I took a few days off; what’s a couple more?”</p>
<p>The upright row machine is great for the back muscles. I don’t use it very often, but I’m still fighting a little bit of a shoulder problem so I have to be careful what I do so I don’t aggravate it…</p>
<p>PS-- this is what I mean by upright row machine… <a href=“treadmillscentral.com”>treadmillscentral.com;
<p>blankmind and BC, awesome running today!</p>
<p>I tossed some metal around today. My goal is to get my body in beach-worthy shape for the HI trip, and that will require some serious discipline. And some burpees as well. 
Idad would be very proud of the dinner I prepared tonight: grilled steak, green salad (can you believe we are still eating tomatoes grown in our garden!), and sauteed broccolini.</p>
<p>BC- congrats!<br>
I watched my son’s former high school CC team doing a light workout on Tues when I went up there for my speech. They were doing their planks ALL wrong, doing crunches (uh oh) and have some injuries. I wish I could take over that part of the training. They have some wonderful young runners, including a Kenyan who was loping around the track at a 6:00 pace looking like he was jogging.</p>
<p>Good luck with the beach body, BB! You’ll get there.</p>
<p>Back to work today. Oh joy. Didn’t get up to run this am. Too tired. Too cold. The trip was tiring. After work…</p>
I see people doing things wrong in the gym and most of the time I don’t say anything unless they look like they are really going to hurt themselves. This happened a month ago at the Y where a very thin lady was using the combo fly/reverse fly machine. You sit a certain way and adjust the arm pads a certain way for the type of exercise that you want to do. She was sitting one way and trying to do the exercise the wrong way and loading a lot of weight that she was trying to push behind her. The pads were at her sides and she was trying to push them back with her arms straight away from her body. To do the reverse curls, you are supposed to put the pads in front of you and then push them in a circular motion until they are by your sides, at an arm’s length.
The biggest offense that I see is people using a decline bench to do situps.
No exercise this morning - MTW were actually relatively heavy workout days for me; not as heavy as tennis but I’m tired this morning. No tennis this week so I won’t get a really strenuous workout but my arm and knees are grateful for the break.
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<p>My sense is that bad high school/prep school athletic training is probably more the rule than the exception. Football is really bad because the coaches are rooted in obsolete powerlifting strength training. I’m guessing that track in general and cross-country specifically is probably pretty bad, too – with nowhere near enough emphasis on strength training.</p>
<p>It’s been really informative to read about Mike Boyle’s thoughts on coaching high school and college athletes (his specialty). He is such a stickler for fool-proof safe exercises because, when coaching teenage males, if it can go wrong or if an exercise can be done improperly or if there is any imaginable way they’ll hurt themselves, you can count on the fact that they will!</p>
<p>FWIW, I will simply say that complicated fancy salmon recipes are kind of a culinary oxymoron.</p>
<p>Just buy really good wild salmon. Then cook it gently and simply. Less is more.</p>
<p>(I’m kind of a salmon freak)</p>
<p>My thighs and glutes are very sore from my kettlebell workout. Guess I need to do it more often! 
At least my knee is feeling fine!</p>
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<p>That’s a good thing! Whatever you were doing with the kettlebell, keep doing it!</p>
<p>Sore muscles are usually a good sign. I think that you need to do stuff a few times a week to improve and once every one to two weeks to maintain.</p>
<p>I know! I had moved away from my kettleball swings/squats when my knee was bothering me. Now that it is feeling stronger I thought I could return to them. Really shows that the biking and walking wasn’t engaging those muscles in quite the same way!</p>
<p>3 miles, 9:46 pace (easy running day), Smith Machine, Abs Dolly Plus and free weights - added a few exercises on the free weights today. Very tired after the workout - I’m not sure if I’m going to do anything at home tonight.</p>
<p>That is what I usually do; put the fish in baking pan, some cooking oil, lemon, garlic powder, salt and pepper and bake it for 10-12 minutes. I love it this way
By the way, all my recipes take 5 minutes to prepare! I don’t like spending too much time in the kitchen!</p>
Well, I stuck to my guns and did more interval cardio today instead of weight lifting – sort of. I did Burpee Fusion for the first time in months.
Three sets. Each set was alternating between 12 swings and 6 burpees, starting every minute on the minute for six rounds. Rest between sets til my heart rate recovered to 60% of max.
Bumped up the weight on the swings to 36 pounds (16 kg) which is light, but not embarrassing, for a guy.
I’m definitely stronger on both the swings and the burpees than I was the last time around, so that’s good. I didn’t see crazy high heart rates (90% max), but – man – I was bent over panting like a dog. Under 30 minutes including a little warm up.
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Listened to Robb Wolf’s podcast interview fo the Wheat Belly doctor while working out.
<p>Picked up a canister of oatmeal tonight at Trader Joes. I’m going to have a 1.5 cups before working out tomorrow. I think that low-carb is good for losing fat but not good for running and I think that I need to build some carb stores. My bodyfat is around 12% right now and the body seems to be going after muscle for energy after 2.75 miles.</p>
<p>Smart decision, BC. </p>
<p>A small core workout for me before dinner. I made some soup using the sprouted pea/bean mix I got at Costco a couple of months ago (and finally used up the homegrown tomatoes!). This mix cooks very quickly without any pre-soaking. DH gave the soup two thumbs up.</p>
I made split pea soup yesterday with a ham hock. The house smelled very pea soup-y and DH and DD came home and groaned but then lapped up the soup in great quantities. Not an everyday meal but sometimes hits the spot.
Walking/running with neighborhood women the last few days. Now I can keep up their pace which was not the case a month ago.
South African oranges at the groceries around here. Am eating a lot of those. It’s good to have good oranges back in season.
<p>I’m eating the oatmeal right now. My wife cooked four cups last night and I put two cups in one of my GlassLock containers and zapped it in the office. The rest is in the fridge and she’s probably going to have it for breakfast.</p>
<p>My feeling on working out right now is that running is good for weight loss (ignoring the joint issues) up to a certain point with a low-carb diet and then you get to the point where the body can’t convert much fat to ATP while you’re running so you use up your ATP stores in about 20 minutes and then your body consumes your muscle. I think that I want to eat at least enough carb calories to support the number of miles minus one or two miles before running - or build up stores over time to accomplish the same thing.</p>
<p>I think that this may be a contributing factor to why weight-training and interval training are superior to running for weight loss - there’s are breaks where the body has time to convert fat into ATP. I think that walking confers this benefit too.</p>
<p>I had an earlier goal of losing another 20 pounds but my guess is that that’s about the amount of fat that I’m carrying right now - making that goal unrealistic unless I want to lose muscle mass to get there. I have a short-term goal of losing five pounds but I’m thinking that it might take a while, say one pound/month.</p>
<p>I’m planning on going over to Marshalls today to look for some more of these Adidas shirts for $7 that idad mentioned earlier. I’m going to Sports Authority too to see if they have the running shirts that I like - I have four of them, 3 XL and 1 L, and one more would mean that I could run M-F without having to do laundry.</p>
<p>I have not had pea soups in quite a long time - I’ve been mostly doing beans for lunch: kidney beans (alone or in chili), black beans, white beans, navy beans, etc. I look over the dried stuff at the supermarket and the beans seem to have better nutritional content though I’ll take another look at the peas when we go grocery shopping this week.</p>
