Week 18: Little Blue Hemisphere, I Hate You

Take any exercise that's not too horrific -- lunges, marching leg lifts -- and then add the little blue hemisphere of death (which they call a Bosu, whatever that means), and you have a recipe for instant misery. Doing sit-ups on those things is plainly insane, yet we did that, too. I have no love for the little blue hemisphere of death.

We also did a usual course of sit-ups, push-ups, and various other ups that lead me to feel like I'm about to do some reps of throw-ups. Since my RSI doesn't play nice with things like push-ups, bench holds, and so on, I've also been stretching, including over the head stretches with a length of PVC pipe. The highlight of this week's workout was when Jessica malaproped that I ought to get myself a PCP pipe for home. If our workouts get much harder, I'm going to need some PCP for the pain.

Week 17: And Now For Something Completely Different

Week 17 included a normal two day gym week, which was grueling as always. We did two days back-to-back. To paraphrase Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: we chose poorly. Adding Kettlebell training was only a matter of time, since Ice Chamber was started by AKC pros (masters of sport and master trainers) so they could promote their sport (and, also, agony).

We did farmers' walks (to teach us why the wheel was invented), kettlebell presses, squats with a kettlebell (ruining the one thing I'd actually become somewhat proficient at), lunges, a bunch of cardio workout, and of course the usual torture of sit-ups, mountain climbers, and supermans.

However, over this past weekend we also did a five mile hike which was, quite literally, uphill both ways. That was a nice addition to the workout week, though the exertion may have contributed to how sick I was feeling by Monday.

And this weekend I also took the MSF/CA-MSP motorcycle safety class through CA.R.E. That was something of a workout in itself: nearly ten hours of range training in 40-50 degree weather. My four on-range Rider Coaches -- J.P., Gabriel, Roger, and Lisa -- were all fantastic. Like Jessica does at the Ice Chamber, they got me going by mixing encouragement into their critiques about my form and execution, guiding me to do a better job by making me more physically and mentally comfortable with the exercises rather than trying to force them.

It was quite a week for physical activity, especially considering that it started off with my being rather ill (and I was pretty ill last night, too, but thankfully 12 hours of sleep last night enabled me to finish the riding course successfully).

IronMax

On Sunday, my friend Max (aka IronMax) will be participating in the IronMan Arizona 140.6 triathlon. To me, this is amazing. Max is a nerd, just like me, but over the past few years he has become my physical training inspiration. His success inspired me to sign-up for plyometrics at the Ice Chamber, and to keep pushing myself even though it often is excruciating.

So here's wishing good luck to Max. I hope he completes the full 140.6, and achieves a time that he's happy with.

Week 16: Spin This

The Spinner bike (aka. Hell-on-Wheels-That-Dont-Take-You-Anywhere) reared its ugly head again. Are people not aware that all of modern society has been built upon one single premise: "climbing hills sucks"? Trains and cars to climb them for you, road grading machines to remove them, aircraft to fly over them -- you name it -- all these things stem from the human desire to avoid climbing f***ing hills. What kind of a sick mind invents a device to simulate climbing hills? Had the Spinner bike folks been alive during the Spanish Inquisition, it's obvious what their vocation would have been.

After riding a Spinner bike I am so exhausted and incoherent, I have no idea what is happening afterwards. At least, that's usually the case, but today we did another push-up like thing that involves supporting all your weight on one arm. My left shoulder does not want. Perhaps eventually I'll get strong enough and loose enough in the arms and shoulders that push-ups, and especially one-armed push-ups, don't feel like having a spike driven through my shoulder -- but until then, these are the worst thing ever.

And next week being Thanksgiving means I'll come back the following week even fatter and wimpier. Damn you Pilgrims!

Week 15

We're getting back into the groove at The Ice Chamber. And by "The Groove" I mean "The Pain". Aches and pains in my arms and legs are reminders of the SS-style workout that is plyometrics, and what a fool I am for doing it. Chance of death by heart attack is now at about 98.8%.

This week we did lunges, squats, lunges with weights, squats with weights, squat-to-press with weights, and of course horrible, horrible things like push-ups (aka. arm-destroyers) and mountain climbers (aka. vomit-inducers). All that made the rowing seem less horrid by comparison, but I know that's just my mind playing tricks on me. It's like people who say prison isn't that bad: they know they're not getting out, might as well make the best of it.

On the plus side, now my bicep, tricep, and hamstring pains can distract me a bit from the pain in my perpetually-RSI-injured trapezius.

Week 13/14: Just like starting over

I missed 2 weeks of workouts, and week 13 became two one-session weeks, due to illness and travel. This week became week 14, and it's just like starting over: I'm back at 99.9% chance of heart attack during the workout, and have put back on several pounds thanks to the patented "mostly booze diet" I stuck to during CineStory and Austin Film Festival.

We did some horrible thing called Bear Walks, which should have been awesome since you get to pretend you're a bear, and I'm working on a movie at work with "Bear" in the title to boot. But it wasn't awesome. It was as un-awesome as marching presses which, like most things that involve marching, make you understand what a miserable little worm you really are, Private. It also finally dawned on me: rowing is a form of torture. I was so incoherent most times we've worked on the rowing machines it never fully occurred to me until now just how awful it really is.

On the plus side, I allow myself to eat peanut butter after the workout, and everyone knows peanut butter kicks ass.

Week 12: A Blur

Week 12 became a 3-day 2 weeks and it all just went by in a blur. I've been super busy getting ready to go to CineStory and Austin Film Festival, and doing a hugely time consuming project at work, and trying to get in some writing on a script I'm co-writing with a friend, and... uh... a bunch of other stuff. So much so that when I went to the gym I was so exhausted that the pain just sort of got muted by the general incoherence of my sleep-addled mind at 8AM.

There was something new we did. It involved doing squats or lunges and rows while Anu and I tugged on elastic straps against each other, thereby becoming each others' resistance. It was very confusing to try to coordinate two people with no sleep. Hopefully this coming week will be more coherent, so I can grouse about it more clearly.

Week 11: Back In The Saddle

Due to jetlag and illness, Week 11's 2 sessions were actually spread out over 2 weeks. Now we're back into the groove. Owing to our weakened state, Jessica took it easy on us, but alas I am still sore. And I know that's just the calm before the storm.

We did manage to work in a new torture: uneven push-ups. Admittedly, all my push-ups are of uneven (at best) quality, but these are push-ups where the ground is made uneven through the insertion of a ball between one of my hands and the floor. The purpose of this seems at first pleasant enough: to simulate fondling a breast in order to make doing a push-up more pleasant. But it turns out the real purpose is to make the push-up far more painful in one shoulder, reminding me that no matter how horrid push-ups may be, there's always a way to make them worse.

Week 10A: Preparing To Occupy Europe

Today's special torment was front squats with balls of unusual size (ok, ok they were of usual size but unusual weight). I got to go from a 16 pound ball to a 28 pound ball over the course of 3 sets of reps. Oh, lucky me. The only place there should even be a 28 pound ball is hanging from an elephant.

We also did push-ups. After nearly 11 weeks of training, I can finally say that push-ups have gotten a little bit easier. When I first started, push-ups were like trying to shove the planet in one direction while shoving the sky in the other direction. Now I've finally realized that thanks to the wonders of fluid compressability what I'm really doing is shoving the planet in one direction and merely most of the sky in the other direction. So instead of 3 sets of reps of push-ups making me want to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, they make me want to jump off the Manhattan Bridge instead. High fives, everyone!

But it turns out that I am some kind of a freak, because I actually wish I was getting to go to the gym a second time this week. The terrorists have clearly won. But I'm not going a second time this week. I'm going to Europe instead, which is technically much, much more awesome than going to the gym. On the positive side, after being away from the gym for ten days I'll utterly and completely suck at everything again, instead of just mostly sucking, and that'll be good for at least a half-dozen more snarky blog posts.

Week 10: Rope a Dope

This week we added another new thing to our repertoire of pain called rope waves. It seems so simple. All you do shake a rope up and down for 30 seconds. Vigorously. And therein lies the rub. You see, I also learned a valuable life lesson this week: anything you can do, if you do it vigorously, it sucks.

The virtue of laziness is that you never do anything so vigorously as to make it suck, and thus lazy people enjoy life more. The harder you try, the more it hurts. So the secret to happiness is nonstop alternating binges of sleeping and eating.

On the plus side, I think I'm down to a 98.4% chance of dying of a heart attack each time we go to the gym. On the downside, there are certain gym activities I'm starting to sort- of like. Not only does that mean that the terrorists are winning and I'm becoming "one of them," but it also means if Jessica finds out what they are she'll make them more difficult. So I must endeavor to keep this information secure at all times.

And tthere have been Prids around twice in the last two weeks, which means dancing, but also beer and french fries. Ahh, life's balancing acts.

Week 9: No Clever Title

After 9 weeks of working out I finally have crossed the threshold and am now at a mere 98.5% chance of dying from a heart attack. I think that means Jessica was taking it easy on us today.

Earlier in the week we learned a new torment that I like to call "being kicked in the nuts." For some inexplicable reason, other people call them Inchworms, and they are almost as bad as Burpies (which suck so royally that I'll never actually do one without someone there yelling at me to do so). Essentially all my muscles were in pain after doing them. Even the ones that weren't involved had sympathetic pains.

Now I am just plain tired. I need a nap.

Week 8: Ministry of Silly Walks

Eight weeks of torment, and I'm down to a 99.5% chance of fatal heart attack every time I step inside the Ice Chamber (a wedding this past weekend, starting with hot dogs at AT&T park, followed by a lovely wedding, which was followed by a late night of partying on a party bus, and then a bacon burger all conspired to set me back into the mid 99.xx% range -- stupid me, I could have been down to like a 98.97% chance of heart attack otherwise).

Today we did a workout which included a routine I now refer to as the Ministry of Silly Walks: skips, grapevines, butt kicks, and some generic hopping side to side thing. Apparently I look so utterly ridiculous and cartoonish doing butt kicks that I caused Anu and Jessica to burt out into nearly uncontrollable laughter. Ahhh... being laughted at in the gym. Now that brings back memories.

It turns out that the interval between being six and being thirty-six proves that skipping and hopping are just like riding a bicycle: you never forget how, but if you don't do it for thirty years, you'll still totally suck at it "remembering how" notwithstanding. It starts off as a near-convincing simulation of fun, and then about two skips or so into it you realize "this is f**king difficult." Yet, it seems so easy for children -- which is just one of many reasons why children piss me off.

Fatness -- Let's Do Some Math

Why are Americans a bunch of fatasses? Let's do some math.

Take a typical fast food meal:

Big Mac: 540 calories
Large Fries: 500 calories
Medium Coke Classic: 240 calories
---------------------------------------------
Total = 1260 calories

The canonical 2000 calorie diet is only a rough estimate, one that is within about 10% accuracy for a male of my age and height, but may be very wrong for other people. In fact, all caloric intake estimates are imperfect, but you need to take into account factors like age, weight, gender, and rough activity level as this about.com calculator does. (And remember, that calculator is showing what you need to maintain your current levels, not slim down.) My wife, for example, should be eating about 400 fewer calories per day than me.

If we don't even account for the problems of empty calories (low nutrition, highly processed food that may impede metabolic reactions needed to properly consume the calories), water retention from high sodium foods, the fact that carbohydrates are burned easily and therefore preempt your body's need to draw from fat reserves, and other more subtle barriers to weight loss (and, more importantly, cardiovascular health and athletic muscle toning), we can see the roots of the problem from straight-up calorie math.

1260 calories is more than half the RDA for someone like me (a 200lb, 6 foot, 35 year old male). If all three meals Americans are eating each day are around the 1000 calorie mark, we're talking approx. 3000 calories or about 750-1000 extra calories a day for someone like myself. (And if you're doing the two Big Mac thing, and adding a 250 calorie baked apple pie, that's another 750 calories in one meal.)

I've been watching the readouts on the machines as I've been hitting the gym, and by way of example someone my size, weight, and age doing a moderate (level 5) cardio routine on the StairMaster is burning about 10cal/minute.

750 excess calories / 10cal/minute = 75 minutes

So, if I'm averaging 3000 calories a day, and my break-even estimate is 2250 calories, I'm at least 750 calories over break-even -- which means an hour and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted StairMaster workout just to break even. Most people who say that they are "relatively active" and are referring to less than an hour of cumulative strenuous walking, stair climbing, and similar activity during the day are fooling themselves. "But I walk a lot" perhaps applies to active people in New York City who may average two hours of fast walking per day or San Franciscans who pound the hills at reasonbly high speeds an hour a day (but even that's still going to be break even at best if it's not coupled with caloric moderation), but not really to anyone who just happens to have to walk during the day because their refrigerator isn't sitting right beside their TV.

The reason so many people are heavy is quite clear: easy access to high calorie foods, combined with the prevalence of sedentary post-industrial workplaces, make for people who eating far more calories than they'll reasonably burn in a day. This seems like common sense, but as the saying goes: sometimes common sense ain't so common.

Week 7: Cognitive Dissonance

I wound up going to the gym 3 mornings this week. What this bit of overkill made me come to fully realize is that I keep going back for some inexplicable reason.

Seven weeks of working out is like being put in Guantanamo, being released, and then willingly reincarcerating yourself -- six times. And paying for it.

That's the really odd thing to me. I'm paying a not insubstantial amount of money in order to go to gym class. I spent a nontrivial amount of time in high school coming up with clever ways to avoid gym class, and now, like a schmuck, I'm paying someone so I can relive the experience.

Sure, Jessica is much nicer than any of the gym coaches I had in school. And unlike most of them she's an actual athlete, as opposed to one of those "do as I claim that I did back in the mesozoic era, not as I do" kinds of coaches. But I'm still paying someone to help me relive one of the most miserable aspects of my teenage years. While I'm at it, I might as well ask her to tell me that she wouldn't date me if I was the last guy on earth, and to ridicule me in front of everyone -- to complete the teen experience trifecta.

Week 7b/6a: Sit and Spin, Mofo

Since my gym blog post last week was for half a week, today was either the end of last week or the beginning of this week. Either way, I have to post twice this week. Not because anyone else cares, but because when you start working out it becomes an all-consuming obsession. The reason for this is obvious: flight or fight. Working out is like being perpetually chased by a hungry tiger, and if you get distracted and think about anything else, even for a moment -- instant death.

So speaking of instant death, the Spinner / Spinning bike is a fascinating invention. It is specifically designed to simulate climbing a preposterously steep hill in the name of fitness.

Ever since the Trojan inventor Equus of Dardanus developed the horse, riding a bicycle uphill has been the exclusive domain of children (who are too naive to know any better), the desperately poor for whom a bicycle is the only alternative to walking (who have no choice), and fanatical cyclists (who are too naive to know any better). Anyone with the means to procure a horse, or one of those fancy "horseless horses" that have become all the rage since Baron Ferdinand von Kombustin-Enjin invented the Internal Combustion Engine, would scoff at the very idea of something so archaic and ridiculous as uphill bicycling.

I guess the inventors of the Spinner bike are SCA types who enjoy reenacting prehistoric times when people didn't have horses and had to ride their heavy iron bicycles uphill into battle, panting like a dehydrated dog as they sweated away their precious bodily fluids (tm) and stabbed eachother with lances. Some people have strange hobbies.

Week 7: Fial

Wednesday I was only 99.2% certain I was going to die of a heart attack, but I was already starting to get sick (probably some nerd plague I picked up at Comic-Con) so it was an even tougher slog than usual. I missed today because I only got sicker yesterday and today rather than a pounding heart I am left with merely a sore throat and earache. The worst part is that it makes this weekly gym posting utterly boring. So sad.

On the upside, according to my bathroom scale I've lost 16 pounds in the last 7 weeks. But I think it's lying to me to save its own hide, because I'm gonna bust that mofo in half if it ever calls me a fatty lardass again.

Week 6: Owner Of A Pounding Heart

Anu is out of town, so I'm on my own with the physical training thing. Very tricksy, that Anu.

On Wednesday I was about 99.9% certain I was going to die of a heart attack by about 3/4 of the way through the routine (which consisted of a circuit of beatings, waterboarding, truncheoning, fingernail pulling, simulated hangings, and having my genitals electrocuted -- or as the CIA euphemistically calls them in their dossiers: oblique twists, squats, lunges, sit-ups, push-ups, and pull-ups).

This morning I was only about 99.5% certain I was going to die of a heart attack. Improvement! At this rate I should consider myself "unlikely to die of a heart attack" in about 50 weeks. I think I shall celebrate with a bacon double cheeseburger at Dick's in San Diego when I go down for Comic-Con this weekend. That ought to round it out to a full 52 week year.

The weird thing is that it's only been about an hour since I left the gym, and yet I am already anticipating going back. This is bad. It means that Jessica, our so-called "trainer" (Grand Inquisitor might be a more appropriate term) is doing something to wear-down my natural instincts for self preservation. I'm beginning to crack. This is the onset of some sort of workout Stockholm Syndrome. Soon this empathy will turn into outright sympathy for my captors, then before too long I'll even be willing to tell them the launch codes (for what, I'm not sure -- but I bet these codes launch something). Next thing you know, I might become one of them. It happened to my friend Max, so I know that there's a real danger the terrorists may win.

Week 5: Youthful Exuberance

People say that exercise makes you feel young again. They are absolutely correct.

When I was young, I felt my life was miserable. Most of my time was spent thinking about escape, imagining a better life for myself. I dreaded each morning as the start of another day to suffer through.

Now, thanks to the power of working out, I've regained that youthful perspective on life.

Another aspect of the return to my youth facilitated by working out is the discovery that I still can't do sit-ups, push-ups, or pull-ups (the only ups I could ever do were 7-ups, regular or diet).

Today we did a slew of different exercises in fast bursts. It was sort of like being beaten-up, except that when you're being beaten-up at least someone else is doing all the work.

Since we did so many exercises, many of them new to our training, I've decided to make a helpful comparison chart for those unfamiliar with certain exercises:

burpies = Hitler
mountain climbers = Stalin
pull-ups = Chairman Mao
push-ups = Pol Pot
straight leg lifts = Idi Amin
sit-ups = Mussolini

On the upside, I'm so dehydrated I totally can't cry like the little pussy I am.

Week 4: A brief history of Push-Ups

For the benefit of those not in the know, I have researched the history of the push-up. It's original crude form was invented by ascetics in the 10th century as a form of self-flagellation. During the 20th century it was refined by the Nazis into a highly efficient means of torture. Adopted after WWII by U.S. Military will-breakers (aka. "instructors" or "Drill Sergeants") as a means of reminding green recruits that they're really not much better off than a Nazi prisoner, it subsequently came back into vogue amongst new-age self-flagellant sects going by such names as Fitness Fanatics and Health Nuts. The push-up is intended to not only cause pain, but guarantee humiliation, as onlookers realize the futile pursuit of the prone Atlas wannabe before them who -- at the whim of his "Personal Trainer," "Coach," "Drill Sergeant" or "Fitness Master" -- attempts to shove the entire planet away from them whilst holding the entire sky on his or her back. Preposterous.

On the upside, I apparently can now jump rope again. I suppose one should be thankful for small miracles. I celebrated by eating a burger and some fries, thereby guaranteeing at least one extra week of torture in terms of my quest to no longer look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. What the hell was I thinking? (A: I wasn't.)

Week 3: The Slowening

It turns out that if you've been strenuously working out for 3 weeks (and you're me), that is the exact right amount of time for you to start getting slower and your aching to persist beyond the actual day of workout. Well now isn't that exciting?

We did pull-ups (which I never could do) using gigantic rubber bands as an assist. And you know what? Using that mechanical assist, pull-ups are... still are preposterously difficult, excruciating, and make me want to cry. As an added bonus, when I get worn out (i.e. after two or three wussy rubber band pull-ups), I lose the tension in my body and the rubber bands shoot my legs out in front of me and I have to cling on for dear life. Come to think of it, maybe that is secretly the exercise, and the pull-ups are an elaborate ruse.

On the plus side, I got new sneakers (New Balance cross trainers), so now my feet only feel like they've just been run over by a bus 50% of the time, rather than 100%. And a gym jacket. Now I look the part of a chubby wanker trying to play himself off as some kind of athlete.

And I finally did 15 damned rope jumps in a row, without tripping and stumbling. For someone as athletically challenged as I am, that's got to be some kind of progress. I just hope I can repeat it.