D.Alan 
"Have a body that people look at and say, "Hey, he works out!""
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Archive for the 'Training' Category
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
I discovered an unexpected benefit to all my lifting and diet minding this week… it helps me in my relatively new “hobby” job which at times requires me to get into small spaces and climb ladders and hoist things around.
My “hobby” job is some part-time work I do as an assistant pipe organ technician, something I started last spring. I have always had an interest in pipe organs, having studied the playing of them in college and indeed own a small one myself, and I kind of stumbled into this job. I work with a guy who has his own business doing this and I tag along with him when he needs another set of hands. I have worked on only a handful of jobs with him since last spring and until this week it was strictly easy stuff as far as fitness requirements go. So far we’ve done only tuning, which requires me to simply sit at the console (keyboards) and hold down keys while he tunes pipes in the chambers.
This week I was with him on a couple of jobs. On the one job we were doing an evaluation of an organ that has had little to no attention for many years, and is over 80 years old, and assessment was needed of its current condition and what can/should be done with it. We both climbed up into the chamber, which was accessed only through a small hatch in a ceiling in the church we were in. In my larger days, I think it would have been a rather close fit getting through that hatch, not to mention the climbing required up small ladders to hoist my former bulk around. Once inside the the chamber we had to climb to the upper level of this organ and that was through another hatch, which I think was a bit smaller than the main one we had already gone through.
On the second job that day we were tuning and he ran into a problem with very large pipe he was trying to tune (the low C of a 16′ Bombarde for those who know about these things). He called for me to come into the chamber with him. This particular organ is very large and the pipes are just jammed everywhere in the chamber and there isn’t a lot of room to move around. You have to be a bit of an acrobat to get into the chamber in the first place, crawling through a small hatch in a wall of the chancel in the church, and then you have to traverse a couple of levels in the thing to get where the pipe in question was located. Again, it would have been a chore in my formerly larger size to do all that. Then I had to climb about six feet up a ladder and hold myself there and reach across to help unsnag the upper end of the resonator of this very large pipe so he could get at the part of the pipe containing the reed that needed attention to be tuned properly.
I didn’t think about it at the time, but after I got home that evening I got to thinking about all the physical things I had to do that day and how not too long ago it wouldn’t have been as effortless as it was. I was rather proud of myself for making the “right” decision to get into this lifting stuff, and this was a great side benefit that I hadn’t even imagined, nor was even a possibility at the time I started.
I want to be able to keep climbing around inside pipe organs (yeah, I’m weird), so I’m definitely gonna keep liftin’.
Posted in Training, Other
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
This was Week #104 of my lifting… two full years. To borrow StressMonkey’s phrase when he hit the two year mark, I can now say that “I’ve been lifting for years.” I kinda jumped the gun this morning when I set my fit status to “I’ve been on bb.com for two years,” thinking it was the 18th that I joined this site, but I saw later that it was actually the 21st. Oh well, start the party anyway!
I never would have believed it back in the fall of 2007 when I decided to get serious about lifting and diet minding that I would actually have stuck with it long enough and hard enough to actually accomplish anything. I spent so much of my life up to that point fat/chubby and wishing I could be more fit looking and would try things like lift a little (emphasis on little, both in effort and weight) now and then, or try to mind what I was eating, but since I was never making a lifestyle change, it never worked and never lasted more than a few days at a time. BB.com and the BodySpace folks especially can take a lot of credit for getting me this far: the positive comments and encouragement all along the way have been a tremendous help. As I have commented before in the blogs, I have virtually no support of my bb efforts at home with my folks or my friends and coworkers. That was something else that worked against my earlier efforts, the lack of support. Here on bb.com I found all sorts of people who had similar fitness backgrounds to mine and who managed to transform themselves. Some were like me being always chunky (or worse) and managed to trim down and muscle up, others came from the other end being very lean and learned to bulk up and muscle up. Many were my age or in the ballpark, as they say. Hey, if they can do it, maybe I can do it, too! Looking at others’ pix each day helps keep me focused. There’s always more bodies out there better than your own to keep you motivated.
I started out as a fat 43-year-old at over 190 lbs at 6-ft tall, and at times in the past I had been well over 200 lbs. There was a time in my mid-20s that I was approaching 220. I have no or few pix of me from that time. I sure didn’t want my photo taken then, but now one from that time would be a good comparison pic. When I started two years ago my body fat percentage was over 20%, probably around 23-24%. Today it is down below the teens, maybe around 12%, give ‘er take. Net weight on the scale is down about 20 pounds, but the fat weight is likely greater than that because I have put on some muscle. Previously the only place I would go shirtless is at the cottage where there are few other people close by; I sure wasn’t into being seen shirtless. This summer I mowed the lawn, washed the car, and did other house chores outside shirtless and I didn’t care who saw me. Cool stuff.
We had a big family event this weekend, my folks’ 50th wedding anniversary was yesterday and I rented a room at a local restaurant and had a dinner for them and over thirty friends and relatives. Some of the relatives I had not seen in about three years and they were extremely complimentary and supportive of my appearance, which was a nice ego boost. One of the dinner guests was the mother of the family I grew up next door to, her youngest is a year older than me and we were best friends growing up. We haven’t seen each other in almost ten years. The mom commented to my mom that she thought that I looked so good, along with her older son who keeps rather fit, but her comment about her younger son was, “Oooh, he’s so hea-vy.” Another one of the guests apparently also commented to my mom about how good I looked, so I think my mom is finally getting the message that what I have done is a good thing. There has been this underlying almost tension with my mom since it was becoming obvious that I was losing weight, I think she was convinced I had some dread disease despite my repeated assurances to the opposite and that it was because I am lifting.
Here’s to the next two years of lifting… so I’ll keep liftin’.
Posted in Training, Other
Saturday, October 10th, 2009
I guess all this lifting does more than make you look good, it gives you some oomph to get things done about the house… Three years ago almost to the day we had a bad early snow storm that pulled down a lot of tree limbs and in my yard there was one huge limb that did a number on a section of a low (4′) chain-link fence along one side of the property. We of course cleaned up all the downed tree limbs and all that at the time, but I just never got to doing anything about the fence. It’s just a small section that’s affected and it’s in some brush between my yard and the next-door neighbor’s so it’s just never been a priority to repair. I look at it most every time that I am out near it and think that I probably should call fence outfit to come deal with it but they’ll probably want to replace the entire fence, which is around 60-ft long, so it won’t be cheap, etc. and I don’t do anything about it.
This week I was out in the yard doing a few things and I got eyeballing the fence again. The damaged section consists of one post that was knocked off angle, maybe to about 30 degrees or so off vertical. The top bar is badly bent in this area as well. I got to thinking, maybe I should try to just push that post back in line. Why not. I grabbed it, leaned into it and shoved with everything I’ve got and by damn, the post moved. I rested a moment and repeated. Did it a third time and the post, while not perfectly vertical, is sure a lot closer to vertical than it has been the last three years. I really don’t think I bent the post as it’s about an inch and a quarter steel tubing, but something moved. I was rather pleased with myself to have accomplished a task that looked like some serious equipment (and money) was needed. I still need to replace the top bar as it is really bent out of shape and there’s no way I can bend that, but heck, I think I can get this fence finally repaired for very little money.
What is it about computer people and huge bellies? I was at a departmental meeting this week of other school IT folks and there were some new faces in the bunch. I ended up at lunch sitting next to one of the new guys and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This guy is probably around 30, maybe 5-8 or so in height, and has this enormous belly and probably outweighs me by 60 or 70 lbs. Seated his belly was more than half way to his knees. Geez. There’s a couple of others in the dept. that are not small, either. You just want to grab them by the shoulders and say "look at yourself, do something!" I have a couple of friends who have been heavy a goodly portion of their lives who are now in their late 50s or early 60s and their knees are completely shot from carrying that extra weight all that time. All the more reason you want to get the younger ones to wake up.
Saw another friend this week that I see only periodically and she was complimenting me on my appearance yet again and seemed so surprised that "you have been able to maintain this all this time." People just don’t get it that a lifestyle change is required for all this to work. She really raised her eyebrows when I said that I lift five nights a week. Nothing fancy is required, just that old fashioned dirty four-letter word: W-O-R-K.
I am quickly approaching the two-year mark on my joining bb.com and making the commitment to lifting and a better diet and I want to look great for the progress pix that I will take, so I will keep liftin’.
Posted in Training, Other
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Passed a milestone this week, I have been lifting for more than 100 weeks! If I do say so myself I am rather proud of that. If you’ve read my profile you know that before I started into this seriously nearly two years ago my attempts at lifting were half-hearted, unguided and never continued more than a week or two. (What? You can’t look like Arnold in a couple of half-assed workouts whilst stuffing your face with cookies?)
Had a setback this summer with the additional weight that I put on. My waist is up a quarter inch since the beginning of the summer and my weight is up 4-5 lbs or so, but I am trying hard to get it back down again.
In the great news department, there were a couple of gains to note in the monthly measurements tonight, namely my chest, bis and forearms, clocking upward ever so slightly… a half inch on the chest, an eighth inch on the bis and another eighth or so on the forearms. Sweet. I have done some tweaking in the routines to hit the bis, lats and delts a bit harder and it looks like it is working. Now to get the belly fat back into recession mode…
Gotta love the commenters on the pix. Received a comment from someone about a recent pic telling me that I need to keep hitting the cardio — no argument there — but then socks me with a "3" rating. WTF. This after I gave this particular rater a "10" on a pic of his. I’m all for reciprocation on pic rating (I rate you, you rate me), but really. Ok, yeah, I’m still a bit of a lard butt and I need to work on the BF, but I think an 8 would be more fair, IMHO.
Now, granted the ratings each poster uses are extremely subjective and there are many who give "10"s for everything, and I am in that catergory. My own philosophy is that if you’re lifting and/or dieting and/or hitting the cardio and think you’re making some progress whether it’s real or imagined and you have the balls to post a pic to the world, then dammit you deserve a "10" for the effort if nothing else. My "ratings" are in the written comments in a good-great-awesome-incredible sort of scale, if you can call it that. Occasionally I’ll not rate a pic of a first posting of a starting point pic of some guy hoping to make some changes with 30%+ BF, and I’ll write something encouraging in the comment field… I was there myself at one time. I have no problem with those who use a 7-8-9-10 scale for ratings, saving the 10s for the awesome bods out there and I know I am not one of those. But a 3? Good grief. Lifting and busting my arse for nearly two years for a 3 from a noob? Pshaw. When I first joined bb.com and was extremely reluctant, hesitant, etc. about posting pix, a lower rating on a pic would send me into a grumble for a while, and had I gotten a 3 back then, I might’ve left for good and given up completely on the lifting. Now I just shake my head and chuckle.
I am coming up on the two-year mark for my joining bb.com and getting started making some body changes and I don’t want to lose any momentum… so I’ll keep liftin’.
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It started last week, but was just sore for a day or two afterward and seemed to be better, but this week when I tried the flat bench and flyes it really started hurting. I am not too happy, of course. I can do incline flyes and presses OK, so it must be just one specific muscle or something.
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