dstumpy13’s BodyBlog

Week two.  Went into the gym today and between the scales there and the one here at home, I am consistently down 4 pounds from last Monday.  I’m not going to record my daily weigh-in here on this site.  Just my monthly.  I suppose I could do weekly.  I’m usually my lowest weight on a Thursday.  Perhaps I should put down my Thursday weight for each week.  School starts next week.  I have to get to work earlier so that my workouts do not interfere with either work or school.  I have been waking up a lot better but still laying around or taking my time in the morning so I’m still not getting to work any earlier.  I need to set that routine this week.  Tomorrow.  I was a bit tired today.  Not sleepy or even drained.  Just not fully energized.  My workout definitely helped my energy level though.   I really like my new routine of doing cardio before I hit my weights.  It feels good.  Though there isn’t anybody in the gym it seems while I’m doing the cardio.  Then when I go to hit the weights, it’s super crowded.  I might have to reverse them just so I don’t have to fight for an apparatus or share anything.  I’m good about sharing usually but I don’t like doing it.   When you’re on a truncated timetable it sucks to have to share.  

Well this week was a good test week.  I did my new program through the whole week at the gym.  It felt good.  I hit all of my target areas at least once a week.  Legs everyday.  I still want to add pushups and crunches to my morning.  That will give me some more chest and much needed ab work.  However, I’ve never been much of a morning person.  I have been going to bed earlier and wakeing up earlier.  Still not quite enough though.  But better than I have ever been.  It’s really nice being well rested and strong all day.  But damn 10:00pm hits and I’m lucky if I’m not falling asleep where I stand.  Maybe I’m just getting old.  Reguardless… the new workout seems to be treating me well.

So I started the new routine today.  Not bad.  Felt good to do some cardio before I did some lifting.  I had a tiresome but fun weekend in Vermont with Kelly and her friends.  We went snowboarding at Jay Peak on Saturday.  We did a nice hike on Sunday also.  I was feeling the energy drain today.  I haven’t yet begun to do a morning routine.  I need to catch up on some sleep and get into a good sleep pattern.  I’ve determined that I probably will never be able to win the biggest loser contest that we’re doing.  I just cannot based simply on the percentages.  I don’t have as much to lose as everyone else.  I will just have to stay as dilagent as I can.  I know I can do well and get my BF% real low.  I just want to look really good.  I also seem to have better focus when I’m training hard.  That goes for school and work as well.  School starts back up in a few weeks.  I was hoping on getting more snowboarding and snowmobiling in around here before it did, but with 60 degree weather thats not going to happen.  I have a dentist appointment tomorrow.  There’s also a Sabres game.  They’re playing at NJ.

So its a new year.  With it comes new goals.  I almost feel like I’m starting a new life.  There will be new workout practices.  I need to continue to improve my diet.  I also need to drink less often and when I do, I need to drink less. 

My girlfriend’s family all go to a little island right off of Puerto Rico every year and they’ve asked me to come along.  This should be fun as it is the first time I will ever have taken a vacation from work to go somewhere tropical.  So my girl and I kinda started a bet to see who could get in the best shape.  Specifically who could loose the most weight percentage.  Its a risky bet for me as she already weighs a lot less than I do and thus her percentages improve.  Well some of my family caught wind of this and over Christmas we all decided to do a Biggest Loser contest of our own.  Everyone who’s in throws 20 bucks in the pot and the best percentage takes it in April!  This is great as my family is a fun group, somewhat competitive and we all could definitely be more fit.  I want to see how well I can really do.  I’ve learned a lot in the last 5-6 years or so that I’ve been working out.  Every year my personal goals mature and change.  I want 2008 to be my best year ever.  I want to look good in April for the beach.  Now my GF and I will look even more awesome next to each other in our bathing suits.  She’s super competitive and my sister and her have become friends and may begin working out together.  Which will be great for both of them to have a work out partner.  Personally I don’t like working out with anyone.  I like doing my own thing.  Hammer down, shower and get back to work.  I have a whole bunch more new music to throw on the mp3 player and I’m excited to get back in the gym since being on holiday since December 20th.  Well anyways, I’m still thinking I want to do a side bet with just my GF.  Still have our own thing.  We’ll see.

So I have to come up with a reasonable goal.  I have 3 months.  I weighed in at 201.2 today.  A 7 site pinch test put me at 14% body fat.  I figure I can realistically get myself to about 9%.  Eight percent would be even better.  That would put me in the 189 - 191 range if I could keep all of my lean body mass.

I’m going to implement a new style of work out.  I never really warmed up before.  So going into the New Year I’m going to make sure that I schedule in a proper warm up into every workout.  I actually want to make sure that I do 15 minutes of cardio everyday right before I lift.  I will also add more compound movement exercises to my routine.  With school and working fulltime, I really don’t have a lot of time to do my workouts in so I’m going to try and get a few days a week where I do another session.  It will probably be cardio to keep it simple.  I have a pretty good base for muscle mass.  I need to drop my BF% more.  So I’m going 15 minutes of cardio, add in compound movement exercises, with a few heavy lifts here and there, all in an interval style program at first.  If anybody has some suggestions on good 30-40 minute program that would be cool.  I’m hoping this will be a better system for me.  I’ve kinda hit a personal plateau of sorts and I need to kill it. 

I want to also do pushups and crunches in the morning.  Every morning.  I also went and got myself a jump rope.  I like aerobic workouts that incorporate arm movements too.  So, jumping rope, rowing, and the elliptical machine will most likely make up most of my cardio.

Today when I went to the gym, I had Matt my trainer do my all my stats.  My BP was good, 122/76.  After that I went out, warmed up, and tested a few of my one rep maxes.  That was neat as I had never really done that before.  I’m not positive I even did it right, but I got a good idea of where I should be.  Tomorrow I will do more of them and figure out what excersizes I will be doing for the first part of my training.

If I can get to 9% bf by April, I might try and get to 6% or 7% in the fall and try my luck at doing a show.  I think it would be neat to be able to say that I have done at least one.