Training when you don't feel like it

Today I didn't feel much like getting a workout in.  I was feeling a bit tired, it was hot out, and also Sunday (which I almost always make an off day).  Oh yeah, and my training partner was nearly electrocuted at work the other night and thus wouldn't be able to make the session.  I felt a bit silly having texted him to ask if he was coming over - I was off work yesterday and thus hadn't heard of his situation.

I realize most of these excuses are pretty lame, and anyone who wants to get into the habit of training regularly needs to be able to overcome.

Because of my work schedule, I knew that if I didn't get a workout in today, I would be out of sync for the next 3 days.  I reheated and drank a half cup of coffee left over from the morning, then filled my water bottle up with cold water, grabbed my ipod and headed out to the backyard.

Ended up having an excellent Heavy day RoP workout in.  On some of the sets of Clean and Presses I seriously felt as though I had my 16kg kettlebell in my hand instead of the 20!  I was quite tired but not totally spent at the end of it all.

What are some of the things that tempt you to skip a training day?  If you do end up getting to the gym (or wherever you train) do you find the workout to be better than usual?

Pull Up Update

My progress with pull ups is slow but steady.  I am quite confident in my ability to do "almost one" pull up.  The reason I say "almost" is because I do most of my pull up practice on the kid's play structure in the backyard.  The monkey bar support arms are relatively low, maybe a bit less than 7 feet off the ground.  This means I have developed a strong finish to each pull up - getting my chin over the bar, but I am weak at starting from a full hang (since initially I never did).

 In addition the support arms are rectangular and even the slightly rounded corners dig into my hands pretty good which limits how long I am able to hold on - which is not good if I'm trying to do a flexed arm hang after a couple sets of one pull up.

Travel to a local park and just use the monkey bars there, you might suggest?  Not a bad idea, but that's inconvenient compared to just heading to the backyard as I leave home or return.  Also, have you looked at kid's playground equipment lately?  It seems quite rare to find straight, flat monkey bars anymore.  They are all either circular, arched, wavy, or something else; I guess this makes them more fun somehow to use for the kids?

What is my solution to these dilemmas?  A little DIY of course!  Tomorrow I plan to head over to the local hardware store and grab some lumber and fasteners, a steel pipe, and see what happens.  I don't have super-elaborate plans, what I plan to do is add on to my kids' play structure.  I have assured my wife that I am 99% positive I won't structurally affect the climber.

I will keep you posted and hopefully have some pics if it ends up being functional.  On a handiness scale of 1-10 I would rate myself a 6.5, so I think this will go ok, wish me luck.

Fat Loss - What I used to lose 48lbs since September

In September of '09, I made a decision to start losing weight and in general become more healthy.  This is a decision I had made before in my life, but this time I planned to make it stick.  So far this is going pretty well, and while I have had a few plateaus in the months since, as the title of this post indicates, I am still down nearly 50 pounds 10 months later.  Having certainly gained some muscle in this time as well, I am confident that I have lost at least 60 pounds of fat.
The catalyst for this particular session of weight loss was a competition.  Inspired by programs like The Biggest Loser, several of the members of the poker chip enthusiast website chiptalk.net decided to have a weight loss challenge.  I had participated in events like this before, and have always found them to be a very good motivation to keep me disciplined.  I knew already what my exercise program would be - kettlebells of course!  But the question I had was what to do about my diet.  In the past I have done low carb Atkins-type diets and been successful - for a while.  I know several people who were fans of point-counting strategy weight loss plans and briefly considered trying that out myself.  In the end I ended up going with the one strategy I was absolutely sure would work.  I called it "Eat Less and Exercise More".  I cut down on portion sizes - no more seconds on anything - and cut out desserts as well.  Additionally, no more drinking of calories.  Other than my coffees, nearly everything I drink is low cal or calorie free.
These changes produced weight loss, and no doubt they would for anyone in need of dropping some fat.  However, it is actually pretty difficult to never have a second helping or overeat in any way.  Especially when there is lots of food available, like at a party or even at my job, the urge to head back to the food table and have "just one more slice" is quite tempting, at least for me.  After a few weeks on the "just eat less" diet, I  found a book that revolutionized my relationship with food and my pattern of eating.
The book is called Eat Stop Eat, by Brad Pilon, and is based on the idea of flexible intermittent fasting.  Essentially you eat normally (which should be as healthily as possible) and once or twice a week you take a break from eating and fast for 24 hours.  That really is the whole plan.  You could take that one sentence and go with it and never actually read the book!  I did buy it however and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Fasting has many health benefits, losing fat is just one of them.  Having read the book really helps when people try to tell me that "fasting is going to slow your metabolism" or "that's bad for you, you HAVE to eat breakfast" or something like that.  I plan to cover some of the myths about eating in future blog posts, actually.  Eat Stop Eat works because by cutting out 48 hours worth of eating from your week (four meals total, plus all snacks you would have eaten during your fasts), you are eating less.  After all, that is the reason why any diet works, whatever the method used, the effective diets have you eating less than you ate before.  By using the Eat Stop Eat method, I didn't have to feel like I was denying myself every single day.  Also, the discipline of fasting helped me to recognize all the reasons I ate, whether it was because I was hungry, bored, or just because it was "time to".  This may not be true for everyone, but after following Eat Stop Eat for nine months, I find not eating at all to be much easier than trying to stop myself from eating too much.  Later posts will cover more about this, including what to eat on the days when you're not fasting, but I definitely recommend you check out Eat Stop Eat if you find yourself stuck on your fat loss journey.

Exercise on vacation.

First off, as I mentioned last post this is something I rarely have ever done before.  While I was away at a cottage on the Bruce Peninsula, I took my 20kg kettlebell with me.  My goal, if you remember, was to complete 5 workouts while I was up there.  Funny thing about vacation workouts:  the book I took to read was the excellent The Purposeful Primitive by Marty Gallagher.  In it, he actually mentions the notion of working out while on vacation, and recommends against it!  Luckily for me I was already 4/5 of the way done.

Actually, he probably wouldn't have a problem with my goal.  His point about not working out while on vacation is valid because a vacation is a great time for someone who is a regular exerciser to take a week off of weight training and give their body a rest (knowing that there is still plenty of walking, hiking, swimming on most vacations).  In my case, I was approaching the vacation workout schedule as a chance to challenge myself to be more regular about working out in an environment free from so many of the excuses I use to avoid it generally.  This past week I haven't been able to mentally claim I was "too tired from work" or "too busy" or "I had to watch the kids".  So I was able to set a goal and achieve it, and I have to say it feels great.  On a related note I was able to lose 1.5 pounds for the week, not bad considering I didn't fast at all and there was lots of great food served every meal.  I probably would have done even better than that had my stepmom not brought a milkshake machine......

Anyway, here's what my week of cottage workouts looked like:

Sunday -Clean and Press, Kettlebell Swings (100)
Monday - A bit of variety, I did a mix of one and two handed swings for 100 total reps.  Also high pulls, goblet squats and some burpees.
Tuesday - Clean and Press, rows, more goblet squats and 100 swings (seeing a pattern there yet?)
Wednesday - Some push ups, a couple waiter presses and a hundred swings of course.
Friday - Clean and Presses and Swings.  Guess how many swings?  I actually set my alarm to get up by 6:45 to make this fit in before we had to pack up and leave.  My original intention had been to do 5 days in a row but on Thursday I was feeling a bit run down (actually had a 3 hour nap in the afternoon!) and so I felt an early start Friday was a much better idea.

So overall 500 swings for the week and quite a few presses done too, with some other exercises thrown in for practice and variety.  Maybe not the hardest-core workout week ever but I am pretty satisfied with it.

Exercise, on vacation!?

Actually, I did this once already this year.  I took my 16kg kettlebell with me on a weekend trip to Ottawa earlier this year with my wife.  But this upcoming week I plan to take it to a whole new level.  My family and I are headed to a cottage for a week's vacation for a week starting tomorrow.  I'm going to take my 20kg KB with me and hope to get a workout in with it at least five times.  Yes, five workouts while I'm on vacation.  This is not something I ever thought I'd hear myself saying let alone actually doing!  I'll report back next weekend with what I actually ended up achieving.

Fat Loss - Your Best vs "Good Enough"

Most of my adult life I've been overweight.  Generally I've bounced between about 250-280lbs or so, with gusts up to a max of 317 at one point.  September of 2009 found me at 276lbs, and just today I weighed in at 229.5 (yes - I'm going to go fractional here, I like being sub 230).
Many people, especially people who are just seeing me for the first time in a while, have been asking me if I've lost weight, and when I say yes,  tell me that I'm looking good.  This is very nice of them, of course, and much appreciated.  It's definitely nice to have your hard work acknowledged.  I do think there's a bit of a downside to this, however.  The risk is that I begin to think that what I've done is all that needs to be done.  While I do think I look ok now, if I just accepted it I would stay here.  Actually, between December of last year and May of 2010, my weight went from 237.5 to 236lbs - because of just this phenomenon.  Losing a whole bunch of fat fast felt great and I became complacent and content to maintain that state.  As I mention, others can reinforce this.  At a recent get-together, one of my relatives seemed almost horrified when I mentioned that I still to lose another twenty to thirty pounds.  As if being 6'3" and 200lbs even I would be like a skeleton or something?  This person didn't actually know my weight, so maybe they just aren't good at estimating the mass of someone who is bigger than they are (many people aren't, I find).  I wonder if perhaps because so many people are at least a bit overweight in our society these days that people just don't know what a healthy weight even is any more?
Have you found yourself on a lengthy plateau at any point in your quest to lose weight?  Why do you think that was, and what made you decide to keep pushing forward?

Fat Loss - The Importance of Diet

Are you struggling with fat loss?  While this blog is overall tracking my progress as I move toward becoming a kettlebell trainer, meaning a lot of it will be about exercise, I will try to add in as much as I can about fat loss.  Diet can be a scary word, everyone wants to lose weight but nobody wants to be "dieting".  I believe diet makes up at least 80% of your fat loss progress.  As important as getting regular, strenuous exercise is for cardiovascular health, fitness, and even fat loss; how much you eat is more important in that last category.  Note that I don't say "what" you eat.  Is eating healthier food good for you?  Of course - eating more natural, unprocessed foods including lots of fruits and vegetables is much better for you than a meal plan consisting of pizza, ice cream and junior mints.  But the amount of calories you take in is what is the key.  It is certainly possible to lose fat on either of the above eating styles.  It is harder to do eating pizza, but it could be done.  Pay attention to how much you eat, whether it's "junk" food or green salad.  Your diet is absolutely the most important thing to consider when it comes to fat loss.

A lot of people I've talked to seem to find this idea unbelievable or at least somehow incorrect.  All the TV experts seem to show that insanely intense exercise programs are the key to dropping pounds, and infomercials advertise their workouts a lot more than they mention the diet program they recommend you do at the same time. It should be obvious that it is possible to lose weight without ever exercising by cutting enough calories.  An example of this would be someone who had gastric bypass surgery of some kind.  By limiting the amount of food they are able to eat at a sitting, they consume less calories over a day.  Contrast that with someone (maybe you?) who commits to exercising regularly but plateaus after dropping a 5-10 lbs or so.  No matter how intense your daily exercise, it's possible to derail it with overeating. 

What do you think about diet vs exercise when it comes to fat loss?  Do you agree with my 80/20 weighting toward diet in terms of importance?

A Summer of Pull-Ups

Or chin-ups, I guess.  Because the HKC course has as a requirement 5 tactical pullups/chinups, I am going to start focusing on that as a part of my training.  Before this year I have never, ever been able to do a full chin up.  This has been due to being either too weak or too heavy.  Hmm, I guess probably both.  But since dropping so much weight and working out much more regularly, my strength-to-weight ratio is now such that I can do exactly one on days when I'm well rested and feeling strong.  So, that puts me 20% of the way to my goal.  How exactly I'm going to go the rest of the way I'm not entirely sure.  I will be getting myself on some kind of progression, which one remains to be seen.  All I know for sure is that I will be doing lots of lifting my body off the ground and up to a bar during the next two and a half months.  There is no way I will risk attending the certification without knowing for sure that I can hit six any time I'm asked to.
Do you have any tips for increasing pull-up/chin-up numbers?  What progression or routine worked for you?

HKC and RKC explained

Just in case you don't know what I'm talking about when I mention the HKC and RKC certification programs; and have not yet clicked on a link to discover what they're all about, I thought I'd give you the quick rundown.  HKC stands for Hardstyle Kettlebell Certified, which is a one-day entry level certification as a kettlebell trainer.  The one-day and entry level part are definitely appealing to me, because while I've not only not ever been a trainer of anything physical; for most of my life I've never even been physical.  The concept of exercising regularly is only a very recent addition to my life.  One thing about the HKC that is a bit daunting to me is the test requirement for it: being able to do 5 tactical pull-ups or chin-ups.  Before this year I had not ever done one full chinup, as my strength to bodyweight ratio made it impossible.  Now that I have been getting much stronger and much lighter, I can do solid partials and the occasional full chinup.  I do have a ways to go before being at the requisite level, but I think that by shortly changing my focus on what I'm training then I will be able to accomplish the 5 chinup goal.

The RKC, or Russian Kettlebell Challenge certification workshop is a full 3 day weekend of learning and training.  As a result it is much more advanced and in-depth than an HKC cert.  Not only that, but the cost is obviously much higher due to the increased value, and depending on what early bird discounts you get is going to run you anywhere from 3 to 5+ times the cost of an HKC.  All these factors are steering me towards making the HKC my current goal, though the RKC weekend remains an event I will dream about for the future.  One extremely helpful feature of the HKC cert is that the full cost of it can be put toward an RKC weekend if I do that training within a year of HKC completion.  

The bottom line is that I believe completing these certifications will best enable me to teach others about kettlebells in the most effective way possible.  I will do my very best to ensure my goal of attending them becomes reality.