C3D72 7/30/12

Didn't get cardio in the morning as planned.  I'm failing miserably in morning cardio, but I did get it in tonight.  Prior to cardio I did three sets of three exercises with 15 repair each for my wrists and forearms.   I feel that I've helped strengthen other weak muscles starting with low weights anand increasing over time, so I'm hoping this will help them develop and not be my weal point in my workouts.

C3D73 7/29/12

Although today was my cheat day I did my first true HIIT since my town calf muscle on father's day followed by 20 min moderate cardio on the bike.  I spent most of the day in my yard doing landscape work so good additional calorie burned.  Thank God for that drizzle on and off,  it helped keep me cool!

C3D74 7/28/12

Good early evening upper body work out today after an action packed family day.  Tomorrow is my cheat day and will get some cardio in.

C3D76 7/26/12

Finished up a late lower body workout, decided to just do upper and lower body workouts on back to back days.  Will get back on track for cardio tomorrow.   Exhausted need sleep,  good night.

C3D75 7/25/12

No need to throw in the towel, was just a bump in the road.  Made it back in late tonight for an upper body workout and feeling good.

C3D76 7/24/12

Today was a complete failure.  No workouts and strayed off of nutrition and had a few drinks at a work outing.  Need to refocus what is important to me.

C3D77

Unfortunately, all intentions of ruining in the morning went out the window when I hit snooze one too many times.  Once I got home from work, ate dinner, and spent some time running around chasing my son who is learning to ride, I apparently was exhausted.   It's a little humid around here, maybe that is why.  After getting my son ready for bed and getting him tucked in, I laid down for a minute.  Next thing I knew it was 137am.  Whoops.  No workout.  My body is very confused between traveling,  late night workouts,  etc.  I set my alarm for 5am today and was going to double up, but I hit snooze on the alarm and had to get up and get ready and go straight for work.  I really need to focus on rest this challenge and be in bed at 930pm and get my workouts in early in the morning.   This goal has been a challenge for me through this whole process.  I will have to play catch up this week.  I will do cardio tonight and then a split tomorrow of cardio in the morning and weights tomorrow night.

C3D78

Made the trek to the gym pretty late and repeated my dumbbell leg workout from last week at my hotel.  I'm going to stick with it for the first 4 weeks just to get my muscles back in rhythm.  I tried the exercise for my hamstring superset that I couldn't do last week again and still was not able to do, so I found a machine that I could grab on to and did the motion in a negative motion and used my grip to help me down and up.  Hopefully after a week or two I can complete without the extra help.  One full week complete!

C3D79

I almost talked myself out of working out tonight.   At 830, I was ready to put my oldest son to bed and was going to take a nap and set my alarm to go do cardio at 11pm.  Good thing my wife kept me engaged, before I knew it the time came and I  never took a nap and got a second wind.  Off to the gym I went and did my moderate intensity interval running followed up by the bike for 20 min.  What is weird is that as I ran my legs felt good.  I was able to push my third and fourth interval max speeds to 5.5 and 6 MPH.  To me that is good for one week and recovering from a torn calf muscle.   Tomorrow would normally be my off day, but I took that Wed.  It's still my cheat day but will need to get a lower workout in.  Until then see ya!

C3D80

After a long few days,  I just finished up my upper body workout that I didn't do yesterday.   I feel well rested now, but boy are my legs still in pain from Tuesday's dumbbell workout.   I just can't get over how 4 weeks off set my legs back that much!

C3D81

It's been a long day.  Unfortunately I've been up since 3am cst time due travelling from the east coast back home.  Not working out my lower body because of my calf injury is today definitely noticed.  I am so sore. And walking around so slow.  Wish you all could see me waddling through the airport today.  The worst was the ramps.  I'm too tired to hit the gym late, so I will bump my exercises all one day.  I'm going to bed now and will do my workout in the morning.  Good night.

Hotel workout

I travel a lot for work and never know what kind of equipment will be available unless I have been there before.   Cardio seems to be the easiest to figure out as most hotels will have at least a treadmill, bike, elliptical, or some combination of the three.  Be prepared to adapt your cardio to whatever you have available and don't be scares of that machine you have never used.  These are the times I change my attempt at HIIT whether it be walking at an incline and altering the inclines or jogging / running with the inclines. I utilize an app on my phone JEFIT for keeping track of routines and it has a library of exercises with animation of how it should be completed.

Some hotels have a full range of dumbbells and benches or machines or both.  Again be prepared to be creative.   On this last trip my hotel had just dumbbells and benches and well, I had to come up with a leg work out. I can tell you that two days later I can barely walk lol, mostly because of my first leg workout since my injury. I did dumbbells squats supersetted with dumbbells lunges. I then moves to dumbbells dead lifts and was about to superset with the exercise on the video where you lift your leg on a bench and motion as sitting. Well, this didn't work for me as I was exhausted and almost falling. Quite the fun visual thinking back on it now. I then moved on to standing dumbbell calf raises and a superset of single dumbbell calf raises. ABS were last and I did your basic crunches on the floor with a superset of bench leg raises. What a workout! http://www.ehow.com/video_7381153_hamstring-workout-dumbbells.html

Difference between nutrition and supplement labels

I've seen them many times on my vitamins,  protein powders, etc.  On some protein powders there is even their proprietary ingedient formula, but it breaks it out as to not divulge their secret formula.  One place I noticed that has a nutritional label is on my EAS Myoplex.  As it turns out there is a difference in labeling of actual fooda and supplements.  For a quick read, you can find it here.

http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194357.htm

http://www.whichsupps.com/nutrition/advice/the-true-meaning-about-what-a-proprietary-blend-is-in-supplements.html

Challenge 3 Day 82

Well today was going well here in NYC, but I continue my love/hate relationship with it here.  Unfortunately for me after arriving the airport, my flight was canceled and no flights until tomorrow.  I scrambled to find a hotel and well what was left is not one in my top 10 choices, but oh well.  I had to get my cardio in.  I did my moderate intensity treadmill and finished up with a 20 minute bike.  Miss my family,  can't wait to get home.

Challenge 3 Day 83

After an early morning flight and on about 4 hours of sleep, I still had enough energy to work out late at my hotel.  Ok the body said no, bit my mind said YOU HAVE TOO!  The equipment was limited,  however I improvised with a all dumbbell routine with exception of my calf raises using just my body weight.   I used light weights to make sure that my legs are ready, I mean it's been a month since my injury and last leg workout.   The room was hot, seemed like no air circulation, so that water was going down easily.  My superset for hamstrings was in exercise I found online, that I couldn't complete or was doing it wrong.  In a nutshell you would put one foot on a bench and then sit back as if you were sitting in a chair.  My legs were burning bad from the deadlifts, so that didn't help.  I finished up with my abs and did lying crunches with a superset of leg lifts lying on a bench.  Back in November I would never have been able to do either of these,  but it shows how much my core has strengthened.  It's almost 1am est time,  so time for bed.  Have to get up at 6am for my cardio.   Hope my legs can handle it!

Challenge 3 Day 84

I completed my cardio late tonight.  I did 20 minutes of a moderate HIIT due to my recovering calf tear.   The good news is I can jog but I'm no where near my previous speeds, with time I guess.  I also was able to complete a low intensity 20 minute ride.  Not going to get much sleep since I have to be up in 4hrs for a flight.  Hope no lagging issues arise with my calf, as legs are tomorrow's workout.  Will have to go easy on it.

Pre challenge work out

Saturday I was able to get a late night work out in.  One of the few over the last month due to my calf injury.  I had decided to take some time to rest a nagging wrist discomfort.   Unfortunately,  it has not gone away.  Since I'm hoping to be good to get back in the gym tomorrow,  I wanted to see what I could do for my wrist.

My wrist issues seem to have begun when I ripped my old lifting gloves.  I replaced them with another Harbinger pair, but not the same as the ones I had.  I think the wrist support was not as wide and over some time I aggravated my wrist.  I took a trip to the local Sports Authority,  but they didn't have the ones I hoped to find.  I settled for a cheap pair of wrist wraps that also has a loop for the thumb, but not sure .  I tried them on and definitely see that they will help, but I will only need one for my left wrist.  They managed to fit under my gloves and did a good job through all my exercises.   I ordered the Schiek pair I wanted online from eBay, and hope these will hold up more than the ones I bought at Sports Authority.

Tomorrow will be my first cardio since my calf tear. I'm a little nervous, but will do a lower intensity HIIT in hopes of no reinjury. m

Where do I start...

It's for life, right?  I laugh thinking about it, but it's true.  I really don't know where to start.  Over this last 3-4 months I have been challenged with injuries.  You try to find the best fit for the issue and move on.  I overcome one issue it seems and another one develops.  As my lower back was healing up, I stayed on a bulking phase.  About a week before Father's Day, I had started back on my HIIT treadmill training with an added 20 minutes of moderate stationary bike.  I felt great, had been injury free for about a month and was sticking to core excercies, bench press, shoulder press, dead lifts, squats, etc.  I work out and feel like the Hulk looking in the mirror, I loved the pump!  My nephew had challenged me to some one on one basketball for Father's day, he's more than half my age lol, but it's always fun to hoop with him.  Timing couldn't have been better as I was one week into increased cardio.  We played a few games and had fun... I was so happy to feel how I did.  The last time he and I did this was Oct. 2011, one of the key days in me making the commitment to changing my life that started on 11/14/2011.  The last time I played was the day I took these pics.

 

  I had some hop, energy, speed... and wasn't winded!  But all good things must come to an end... as the ball bounced away on the driveway, I chased it down and casually hopped to catch the ball before it went in the grass when I felt a snap in my right calf.  A snap, you got it.  I landed on my other foot and instantly rolled into the grass laughing... always something.  There was pain and I was worried... all that kept flashing through my head was this was a bad injury, I knew it, but was down playing it to my family who watched.  When I got up, I could barely put pressure on it.  I elevated it, iced it, etc.  Hoping it wasn't as bad as it seemed, I slept the night.  In the morning, there was no way I could walk... horrible.  What did I do?  Well what I did was end up on crutches for a few weeks and lucky for me a pretty bad tear.

So here I am 7/14, just about to get back in the gym.  No cardio, no leg work since the tear... I just started up the upper body in the last week as my wrist had started to give me some pain previously and thought a few weeks rest would do it some good, but there is something still there that doesn't feel right.  I'm hoping to start my cardio on this coming Monday.  I've been working this injury with stretches and have been doing calf raises to stregthen them.  I was floored at how much strength I lost at first, but it feels to be getting much better. If I can do 3x20 single calf raises, I will be ready to introduce running slowly again.

Here was the last picture I took right before the injury, I continue to bulk up and lose fat, but still have a ways to go, hoping this next challenge will be the one to get a good chunk of my belly gone.  I have received many compliments on my upper body, shoulders, arms, back looking strong and powerful, but my gut is my gut.  What's funny is that my abs have never been stronger!  A frustrating mind game is that even though I had gone down in my belly, it's actually grown, but not because I'm gaining fat, but because my muscle seems to be pushing it back out!  Here's to my next challenge which I hope will start Monday. :)