New Year - New Body

Seems a lot of people are talking about losing weight, becoming more healthy, working out, etc. Oh wait that's right it's the beginning of the year. Resolution time. This is when so many lock down one of the 2 fundamentals to change their bodies - desire. The other fundamental is more tricky and usually is the reason why many of the "resolution" folk don't hit their goals. That fundamental is belief.

Often people sabotage themselves because they don't believe they can hit their goal and for one reason or another jump on the excuse train to quitsville. "I can't possibly do this or do that so I'll cut a corner here, a corner there" and then "I'm getting no results, I'll never have those massive guns or that six pack - oh look soda, oh look ice cream...oh look soda with ice cream in it!". That's about the gist of the process. Part of the problem is misinformation. We are just not educated enough to understand how the processes in our bodies work and that affects our belief in the end result. If we lose the belief that we can enact change in our bodies we will eventually lose the desire.

A good example of this is the thought that you can spot target fat loss. "Oh look at my belly, I know! I will do 1000 crunches and my abs will magic their way from under the layers of fat!". Turns out that doesn't work and all you gained is a strained neck and an injured back. Reason being, it's true what they say , abs are in fact made in the kitchen. I am a firm believer in the 80/20 rule (80%  nutrition, 20% exercise). If you eat properly (that's great tasting healthy food - it's not a myth people!) you will shed fat over your entire body.

Can't tell me this doesn't taste fantastic!

 Your last fat stores to go tend to be the exact problem area you are looking to "target", like your belly bulge. No amount of crunches are going to make that pouch budge until your other stores are depleted. And on top of that crunches are terrible for you! stop right now! Do some functional core centric routines (abdominals does not equal core btw) and you'll have much better results and avoid imbalances since you are not helping your lateral obliques or your back which can lead to injury due to imbalance, and oh wait no working out due to said injury, and eating since you are sad you cannot work out...but i digress. There is a reason that your body stored all that fat there to begin with. We cannot control which area our body burns fat from at a given time, but we can continually burn it until all that's left is that final problem area and that too will disappear.

Maybe our resolutions should be adjusted to avoid misinformation and using our brains to understand how exactly our systems work so at the end of the day, we can still believe in our end result. That way we can avoid the eventual pitfalls including losing the excitement you had on January 1st that this is your year to rule the pool! Also, maybe we can change that to the year we become more healthy so we can live better quality lives for longer than we would have otherwise, but hey if "rule the pool" gets the same results - there's your motivation. Keep the belief!

Check out the fat I didn't spot reduce - also 0 crunches. Zero!

"There's no way you can get in shape working full time raising an infant and using DVD programs" - Cool story bro

A time to cleanse

Recently a friend of mine decided he was going to do a cleanse to prime himself for his latest fitness program "Insanity: The Asylum" (read my Asylum journey here). I have written about him before in the Body Experiment series of blogs under the alias "Noob" (Body Experiments I, Body Experiments II, Body Experiments III). Since he has transformed his body he is now comfortable dropping his alias and "unmasking" and will be addressed by his real name, Gursh. Funny how the need for anonymity is in direct correlation to his waist size and body fat percentage.

Also Day 1 of P90X as he started right on the heals of Insanity

Gursh has just completed one round of P90X and to prepare himself for the Asylum performed a 3 day cleanse. Three days seems to be a bit short for a cleansing program but his cleanse was not designed for weight loss. Gursh performed a Shakeology cleanse. The main focus of this type of cleanse is to maximize the amount of nutrients you take in with minimal calories. It is all about priming your body to accept nutrients more efficiently and reach a level of homeostasis to maximize results of an upcoming workout/nutrition program. Nutritional efficiency is the name of the game.

Despite the fact that this type of cleanse is not truly designed to lose weight or inches, Gursh did see a drop in both. In the three days he lost a total of 7lbs and about 1.5 inches around his waist as a bonus (currently 166lbs down from 191lbs in Jan, waist from 40" now at 32", body fat from 27% to about 10%). Gursh will continue to have a Shakeology shake daily as it is super nutrient dense and will help with maintaining and improving on his current results. When you focus on becoming healthy and improving physical performance rather than just "losing weight" or getting a six pack the results are life augmenting - and you end up losing weight and getting that six pack anyway lol.


By the way Gursh is not the only one to "unmask" from prior blogs. Say hello to Mitch aka "Sub Zero" and his results from his  journey with P90X...and if you haven't guessed these two are both official Super Mudders!

Enter the Asylum

A week after the last Tough Mudder I was still recovering from a knee injury and broken toe. A sane person would have rested and healed up but I just got Asylum in! Asylum is the bigger meaner brother of Insanity. I chose to go by the namesake, be a little crazy, and commit myself into the Asylum asap. April 17th I threw myself into the grinder.

The first thing I had to do was the brand new Athletic Assessment aka Fit Test. How bad could it be; I completed 2 rounds of Insanity, a round of P90X, a round of P90X Plus, and was currently doing a hybrid with all of the above including volume 3 of P90X one on one (workshop for the brand new P90X coming out fall 2011) right before the Mudder. That Fit Test was a huge wake up call. I actually found it tougher than some full workouts. In fact I nearly killed myself on the last test. Those 30sec-1min breaks in between exercises are a tease.

It's ok though because no matter how tough Asylum was it was a mere 30 days. Piece of cake. Wrong again. I expected Asylum to be tough but I didn't expect it to take me to the places it took me. The program introduces some new tools of destruction to the mix that really changed the game.

The first workout after the Fit Test was called "Speed and Agility" and made use of one of Asylums new tools; the agility ladder.  The ladder was great because it really helped with positioning and proper form. It was a great physical guide to foot and hand placement when performing movements like squat jumps from the floor, switch lunges, and full "long jumps". Also warm-ups are now jump rope drills which is why a speed rope was included with the package.

Another new tool introduced in Asylum are power bands; essentially giant rubber bands you put on your ankles and/or grip with you hands. I used to have a ton of trouble with power jumps but eventually I got to the point where I could bang out 40-50 in a minute with no problem (used to have trouble with 20-30 lol) and some more if I really pushed. These bands slapped me back into reality and showed me that power jumps could still be brutal.

In the Asylum workout "Vertical Plyo", the bands were used on your ankles to provide resistance as you attempted to jump from a squat position and tap knees to hands aka power jumps. The resistance by those bands as you tried to perform the movements was pretty ridiculous. Even your upper body got some special treatment as you would do things like "X jumps", where you would touch your toes then jump up with arms and legs wide forming an "X", while bands were on your ankles and death gripped in your hands. "Vertical Plyo" was a test in pure power with the intensity and pace that should be illegal while using the bands.  Too bad my band for your hands/wrists broke mid program.

Unlike Insanity, Asylum also included a resistance program aptly called "Strength". This workout included the use of dumbbells and the good old pullup bar. Unlike normal resistance workouts this one was paced aggressively and you end up sweating like you were doing a cardio routine. This workout actually was kind of like a cross-fit workout. The moves were all compound moves that required a lot of strength and it was all done in quick succession.

Probably my favorite of the new workouts is "Back to Core". "Back to Core" focused on, you guessed it, your back and your core. It isn't often that there are programs that specifically work the back band of your core in such a fine tuning manner. Most people think of your core as just your abdominals anyway, let alone work the rear kinetic chain. "Back to Core" is such a great tool to enhance your overall performance by focusing on parts of your body that you would normally neglect and often times is the reason we get injured.

At the end of about every week or so you build up to a workout called "Game Day". In "Game Day" you get to take your newly improved body "out for a spin". It is almost like a much longer Fit Test. "Game Day" includes movements from numerous sports and engages all your systems. To top it off at the end you get to do a bonus 10 minutes of hell called "Overtime". I had a friend who had completed Insanity try "Overtime" fresh and was getting killed. Now imagine a set of brutal movements like that stacked right after "Game Day". I used to do a P90X workout followed immediately by an Insanity workout back to back and even that was not as tough as "Game Day" plus "Overtime".

All in all Asylum was a ridiculously brutal and efficient program. You will burn fat, lean out, tone up, and improve performance overall. The gains in 30 days of Asylum have been better than gains I have seen in 60 or even 90 day programs. I am so glad I completed the other programs before Asylum; I don't know if I would have made it through Asylum had I not done so (at least not effectively). Can't wait to test the results of a few more rounds of Asylum at the next Tough Mudder! And now some more embarrassing "before and after" photos - this time comparing my oh so amazing pictures from before I started working out last April to current (May 2011)!

Fit Quest

 
A year ago I made a decision. I decided to go against who I believed I was and make a change as to who I would become. A year ago I put the bulk of my free time in geeking out. My days were filled with video games, movies, comic books, beer, and terrible food (delicious but deadly). Fifty wings, a bowl of chilli, a pound of shrimp, and beer to wash it all down was my staple meal at Hooters where you would find me at least once a week. Such a lifestyle led to my slow and eventual transformation into the stereotypical out of shape gaming geek.

I put so much time and effort in the nerd life I wondered what I could do if I put that same amount of time focusing on the opposite more active lifestyle. Motivation was key. Getting in shape purely to look good was too flimsy of a motivation for me so I needed something more to focus on. That solution came when my cousin suggested we do an event as a team. That event was the Tough Mudder. Training for such an event was definitely the perfect catalyst in ensuring I would train and continue to do so or risk failing to complete the Tough Mudder with my team (you can see our team videos here).

Now, a year later, I have completed 2 Tough Mudders(one 5 mile, one 12 mile)  and in 4 days will participate in my 3rd. A year ago I hated to run and would gas out at a measly half mile or less. Today I still hate to run (I have only run a handful of times since last year and in the past 3 months only a single time), but as evident from a one mile time trial a few days ago (7:40), I can now definitely run a mile or more unlike last year, and at a decent pace to boot. A year ago my first Tough Mudder was a good challenge. Today that original Tough Mudder would be a warm up. A year ago I was addicted to video games to the point where I would routinely spend 40+ hours playing weekly. Today I still love video games because we all know video games are the coolest thing in creation, however my 8+ hour game binges have dwindled to only a few hours (still a lot of game time I would say but I love it). A year ago I was a food addict and ate to my hearts content. Today I still am a food addict and I actually eat more food daily than I used to eat, but my food decisions have been vastly improved. I actually am eating every 2-3 hours for as long as I am awake and I enjoy the food I eat now just as much as the horrible food I ate in the past. A year ago I was 180 pounds of flub looking down the barrel of a shorter, fatter lifetime. Today I am a lean, mean, 160 pounds and will be as active 30 years from now as I am today.

I am happy to say I dodged a huge bullet by deciding to do a complete 180 physicaly despite lacking the knowledge of how to properly accomplish my goal. I avoided the trap of crash dieting, calorie counting, pill popping, and many other "known" methods to "lose weight". My focus was to become healthy and as a result I lost weight, built muscle, and burned fat. I learned as I went and am continually adding to the foundations I have built. That decision is also why I created this blog. My mentality has changed so much in a year I figured I would log my thoughts so that I could look back and see where my head was at during a given point in time. In the mean time I am helping those around me with their own "Fit Quest" and will continue to do so (in fact I am studying to get my NASM certification).

...one of my friends just brought up a good point about men who work out neglecting their legs. I definitely work legs but don't seem to take many pictures so here's some sexy leg action!

Body Experiments III

In January I began a series of posts that included "Body Experiments" and "Body Experiments II" which described the testing of various "proven" techniques to improve body composition. This is the 3rd installment and we take a look at a few more results.

Since the last post Noob has completed a full 60 day run of Insanity with some pretty great results. Noob began at a weight of 191 lbs and is now 175 lbs having gone from about 27% body fat to about 13%. He has lost close to 30 lbs of fat and gained about 14 lbs of muscle (mostly in his legs). All in all Noob has seen a total of 15 inches lost with the largest lost around his waste (5 inches lost).

In addition to the changes in appearance Noob also has had a dramatic change in physical performance. Insanity uses a series of movements to gauge overall performance and have labeled them the "Fit Test". Here are Noob's Fit test results from Day 1 to Day 60:

Noob was not the only one to complete a round of Insanity. I also completed the program (my 2nd round complete) with some P90X sprinkled in. In addition to the workout programs, I also experimented with the use of cold water showers to help burn fat(as described in the original "Body Experiments" post). All in all I found the method to be pretty effective. It's hard to tell from the pictures but I definitely felt and saw a difference in definition when I used the cold shower method. I also lost about 10 lbs through the process and a couple percent of body fat (maybe 1).

 

Unlike my first round where I took the Fit Test every 2 weeks, this time around I only took the Fit Test at the very end. Here are my fit tests from my original run of Insanity as well as my latest test (highlighted in red).

 

Next month we will see Sub Zero's final results and the progress of our first female on a fit quest!

Body Experiments II

What happens when some goofballs decide to put "proven" workout techniques/programs to the test? Apparently, they get pretty good results. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about body experiments a group of us conducted and now some initial results are in.

Scorpion (alias - see previous post for details) decided to test a method in Tim Ferriss' book "Four-Hour Body" with which Tim Ferriss was able to put on 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days. It was a pretty strong claim especially considering the workouts were only 30 minutes long and you only do 2 workouts a week. That equates to a measly 1 hour per week or a grand total of 4 hours to gain this mass in 28 days. Scorpion did not follow the exact same set of exercises but followed the technique and pace in which the exercises should be executed. He also modified the meal plan slightly.

Amazingly despite not sticking 100% to the program outlined in "Four-Hour Body", Scorpion made some pretty strong gains. Overall he gained about 20 lbs in the 4 weeks going from an initial weight of 176 lbs to 196 lbs. 196 lbs is the highest weight Scorpion has ever been despite past attempts to get to 200 lbs via other methods including taking weight gainers. Adding a couple percent of fat loss to the total muscle gain for scorpion was around 25-27 lbs. So it seems the claim of gaining 34 lbs of muscle in 28 days is in fact legitimate. Now having completed his program Scorpion will either push to gain the last few pounds to hit the 200 lbs or perhaps start a new experiment testing a claim to go from 5K runs to 50K runs in a 12 week period. First, he needs to get initial 5K under his belt as Scorpion's cardio leaves a bit to be desired.

Noob also hit a milestone having completed 30 days of Insanity. His results have been great. He is following the workout programs as described and is actually eating healthy (unlike the 90% of Americans who "think" they eat healthy despite our 30% + obesity rate). Noob began at 191 lbs and is currently at 183 lbs. Doesn't seem like a lot of weight for 30 days but the scale is a poor judge of progress as it doesn't take into account muscle mass gained in contrast to fat lost. It's a good thing we took measurements. In the past 30 days Noob lost a total of 8.5 inches and about 7% body fat (about 15 lbs of fat!).

• arms - .5 inches
• legs - 4 inches
• chest - 1.5 inches
• waist - 3.5 inches

 











Next time I'll go over my final 60 day results (cold shower technique to burn fat!), Subzero's 30 day milestone (P90X), perhaps the return of Ermac after his shoulder injury (P90X), and maybe the start of our first female member to attempt a body transformation!

Body Experiments I

With Shake Weights, Ab Rowers, Total Gyms, and programs like Zumba, P90X, and Insanity how is it that we do not have a population of rock hard bodies running marathons and outliving past generations? The answer is lack of brainpower. It isn't even a lack of ability, but a lack of will to think. We do not possess the knowledge to properly fuel and shape our bodies because we are too lazy to learn how. Dean Karnazes said it best - "Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness". Sure having that perfect body would make us happy but getting it is simply not comfortable. We are quite content letting someone else do the thinking for us, which is fine when the sources are legitimate, but often we do not even bother to figure that part out and end up crash dieting or in possession of the latest fitness gizmo. We believe the promises of magic pills and potions and miracle machines that can transform us in minutes. I figure nutrition and exercise are applied sciences so along with a few other people I know, we are going to apply "proven" techniques and methods and see if they really do work. The following blog post chronicles our adventures.

Now before we went ahead and began our fitness shenanigans we took "before" photos. I have posted my terrible "before" photos in the past despite how terrible they were (you can see an example in a previous post). Did I mention they were terrible? Anyway, it seems my compatriots are a little less inclined to "show off" so I have come up with a perfect solution - anonymous photos! By "anonymous" I mean that I will cover their faces with various Mortal Kombat ninja masks and refer to them by Mortal Kombat characters. Thought it would be fitting since the new Mortal Kombat game is coming out in March. If you hadn't guessed, I am a huge geek that got interested in fitness as of late.

Let us begin with our Xers. Or rather P90Xers. P90X promises body transformation in just 90 days by simply following a program of workout DVDs at home and all you need are dumbbells and a pull up bar (or resistance bands if you are lacking either). Our first guinea pig is Reptile. Reptile can literally be described as someone who has never worked out a day in his life. Unfortunately due to a debilitating internal injury Reptile had to take time off from the program. Hopefully he will continue and complete the program in 2011!

Along with Reptile, Ermac took the P90X challenge as well. Ermac once played sports but began living a sedentary life of video games and watching movies. Ermac completed the program! He lost about 25lbs total which was a combination of losing a ton of fat and gaining heavier muscle mass. Ermac did not quite follow the meal plan but his results were still great. Fired up, Ermac planned to do a second round of P90X but due to a shoulder injury is currently inactive. He will restart the program when his shoulder is better. During the interim, the weight he lost stayed off due to better eating habits despite not working out. Hey, after next round I bet Ermac will be confident enough to lose the shirt.

Sub Zero decided he would attempt the program himself. This will be his second attempt as Sub Zero's greatest handicap is accountability and persistence. P90X is not an easy program and often times causes people to quit because it takes people out of their comfort zones. Let's hope Sub Zero sticks with it considering it definitely works as evidenced from Ermac's results as well as my own.



Insanity is another program we put to the test (I am currently in my 2nd round...kinda - I'm adding 3 days of P90X per week). Insanity is another DVD program like P90X only with more of a cardio focus and no equipment necessary. Noob is currently in his 2nd week of Insanity and the transformation is already quite apparent. Noob initially had terrible cardio and very poor eating habits. He is actually doing a better job of his first round than I did initially as he is following a better nutrition plan. In two weeks I will post up his 30 day results and there will definitely be clear progress.

Scorpion is also testing a "proven" method to reshape his body. He is testing a program that promised gains of 34 lbs of lean muscle in 28 days with only 2 workouts a week (30 minutes each). The total workout time for the entire month is 4 hours! Scorpion was intrigued so he decided to attempt the program. The details can be found in the book "4-Hour Body" by Tim Ferriss and includes such techniques as doing all workouts to failure, using a 5 count cadence (that means each movement takes 5 seconds positive and negative so they are very very slow moves), and guzzling a ton of milk. Scorpion has a long history of working out until just recently (couple month hiatus before starting the regimen) and came close to puking during a few of those "short" 30 minute workouts. The method seems to be pretty effective so far - again as with Noob the 30 day photos should demonstrate the effectiveness.

I myself, am also putting specific techniques to the test. The "4-Hour Body" has a chapter on using temperature manipulation to lose fat. In this case I use cold showers to activate specific responses in the body to actually burn fat. That's right, cold showers to lose fat! I have to say it is working pretty well. I don't feel like I have much fat to begin with but I am definitely getting more and more defined. I would like to attribute the gains to this crazy cold shower technique.

Hopefully when everyone gets their desired results they will be brave enough to "unmask"! We'll see in 2 weeks...hopefully we'll have more folks joining us in body experiments!

Round 2!

Today begins my 2nd round of Insanity!(Insanity is an interval based cardio workout program created by Shaun T). Today is also a milestone in that it is the first time I made it through an entire workout full bore without stopping! It was still pretty tough - if it wasn't tough then I wasn't doing it correctly. Feels great after doing nothing last week. Last week was my first real recovery week in the past 3 months (just completed a round of P90X+) in which I did absolutely no workouts. I try to give myself a full recovery between regimented workout programs to let my body heal up micro trauma in the muscles and prep myself for the beating to come.

Gotta say I was a bit restless the past week. I find it pretty difficult to take a step back from fitness. At the beginning of the year that previous statement would not apply to me at all as prior to this past March, I didn't workout for probably 4-5 years lol. Despite having trouble pulling myself back from workouts, today came with the usual necessary psyche up to finally get myself into workout mode. I battle myself almost every day to get up and actually work out and the same thing always happens. I win the battle and feel awesome after the workout. Even though I didn't stop through the entire workout I really didn't sweat as much as I used to during my first round of Insanity. I also didn't drink as much water (used to drink 4 bottles in about 45 minutes and today only 1).

I am hoping I will see as much improvement through the 2nd phase of Max workouts (Max workouts - more difficult movements for a longer duration in the 2nd month of Insanity) as I have seen today with phase 1. These initial 45 minute workouts go by so fast compared to P90X which take about 1 hour and usually a followup ab workout for 20 minutes. I should complete the 60 days of Insanity by the end of February which is when Asylum releases! It's said that if Insanity is practice, Asylum is the game. That followup program is supposed to be a BEAST and somehow work in weights with the crazy cardio?! Asylum is gonna be awesome! Not that Insanity wasn't a beast in and of itself. I remember my first round where I had to take breaks during the 15 minute warm ups lol - did I mention prior to that I didn't work out for years? Let me end with a few embarrassing images LOL.

NEVER AGAIN will I let myself get into that shape LOL. Wow.