I like to set fitness goals for myself. In the first quarter, my goal was to run a half marathon which I did on March 31st.
Now it’s time for a new goal and in the second quarter, I’m focusing on strength training. I’ll see how much I can increase my push-up and pull-up maximum repetitions before the end of the quarter. I’m also keeping track of body composition. This is part of an overall mission to get in better shape.
Time To Step It Up
I have a lot going on at the moment. I’m trying to wrap up a million things before the girls get out of school (next week!) including:
Landscaping the front yard: After 5 years of trying to grow grass in the high desert that Colorado is, I’ve thrown in the mower. Hello rocks and xeriscaping! Suck it grass!
Code: My business partner and I are putting finishing touches on our app. This will look like nonsense to you unless you are familiar with the ways of Rails:
Lori Wall Bed: I’ve been working on building a murphy style bed that folds into the wall. It’s currently in a 1,000,000,000 pieces (plus or minus 999,999,900):
Another blog?: I’ve been working on buying an existing blog. I’m only a partial sell out on this blog (Hey look, ads!). I’d like to fully sell out, but can’t bring myself to do it here. However, another blog that isn’t so personal would give me the chance to go nuts with some monetization ideas. It would also allow me to write some material that doesn’t quite fit here. Nothing to report on this yet.
Just like when I was working, exercise is the first thing to suffer when I run out of time. Sometimes, I only end up doing half of one routine. Other times, I put it off until the next day. Not good. From here on out, I’m going to exercise first thing in the morning. No more lollygagging*.
Strength Training Update
Now for the embarrassing pictures. Brace yourselves.
Progress is slow, but I’m filling out a little here. My gut continues its downward trend too which is good.
I’m still a stringy dude, but I can see progress here too:
For some reason, I have a cowboy hat on in the photo on the right. It’s been warm here in Colorado and I must have been delirious from the heat. I am no cowboy. I do not enjoy horses, rodeos or country and western music (I can’t stress the last one strongly enough. I’d rather listen to cats in heat. Or cats fighting. Or cats in heat fighting.).
Walking Dude (And Avoiding Roly Poly Genocide)
I’m been so active lately, it’s not unusual for me to walk 30,000 steps in a day without trying. Sitting down is painful and rare.
In the first 137 days of 2018, I’ve walked 2,264,153 steps (1,068 miles!). This comes out to 16,526.66 steps per day (the .66 happens when I trip and fall on my ass) which puts me on pace to walk 6,032,232 steps this year. My goal is 6,000,000, so I’m ahead here.
Because I’m so active over summer, I expect that I’ll finish the year with close to 7,000,000 steps logged.
And when I’ve been walking around town lately, I’ve noticed that there are roly polys everywhere. These are the little crustaceans that turn into a ball when you touch them:
I try to avoid stepping on them. They’re probably just looking for food, love or booze. Maybe, they’re on the way to the movies. Or maybe they’re on some secret roly poly mission.
The roly polies are probably innocent, so why should I squash them? In any case, other humans must think there’s something wrong with me as I walk down the sidewalk jumping around like a madman to avoid committing roly poly genocide.
Thoughts
My strength training experiment has not been a failure, but the progress is really slow. I struggle with not eating crap. I struggle with finding the time. Sometimes, I struggle with mustering up the energy.
I’m halfway through this experiment and it’s time to get serious. No more farting around!
Tune in for another titillating update in two short weeks!
*Lollygagging! What a fun word! Who came up with it? Probably the same person who invented flabbergasted and cattywampus.
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This is not meant to be trolling so don’t take it that way :). Your personal goals are yours and you should pursue them with vigor. Now, my comment:
By increasing how many pullups and pushups you can do, you aren’t really training strength per se, but rather you are training muscular endurance.
Strength is the amount of force you can exert against an external resistance. By always using the same force against the same resistance, are you any stronger? Or are you just capable of doing it more times than you could before? If you want to get stronger you have to add weight and show that you can do more force next time.
Put a backpack on with a 5 lb weight in it for pushups (and increase incrementally over time), or switch to bench press where you can add weight incrementally in an easier fashion. For pullups you can hold small weights between your knees.
The ultimate strength exercise: barbell squats. I think MMM might agree with me there.
No offense taken at all! My primary goal is to increase the weight I lift, not endurance. In the past, I’ve always been able to increase my max pushups and pullups even when I focus on strength gains. However, I see your point. If my sole goal was to increase the reps I’m able to do in those 2 exercises, my workout should be different. I’m going in two different directions here.
“Put a backpack on with a 5 lb weight in it for pushups (and increase incrementally over time), or switch to bench press where you can add weight incrementally in an easier fashion.”
I have young daughter sit on my back prisoner style!
When my prog folk punk cartel ‘Roly Poly Genocide’ makes it big, we’ll send you a royalty check for the name.
I want 25% of merch sales. 🙂
Great idea getting rid of the lawn. That is such a useless feature. It requires so much water and maintenance.
Good luck with the new blog. Will you have time to deal with it? I’ve had more than one blog before and it never worked out. Just never have enough time.
“Will you have time to deal with it?”
Yep, The biggest blogs don’t have many posts. They’re successful because they have evergreen content and make full use of SEO. 1500 Days is too personal for most of that content.
Have you gotten stronger? It can be difficult to visually see changes, especially early on, but you should be able to see quantifiable increases in what you lift, how many reps, and how you feel afterwards.
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“Have you gotten stronger?”
At the start, I was curling 25 pounds with each arm. Now, I can do 40. Thanks for reminding me of this. This is the most important thing and I often forget it.
The biggest downside of my work is definitely the lower step count during the week (usually just 11,000 – 13,000). And hooray for xeriscaping! So much easier, cheaper, and better for the environment.
I know, right? Work just gets in the way!
do you know the lollygaggers scene from “bull durham” with robert wuhl? it’s a gem. the roly polys are probably headed down to the roly poly love shack to party. grass sucks, if i never had to own a lawn mower again i would declare victory in life.
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Never seen Bull Durham. Maybe I will now!
The roly polies must have love shaves all over the place because there are about 100,000,000,000,000 in my yard alone.
I’m so glad you call them roly polies! That’s what we always called them as a kid, but after moving for college, I discovered that other people called them pill bugs or potato bugs and that just seemed wrong and much less fun! =)
I’m curious about the murphy bed. We had looked into that, but it never really worked in any of our spaces in this house. Maybe someday, though.
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Hooray for roly polies! Apparently, they have about 827 different names. The best one might be cheesy bobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodlouse
And you’ll see the new bed in person in less than 45 days!
Haha “roly poly genocide”, love it!
Never heard of xeriscaping (grass and weeds grow too easily here in NC), but it looks like a great idea for your climate.
Haha! Don’t step on them!
Which pattern are you using for the Murphy bed? I looked into one when I had my studio unit, but realized it didn’t work as the bed still took up space when it was down. I built a loft for my queen sized mattress instead. If you have high enough ceilings, I thought this idea was cool too. https://imgur.com/a/5Vz0S
I’m using the vertical queen Lori Bed!
That idea is awesome, but I don’t think that it (or a loft bed) would have worked for our particular room.
Hey, nice rock garden! With a little raking that’ll look pretty zen.
Three tons of rock will burn a few calories!
Can’t wait to hear about this new blog your purchasing! Exciting news.
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I’d like to add “gobsmacked” to your vocabulary list. I love that one.
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Love it!
What!? Never seen Bull Durham!? Must Fix Now!
On a happier note, good karma to avoid complete roly poly genocide
As for the weight lifting, like everything else, it’s a question of priorities…
So maybe, since family is important, and mental work is important, and walking is important (you show your priorities by actually doing these things consistently), maybe weight training is still totally cool and achievable but more like 3 or 4 on the list… so still have the same reps and weight goals, but adjust the frequency and timeline to meet your actual life
Just my two cents – I’m all about embracing the practical reality of who we are and work to be vs the idealized myth…
MY personal win was getting to the point that on a random Tuesday mental health day/day off last week, I CHOSE to go to the gym and was HAPPY to go!
A year ago, you couldn’t have paid me to go to the gym on a day off – this year, I was pleased as punch to go and really enjoyed it!
Your step count is absolutely incredible 🙂
I’m always happy when I reach 10000 steps in a day and I’ve very rarely reached more than 20000. That alone is a very good training 🙂
Keep it up!
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Oooo! New blog is exciting! I <3 Selling out.
Mr. PoP recently posted…Happy National Bike to Work Day!
Good on you for working out so much, and avoiding those bugs. Like, live and let live, you know?
I appreciate your decision not to fully sell out. I personally figure at least part of the point of financial independence is so that we don’t have to do things we don’t love for money, right?
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Jez, that’s some impressive progress. I’d be curious to know what your 30k step day looked like? I recently hit that step count for the first time (which involved a 9 mile hike) and afterward I was pretty much destroyed the rest of the night.
My 30,000 step day is mostly just wandering around town. I’m so used to walking that even days where I’m over 15 don’t feel any different. Of course, I have a secret weapon: Who on earth has time to walk around for hours every day? Only the unemployed!
Let me add one of my favorite words to your vocabulary: tenesmus. It’s a medical term meaning, “I have to sh*t so bad it’s leaving me sideways.” Used all my scrabble letters to form it the first time my wife and I played scrabble together. It was on a triple word score tile. She’s refused to play me again since.
Happy to see you productively engaged in so many interesting projects, my friend.
Hope to see you at FINCON 18 if not on a hike in July,
CD
Tenesmus! I have that every morning! 🙂
Yep, see you soon!
Nice post!
I was wondering where you usually like to go to walk.
I typically like to run on the treadmill lately I have found that running outsides is much better. I have been running in parks ever since. I am certainly open to other ideas though. Do you have any particular place where you like to walk?
Thanks
We have some nice trails near our home next to the river, so we usually hit that. Outside is so much better than inside!