The Upswing

I have been to the gym every day this week starting Monday. It's not too impressive but I just wanted to say that the slump is over. I can still do 50 pushups as well. Ok I lied, I died on the 49th, but i did one more for good measure. So I guess it wasn't consecutive, but I've been working out pretty hard, 2 of the days with eric. I'll get to 50 again no worries.

Catalyst

Planet Fitness® has gone to great lengths to provide its members with a friendly
space to work out. We call it the Judgment Free Zone. We discourage weight
dropping and obnoxious grunting so you can focus on your own workout and not the
person next to you.

-Planet Fitness Web Page

I was a little put off by this message. Idealists make me want to vomit sometimes. "Judgment-Free Zone"? What is this, middle school? But it's $10 with no year long commitments so I compromised my realist morals and went to check it out.

Planet Fitness was somewhat difficult to find. I had to circle around behind an asian strip mall named Eden Center. After passing all of the loading docks and random storefronts where mobsters wash their money, I found Planet Fitness under the main level next to a place named "Diamond." I was drawn to Diamond like a moth to a flame. Perhaps it was the 8 foot by 2 foot scrolling multi-colored marquee announcing the exciting arrival of "Kim Jua" or the large blue neon sign with the "A" replaced with a princess-cut diamond (Sidenote: I had a dream that largely had to do with diamonds last night, favorite quote from dream: "'When your friend showed me that diamond I realized it was from a funeral parlor you shady crook!' 'How can you tell??' 'Because it's made of white cement!' I point to a diamond which is clearly a piece of sidewalk"). However, my instincts told me I would stand out like a sore thumb at an underground Pai Gow parlor for triad members. Drawing myself away, I entered next door at Planet Fitness.

I now know where Barney the Dinosaur works out. Purple was everywhere in an annoying fashion. And i'm not talking acceptable and cool Donatello purple, I'm saying "hot purple", hot pink's retarded cousin. But, since it was a judgment free zone, I tolerated it to go up to the front desk. The people that worked the front desk can best be described as disinterested mexican children who probably can't even help their parents with the groceries because the milk jug is too heavy. A "tour" was given where the little girl just pointed at areas saying "that's where the machines are, in that room is free weights, and that room is for 30 minute work outs." I inquired about the 30 minute work out room and apparently it's exactly like the program my mom goes to, 'Curves', where you do each work out for about 30 seconds. They totally ripped off curves. The coup de grace was when she pointed out the tanning rooms. "Of course, unlimited tanning is included in our membership." Wait a second. Tanning has no scientifically proven health benefits. The only reason to go to a tanning salon, especially for a male, is to look like a "jersey guido" (guy from Fitness First said that). Further, tanning is for being vain. Having tanning rooms in the gym implies that the gym is there so people can stroke their vanity and are therefore judging themselves in a judgment free zone which opens the floor for me to judge them and then judge planet fitness as a dud. The mexican children handed me a couple sheets of paper with the schedules on them and basically "muchos gulps eh? whelp, sayonara"'d me into the streets. No sales pitch or nothing. I guess they judged me an unfit candidate after my visible disgust at the tanning rooms.

Long story short, I impulsively drove straight from there to Fitness First and joined immediately. I worked out so hard that I slept for 14 hours and dreamt of diamonds.

First Slump

I'm in a slump. I haven't done any real training in a week, aside from playing basketball. Pretty much my life as a whole is in a trough right now, including the stock market, but it's no big deal. It's just the normal oscillation of life. I'm going to join fitness first since it isn't too expensive and my friends Monty and Eric have joined it. Joining a gym will help me with a missing key piece in my plan, having a workout partner. I'll just take a step back, reorganize a bit, and jump back and hold on to the ride of the next upswing. Hopefully I can get slingshot into a more continuously positive-sloped path. Here's some inspirational tips on how to deal with the ups and downs of exercising: http://zenhabits.net/2008/02/17-fitness-truths-to-get-you-in-great-shape/.

The Warmup

My workouts vary, as I try to keep things interesting from using different machines and different settings on the treadmill and bike. When I ramp up my work outs soon, the training will be completely different from now. But when I ramp it up, it will be outside of the confines of a small apartment complex gym. I am considering joining a gym and doing classes such as boot camp or possibly join team in training and have a built in support group and all that jazz. My friend Erika did team in training for the Disney Marathon and she said it was awesome. Her endorsement was rousing. Even after I ramp it up, I will continue to have the same warmup that I've been doing. Here's a guide to my current warmup. Say ramp one more time.

The warmup starts with pushups. I found that if I try to do pushups after my blood starts flowing, I feel like I'm crushing veins and arteries in my hands. It is one of the most uncomfortable feelings trust me. When this happens I resort to doing pushups on my knuckles. I use the pushups to get my blood to start flowing and as a checkpoint of how my training is going. I do as many pushups to exhaustion in a row, which is still currently 50 but 50 is getting easier to achieve each time. My sister's husband Steve says that if I do bicep curls to exhaustion before I do pushups, then I will be able to do 10-15 more pushups. He says it's because they're complementary motions so they don't cancel eachother out but bicep exercise get the blood flowing to the upper arm. I think I'd just have the feeling of crushing veins and then I'd get the awk-awks.

I then move onto situps or, more appropriately named, crunches. These aren't your garden variety crunches though, they have a slight twist which I learned from growing up with sisters and a mother who would do "Abs of STEEL" workouts. Basically, my feet never touch the ground and my legs crunch in as my torso crunches in. I believe it's called a total body crunch. I call them situps. I also do alternating situps as were mentioned in an earlier post. They involve pointing the elbow to the opposite knee on each crunch, alternating left and right elbow each time, and only pulling up one leg at a time. I did do these to exhaustion before but now I just do them to the second crampy feeling because it feels like I can go forever just because I probably change how I do them during the crampy feelings.

After the pushups and situps and recording of my progress, I stretch. Some times I do more stretching than others, especially if I'm going to run during my work out, but I always at least do the following stretches that I learned from the circle stretching before lacrosse and cross country practices. I always thought it was weird that I played two sports that could be represented with an "x", as they often were, xc and lax. I think it was to make them seem cooler and more XTREME because of the 90s phenomenon of the X-games. I couldn't shorten them to xc and lax however, because I already used my reserve of douchebag points in other facets of life. Enough of an aside, on with the stretching.

The first stretch I do is a simple standing reach for your toes. I feel like this is a good most of body stretch. I imagine I'm leading my past stretching circles and say to myself, "to your toes, take it down." It helps with the boringness of it. As with all stretches, I hold it for at least 8 seconds, and I don't bounce at all. Bouncing is really bad, you can tear a ligament or hurt yourself in general that way. If you can't reach your toes, oh well. If you can go past your toes, you already know how to stretch.

Kim Jong-Il can't touch his toes yet.

I then put my right leg across my left leg and reach for my toes from my waist, still keeping my legs straight. "Right over left, take a clown." Then I do the same with my left leg. "Left over right, Parson Brown." One of the stretch leaders in lacrosse, Kevin, would replace "take it down" with random things like that. He thought he was funny, and he was damned right. Everyone in my imaginary stretching circle giggles everytime.

Take it clown, Kim. Take it all the way clown.

The next move, which is important according to one of my training tapes (Kindergarten Cop), is the neck roll. It is pretty self explanatory and feels damned good.

Kim Jong-il is a trained professional, please do not attempt to drink and neck roll at home.

An important stretch that I neglected to do before I was injured a week back is an excellent one for the back of the knee. There are several variations of this stretch and some may be more effective than others, but I use them interchangeably. If you have a wall, you can place the bottom of your foot against the wall and then lean forward into the wall, feeling it in the back of your leg. If you have a partner, you can use the bottom of their foot. Another way is to do a lunge, effectively using the ground. If I have an attractive and nice smelling partner, I prefer the second way, otherwise a lunge will do since I messed up the paint in my last apartment with the wall way.

You should feel it where the red arrow points.

"On your butts, butterfly." A butterfly stretch is where you put the bottoms of your feet together, pull them into your crotchal region, and then push down on your knees. Althought your knees are shaped like butterfly wings and can flap, don't flap during the stretch lest you want a groin injury. When the ground was wet, we'd do "spidermans" instead. I actually prefer spiderman because there is less flapping possibility and less of a chance for mr. dan to come out and acquaint himself with others. To do the spiderman, get on your haunches and put your arms between your knees. Then push out with your elbows. The next picture is pretty creepy, the squeamish should avert their eyes if they don't want to have nightmares of a Kim Jong-il spider.

Dammit Kim, I'm all out of poop baggies.

I then finish it up with a sitting reach to my toes. Basically it's one of those "it's on the test" things. Remember in gym class when you'd have to sit at that box and reach as far as you could? I thought those days were over. But then I joined Lifetime Fitness a couple years back and for the fitness test to see your starting point, they used that same box. I hate that box. I was completely unprepared. I vowed to never be caught unprepared again, so I throw in the stretch for good measure. I also do one leg to the side at a time stretch, but it may just be superfluous.

You graduated with honors... well you just barely passed, but you're in. You're in the university of stretching.

I've heard some rumors of stretching being unnecessary and other tales that you should stretch both before and after working out. I took the middle road and just stretch before working out. It's relaxing, feels good, and I'm pretty sure it diminishes my chances of injury. I yearn for the days of group stretching circles and my fantasies of leading them, and perhaps will one day realize that dream. For now the warmup is just something I do on my apartment floor before I work out, but one day it will be a social event again. Mark my words.

P.S. I borrowed Jordan's idea of cutting up and using dictators in an amusing fashion. His blog is hilarious and can be found at: http://jaharriman.blogspot.com/ .