Day 58: Weekend Recovery

I had a nice weekend with family and friends. Great times usually translates to a bunch of unhealthy food. I decided to go with Yoga to help my body recover from all the bad treats.

9:00PM

Knee Rehabilitation, Strength, and Yoga

Pretty straightforward stuff here. I spent about half an hour doing my knee exercises and then continued to work on my 100 pushup and 50 pullup challenges. I don't have a bar close enough to the ground to do Australian pullups so I settled for doing Hanging Leg Raise Pullups.

The Yoga felt great. I feel nice a recovered for a great work week!

Also, checkout yesterday's post. For some reason it didn't post to twitter or facebook, which is a shame because I spent more than my usual amount of time writing it.

Day 57: Training Groups and Mount Trashmore Park

I'm down at Virginia Beach for the weekend so I got my brother in law to come out and do some riding with me. Mount Trashmore was a convenient location because his wife is doing an exercise boot camp.

This got me thinking about Training Groups. They've become a craze lately with programs such as Boot Camp and SEAL Team. Whether its for weight loss, running, triathlons, martial arts, or just fitness I think these exercise groups are a powerful thing. They seem to be 10x more effective than a standard gym membership. I think people find them compelling for several reasons all of which build on top of one another.

1. No judgement. A lot of people get discouraged by the idea of working out because of insecurities. With these training groups those insecurities tend to melt away. At different points of the exercise everyone looks exhausted and is pushing themselves to their limits. At that point you can't help but have the utmost respect for the person next to you regardless of why they are part of your group. Its a very empowering thing.
   
2. Camaraderie. You'll find people cheering each other in these programs which begins to build a sense of camaraderie. I know a lot of people who have formed lifetime friendships because of this reason.
   
3. Accountability. This camaraderie reinforces accountability. People motivations for their workouts begin to change. They start showing up to workouts for those very friendships that they've built.
   

I've had the benefit of being part of two awesome fitness groups: The Marathon Training Team and Endorphin Fitness. What about everyone else? Is there an exercise group that you love?

8:00AM

Mountain Bike

This was just a fun ride. Mount Trashmore doesn't really have any trails but has a couple of hills to get your heart rate up. It was nice weather and great company so I couldn't ask for more!

Day 56: Workout Haiku

Have a good weekend everyone!

7:30PM

Swim

I just went swimming
Today was a busy day
It felt pretty good

Day 55: Its All About Perspective

Burnout. Its something that everyone faces professionally, physically, and mentally. Sometimes its from exhaustion and sometimes it can be from not loving what you're doing anymore. So what's the solution?

Sometimes in life you just have to adjust your perspective a little. "Man that swim workout was tough!" can easily be changed to "Wow! I can't believe I made it through that workout. I could barely swim a lap a year ago." Its all about finding the little adjustments in perspective to enjoy the journey a little more.

Do you have a task coming up that seems monumental? Just take the time and enjoy the process rather than focussing on the end goal. Everyone enjoys accomplishing things. Its OK to lower our standards every once in a while just to have those little moral victories.

7:00AM

Knee Exercises

Nothing fancy here. Just a couple of exercises to help rehabilitate my knee.

6:45PM

Bike Recovery

I usually can't do some of the warm-ups we have for strength class because of my knee so I jumped on the bike to get a little sweat going. Things felt good.

7:15PM

Strength Class

This was the first time I went to strength class in a while. They changed the format and its more like a crossfit setup rather than a time at each exercise. It was different which is good. Its nice to switch things up every once in a while.

At the end of it Rusty and I did what everyone started terming as "workout HORSE". He'd do a challenging exercise and I'd see if I could do it too. The last thing he did involved a pull-up position combined with windshield wipers. It looked crazy. I think that guy needs to get into gymnastics.

Day 54: Everyone has Off Days

Today was just one of those days. I did a lot of different things today and got a lot of stuff done but it almost felt as if I wasn't doing anything at all. Ever have that feeling?

I guess its just a blah day which is something everyone has once in a while. I mean we are human. Pro athletes have them all the time. A basketball player's shot might be off or a pitcher might just not have the right stuff. This off feeling doesn't only affect us physically, but also mentally and even spiritually.

One of the most real things that someone has ever told me is from a good friend of mine who is a Pastor. He said, "there are days where even I struggle spiritually." That's brutal honesty. Especially from a Pastor.

Everyone struggles. Sometimes you can find the reason sometimes you can't. For me, I attribute today's lackadaisical mood to yesterday's free IHOP pancakes that I had for dinner.

6:00AM

Team Intensity/Technique Swim

Swim started out great. I kind of attacked the warmup because I was excited that I could push off the walls with both feet. I didn't get the clearance from my orthopedic but since I did run this past Saturday I figured it couldn't hurt. It was great! My stroke felt smooth and I was hitting my flip turns. Then I got tired.

We've already acknowledged that pancakes were the problem so I'm not even going to get into the rest of the workout. I finished it. End of story.

6:00PM

Rock Wall Climbing

I almost didn't make it to this. Because of the way I was feeling I just wanted to pass out on the couch as soon as I got home from work. I'm glad I decided to go.

I tried some tougher climbs today. Now I can see why everyone has those packs of powder. Your hands get sweaty while up there. To quote another guy climbing with us, "my hands are sweating like I'm on a first date." Its that serious.

One thing that I learned is that you don't want to use your muscles when your holding yourself up there. You just want to let your skeleton (I'm sure I'm describing this wrong). The point is that you don't want to keep your muscles flexed or they will fatigue faster, you just want to stay loose and let your skeletal frame distribute the pressure associated with holding yourself up.

Day 53: Better than Coffee

I always say that these workouts are better than coffee. I've eliminated caffeine from 99% of my diet (that 1% is for when we go to the movies). They get my day started and my blood pumping. On the days when I don't get a workout in the morning I tend to feel sluggish.

6:00AM

Team Intensity/Technique Bike

We did another high intensity workout intended to push us to our limits. It wasn't too bad, I might have held back a little because I was worried about tweaking my knee like I did last week. At the end of the set though, my heart rate was in the right place so I did eventually get to the intended effort.

One of the things that got me going even harder was that Coach Michael told us to envision or goals for this year. On the bike I don't really have any race goals but I do have a pace goal for a specific course.

I want to average 25 mph on the 6 mile West Creek course. West Creek is where we do time trials to gauge our improvement. With this goal I have to take about 40 seconds off my fastest time which is doable with consistent work and maybe a little drafting.

One more note about this morning's workout: I think someone crop dusted me. Actually I know they did, I just don't know who. What was worst is they got me right after we ended a hard effort so I was breathing hard. "Now that's how you get pink eye."

Everyday Tagalog Verbs

When I first started to practice learning Tagalog several people told me "know the root". They were talking about verbs and knowing their root form. Trying to jump into a new language is hard; trying to do that while knowing each grammatical rule is even harder.

Imagine attempting to explain word conjugations to a foreign speaker. Think its easy? Look at "think" and "eat". They're two straightforward verbs. To conjugate them in the action of doing you just add the suffix "-ing": "thinking" and "eating". Simple enough. What about past tense? "Thought" and "Ate". How do you explain that? There is no simple rule. Its just having experience with language.

In an effort to keep things simple (the KISS principle) I decided to compile a list of everyday verbs and their root Tagalog translation.

• wake up - gising
• to shower/bathe - maligo (Thanks Mae!)
• to cook - luto
• to eat - kain
• to go - punta
• to wash - hugasan
• to walk - lakad
• to talk - usap
• to drink - inumin
• to sit - umupo
• to sleep - tulog
• to clean - linis
• to know - alam
• to leave - alis
• to wait - antay
• to go down - baba
• to read - basa
• to buy - bili
• to get up - bangon
• to carry - karga
• to knock - katok
• to get or take - kuha

Are there any daily verbs that I am missing? Let me know in the comments and I'll find their root translation. Also, if I'm wrong please let me know. I know my Mom will eventually read this and correct me but every little bit helps.