Those things that hold your torso up

So,

I felt like my current program, as neat as it was, lacked legs. We’re working from the stone soup recipe book here, it seems. Anyway, I was talking to my friend Dave the other day, who is doing the 400 challenge. That’s doing 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 body weight squats, and 100 bodyweight rows in 17 minutes or less. Or, in most cases, trying to do that.

Now, I don’t want to go after that goal at this moment, worthy as it is, but it put me in mind of body weight squats. Which I will be adding to my routine. I did the first bout of them (100 total) yesterday. I did a few sets of twenty, then dropped to ten careful reps each set for the rest. My first foray will probably be working toward 5×20, then 4×25, and who knows what after that.

With the state of my knees, the bodyweight squats are a fairly friendly way to get some leg work in, and I can do them almost anywhere (but not at work, I’d rip my pants.)

I’m considering adding a few other things in, perhaps as part of a Saturday remedial workout.

Exercises that are on the docket:

Sandbag Turkish get ups

Large sandbag lifts to standing position (I have enough overhead work already)

Pushups (I’ve been considering making a run at a hundred consecutive for a while now).

***

Those are my thoughts at this hour. Cheers!

A little iron on the side

So, I’m at my high school reunion, and coming back from lunch. I thought I’d see what passed for an exercise room at the resort. It was a pretty small, fairly underwhelming little spot. Clearly, people come to Havasu to run the lake and get lit up, not work out.

There was a little dumbbell rack, and that was something. It only went up to 50 lb. ‘bells, though. I wanted to do some bent rows, and 50 won’t cut much water with me, so I had to get creative. It turns out, with rubberized octagonal dumbbells, you can stack one on another and hoist the bottom one, at least with bent rows. 100# is more like it.

Cheers from Havasu.

Odd realizations

So, I’ll be heading off to go to my 20th year high school reunion in a few days, and it brings up some intriguing questions and thoughts.

First, I doubt that I’ll ever understand time. I remember things from high school and even elementary school with perfect clarity, yet other events that may have only happened a few months ago are “ancient history”. The date stamp feature in my brain appears to be, at best, highly subjective.

Second, it’s hard to imagine that it’s been longer since high school than my age was upon completion of that set of trials.

Third, though I am in no way a match for my 18 year old self in regards to sheer physical prowess, I’m actually pretty happy to be back down into the ballpark weight that I was carrying at the time of my graduation. For many years, I thought that I’d never be back down there, short of some wasting disease.

Overall, I don’t know for sure what I expect or what I hope for. I am trying not to hope for anything, as that might make things weird. It’ll be interesting to meet people that I’ve literally not seen for twenty years, though, as I have not kept up contact with old school pals at all. If not for the advent of Facebook, I don’t know if I would have even known about the reunion, or had the scanty communication with those folks that I have recently established.

I’ll be talking about this again after the fact. I hope that this will be a fun weekend, and that it will not bear witness to another one of those “bad” roadtrips, like last summer. In other words, I hope that none of my important parts chooses to fail while I’m somewhere in the Nevada desert far from anyone who can assist me.

Cheers.

Stuff I Can Do…

250 consecutive crunches

500 pushups within the span of a football game

Ripping phonebooks and apples like a G6.

 

That is all for now.

News from the Barrel House

The stomach is still not totally happy with me. We had a major spat last night that kept me from going out to do fun stuff with friends. After I relaxed for a while, it got better, but it’s still more than capable of jumping up and giving me a bad time. I am sad about this, but when you’ve got an evil gnome in your belly, he’s going to sometimes get angry and start throwing punches around down there.

I feel fine thus far today, and so the up and down of the health situation continues on, right?

In other news, I’ve gotten back to my most-every-day abdominal work. The first few days, I was sore, but I’m back now, and things are fine. I hope to be able to start doing my more ambitious exercise plan pretty soon, but every time I feel like I’m ready, the stomach goes on the warpath. It’s getting pretty old.

Update on my health and additional blather

So, then. Here we are, and it’s almost Christmas. Where has the time gone? Somewhere. Down the tubes, perhaps. I don’t even know how many tubes there are, or where they’re located. I’m out of the loop, it seems.

In any case, my stomach woes have seriously abated. Like, nearly back to normal abated, K? I was able to eat pizza, candy, and other things that would have made me miserable over the course of the last week or so. I think that the various treatments have, at last, taken effect. I am mucho happy about it, too.

I’ve been continuing to take it easy, though I have been ripping a phone book here and there. I think I’m just about ready to get back into hoisting things once more, and that will be great. I’ll let you know once I’ve begun.

In the archery realm, I’ve taken to shooting regimented, scored rounds, which has been an interesting and eye-opening experience. I think that my recent, intensive studies about archery, as well as attacking it with greater purpose and forethought, have made me a better shooter. There’s still a long ways to go, but I’m improving, and my bad shots are coming fewer and further between. Which is awesome. There’ll be a lot more about this in later updates, I’m sure, as the bow madness has completely got me at this point.

Hope you’re all well, and that you have a relaxing and fun Holiday Season!

I have to stop licking keyboards and other observations

So, then. Medical update. It seems that, by eating dirt or otherwise coming in contact with various germs, I managed to get a bacterial infection that attacked my stomach. Hence, the stomach distress and gradual return to my high school weight (the one upside). I recently finished with a course of antibiotics and am now on acid reducers to let my breadbasket begin to heal itself. It appears that this has begun to bring the suckitude under control. I see the doc on Monday.

Fun stuff below the break!

Strength Training for Librarians and other stories

So, it’s been a few weeks. Ugly weeks, for the most part. Why? Well, I’ve been having struggles with stomach issues. I’m going in tomorrow to see what it is. It hasn’t been fun. I am not eating much at this juncture. Again. I really want to be over the GI drama. The GI has other ideas. Enough of that crap.

What’s been going on? Well, I taught a fitness class on Friday called “Strength Training for Librarians”, and it went pretty swimmingly. We only had an hour, so I couldn’t get far into the whys and wherefores of things, but I showed them quite a bit, and gave them a handout that ran about 4,300 words, so I did what I could.

I’ve also been shooting as much as I could, and actually having some good success. My arrow groupings are tightening up, and I think my form is as good as it’s been thus far. There will be some videos in the Archery 2 segment reflecting this very soon.

Except for a few days when I just felt flat awful, I’ve been ripping phone books like a great big phone book ripping thing. Because of my difficulties health-wise, I haven’t yet settled back into any kind of workout routine. I’m hoping that the doctor will have some remedy for the stomach problems in hand, and that I can get back to normal (at least as close to normal as I ever get). I’ll keep you updated about what’s going on, and hope to have some fun stuff to share soon.

Happy lifting, good shooting, and take care.

Bummin’ around, shootin’ arrows…

This morning, in a chilly, almost-raining atmosphere, I took my Bowtech Black Knight 2 out for a few shots. I don’t shoot it all that much, as a rule, because I know that it needs new strings and cables before I put much mileage on it. That, and I have so many toys to play with that I can’t get to all of them that often. Also, the rubber tubing that makes sure that the peep sight on the sting turns in the right way snapped a while ago, and I haven’t fixed it. All that aside, I thought I’d put a few shots through the old beast and see how it did.

Working on things…

Hey, folks. I know it’s been a while, but I’m just checking in and giving you some idea of where I’m at physically at this point. Let me take you through it as it happened.

First, I had a week in which I was really starting to feel better. That was where we left off in the story.

The next week, I developed about a ten-day back ache that just would not quit. It was a really bad time. I had to take a lot of meds to keep things going that week.

The week after, the trouble moved to the lower abdomen, where I had a minor bout of IBS. Awesome.

From there, I found the trouble spot moving to my stomach, as I had a reoccurance of the symptoms that I had assumed were part of the gall badder issue. Eh…they’re still around, and certainly made worse by stress situations in my environment. Those issues have calmed down a little, but my stomach is still in some turmoil. The stress came from work, of course, and from being worried about my aunt, who was going in for the same operation I just had. She’s 78, see? Anyhow, she came through fine, and is tougher than I am, so she’s cool.

I’m trying some medicine that is for acid reflux right now, though my problem isn’t exactly that. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to go back to the doc and seek redress another way. I’m hoping to avoid that, but for now, I’m back on very carefully-planned rations, and not eating anywhere near bedtime. That seems to reduce the discomfort, but I’m annoyed with my body that it isn’t doing everything I want it to, when it’s convenient for me.

Anyway, I did a little weight-hoisting today. I can still put the 90lb dumbbells over my head with some facility, and can do the k-bell stuff about as well as I did before. Some heavy movements cause me to feel little, odd sensations here and there, but they don’t seem to be anything more than lights being switched on for nerve endings down in the boiler room.

I have been shooting a lot and making videos, as you may see if you skulk around Facebook or on Vimeo. I’m in good shooting form, which is nice, and I’m doing what I can to make the most of the late-season afternoons. It’ll soon be cold and yucky, and that tends to curtail the shooting a bit.

Finally, my phonebook ripping deserves mention. I am really having a great string of rips. I haven’t failed on a big (1,600 page) rip in weeks, and I’ve been doing one after work every day. It’s sweet.

All right. That’s all for now.

Hope you’re all well.