Update: Injury tally

Starting parkour training has somewhat hindered my strength training. Current injury tally:

• bruised knees and shins: 3
• strained wrist: 1, left (cat pass practise)
• incapacitated arm: 1, right (landed very hard on my elbow when I drastically mistimed a dismount from horizontal bars)

Still having fun though. Should be back on the weights next week, or this weekend if you count helping someone move house.

All kinds of sore

Image courtesy of and (c) AfroGeeks

In the past 5 days I have:

• done weights training twice
• been for a run (~4km) twice
• attended two parkour classes (my first two)

It doesn't seem like much when I list it like that. Nonetheless. I am sore.

But I feel fantastic. I feel strong, reasonably fit, and like I have taken a solid couple of steps down this road to Midoriyama. Last night at parkour I achieved something I thought would take me a few months to work up to. Basically two horizontal bars about 2m apart, and I wanted to swing from one to the other. Similar setup to the Jumping Bars:

Image courtesy of and (c) Sasukepedia

Sickie schedule

I've been sick the past week. My body has amazing timing. I challenged myself to get up at 5am throughout May, which worked a treat because I mostly had the weights to myself at that time of the morning. And then on 2 June I got hit hard with a cold. My first sick leave in two years, right at the beginning of June. And it was right after I hit a pretty big milestone -- 105kg squats, 110kg deadlifts.

Back to the gym yesterday, easing into it. Dropped back to 80kg for squats, to make sure I'm getting all the way down to a right-angle. (I wasn't before, but didn't want to push it in case I missed my incremental increase.) Then a short run this morning. And now my legs (and glutes) are saying "hey what happened to sofa time?"

2 legs good, 2 arms bad

Quick update. Just after my last post I took a good shot at meeting my 5km in 22 minute goal... and smashed it out of the water. 5km in 19:57. That's on a treadmill with no incline, but still I'm very pleased with myself.

For the past 2 weeks I've been following Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength Program. Well, as much of it as I could gather from the internet, which is unsurprisingly scattered but sufficient. I think. It's a linear progression program, which means each workout you increase the weight, using "the novice effect" to build strength relatively quickly. (Again, thanks to Oti for suggesting I move into a linear progression weight training program.)

Catching up, setting sights

I got called out for not updating the blog -- thanks Oti. :) Am I still training? Yes!

Sunrise, as I was LEAVING the gym this morning.

I had a couple of weeks off training due to a week away for my birthday and a week of not getting to the gym for logistical reasons (combined with weak willpower).

Progress in the past 6 weeks.
1. I decided that weekdays in May I will get up at 5am and go to the gym. So far so good. This means I don't have an excuse to NOT get to the gym, and means I don't spend willpower during the day telling myself to get up from my desk and go.

2. At the climbing gym, I'm still on yellow bouldering routes, but smashed out a full overhang climb (about 25% angle all the way up) which I'm very proud of. I still have about 4 or 5 difficult yellow routes to conquer. I'm also practising on the campus board -- going up two rungs at a time (only 1 step, so far) and going up two hands at a time (again, only 1 step so far). Still, that's progress.

3. I did a 5km treadmill run in about 26 minutes (about 5m12s per km, or 8m22s per mile). I thought that was pretty good. Then I looked at the goal I'd set myself at the beginning of the year: 22 minutes. Wow, that's fast. To be honest, pretty unlikely. I thought I'd try to slowly improve, but next time I was on the treadmill I pushed myself and came in at 22m21s. So I guess I can push myself to hit that goal this month.

4. I've been doing my usual "first of the month" mini test to help measure progress. No surprise that the thing you don't work on doesn't improve -- burpees are my downfall! Well, I think willpower is my downfall -- hence the dip in max pushups in April. My goal is 100 in one set, which will all come down to willpower.

	Pullups	Pushups	Burpees	Plank
Feb	9	34	26	2:00
March	10	40	24	2:10
April	11	27	27	2:20
May	11	49	23	2:30

This month I'm aiming to increase strength. I've been at the gym for 4 full months this week, so my body is used to exercise. So it's time to start pushing. Given my lack of willpower for doing long sets, I actually expect to do quite well with heavier weights / fewer reps.

Next step is to record my current strength for weighted exercises and track that progress.

March fitness update

Did my monthly self-test today -- a few days late, because I 'hurt' my shoulder last Wednesday at my PT session. I'm saying 'hurt' because if I say 'injured' that gives me an excuse to stop. I hurt it, but still went for a run and played soccer in the meantime.

Today was hard, but mostly a slight improvement on February.

Max pull-ups: 10 -- up from 9 in Feb. Actually, today is the first time I've ever done 10 in a set. And I felt like I could've maybe done half of another one.
Max push-ups: 40 -- up from 34 in Feb, which I called "pathetic" at the time.
Burpees in 2 minutes: 24 -- down from 26 in Feb. Actually, it looks like last time I did burpees before push-ups. That might explain the improvement then failure. But also I haven't really done any burpees in my routines in the past month, so there's also that.
Plank: 2:10 -- up from 2 minutes flat in Feb. But in Feb I remember the first minute was ok, then I started shaking. Today I had a false start when I started shaking at 45 seconds. I took a short rest then went again. And started shaking at 45 seconds, but this time held it. Having a target to beat sure helped!


Also, most people have probably seen this by now, but worth posting again for good vibes:

"My friend Tyler is trying to lose weight and he asked my other friend Orlando to train him. Tyler was embarrassed to go to the gym though so Orlando is taking care of that by dressing up as characters when they go to the gym so that the focus isn’t on Tyler but on himself. So far Tyler has been trained by a Jedi and steampunk Batman. This is one of the nicest things I have ever seen done for someone else." -- A Collection of the Wonderful

Little steps

In the past week or so I've had little successes. I should keep track of these for when my motivation wavers.

Burpees
I'm surprised at how bad at burpees I am. Well, how exhausting I find them. At the start I was exhausted after 7 or 8. Last week I was tired after 9. That's something, right?

Climbing
Last week I conquered two yellow bouldering climbs.

First of the month: Feb 2014

I thought I'd do a series of tests on the first of each month to see if that shows my progress. Being the beginning of things, though, and not having an obstacle course to run, it may not end up being that useful.

For the first test, on 1 February 2014, I set a spectacularly low bar.

New things (to develop core strength)

I was so busy laughing I forgot to get a photo.

On Sunday I tried slacklining for the first time. I don't think I've ever laughed so much while failing so completely at a physical task. I'd lose my balance to one side, put all my effort into holding myself there, then start laughing as I feel my weight shift beyond the point of recovery, and then go tumbling off. If you want an activity with a high concentration of laughing and swearing, give slacklining a go!

I did get the hang of it after a couple of hours, which is an awesome feeling. But when I went to bed that night it took me a good 10 minutes to get my brain to stop trying to shift my balance.

Climbing and goals

Because I'll probably never set foot on a Sasuke-like course before I get to some kind of official try-outs I won't know whether I'm able to, for example, beat the warped wall. So, I need to set myself some kind of goals to achieve instead.

We hear a lot about how Sasuke is about upper body strength. Certainly Stage 3 is a killer on the arms, and Stage 4 is at least 50% arms. And of course core strength is essential for just about everything, especially things like the body prop, cliffhanger, salmon ladder and any kind of spider walk.

Body prop: total core control

But watching Makoto Nagano on the earlier stages, how easily he keeps his balance and doesn't break his stride when climbing and jumping, I think it requires a lot of leg strength as well. (I had originally put it down to his sea legs and great balance gained from time on a rocking boat, but I think he's also just really really strong.)

Motivation, the freedom to fail, and disappointment

I talk big. My life motto, inspired by improv, is "give yourself the freedom to fail." It means that you can try things without worrying too much about what happens if it all goes wrong. Because failure is an option, if you do fail you haven't really lost anything.

When we started our weekly (originally fortnightly) open mic variety show Arthur B's Fringe Affair, the motto of the show was "you have complete freedom to fail", and our performers really seemed to appreciate and embrace it. Some people said it was a bit negative, so we updated it: "You have permission to be awesome, and complete freedom to fail."

Last year I wrote and performed a bunch of brand new things which had the potential to fail. Short stories, standup comedy, beat poetry, songs, and a whole bunch of improv sets. I also stopped blogging, running and doing pushups. Which brings me to motivation and when it stops.