90 Day Transformations

The Towel Method..

While I was swapping plates between front squat sets this morning, a guy working out nearby said, "hey, I like your towel method."  I was like, "eh, wha?" 

"Your towel method," he said again, pointing at the towel I had hanging out of the waistband at the back of my pants.  "That's a great way to gauge how far down you are squatting."

I still didn't get it.

"You stop when the end of the towel touches the ground, right?"

I realized that I had my hand towel just the right distance hanging out of my pants so that when I was at the bottom of my squat, the end of it brushed the ground.  Perfectly.  Like I planned it.  I laughed and said I hadn't planned it but that I was totally going to patent The Towel Method and I'd happily send him a check for 10% every month.  We laughed heartily.  Then got back to our workouts.

Final Stage of Men's Health Beginner Program

Welp, this is it..  I'm on the home stretch of this first 6 month program.  The Intermediate Program will start in about a month from now. 

The final phase of the Stage 4 routines are exactly the same as the previous phase except for the following:

1.  Instead of doing the sets of the big exercises like this... 
set 1, 10 reps
set 2, 8 reps
set 3, 6 reps

I do them like this...
set 1, 6 reps
set 2, 8 reps
set 3, 10 reps

Naturally, a set is using the weight I can only make it to six, eight, or ten with.  So I start each exercise heavy, and work to light.  Should be interesting to see how much more, if any, I can lift at the beginning of the routine as opposed to the end of it.  For example, currently I'm able to do 135 six times without a spotter on my last set of bench press.  Will I be able to bench 145 six times at the beginning?  I'm totally gonna try it (with a spotter). 

2.  There are two warmup sets instead of one.  Ergo, each exercise gets 5 sets.  Sweet!

There are three routines that are done a total of three times.  That's three weeks.  Then I'm done with the Men's Health Beginner Program!

Here's a question..  What's the deal with no safeties on the bench press stands at 24 Hour Fitness?  What with all the liability exposure they have at public gyms one would think that they would have bench press stations that have safety bars on them so in case the user drops the weight or can't get it back up, they can just let it down on the bars.  I mean, aren't most injuries and deaths caused by bench press accidents??  I have safety bars at home on my squat rack and they give me a little extra confidence to push up that last rep without fear of dropping the bar on my ribcage or getting stuck under it with nobody else home.  Maybe it's just 24 Hour Fitness that doesn't have them. 

Anybody else go to a gym that has safety bars on the bench press stations?

The Rig

I thought I might put up a photo of the rig I'm using to workout with right now.  Yeah, yeah, it's no in-home boot camp pullup bar and a set of dumbbells kinda thing.  Also, don't look at the piles of crap on the shelves behind it.

Do notice that there are safety bars so that when I'm doing bench presses by myself, I don't die, which would defeat the purpose.

I wish I could take this thing on the road.  Oh well, I guess I will just have to find a gym near the hotel.  The stand and dumbbells with the weight vest on it on the right side is the entire rig I used to take on the road for P90X and P90.

Troy olympic plates and bar, Bowflex adjustable bench, and Body Solid rack.  I have since added one of those big foam floor pad things so I can drop my dumbbells on something other than my face.

The workout I am doing at the moment has parts that are kinda easy because of my P90X conditioning (which does seem to stick with a person, even after several months off of it) but I modify them Tony-style to make them harder. 

And it has parts that are pretty hard in ways I wasn't expecting.  For example, in the Bench Step exercise, I'm finding that my grip on the dumbells is giving out before my legs do.  I've had to modify my grip a little bit to get through the set.   Despite that, I still had to take a break last time for about 10 seconds to shake my hands out.  I won't use straps so if this has to take a bit longer so my grip can catch up, so be it.

Rock n'roll.

Weigh Vest Random Thought #1.1

Here is me in April 2008 and me yesterday wearing the weight vest loaded up with 30 pounds.  Like I said, just leveing the playing field.

Core Synergistics, The Phelps Diet

I didn't realize that weights were required in Core Synergistics so I am excited to say that my new Ironmaster Quick-locks are drawn earthward by the force of gravity better than any other dumbbell I have ever tried, bar none.

Why can't I just drink Recovery Drink during Recovery Week?

There is a little bit of everything in Core Synergistics:  pushups, lunges, tons of ab stuff, rolling around on the floor like a gimp banana, and so much more.  Not easy like I hoped it would be.  I'm definitely not recovering from anything with this workout.

Not sure why they call it recovery week because these workouts are skullcrushers just like the regular workouts.  For those unfamiliar with some of the P90X routines, here are the Recovery Week workouts:

1. Yoga X (isometrics, legs, cardio)
2. Core Synergistics (abs, pushups, back, core)
3. Kenpo X (cardio)
4. X Stretch (doy)
5. Core Synergistics again
6. Yoga X again
7. Rest or X Stretch

Okay, so maybe X Stretch isn't exactly extreme, but Recovery Week is not a week off, no sir. 

Overall, it's going well - nothing but good things to say about this part of P90X.

Michael Phelps' diet looks a lot like my pre-P90 diet:

Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.

That's about 12,000 calories A DAY.  12,000 calories.  I feel like I need to say it twice for effect.  He spends up to 8 hours a day in the pool, all for a race that lasts for a couple of minutes.

We may not have the desire to become the world's greatest Olympians, but we can be great in our own smaller ways.  The discipline, motivation, and commitment required for this kind of personal improvement is very powerful stuff and is something we have to reach deep down to find.  Integrity begins with keeping the promises we have made to ourselves to make our lives better.  What an incredible accomplishment to complete a program like P90 or P90X or Body For Life.  You should all be very proud of yourselves.

Shiny Baby Ironmaster Quick Locks Arrive, Ninja Tryouts

I'm at the end of Phase One and this is Recovery Week so no picking up and putting down heavy stuff.  I'll have to test out the new dumbbells next week, when I start Phase Two (time flies, doesn't it?).  I did practice changing out the plates a couple of times - after I spent 20 minutes putting together the free stand.  The screwjob dumbbells I was using took me over a minute to change out the plates.  On the new Ironmasters I can add a couple of plates to two dumbbells in much less than half of that time.  Besides the fact that the locking handle dudes come on and off in like 2 seconds, the main thing that makes these faster is that the plates are designed to lean in to the handles so they won't tip over during plate changes.  That and they are square so they won't roll either. 

Pretty cool.

In other news, thanks to P90X I was able to jump from the roof of this house to the roof of this garage and back.  Yeah, I was thinking the same thing you were:  like a ninja.  No WAY would I have made that 5 foot jump without my Plyo skilz!

Food and Weights

quinoa

I have discovered a new food called quinoa (pronounced "keen WA."  Guessing that's Spanish).  I cooked some up last night and I have to say it was pretty good.  The flavor was kind of a cross between rice and oatmeal.  I may have used a little too much water, but it still turned out alright.  The great thing about quinoa is that it has more protein than regular brown rice does.  It also cooks in less time rather like couscous, although I don't think there is an instant variety like there is with rice (I find that the instant rice just doesn't taste as good - except, of course, Annie Chun's Rice Express).  I ate it without any flavor enhancement until the last few bites when I added a little bit of salt, just to see what would happen.  I found that the stuff tastes fine on its own.  It could definitely be used as a substitute for rice in any dish and can probably also be a sweet dish as well (add honey or jelly or Boston crème pie).

Ironmaster Quick-Locks

In other news, I bit the bullet and ordered the Ironmasters (they were on sale).  I was trying to figure out a way to get the weight I need for my workouts and a way to be able to change quickly between weights, all while keeping my money in my pocket.  My current setup just doesn’t work no matter how I slice it.  I thought, “well, I could pick up another Cap 40lb w/carry box, and just keep adding them together.”  Well, it turns out that unless I buy bigger plates, I can’t put more than 35 lbs on one dumbbell.  There just isn’t enough room.  So if I escalate my current rig I will have two boxes of 40 pounds each, the 20lb set I had before that, and then some more loose plates so that I can actually get the weight up where I need it (with room to grow).  So now I am making four or five trips between the hotel room and the car every time I need to move, instead of two or three (we’ll say three with 75lb dumbbells and a stand).  And it will still take me 30 or more seconds to swap out plates.

All this, in an effort to rationalize buying a shiny, expensive set of dumbbells.  But it is what it is and I need the weight.  The price is comparable to the other adjustable dumbbells and as far as I can tell, these are the nicest looking anyway.  Plus I can throw them on the ground and not worry about breaking them.

They'll be here in about two weeks so I will have to limp along with what I have until then.  When they arrive I will give them a full review.