Listening to Body at Exercise

Leveling Posts for Water Harvest Shed

Ladders creak, and so do I. I listened to my body as I executed my 16 session Kettlebell strength regimen today and came up with a catalog of creaks and pops that presented fodder for blogging today. I first noticed a creaking in my neck that got me thinking about listening to my body. I heard the creaking while performing the first round of KB swings. I realized that by watching myself in the mirror I caused my neck to rotate at the head, which remained stationary, while my torso bent at the waist. If I stopped looking at myself in the mirror and let my head follow the torso my neck stopped creaking.

When performing KB rows, my right shoulder and elbow popped on many repetitions, but on the left side, only my elbow popped. I couldn't find a position or method that stopped the popping as the sound occurred intermittently.

The next sound I heard was my left knee popping when doing KB goblet squats. That occurred pretty consistently, but a squat is a squat and I didn't know how to reduce the sound without reducing the effectiveness of the squat. I also found right shoulder presses caused right shoulder pops and finally I heard the sound of my elevated heartbeat at the end of the session.

I googled "joint popping" and found a joint popping article on John Hopkins Medical Center web site, along with other sites that say the popping is nothing to be concerned about. Occasionally my pops inflict pain, but nothing to write about (hah!)

Which leads to another type of body awareness to mention here - that of feeling and quantifying pain. Prior to starting this exercise regimen I had noticed that the inside muscles of my right elbow hurt, possibly from a strain due to improper bowling. It wasn't enough pain to prevent me from working out, but I noticed a diminished ability to perform right-side exercises due to weakness around the right elbow. Being right handed I found it odd that I was able to perform more reps on the left side than the right side. However, several weeks into the strength sessions, I find the pain has diminished and the strength is slowly returning to my right arm.

Throughout the course of exercise I constantly notice tiny twinges of pain in various locations, perhaps a right shoulder twinge caused by favoring the weakened right elbow, or knee and hip twinges while doing squats - an exercise I haven't performed in years. The pain is always light and fleeting though and I carry on. But I always listen because I never want to go over the boundary of creating a real injury.

Changes to Enhance Attractiveness

Window flower boxes seen while walking in Bamberg, Germany

I have always loved how Germans dress up their windows with flower boxes. Many of my Cedar Park neighbors also dress up their yards with very nice landscaping and my wife and I have created nice landscaping in some areas of our yard, but a lot more needs doing. For the most part, people try to make a good impression on others by dressing up their surroundings, and themselves.

A few weeks ago I saw an article online where it was emphatically stated that women don't think men wearing tennis shoes (sic) to work is appropriate or attractive. That stuck in my mind because, as an engineer, I had not thought about my footwear in terms of attractiveness and I wore New Balance Shoes to work nearly every day, whether it was with jeans or dockers. I always put comfort first, especially after I started standing at work all day.

After reading that article however, I started wearing dress shoes and loafers to work more frequently and the New Balance shoes much less frequently and it occurred to me this morning that my change in shoes would make a good topic for today's blog. Why did I change my behavior after reading that article? Seriously! I've been married 32 years, (33 in May) and I'm not "on the hunt" so to speak, so why, after reading an article about tennis shoes not being attractive, did I start wearing loafers and dress shoes instead of tennies?

Even when I wore tennies to work, I always wore nice clothes above the shoes. I'm no fashion plate in any sense, but I like to wear nice dockers or quality jeans with quality button-up and polo-style shirts. I almost never wear t-shirts to work even though it's perfectly acceptable. Mainly, my choice in how I dress for work is a function of having worn an Army uniform for 12 years. To my way of thinking dressing nice carries on the uniform tradition I learned and it presents a professional face to the world which I hope speaks to my competence. In fact, during the years I worked as a manager, I almost always dressed in slacks and button-up shirts because that fit my ideal of a manager's appropriate uniform. While manager, I relegated Jeans and tennis shoes to casual Friday (even though that's not a work dress policy.)

So, back to the shoes - I changed my behavior after reading that article, which means I do wish to be attractive to people, and women in particular. I guess the shoes are my way of putting the flower box in the window - it's put there to let neighbors and passers-bye know you care about the appearance of your surroundings. In the same vein (vain?) I started wearing the dress shoes to show that I care about my appearance as does my pursuing fitness. Although the health benefits stand foremost in mind, as I want to live and enjoy life a lot longer than my father, I believe a side effect of attaining fitness is an improvement in appearance.

Today I appear to have regained energy after the lag of the past two days. I reached a new record of 240 Kettlebell swings, and another record 4 Turkish Get Ups on each side, with all but the last left side TGU of the "strong man" style. It felt great to tackle all of that!

Stamina and Stress Observations

Installing Fence

The stress incurred during the last few weeks of travel and day-long discussions may have taken a toll on my energy levels and stamina. By the end of Friday's discussions I was visibly drained and I didn't perform as well with the last person as I did the first few folks.

By nature I am a morning person. I often attribute that nature to 12 years of getting up at 5 a.m. nearly every day I served in the U.S. Army. But whatever the cause, I am aware of the fact that I achieve my best work performance early in the Morning through lunch. By the afternoon though, especially around the 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. hour, my energy ebbs and my brain operates in a fog and I because of that I choose to work on things that don't require great concentration in the afternoons.

I have found in the last two years or so, that if I get the opportunity to take a 10 to 15 minute nap or light doze at lunch the dreaded 2 p.m. let down doesn't occur, or at least at reduced severity, and my afternoon productivity greatly enhanced. If the weather is anything except freezing cold or blazing hot, I typically head out to the parking lot at lunch to get a doze session sitting in my truck. Unfortunately, I have far too many lunch meetings to do this as often as I like. I don't often doze at my desk at lunch because, at least to my thinking, there is a stigma attached to napping here in the U.S.

Yesterday, my energy levels ebbed to the point that everything I did felt and appeared lethargic. My wife commented on how pale I appeared and, in fact, I asked her to drive home from our visit to Gruene Weide because I knew I would have trouble staying awake while driving at my low energy levels.

That low energy continues to today as I was unable to complete my 16 session Kettlebell strength training. I accomplished everything except the 16th and last session of left side windmill and I didn't follow up with the extra KB swings I've added to the strength session the last couple of weeks. I pushed myself to complete the last few exercises, including finishing the full 25 seconds of 20 lb shoulder presses but that killed the energy needed for subsequent windmills.

I have observed over time that I have energy levels that flow from peaks in the morning to ebb by afternoon and I also observed energy levels that ebb and flow over longer periods. I haven't taken the time to log and quantify what the duration of the longer phased energy levels are and if there is a consistent cyclic rhythm to those longer period energy flows. But whatever the nature of the longer flows, I believe, from my own observation, that stress plays a role in accentuating the peaks and valleys of the long cycle energy levels.

San Diego Sunset at La Jolla

Sub-title: blogging on the road.

La Jolla Beach Sunset

I started this blog sitting in the San Diego airport blogging with my ASUS Transformer pad. It was not an easy go as the first issue encountered was that the blogger tool wouldn't upload my awesome sunset photo so I had to complete the upload at home that night. "Typing" is also a lot slower on these pads than a keyboard. (I've been typing for a  living since 1978.) Still, it was nice to be able to spend some of my wait writing. In the end, the pad/browser couldn't handle more than three paragraphs of text so I saved it and finished the blog at home. Blogging on the road with this pad is not as effective as it should be and needs work!

Friday after my day-long meeting in San Diego I sat, bored, in the hotel lobby, when it occurred to me that there was enough daylight left to go to the beach. So I decided to jump in my rental car and see the sunset from the nearest beach. A google maps search for public beach showed La Jolla Shores beach nearby. (I told the guy sitting next to me on the flight to San Diego that I would be staying near 'La Jol-la' and he said, "Oh, you mean, 'La Hoy-ya'." You would think a native Texan would know how to pronounce La Jolla. But then we Texans pronounce the Llano River with a 'La', not the 'Ya' sound. )

I arrived at the beach with 40 minutes left until sunset so I walked along the beach to get some light exercise. Along the way I took pictures and picked up a pretty rock along the way. As I got to the south end of the beach I found myself standing at the entrance of a seafood restaurant I had looked up earlier in the day. "This day is turning out great!" I thought to myself.

By then the sunset displayed its stunning hues through the remnants of earlier storm clouds as you can see from the photo above. As the sun sank lower though, the onshore breeze rapidly chilled the air to the point that I stood shivering before that georgious display of nature. I determined to stick it out through the whole sunset, cold or not. Fortunately, as the sun finally set, I turned to immediately enter the restaurant and warm up with a glass of red wine and a Cod Fish dinner.

I noticed that folks were eating huge bowls of black mussels but I had never tried them before. So I wound up the courage to ask the bartender if he could bring me a sample and he obliged by bringing out a bowl of four mussels. Wow! What an explosion of wonderful flavor! They were steamed and served in a bowl of slightly buttery seafood broth with leek, onion, red chilli peppers, and other spices. If I am so fortunate to go back to San Diego, I'll definitely stop at The Shores Restaurant at La Jolla to order a full serving of Steamed Carlsbad Black Mussels.

Overcoming and Succumbing to Excuses

Nap in Hammock after trail work

Last night and this morning I had several occasions related to both diet and fitness to exercise restraint or overcome excuses. Today's blog entry covers the reasoning that led to both success and failures in the art of overcoming or succumbing to excuses.

Inge cooked one of my personal favorites last night, Schnitzel, Rotkraut, und Kartoffelbrie - Chicken schnitzel, red cabbage, and mashed potatoes. I must be a simple guy because I love simple food! (My three favorite vegetables, in order, are spinach, cabbage, and asparagus.) For the last few weeks, I have been watching my portions and for this meal, I try to limit myself to one schinitzeled chicken breast half. However, Inge, in her ever generous way, put one and a half schnitzels on my plate.

I immediately entered a mental quandary with thoughts and excuses ping-ponging through my brain:

"It's only half a schnitzel extra," I pontificated to self.

"But I have been loosing weight so well. I can't eat the extra because it'll spoil my diet!" replied the other side.

The trident bearing half responded, "since you HAVE been doing so well, half a schnitzel won't hurt!"

And in this case I succumbed to the temptation and ate the whole thing along with extra portions of Rotkraut and the first beer in two weeks. For the first time since the New Year, I was stuffed to the point of discomfort and just a bit peeved at myself.

The annoying thing about this is the half-vs-whole thing. If she had placed a second whole schnitzel on my plate I would have immediately put it aside to eat as leftover because schnitzel on a slice of German rye bread makes an excellent leftover. But half a schnitzel borders on insufficient for leftovers and to discard it would have wasted food - something I discussed last week. So I ate it to my chagrin.

Today is the beginning of another travel day and I also had an early morning international conference call scheduled. So I rushed through my morning routine, the morning walk with Penny, and my Kettlebell swing session. Tuesday I had executed 15x15 swings but this morning I was sorely tempted to do fewer using the time crunch as an excuse. During the second session, I was mindlessly swinging and realized I went past the 15 count so continued to 30 for a double session. Still thinking about stopping early I decided on the 9th session to double up to 30 again, and thus zoomed past the tempting 10th session stop. From then on, it was just a matter of doubling my sessions the next two times to skip past even stopping points and repeat Tuesday's 225 swing session. By doubling up on the last three sessions I overcame excuses and temptation to slack off.

However, I know how long it takes to shower, shave, and dress so I knew I didn't have enough time after the swing session to perform my Turkish Get Ups this morning. So I skipped TGUs, rushed to get ready, fired up the work computer just in time for the 7:30 meeting, only to find that the meeting was canceled. Go figure! The lesson here is to adjust my morning to fit my exercise into the schedule even for an early morning work meeting.

Anyway, I always live knowing that life throws curves and even when I give in to temptation or find an excuse not to perform as I should, I don't beat myself up too much. It's easy enough to get back on track as long as I don't fall into the trap of letting excuses take over every day.

Is Pursuing Fitness Narcissistic?

Passing Ski-lift while hiking in Schwarzwald in Germany

This morning, while engaged in my Wednesday Strength session, I watched myself exercise in the master bath mirror in my usual shorts and t-shirt. About half way through the 16 sessions, it dawned on me that I couldn't see what was happening with the t-shirt on so I pulled it off during one of the tabata rest sessions.

As I continued my strength session sans t-shirt, I found myself fascinated to watch what muscle groups were moving around as I performed the exercises. There was a lot of shoulder activity I wasn't aware of during Kettlebell swings. Shoulder presses naturally hit the shoulders and arms but also activated upper chest muscles too. I was less than impressed with any visible muscle activity while doing curls, but my biceps and triceps communicated enough pain and strain to tell me that's where the action was and I just couldn't see it. From a mindfulness standpoint, watching the various muscle groups helps one understand what's being affected by each of the exercises executed.

So, I exercised, shaved, showered, got dressed, and for a minute or two admired myself in the mirror before heading out to work. It was then the topic of this blog entry popped into my mind. I googled narcissism and by its very definition, my exercise this morning and the past few weeks, and my admiring how I looked before departing is narcissistic. Darn! By definition, my pursuit of and my writing about fitness describes a narcissist and so I ask, is that a bad thing?

One way to look at is is re-framed the way one asks if one is alcoholic - does the consumption of alcohol negatively impact one's life and relationships? If so, it's time to seek treatment. So, does the level of narcissism reached in my pursuit of and writing about fitness negatively impact my life and relationships?

I would say that, overall, this fitness obsession currently positively affects my life. I am achieving better physical conditioning, thus, hopefully increasing the length and quality of my life. I don't think I'm negatively impacting any personal relationships in this fitness kick. The only negative thing I can think of is that writing this blog takes a bit of time, but one principle reason for writing about my pursuit of fitness is to serve as inspiration to keep going. I also have the rather vain (and narcissistic) hope that publicly sharing my thoughts and feelings about getting fit could serve to inspire others in their pursuit of fitness.

Across the Board Intensity Increase

Ice Capped Berry - 2007 Austin Ice Storm

Unlike this berry, temporarily frozen in time, my exercise regimen receives adjustments over time to ensure the correct intensity for what my body can deliver. Yesterday I amped the tabata up by 5 seconds per session, resulting in a 25% increase in my strength session length. Today I increased my swing session from 180 swings to 225 swings - 15 sessions of 15 swings.

For the swing sessions I don't deliberately set out to elevate the swing sessions ahead of time. I evaluate how I feel, mentally and physically, at the beginning of the session and set a target which I adjust as I progress through the session. Today I felt both physically sound and mentally rested and realized as I progressed that I could up the count from 12 sessions to 15 sessions without any problem.

However, that doesn't mean I was whistlin' dixie or shootin' th' breeze by the end of my 15th session. No, I was a pantin' sweatin' exhausted soul, wonderin' why I do such foolish things. Then I executed my Turkish Get Ups, thinking briefly of trying to execute 4 sets but could only accomplish 3 sets each side due to exhaustion from the expanded swing session.

I believe that by consistently pushing my exercise session boundaries I am incrementally improving my fitness and conditioning over time. Both subjectively and objectively I feel I have obtained a significant improvement in my fitness over the past six weeks of consistently working out. In fact, I feel better than I have for years!

Amping Up Tabata

Sailing Lesson, Corpus Christi Bay

Today I decided it was time to give my Tabata session a tweak so I edited my Android Tabata Timer app to bump the exercise period from 20 seconds to 25 seconds. I kept the 16 sessions and the 10 second rest period, just added 5 seconds per session.

You wouldn't think adding 80 seconds to a 320 second exercise session would make much difference, but I can tell you, it does! I was winded, extra sweaty, and quite exhausted after my workout today. On my 20 lb shoulder presses I couldn't even continue pressing the entire 25 seconds on each side. I decided after that to drop to the 10 lb weight to perform the windmill because I knew I wouldn't be able to support the 20 lb weight for the entire 25 seconds and I wanted to be sure to windmill for the entire period as it is an ab exercise and my exercise emphasis is on toning my abs. I figured, "better 25 seconds at 10 lbs than 15 seconds at 20 lbs."

I still added the extra Kettlebell swings afterwards, but kept having to mentally egg myself on after 15, 20, and 25 reps because I really wanted to quit. I completed 30, which I felt was sufficient for today's workout given the extended Tabata timing.

About the picture - my wife and I decided to take sailing lessons last fall and in some ways we found it was a lot of fun, but we also came to the realization that it wasn't an activity for us. The instructor thoroughly emphasized the risks of running over sandbars and wrecks and pipes by sitting quivering over his GPS worrying if we were about to crash into something unseen beneath the waters. I don't see how one can have fun sailing if, as an experienced sailor, one has to sit staring at charts and GPS's perpetually worrying about the next imminent wreck.

Sometimes, Rest is Called For

Backyard Compost Heaps, Resting

Yesterday I chose to rest. After the stress of my travel and discussions during the trip, as well as other work related stress, I decided that it would do my soul good to just rest. I walked Penny on one of the shorter 15 minute routes and other than making a trip to buy a bag of donkey food for Herbie, spent the rest of the day watching movies and documentaries. That doesn't give much to write about and from a mindful vs. mindless aspect, it was certainly a mindless type of day.

Today we drove out to the ranch and watered the orchard and garden, fed and brushed Herbie, and spent a good bit of time with shears and loppers busting brush. We named our land, "Die Manchmal Gruene Weide", which means, "The Sometimes Green Pasture". However, we could have just as easily named our land, "Die Dornig Weide", which means, "The Thorny Pasture" because the woods are overrun with climbing brambles. We have cleared out a lot of nice paths through the woods, but there are still years worth of bramble clearing work to do there.

I wish to go back to discuss the mindless day. The effort required to always maintain a level of mindfulness seems to me to be a potential source of stress.  If the definition of mindful living requires attention to every thought in every task at all times, then that definition becomes an unreachable goal, just as Jesus' re-definition of adultery from the physical act to simply having lustful thoughts of another means it is impossible for normal people to attain a life free of adultery. In the latter case the point is being made that holiness is impossible to achieve of our own accord due to the fallibility of our human nature and our holiness only comes by the grace of God.

In the situation of mindful living, I do not believe we humans, by our very nature, can perpetually maintain mindfulness. Therefore, my answer and approach to mindfulness is treat it as something I try to achieve when and where I can that, at that moment, could result in a betterment of the situation I am in at that moment. I can apply this at work while tackling a difficult task, or when bowling, to achieve better scores, or during my workout and eating to hopefully achieve better health and fitness. I find though, at least for me, that it is far easier to accomplish these and other events of life in a mindless way and I must deliberately and with conscious effort be mindful. In fact, I just forget to be mindful most of the time. Would that I possessed a tiny mental alarm that pinged me when I drift through a task mindlessly.

One Month Before and After Picture + Travel Report

Without further ado, here is the one month side-by-side before and after pictures: Warning, no Adonis here!

Before and After @ 1 month - can you tell which?

These two pictures were taken with a similar relaxed pose and in my biased opinion I can see shrunken love handles and gut and some definition improvement in the chest - barely. No six pack abs, but the beer belly screams, "feed me more beer!" Today, I weighed in at 187.5 lbs, which is six pounds fewer than the before picture. That's not a lot of weight difference, so I posit that the difference (such as it is) comes from the Kettlebell workout sessions combined with ranch exercise. 

I now present my travel report card - Food D+, Exercise F. I didn't exercise at all (though I only missed one day, Thursday) giving the excuse that I only brought/wore dress shoes and didn't want to go to the gym (which I didn't even look for) wearing dress shoes and sweats. This morning it dawned on me that I could have exercised anyway by doing some push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, and a couple of TGUs (sans weights) to get some activity going. So in the end I admit I copped out on a lame excuse.

From the food perspective, the first day I stayed under my calorie budget, which surprised me. In addition, the quality of the food wasn't too bad either - two soft-boiled eggs, Thundercloud turkey sub with avocado, very tiny bag of airline pretzels, and a meatless baked ziti (which I didn't finish) for dinner. Perhaps I ate too much bread and pasta but otherwise not too offensive a selection. 

Thursday drove my overall food grade down because I ate a hotel waffle (with sugar free syrup) and sausage, a Longhorn Steakhouse steak salad, and in the wait for, then rush between, late flights I drank 1.5 glasses of red wine, ate a Starbucks blueberry scone, and finally, grabbed an Einstein Bros pepperoni pizza bagel for a late dinner between connecting flights. The salad was good, everything else, from food quality standpoint was bad (though red wine is supposed to be good for you which is why I drank that instead of a beer.) Not only was the quality bad, but the total caloric intake of 2200 calories busted my daily budget to the tune of 400 calories. Booo!

Some thoughts about the waffle syrup choice. My choices of accompaniment for the waffle was syrup, of which the first ingredient was high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or a sugar free syrup which replaced sugar with sucralose. I also could have chosen a fruit spread (more HFCS) or eaten the waffle plain, or added sugar. I really love waffles but I get to eat them very infrequently. Therefore I decided to enjoy my waffle, but choose the chemical unknown of sucralose syrup rather than ingest HFCS as the latter is something I've been trying to avoid after reading the, "Fat Chance" book where the author basically labels sugar, and particularly HFCS as a toxin. (And he applies the label based on recent scientific studies.)

I knew heading into this trip that there was a potential to go off the wagon. I have another similar trip next week and I need to take the lessons learned from yesterday's travel experience to improve next week's results, both on the exercise and food front. I saw plenty of fruit offered at the airports and it would have been a lot better from a health standpoint to grab some fruit instead of a scone. We'll see how I approach the food and exercise choices next week.