Team Up

You Spell "Sore" With A Captial "S"

I mangled my way through my workout last night. Some compute maintenance/transfer/upkeep was taking much longer than I had anticipated.  And the soreness from my run on Saturday was really setting in.  I probably won't get back to run until tomorrow night (Wednesday) late. It may wait till Thursday if the legs are still sore. As tough as it is, its good pain - its the pain that tells me I'll be stronger when its gone.

The nutrition part of my program is doing great. I'm relying heavily on Shakeology and its works great. I'm actually concerned that I'm not getting enough calories.

Tonight's routine will be shoulders and arms. That should give the lower body a bit of a break. And today Judy spent some time on the elliptical and the treadmill. We're both wearing pedometers to work on getting our 10,000 steps per day. All in all, looking very good so far. Time to Bring It, folks.

This is the scene from the "man cave" last night. I was moving files from my old G4 to my "new to me" G5 dual processor 2.5 GHz Power Mac. Since the main 'puter was busy I had to use the G3 iBook my brother-in-law gave me to play my P90X video on for the exercise. There's even my trusty iPad to the left of the monitor.  Anybody looking for a well used G4?

First Day of the Challenge

Here we go on day one. Its first thing in the morning. I didn't sleep well last night and now I'm running behind. When I get home this afternoon I'll be doing my first set of the round. I've got some ambitious goals to get through in the next few months, but I believe I can do it.

***

After lunch I went to run to set my baseline for where I want to build on. The time frame includes 5 minutes of warm up, running until I reach a total of 3 miles (includes the warm up distance) and then the 5 minute cool down. Today it took exactly 38 mins. I would like to set my goal higher, but for the time being, I'm going to make it 1 minute a week for the first 4 weeks. Then I'll drop down to 30 seconds a week for the next 4 weeks. I'll re-evaluate it then, but I'd like to keep it up until the end of the effort.

I'll do the P90X after I get back from church.

***

Done with Chest and Back. First round of the 90 Day Challenge I joined is in the books. Gonna try to get some rest now.

Getting Grilled Chicken Moist and Tender

From Kimberly Ann:

"Do you know of a way to cook chicken breast in a way that they come out more tender? I've been doing them on a small George Foreman grill and just seasoned for about 3 1/2 minutes which helped with the shorter cooking time. When I did them for 4 min. they were just too done. I was looking for maybe a healthy but low fat marinade. I even thought of squeezing lime juice on them and letting them sit. Do you have any suggestions?"

Good question, Kimberly, because I also have found that a Foreman style grill can make chicken breast fillets dry and/or tough on the outside. Four suggestions from me that I have used.

1. Cut back on the heat and let the chicken cook slower.

2. When you marinate, use olive oil also. Are you using any salt in the marinade? If so, eliminate it. Salt before cooking pull moisture out of the meat. The olive oil helps to keep the chicken moist and the outer layer of the breast meat tender. I like to use olive oil and Tony Tchasheirs Cajun Seasoning, or lemon pepper, or season all. I realize some of this goes against the "no salt" advice, but olive oil and just about any grilling seasoning is great.

3. Start with the breast fully thawed. I usually buy the bags of chicken breasts from Wal-Mart and will cook up a whole bag at one time. I use the extra meat during the following days for all kinds of dishes. When I have tried to cut corners and start cooking while the meat is not fully thawed or still really chilly, I get the dry meat result. When I'm cooking chicken breast (which can be once or twice a week - remember I cook them all at once) I let the meat get up to near room temperature before I cook it. It goes without saying that you don't let that process go on a second longer than necessary.

4. Another way I've cooked the chicken breast is to fry it. Don't gasp. Here's how. Cut the chicken breast up into the size of portions found in Chinese cuisine. Put olive oil in the frying pan (don't use much; it doesn't need it and nobody's that wealthy). And again, cook at a lower temp. Always comes out tender and juicy, but th color is a little pale, so it needs a nice sauce to dress it up if not casseroled.

4. Finally, the best way I've stumbled on to cook the chicken healthfully and without drying it out is to chunk the Foreman and invest in a Nuwave Oven. Frankly, I hardly ever get the Foreman style grill out any more. I still marinate using olive oil as a base, but then it goes into the Nuwave oven and comes out perfect. If you don't have one, you might find a friend who does and borrow it before you invest. Luckily, mine was given to Judy and me as a gift. At first I thought, "What am I going to do with this monster?!" But now I wouldn't part with it.




Hope that helps Kimberly. I understand the problem and have had to deal with it. Keep the nutrition clean. Remember: you can't out exercise a bad diet.

I had some salty snacks yesterday. There is very little salt in my nutrition these days. I'm noticing any bloating right away.

Turning Up the Effort

I've blogged before about how to use a treadmill to get real results instead of just wasting time. If you're not dripping with sweat when you finish with your minimum twenty minutes on the treadmill, you need to seriously reconsider what you're doing and why.

Use the machine to push you. I do my HIITs on the treadmill shooting for 400 calories burned and 3 miles run, in less than 32 mins (working toward less than 30 mins). I worn out from running, but I can still keep going at a slower rate. But I have to make that slower rate effective. Remember: no sweat, no results.

I set the treadmill for cardio. I put speed at 3.2 to 3.5 and heart rate at 140 to 145. The variance is just to compensate for how burnt I feel from the previous run. I usually shoot burn another 200 calories. (Disclaimer: I know the "calories burned" on these machines is about as bogus and overrated as a Yugo customization store, but the numbers provide goals and consistency between workouts). I run the incline down to zero and let the machine gradually increase the incline to get my heart rate up. Once I reach the target heart rate, I'll let it stay there for a couple of minutes, then run the incline back down to zero and repeat the process. I do this until I've burned the additional 200 calories.



This process keeps me from falling into a steady state cardio, and moves me from low intensity to high intensity, keeping the body adjusting and burning additional calories. The age old problem is that if effort is static and unchanging, the body finds the most efficient way possible to meet the metabolic demands placed on it, reducing the effectiveness of the exercise. Constantly changing the effort level and metabolic demand keeps the body from ever settling into that efficient state and ends up with more calories burned.

Try it. Put in the run, but at the end of the run you've got some more to give, do this intense walk on the treadmill to get rid of a few more calories.

Salt Anyone?

During the past year I've noticed the effect that salt has on me. Because I was using salt, and lots of it, I couldn't really tell what it was doing to me. It's sort of like trying to determine if a fish feels wet. I was using a sauna regularly at the time, so that helped with some of the salt in my body. Also, I couldn't tell that salt was causing me to retain a lot of fluid and bloat, because I was bloated!

With some of the developing changes in my nutrition I just naturally reduced my salt usage. Then when I did use salt I could really tell what it was doing to me. My feet, which had finally begun to show some veins and tendons instead of just being balloons on the end of my legs, would quickly lose that definition.

The bottom line is that there is plenty of salt in the foods we eat to sustain health. Part of our nutrition plans needs to be cutting out the use of the salt shaker in our food prep.

Don't Waste Your Time On The Treadmill!

I enjoy the treadmill. Its not that I don't enjoy running outside, but I find I get a good workout off of a machine as well. The key is to make the machine work for you, not just get on it.

I've heard people talk about getting on a treadmill for a workout. When I ask them about the details I sometimes find out the person just walked or jogged lightly and didn't even work up a decent heart rate. Basically, they wasted their time.

Others will champion the advantages of using different machines: air bikes or elliptical machines. But the same mistake can be made on those machines: if you expect to be any different just because you got on an exercise machine for a half hour, but you don't push yourself, you wasted your time.

Generally speaking, it is not the machine, but the intensity and effort you bring to it that will make the difference. If you are not challenging your body to do something harder, you are not changing your body to be harder.

My choice is the treadmill. I enjoy the run and I enjoy using the machine to push me forward. Other machines may be preferable to you. It doesn't matter which one you like to use and switching up from time to time is a definite advantage. But given a choice, I'm climbing on the treadmill.

Here's what I do. I start out with a 5-minute walk. On the treadmill that I use (Life Fitness), for me that starts at a speed setting of  2.8 and I gradually work it up to 4.2 or 4.3. After five minutes I go to 5.2, a slow jog. After 30 seconds I speed up to 6.2 or higher. Then every 30 seconds I speed up by an increment of .2. When I reach exhaustion (somewhere between 8.0 and 9.0 depending on the day) I  drop down to 5.3. Then I begin speeding up every 30 seconds by an increment of .3 until I reach exhaustion. When I need to slow down to rest, I drop the speed down to 5.4. I incrementally increase the speed every 30 seconds by .4 until exhaustion. Then I drop down to 5.5. Incremental increases at 30 second intervals are .5. At exhaustion I drop to 5.6 and repeat the same kind of cycle. When exhausted and I finish that round, I start the process in reverse: 5.5, 5.4, 5.3, and 5.2. With that final round done, I walk for 5 minutes again to cool down.

The entire exercise takes a little over 30 minutes, usually about 35. If I don't have that much time I can adjust to make it shorter. If I feel a bit of overachiever in me, I can make it go longer.

The advantage is that I get an effective workout, instead of  just putting in time on the treadmill. Another is that this is effectively an interval exercise, or HIIT (shown to reduce belly fat). With every round I am challenging my body to either work harder or longer or both.  I can evaluate each session I'm on the treadmill by recording the length of time that I run and the point at which I reach 1 km, 2 km, and 3 km.

Similar approaches can be used on the exercise bike, the elliptical machine and even a stair master. If you are not sweating and needing to get your heart rate down at the end of the exercise, you need to reevaluate what you're doing. It's not the machine. It's how hard you're willing to work while you're on the machine that makes the difference.


Check out other great health and exercise resources at my Coach site. With the use of BeachBody products I have lost over 100 lbs and I'm keeping them off. At 55, I'm in the best shape of my life. I look forward to helping you reach your health and weight goals.

Run for Your Life!

I've enjoyed the couple of late starts and early releases we've had from school due to snow, but I'm really glad that winter is on its way out. The weather has been great lately, and even though I know there will be some wintry intrusions, the cold is giving way to spring and summer warmth.

That means more time outside and some morning exercises that I haven't been doing. Its time to start readying myself for am runs outside. I've not run since the late fall when I changed my work schedule and chose not to go to the fitness center in the afternoons after school. So, I'm in the same boat with a lot of other people who need to get back into running.

First, measure a course. Get in your car and drive the course you plan to run or find some other means of measuring. Remember, three miles is approximately five kilometers. If you can do that much, go for it. If it needs to be less, set it, but make sure you're doing that much on a regular basis.

Then begin getting out on your course and walking or running. Expect to be sore at some point. Muscles are going work harder than they have. Start off slow. Either a very slow jog or even walking could be best. Do that for one to two weeks daily. Then it is time to pick up the pace. This is a "make myself do it" decision. Heart rate needs to be well elevated and breathing should be hard enough to make more than monosyllabic conversation difficult. Keep this up for a week if it doesn't make you sore, or until the soreness passes. Be careful here: even though you are trying to push your performance, don't over do it. You should not be gasping for air with this level of intensity. Run hard enough to make conversation difficult.

Once you've acclimated to that stage (it may be as long as a month after starting) you're reading to start HIITs: high intensity interval training.  The concept here is that for short periods of time you will push yourself to your limits. Then slow down, but don't stop. Just get down to a recovery level. For example, after warming up with a slow steady run  for five minutes or so, start speeding up. Push yourself harder for a 30 seconds to a minute. After that, slow down to your original jog speed or even a little faster, and catch your breath. This should only be a minute or so. Once you've regained your rest level, push your speed up again. Do it faster this time. The repeat the process of dropping back to a resting level to get your breath back. When you stop the push, the high speed interval, you should be gasping for air. You should have reached your physical limit.

The advantage of this process is that is has been shown to improve cardio vascular response and to burn belly fat. The routine will improve slow and fast twitch muscle fibers (because you're utilizing both). And it will increase your overall speed.

If you plan on participating in 5K runs, spend at least one of these exercise days during your week to just keep up a sustained hard run. Push yourself to maintain a high speed. The HIITs will help you build this sustained speed as well. You've already determined your course, so keep a record of how long it takes you to run the course. Chart your progress. From time to time,  follow the course in reverse. This will help you avoid certain injuries to your legs or hips.

Before you know it, you'll be back into shape and keeping up your runs. Run every other day, about three times per week. If you run more often, make sure you intersperse some very light duty runs into your regimine.  Certainly take at least one day off from running to give your body some recovery time. And the older you are, the longer recovery can take. Be wise.

Well, that's how I plan to do it. I'll be getting up early in the morning and putting in a couple of miles running around my neighborhood. My June, I should be ready for some 5K runs. Let's get going and start running for our lives.

Coach!

This past weekend I signed up as a Beachbody coach. I have had and continue to have outstanding results using their projects. Losing over 100 lbs of body fat is one of the most amazing things that has happened to me. And the opportunity to let others know about those products and to experience the high of getting into the best shape of their lives.

If I can be of help to you, contact me and let me show you how to reach the health you have always wanted for yourself.