Showing posts with label pull-ups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pull-ups. Show all posts

Saturday, September 4, 2010

66. Warning - PCP Philosophisizing Ahead

At the moment I'm in a very cocoon-y meditative introspective state. It started after reading Jenny's post about panarchy and that's when it really sunk in that this is bigger than getting fit for the firefighting test, this is about striving to reach a new place of normality, a quantifiably better normal. All of a sudden my mind just went silent (which is totally weird for me, because I'm pretty much the least mindful person around, my brain is always going off in 7000 different directions).

Today, I got up, went to class, came home, snuggled with the mister, did my pcp workout, baked some banana bread, worked on the house, cleaning and fixing, made dinner, and am now just finishing up with blogging and some cleaning before jumping into bed with my book. It was the kind of day that I think of when I think of life being good; relaxed and productive and really pleasant. This is my baseline for what life should be like.

Lately, things have been busy and so I haven't had as much time or mental energy for pcp. I've been great on the diet, but when working out, it hasn't been with as much care as it should be. I've done the exercises, gotten through, but haven't taken the time to really check my form and make sure I'm getting the most out of the exercises, and not going all the way to farthest amount of failure I can get to. I've been slacking. I kept telling myself that I'd get back up to par when life slowed down. But the thing is, life will never really slow down. Well will never slow down to the point at which I say, "ok, life is slow now; now is the time to do better with the workouts". It's a mistake to think that when life slows down there will be more space for well focused workouts. That's the wrong way of thinking about, because then you end up with life and working out and they're separate. They're not separate. They're one and the same. PCP/being healthy is life and life is PCP/being healthy. If try to separate them, you're only going find time for one: life or pcp. But when you realize that pcp is just another part of life and just get in there, that's when you've got it.

During the first month, I kept thinking, "oh in October when I don't have to workout ...". But no, that's not it at all. The 90 days don't matter. Well they do, I'm glad there's only 90 of them, I'm not sure I could pull off 120 or more, but they don't really matter. PCP doesn't end on day 90. By day 91, hopefully we've boosted ourselves up from our old normal to a new better normal so that when we don't have a workout prescribed or our daily grams measured out, we don't go back to our old ways, we start to find our way around daily life at our new, better level of normal.

End philosophisizing - Bicycles today were so hard. I don't know what it was but I was really struggling to get through the last two sets. Also, I did 6 sets of pull-ups with Jordan's help. He definitely had to help me way more at the end at the beginning. Patrick, is that the best way to approach them? Or should Jordan help me as little as possible so that I fail early on and then finish out the rest of the sets as inclined pull-ups?

Friday, August 6, 2010

37. Mystery Pumpkins

Somebody left three pumpkins on my porch yesterday. Score! I'm fully intending on eating these bad boys, but I'm not sure I'm ready for roasty toasty fall food yet. I'm still stuck on salads and smoothies (although without the banana the dinner smoothie doesn't work so well). It seems like I might be the only one who's enjoying the fruit dinner, which I definitely am. I really do feel lighter and happier with just the apple, milk and egg. I'm even glad the banana is gone, because it just felt like too much. It's almost like my entire metabolism shifted or something, because before the fruit dinner, the regular dinner was way too much and now sometimes it seems like a struggle to eat my veggie snack at the end of the the day.

So the diet is still good. And even the socializing thing is going well. I'm getting comfortable at ordering soda water at bars and resisting the munchies. I haven't been to a potluck, which might prove to be my downfall, but I did successfully resist donuts, coffee cake, pie, and candy bars at work yesterday and supposedly there were donuts today too. I didn't even bother to go look. Usually I would have told myself that I didn't want/need any of whatever it was and then gone over to check it out anyways and end up walking away with a little something, but I didn't even go over to look. Progress!

Workouts are good, except for the leg exercises, they're killing my knee. Yesterday, the pain after one of the frog jumps was so intense it took my breath away. I gave up after that one and sat for a while to regain my composure and then pressed on. My arms and back are getting so strong. I haven't tried a real pull-up because I don't have a bar yet (fragile old doorframes don't like pull-up bars) but I think (hope) that maybe I'm getting close to being able to do one.