Progression

I've managed to cross a couple of things off my list - namely finishing my essay (last one for this course, hooray!) and seeing my friends in November. At the moment I'm on my elective placement, which is fun and interesting but also exhausting. As usual when I'm learning a lot, I also need to sleep a lot, and with placement all day and coming home at 5pm, my motivation to work out is dimmed a bit.

However, today I made it to the gym (leg session...) and yesterday I made the decision not to go, but to do a home workout of press ups, squats, burpees and crunches instead. So my exercise level is fine, but my motivation is a bit lessened I suppose. Oh well. I'll get through it. Also, I'm ignoring Jamie Eason's dictat not to do cardio in this section because I need to either walk or cycle to get into placement. It's not the biggest cardio challenge, but still. I feel like a rebel. I'm looking forward to Phase 2, for a change as much as anything.

I almost did my 50 let me ins on Sunday (got to 35 and was feeling good), but my mother decided it would be funny to try and tickle me as I did it, so I gave up. Annoying, but maybe I should do exercise where my mother can't sabotage me.

It's a little bit annoying that a lot of these goals can't even be looked at properly until next year/when I have a job. Well, I suppose that's not true, I can do things like crochet a viking hat or learn 1000 words of Italian. Or a lot of the fitness goals can be worked on. I suppose it's just the fun/moving my life forward things that need to wait. 1 month left of my degree.

Hm, kind of downbeat today...good thing I'm going to a self-esteem group tomorrow!

Assault Course Race

So one of my major Dexterity goals is to run an obstacle course race. In the last few days I've been looking around a few, and I think I've settled on the Spartan Super Race. This is a 12km race consisting of mud runs, trails and obstacles. They don't tell you quite what obstacles, but they promise you 'fire, mud, water, barbed wire, and occasionally Hell on Earth.' Well...that sounds like fun.

Yes, that is a man LEAPING OVER FIRE

Happily they also offer a free eBook which contains a pretty comprehensive training guide. To be honest, the training looks tough as hell, let alone the actual race. It looks like they want you to do a LOT of burpees. I hate burpees. I don't know anyone who doesn't. However, I know I hate them because I find them hard, and I find them hard because they require pretty fantastic levels of strength and cardio fitness. So I just need to suck it up and do more of them. It also wants you to do pull-ups. If you look in my goals, you'll see I currently cannot do a pull-up. So in a way this is difficult, but in another, more meaningful way, my goals are all coming together and soon, SOON! I will take over the world!

Fortunately, the race I'm aiming for is scheduled for September 2013, so I have plenty of time to train up and become an incredible monster made of fitness and mud running. For now I'm going to stick with the Jamie Eason programme to completion, and then probably try following the Spartan Sprint programme, and then graduating to the Spartan Super programme. If I get through that fine...maybe I'll look at the next level...maybe.

In the short term, the goals looking likely to be achieved are:
-Finish OES essay: this sucker should be finished by tomorrow. If it's not, I don't get cider.
-See the guys at least once a month (November; 5%): should be seeing them this Saturday
-See my sister at least once a month (November; 5%): My birthday's a week on Saturday, and she said she'd be home for that
-Finish stage 1 of Jamie Eason programme: Due to finish stage one the day before my 26th birthday!

So within the next 2 weeks I should have 50% experience towards level two. Actually, that's not bad! I'm not unhappy with that!

After that, next on my hit list will be:
-Do 50 let-me-ins in one set
-Crochet a viking beard hat
-Get a job in OT
-Sell my old clothes over eBay
-Finish elective placement
-Finish PGDip

Viking Beard Hat. Just FYI.

So plenty to be going on with! May end up updating this list with more awesomeness when I cross some stuff off!

Jamie Eason's 12 week plan - week 2

So a major element of my goals include finishing the Jamie Eason Livefit 12 week plan. Basically this is a 12 week workout program on bodybuilding.com which is largely focused on weight training, but has cardio in later weeks as well. So, I'm not training to be a bodybuilder. Frankly, Jamie Eason's arms are a little too jacked for me, hot as she otherwise is.

Jamie Eason and her incredibly jacked arms

But lately I've been slacking on working out. In the past I've been pretty good, but since my last placement I ended up so exhausted coming home every day that I barely exercised. After that, I found it hard to get back into the swing of things. Now I'm living back with my parents I'm also finding myself putting on fat (I can't say weight because I never put on weight) and overall I just wasn't happy with the way I was looking or feeling.

In general I do best in fitness goals with a fixed plan to follow. I managed to start running with Couch to 5k, but struggled to keep going once it had finished. I need structure or I end up just aimlessly drifting from one thing to the next. I suppose this is why I've never really enjoyed sandbox games - I much prefer to know what objectives I could be completing next.

So far I've completed 2 weeks of the program. Thus far it's been fine - I'm doing fairly high reps (12 per set) but trying to push the weight up every time. I'm always sore the day (and sometimes 2 days) afterwards, but it's a good sore. It also only takes me 45 minutes, which is great for a morning workout. I hear the time it takes really ramps up in later weeks though, so maybe I'll have to start waking up earlier...either that or work out in the evenings. Next week 10 rep sets begin, so I'll be pushing the weight up even higher.

In terms of the diet...I am ignoring it entirely. Bodybuilders and anyone obsessed with weirdly specific performance (I'm looking at you runners and triathletes) tend to get very precious about diet. You may only eat egg whites, you must eat every 3 hours, you must eat constant protein, you can only eat 'bad' food on a 'cheat' day. Pfffft. Whatever. I've tried to clean up my diet a bit (a lot more fruit and vegetables, a lot less chocolate, biscuits and cake) but I'm not going crazy with eating a lot of unnecessary protein (read anything by Anita Bean - she makes a pretty convincing argument that we don't need as much protein as we eat) and I'm eating 3 times a day. I'm also eating junk food if I want it. I rarely want it. But I'm not aiming to look like a fitness model, just a fitter version of myself so I don't see any point in torturing myself with denying myself things.

So far I think I'm starting to look a bit 'tighter' if that makes sense - my muscle definition in my arms is improving and my stomach's looking a little flatter. I'm quite lucky in that my body seems to respond to exercise quite well and quite quickly, which is always gratifying.

Oh well, another 2 weeks and I can cross Phase one off my list and give myself 20 experience points. For now I'll keep working on my essay - should be able to get 20 experience points by mid next week if I push it.