Today's Workout/Goals for the New Year

Would you look at that!  I managed to work out 2 days in a row!  Today I did Shoulders and Arms with Joyful.  It felt really good to actually do a "real" workout, and actually finish it!  It helped that it was upper body, so it barely affected my hernia.  I got the occasional sensation, but nothing to worry about or anything.  I decided to be a wuss and use 10# weights for everything.  For some stuff, it was really easy, for some stuff it was fairly hard.  10# on some of the tricep stuff is tough! 

I'm really trying to make a point of actually doing what exercise I can do every day.  It's so easy for me to use my hernia as an excuse to not do anything, and that doesn't do me any good.  Sure there are days where I actually hurt bad enough that exercise would suck really bad...but most days, I could do something.  We own a LOT of Beachbody workouts, and I bet there's something we have that I can do pretty much every day...my original plan for the New Year was to do Insanity...that's still the plan once I'm back to normal after my surgery.  From what I've read, it looks like it'll be a week after my surgery and I should be back to myself...so I guess probably starting Insanity the beginning of February.

I'm going to do the Lincoln Marathon this year.  It's in May...so I'm going to be using Insanity to do most of my training for that.  I've made it my goal that by the time I'm 35 years old, I'm going to qualify for the Boston Marathon...which means doing a marathon on 3 hours 15 minutes.  Step one of accomplishing that goal is getting my marathon time solidly under 4 hours.  I should be able to do that just fine seeing as how my Omaha 1/2 Marathon a couple months ago was 1 hr 51 minutes.  So I really want to use Insanity to get my Lincoln Marathon done in like 3 hours 45 minutes.  If I start Insanity the beginning of February, I'll have the whole month of April to work on my running, since the marathon is the beginning of May.  I'll have the cario/leg strength part down already, I'll just need to get my knees back into running...thankfully since losing my P90X weight, running is WAAAAY easier on my knees.  They say for every pound you lose, it's 4 pounds of pressure off your joints.  Plus, I really want to get a good time in Lincoln so that I don't need to do a full marathon in Omaha...that course is too hilly for my liking.  Doing a half marathon there is plenty for me :)

So that's really my main goal for the year, athletically...have my hernia surgery on January 20th...start Insanity February 1st...start running when I'm done with Insanity...do the Lincoln Marathon in 3:45 or better.  For goals after that, I guess we'll see.  It'll depend somewhat on how the Lincoln Marathon pans out for me...it'd be kinda nice to start another round of Insanity after the marathon, but I guess we'll see :)

Stretchin' It Up

Joyful and I did X Stretch tonight...it was quite nice.  We were going to do Plyometrics, and I was just going to do what I could, but we decided like 5 minutes in that it just seemed like a bad idea to do that tonight, so we changed to X Stretch.  Tony says in it that "it might just be what the doctor ordered", and sure enough, it was glorious.  It's just an hour of stretching everything from the neck down.  Kind of like Yoga, but not hard...just nice and relaxing.

We had a fabulous Christmas time this year.  It was Isaiah's first Christmas, and it was fun watching him with his presents...though he really didn't want to go to sleep tonight.  I tried to not be overly gluttonous, and I think I did a decent job of that...especially considering my lack of will power.  I could have done a lot worse :)

well, it's something...

So my working out has been super hit or miss the last while due to the hernia thing....I'm starting to slightly regret pushing back the surgery to January, but I tell myself that financially it'll be nicer...I do miss working out on a daily basis, though.  I get in a Shakeology workout here and there, but it's hard to stay motivated when my ability to workout is dependent on how my stupid groin feels.  Someone once said at a Beachbody thing that it's way easier to stay on track with your exercise and eating habits if you follow a specific program, and it's so so true.  Not that I've ever been good with the eating habits part even when I was sticking with a specific program, but I did pretty good...and it was so much easier to be dedicated to working out when it was habit.

Tonight I attempted the Yoga workout from the One on One series.  For those who don't know what the One on One series is, you should click here .  The Yoga is fun and crazy...and that coming from a guy who really doesn't care much for Yoga.  Tony has some new moves that are pretty ridiculous.  Some I can do, many I can not...but how awesome would it be to get to where I could do it?  I think that's one of the things I really like about P90X (and presumeably its successor, MC:2)...it's got stuff for you to work towards.  Sure right now I can't do Crane or some other pose, but if I work at it, eventually I will be able to.  That way you can celebrate the little milestones.  You've got your 30, 60 and 90 day stats, and you've got the "ability milestones" as you are able to do things you couldn't before.

Sadly I had to stop my (surprisingly) enjoyable Yoga time about 30 minutes in because my hernia was feeling weird and I didn't like it.  It's not so much that it hurt, it just felt weird and made me feel uncomforable...so I stopped.

I need to make a point of being better at exercise this week, especially with my challenges of will power around yummy food.  Joyful and I have done a good job of just not having stuff in our house that I shouldn't eat...but we're going to my mom's on Christmas Eve, and I'm sure that will be a potential for gluttony if I'm not careful.  As I mentioned once before, I work out obviously because it makes me more fit and healthy, but also because I like to eat :)

I'll try to do a better job of blogging...it's been a while since I wrote anything...but just in case, have a Merry Christmas!

New Workout

So I've been saying for a while that I needed to try the Shakeology Workouts...and I finally did today!  It felt so good to actually do a real workout.  Now, the Shakeology workout is NOT on the same level, intensity wise, as P90X...but it was perfect for me right now.  I felt some discomfort in my hernia one time when there was a bunch of jumping jacks, but I took it easy while they finished all the jumping and then I joined back in. 

It was kind of a weird workout for me...for one, I'm really used to working out with Tony Horton and having his style...the gal on the Shakeology workouts is most definitely not Tony.  I won't lie, I felt a little dumb at first...the lady is super super super perky, and that's just not my style, but I told myself I needed to workout, so just deal with the annoying lady and do the workout.  The workout itself is actually quite good.  The Shakeology workouts are designed for people who probably don't have a super high level of fitness...it was a nice, whole body workout...it had some cardio, had some weights, had some ab stuff...a decent number of squats and lunges.  There are 2 workouts, a 30 minute and a 50 minute.  I did the 30 minute because I wasn't sure how my hernia would react to doing a workout and I didn't want to kill myself.  It seems to me that this is definitely a workout I could do daily...probably on Sunday-Tuesday when I'm generally feeling good, hernia-wise, I could do the 50 minute.  I'm excited to workout again.  I'm excited that the UPS man brought our bag of Shakeology today.  I think my body will be thanking me for both.

Hooray!

I did a workout!!!  It makes me a little sad that on my P90X Blog, I'm so excited about having done a workout, but so it goes when I've got a hernia, I suppose.  Joyful's hip has been bugging her off and on (apparently we're falling apart), so instead of Yoga, she decided to do X Stretch...I figured I could join her for that one.  It was really nice...it felt awesome to stretch my body...pretty much the entire thing felt fabulous!  There was one stretch, Prayer Squat, that hurt my hernia area, so I stopped...but otherwise, it felt glorious.  I really need to be doing this much more often. 

I haven't actually attempted the Shakeology workout yet...I really need to.  My problem is that my hernia discomfort/pain tends to grow as the day goes on, and also as the week goes on...so chances are good that by the time I get home from work tomorrow all I'm going to want to do is lay down and hurt less...hopefully not, but it seems like Thursday and Friday tends to be my painful days...

I don't remember if I ever put it on the blog or not, but I'm doing my hernia repair surgery on January 13th, so I've got about a month until I will get all fixed up, then it seems like it's probably like a week till I'm normal again.  Joyful and I had planned on starting the Insanity workouts in January, and I'd still really like to do that, so I'm thinking after my surgery we'll start that up...might as well put the repair to the test :)

Awesome...

So since I can't really work out very well physically right now, I'm trying to improve myself in other ways.  One thing I really like about Beachbody as a company is that they're really big on personal development.  And trust me, I need me some personal development.  We had a great training thing yesterday with Craig Holiday and Traci Morrow...chances are really good the vast majority of the people who read this will have no idea who those people are (I know a year ago, I certainly had no idea who they were).  Traci is one of the founding coaches with Team Beachbody, and Craig is a marketing/leadership training guru of sorts.  They both came and spoke yesterday, and it was awesome.  We did these breakout sessions where Craig talked to the guys and Traci spoke with the gals.  It was really good stuff...very encouraging, very motivating, very challenging stuff.  A lot of it was encouraging me, as a man, to show my son and wife that I love them and work on healing any broken relationships, and work on consistently being the same person no matter where I am.  It was great, that it was this Beachbody event, but all the speakers were very heavily tinted with the Christian perspective...it's just nice to be working with a company who isn't afraid to have very vocal Christians doing their training stuff, and allowing them to just be themselves and not have to hide that aspect of themselves while they're doing work...way different than really almost any other job out there...and, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I'd be happy to have any of you join my team and help end the obesity epidemic in America...feel free to send me an e-mail :)

The Latest...

I had my appointment today with the surgeon who will do my hernia repair surgery, and here's what I learned.  I don't care much for dropping my drawers in front of a stranger (okay, I didn't just learn that, but I still don't like it).  More importantly, I learned stuff about my surgery.  I was hoping that I would be able to put off surgery until mid-January, and that is the case.  I was hoping that for a couple reasons...for one, it'd be nice to not have to deal with recovery while we're getting Christmas stuff set up and doing all that fun Christmas stuff...but the main reason is that my anniversary at work is in mid-January and I get my anniversary pay, which would be helpful since I'll have to take a little time off work.  Not having paid sick leave at my job is one of the unfortunate aspects of my job.  The doctor told me they recommend people take a week off work. 

So basically between now and then I'm just supposed to keep an eye on my hernia and make sure it doesn't show any of the signs of complications, be careful when I lift things and take it easy in general. 

The main hassle with putting off the surgery is the whole working out thing.  It turns out I miss working out, and I REALLY don't want to put on a bunch of weight between now and when I can work out for real again, but I SUUUUUCK at eating good.  I decided I'm going to try doing the Shakeology workouts or if those make me hurt look at the other workouts...I just need to find a workout that I can do that's not going to put too much strain on my core, thereby putting strain on my hernia and hurting.  I'm tihnking tomorrow I'm going to try the 30 minute Shakeology workout and see how it goes...I'll let you know :)