Body-shaping...
Jul. 7th, 2011 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dennyOver the last year or so, and more seriously over the last eight weeks, I've been making a bit of an effort to improve my physique. I may start writing some stuff about that here. Posts on this subject will be behind the cut-text 'body-shaping', as they may potentially be triggery for ED people. Please don't read my body-shaping posts if you're going to be upset by discussion of diet, exercise, and/or (often negative) body image. There may also be some mild TMI in there about my sex life, you never know your luck.
The story so far...
Nothing very exciting started this really, I just reached a point where my body was (and still is) sufficiently far from the shape I would like it to be that I decided it was time to try to do something about it. I'm not massively overweight - two months ago I was sat just on the 'normal' side of the border between 'normal' and 'overweight' on the BMI scale (24.6), with a body-fat percentage just between 'average' and 'obese' (23.1%) - but I've never been very well-muscled (understatement!), and I have crappy posture, so the fat does tend to show. I'm not actually that bothered about my weight (77kg two months ago, 73kg now), it's more the body shape I'm worried about, hence the post title/tag/cut text.
Basically, I've got flabby enough that I find looking at myself in the mirror a bit unpleasant, and eventually I decided that I'd rather do something about it than carry on whining about it (to myself, and occasionally to my long-suffering girlfriend(s)).
I also figured that while I was trying to shed some fat, I could work on gaining some upper-body strength (useful if you have a girlfriend who wants to play-fight, which I did at the time), and improving my stamina (useful if you have a sex life, full stop) :-p
So, I first started going to the gym again last year (I'd been before in 2005, when I was recovering from my motorbike accident, but that largely focused on rebuilding damaged and/or atrophied leg muscle). This time round, as is probably fairly typical, I went a few times a week for a few weeks, then once or twice a week for another few weeks, then fizzled out in less than three months. I started again a few months later and did much the same thing again. Finally, I started in again eight weeks ago, and I've been doing better at regular attendance this time - I'm averaging about four or five visits a week.
I've been collecting the wristbands they give me each time I go to the gym, and sticking them along the top of the mirrors in my bedroom. This is an effort at gamification - the idea that if you can build up a score by doing something, then doing that something becomes more appealing. Here's my score for the last eight weeks:
I've also made more effort to change my diet this time - something that was more difficult in the past due to eating with other people quite regularly, but now I'm usually eating alone (or with Helen, who eats quite healthily anyway) - so it's more possible for me to manage my diet without too much temptation or drama. Mostly this means I'm trying to avoid eating tonnes of potatoes with every meal, which had got to be something of a feature of my diet the last few years. I've also stopped drinking calorific drinks most of the time - no more Lucozade, and much less fruit juice than I was drinking before. I'm currently drinking bottled flavoured water instead, in an effort to (a) avoid drinking calories and (b) drink more water, which seems to be a weight-loss/toning tip in itself (and I have a long-running problem with not drinking enough fluids and being dehydrated all the time, so it seems like a good goal in and of itself).
During the first run at the gym last year I threw myself into upper-body exercises quite hard (being well-motivated by the previously stated reasons!) and this did give me some shoulder muscles, which I've never had before in my life (I believe the visible ones are the deltoids and the upper trapezoids). Sadly this didn't seem to make a huge difference to my practical upper-body strength, but it did make a big difference to how I looked to myself - I notice the extra muscle every time I tie my hair back in front of a mirror - and I've even caught myself stroking them from time to time when I'm sat at my PC thinking about a coding problem. I do have a thing about nice backs and shoulders on other people, and may therefore be inclined to fondle them when allowed and encouraged, but it was amusing to find that this apparently applies to my own back and shoulders too! :)
However, having thrown myself in a bit fast last year, I did do myself some kind of minor injury - my shoulders both started making some fairly unhealthy crunch noises, accompanied by crunchy internal feelings, and that problem still hasn't entirely gone away. So, this time around I've been taking it much easier, trying to build up better muscle tone first by doing more repetitions at lower weights, instead of immediately trying to build muscle by lifting the heaviest weights I can cope with for a short set. I've also switched a couple of exercises (notably, the shoulder press) from the machines to free weights, which seems to have helped a lot to reduce the shoulder crunchiness. I'm a bit scared of free weights because I figure if you do an exercise incorrectly with them, you can probably do yourself a nasty injury, but if the machine version was doing me a nasty injury anyway then it seems worth the risk of trying the free weights instead!
In case anyone is interested, I'm currently doing the following exercise routine (more or less - it varies a bit depending on how worn out I get and how busy the gym is) every other day:
Cross-trainer: 10 minutes on level 10
Pectoral machine: 2 x 20 reps x 20kg
Bicep curl: 2 x 20 reps x 20kg
Tricep pull: 2 x 20 reps x 20kg
Low row: 2 x 20 reps x 30kg
Vertical Traction: 2 x 20 reps x 40kg
Abdominal Crunch: 4 x 20 reps x 25kg
Cross-trainer: 30 minutes on level 10
The pectoral machine is a new addition there, only started doing that last week. so hopefully that one will build up to a higher weight over the next few weeks. The rest have been built up to over the last 7 weeks from a lower weight (between half and 3/4 of what I'm doing now) and fewer repetitions (1 x 15 initially for most of these). I did the low row initially and then stopped for a while, but I'm trying to start again now as I want to keep my lower back strong given how much time I spend in an office chair.
On the days in-between, I just do the cross-trainer, usually for half an hour to an hour on level 10, although this last week I've been skipping cardio-only days and/or using lower settings on the cross-trainer, as I seem to have a knee problem developing (the knee that got mashed up in the crash, so that's a bit worrying).
Knee aside, the cross-trainer is probably the most successful result I've seen from all this exercise so far, in that my capacity to do it for longer has dramatically increased. I think that indicates a general improvement in my stamina as well as some specific improvements in my leg muscles. When I first started out I was doing 3 minutes on the cross-trainer on level 6 and really feeling it! After a week or two I moved up to 5 minutes, and I've been building it slowly ever since. Now half an hour is fairly easy to cope with, and an hour is generally possible if I want to push myself (and if I have the time, and I'm not dying of boredom by then). I'm looking forward to going ice-skating again at some point and seeing whether I can do more than a couple of fast laps now without running out of energy.
...on that note, I've just realised that I need to go hit the cross-trainer right now if I'm going to fit it in today; I'm at a tech workshop / training course thing this evening. So I'll post this now, and maybe update it or post a follow-up later. (Look ma, no proof-reading!)
By the way, the reason I decided to try to blog some of this is that I've found it motivating to read about other people (that I know) trying to work on similar stuff lately - sort of a remote/virtual gym-buddy deal. I feel like I should try to return the favour.
The story so far...
Nothing very exciting started this really, I just reached a point where my body was (and still is) sufficiently far from the shape I would like it to be that I decided it was time to try to do something about it. I'm not massively overweight - two months ago I was sat just on the 'normal' side of the border between 'normal' and 'overweight' on the BMI scale (24.6), with a body-fat percentage just between 'average' and 'obese' (23.1%) - but I've never been very well-muscled (understatement!), and I have crappy posture, so the fat does tend to show. I'm not actually that bothered about my weight (77kg two months ago, 73kg now), it's more the body shape I'm worried about, hence the post title/tag/cut text.
Basically, I've got flabby enough that I find looking at myself in the mirror a bit unpleasant, and eventually I decided that I'd rather do something about it than carry on whining about it (to myself, and occasionally to my long-suffering girlfriend(s)).
I also figured that while I was trying to shed some fat, I could work on gaining some upper-body strength (useful if you have a girlfriend who wants to play-fight, which I did at the time), and improving my stamina (useful if you have a sex life, full stop) :-p
So, I first started going to the gym again last year (I'd been before in 2005, when I was recovering from my motorbike accident, but that largely focused on rebuilding damaged and/or atrophied leg muscle). This time round, as is probably fairly typical, I went a few times a week for a few weeks, then once or twice a week for another few weeks, then fizzled out in less than three months. I started again a few months later and did much the same thing again. Finally, I started in again eight weeks ago, and I've been doing better at regular attendance this time - I'm averaging about four or five visits a week.
I've been collecting the wristbands they give me each time I go to the gym, and sticking them along the top of the mirrors in my bedroom. This is an effort at gamification - the idea that if you can build up a score by doing something, then doing that something becomes more appealing. Here's my score for the last eight weeks:
I've also made more effort to change my diet this time - something that was more difficult in the past due to eating with other people quite regularly, but now I'm usually eating alone (or with Helen, who eats quite healthily anyway) - so it's more possible for me to manage my diet without too much temptation or drama. Mostly this means I'm trying to avoid eating tonnes of potatoes with every meal, which had got to be something of a feature of my diet the last few years. I've also stopped drinking calorific drinks most of the time - no more Lucozade, and much less fruit juice than I was drinking before. I'm currently drinking bottled flavoured water instead, in an effort to (a) avoid drinking calories and (b) drink more water, which seems to be a weight-loss/toning tip in itself (and I have a long-running problem with not drinking enough fluids and being dehydrated all the time, so it seems like a good goal in and of itself).
During the first run at the gym last year I threw myself into upper-body exercises quite hard (being well-motivated by the previously stated reasons!) and this did give me some shoulder muscles, which I've never had before in my life (I believe the visible ones are the deltoids and the upper trapezoids). Sadly this didn't seem to make a huge difference to my practical upper-body strength, but it did make a big difference to how I looked to myself - I notice the extra muscle every time I tie my hair back in front of a mirror - and I've even caught myself stroking them from time to time when I'm sat at my PC thinking about a coding problem. I do have a thing about nice backs and shoulders on other people, and may therefore be inclined to fondle them when allowed and encouraged, but it was amusing to find that this apparently applies to my own back and shoulders too! :)
However, having thrown myself in a bit fast last year, I did do myself some kind of minor injury - my shoulders both started making some fairly unhealthy crunch noises, accompanied by crunchy internal feelings, and that problem still hasn't entirely gone away. So, this time around I've been taking it much easier, trying to build up better muscle tone first by doing more repetitions at lower weights, instead of immediately trying to build muscle by lifting the heaviest weights I can cope with for a short set. I've also switched a couple of exercises (notably, the shoulder press) from the machines to free weights, which seems to have helped a lot to reduce the shoulder crunchiness. I'm a bit scared of free weights because I figure if you do an exercise incorrectly with them, you can probably do yourself a nasty injury, but if the machine version was doing me a nasty injury anyway then it seems worth the risk of trying the free weights instead!
In case anyone is interested, I'm currently doing the following exercise routine (more or less - it varies a bit depending on how worn out I get and how busy the gym is) every other day:
Cross-trainer: 10 minutes on level 10
Pectoral machine: 2 x 20 reps x 20kg
Bicep curl: 2 x 20 reps x 20kg
Tricep pull: 2 x 20 reps x 20kg
Low row: 2 x 20 reps x 30kg
Vertical Traction: 2 x 20 reps x 40kg
Abdominal Crunch: 4 x 20 reps x 25kg
Cross-trainer: 30 minutes on level 10
The pectoral machine is a new addition there, only started doing that last week. so hopefully that one will build up to a higher weight over the next few weeks. The rest have been built up to over the last 7 weeks from a lower weight (between half and 3/4 of what I'm doing now) and fewer repetitions (1 x 15 initially for most of these). I did the low row initially and then stopped for a while, but I'm trying to start again now as I want to keep my lower back strong given how much time I spend in an office chair.
On the days in-between, I just do the cross-trainer, usually for half an hour to an hour on level 10, although this last week I've been skipping cardio-only days and/or using lower settings on the cross-trainer, as I seem to have a knee problem developing (the knee that got mashed up in the crash, so that's a bit worrying).
Knee aside, the cross-trainer is probably the most successful result I've seen from all this exercise so far, in that my capacity to do it for longer has dramatically increased. I think that indicates a general improvement in my stamina as well as some specific improvements in my leg muscles. When I first started out I was doing 3 minutes on the cross-trainer on level 6 and really feeling it! After a week or two I moved up to 5 minutes, and I've been building it slowly ever since. Now half an hour is fairly easy to cope with, and an hour is generally possible if I want to push myself (and if I have the time, and I'm not dying of boredom by then). I'm looking forward to going ice-skating again at some point and seeing whether I can do more than a couple of fast laps now without running out of energy.
...on that note, I've just realised that I need to go hit the cross-trainer right now if I'm going to fit it in today; I'm at a tech workshop / training course thing this evening. So I'll post this now, and maybe update it or post a follow-up later. (Look ma, no proof-reading!)
By the way, the reason I decided to try to blog some of this is that I've found it motivating to read about other people (that I know) trying to work on similar stuff lately - sort of a remote/virtual gym-buddy deal. I feel like I should try to return the favour.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-07 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-09 03:25 pm (UTC)I think we've talked about the shoulder crunching too. I like your idea of working on the internal muscles, and basically with any problems you're having I think you've got the right idea just taking the weight down or having more rest time.
To me that seems like a lot of weight on the bicep curls, btw.
x
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-09 07:57 pm (UTC)What confuses me is that I find the tricep pull easier than the bicep curl at any given weight - I really expected my triceps to be much weaker than my biceps.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-09 08:56 pm (UTC)not sure what you mean by tricep pull but is it possible you're working your back too? wouldn't be surprised if you build shoulder/upper back strength more easily than me.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-10 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-10 02:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-11 11:44 am (UTC)i like 12x3s, it's a nice even number balanced out by one of my favourites. 3times4 is surely a special thing :) so yeah, get over it ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-08-04 10:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-09 06:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-09 08:03 pm (UTC)