Category: Fitness

Today I’m celebrating the 5th anniversary of my road to fitness. I’ve made many changes in my workout routine over the years. This last year, during my 3 months trip, I worked only on my aerobics and so the latest change I made to my gym workouts when I came back 6 months ago was to stop working on muscles (mostly weights) entirely and only run on the treadmill for one hour three times a week.

This change, which cut my net workout time from 6 hours a week to 3 hours a week, proved very positive. I lost 10 kg, which I can only guess is mostly muscle, and I get lots of compliments that I actually look better than I did when I bulked up. Since my initial goal of going to the gym was looking better, I embraced this new routine and I plan to keep on doing it until my body adjusts and starts gaining weight again.

Most of the time I enjoy running. I usually do nearly 12 km in one hour and I try to push myself harder but sometimes my knees start hurting so I pace myself.

As for nutrition, my response to the weight loss is different than most – when I lose weight I become more watchful of what I eat and try to keep it healthier, as if to not to ruin the new achievement. I hope I’ll be able to keep it up, as I do with the workouts.

Yesterday, after posting on the blog, I went to walk the streets of Koh Samui. The place is full of high-end restaurants, pubs and hookers. I didn’t like it at all, as some of the places seemed downright creepy to me. Eventually I sat at an Irish pub called Tropical Murphy’s and had a very good Shepherd’s Pie while listening to live music.

This morning Neil and I went looking to rent ATVs (4 wheelers.) You can rent scooters everywhere, but ATVs are harder to find. Apparently when they break it’s hard to get parts for them because all the places in Samui that used to have them only had broken ones, except for one place that had rented all of its ATVs for the day. So going to look for ATVs is what we did this morning. Then lunch and a nap.

We also found out that our resort has a small gym. How small? It’s a room just big enough to hold 6 treadmills. At around 4:30pm I decided to try running on a treadmill after not doing it for 2 months. It was definitely easier than running outside but the problem was that the air conditioning and the ventilation in the room didn’t work, so my body became very hot very fast and my heart rate was at 180 bpm after running at 10 km/h for only 35 minutes. Eventually I did 6 km in 40 minutes, an embarrassing average of 9 km/h. Going outside to the 30 degrees heat I actually felt relieved. Usually I would start worrying that I’m not in shape anymore, but those were really sub-optimal conditions. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Koh Phangan and the day after that I’m hoping to run on Haad Rin beach again.

We thought about going to that party again but at around 8pm there was lightning and thunder over the sea and then there was a power cut for the entire night until the next morning at 9am. Rain really brings me down but now it appears to be clearing (the power cut off again just as I was writing that sentence. I should post now.)

4 years ago I went for the first time into the gym. I almost never missed a workout, which means that for the first 18 months I was at the gym 6 days a week and then I switched to 4 days a week – a more maintainable schedule, considering that I had a girlfriend at the time and also my body was developing some pains that wouldn’t go away and I associated them with over-stressing it.

Over the past year my weight stayed about the same (~89 Kg) with some minor fluctuations up and down. I look pretty much the same – sturdy with some extra fat around the stomach. I wish I didn’t have that extra fat, but I’ve learned to accept my appearance, as much as a former “fatso” like me can accept his looks.

Aerobics-wise I still do 2 days HIIT and 2 days moderate-level running. The difference is that now I run 11.5K in one hour instead of just 10K. I guess this is a nice improvement from last year… I kind of feel proud of myself now :) I intend to go further and make it a 12K run in the following year.

My muscles have stopped growing. Obviously I don’t invest the required time and effort to grow in this sense, but even though I like to see myself improve, I don’t want to become extremely muscular – I don’t think it’s a look that will be good for me.

Over the past year I switched 2 gyms – one time because the place I used to go to went bankrupt and another because I didn’t like the new gym provided as a replacement for the bankrupt gym. I don’t like changes in that sense – different equipment requires the body to adjust and the HIIT workouts need recalibration, but I think I managed it well and I’m very happy with the current gym.

I’ve been thinking about moving my daily schedule one hour forward for a long time. Currently I get up at around 5:10am and start the daily workout at around 6am. This is mostly for historical reasons: when I worked out in Motorola’s gym there was only one cross trainer and I wanted to be the one taking it. Now that I’m in a larger gym there’s no need to be one of the first-arrivers.

The reason I didn’t do this until now is that I didn’t want to get stuck in any traffic but mainly I was afraid that this will affect my workouts somehow. However, the benefit will be greater than the risk – saner wake up and bed time hours and mostly living like a more normal human being.

Hopefully the drive to the gym won’t be a nightmare and the change won’t affect my workouts for a long time (I’m pretty sure I’ll adjust.) I know I’m going to feel the pressure when I see all the familiar faces leaving, but I’ll get over it :)

Today marks three years since I started working out. The 4-days-a-week routine now contains two different aerobic workouts: One is an 25-minute HIIT (high intensity interval training) workout, followed by a ~12.5kph run for 20 minutes. The other is a steady state 10kph run for 1 hour.

The HIIT workout is always hard, but the difficulty varies – one day I finish it without feeling like I did an extremely difficult effort, and on another day I might find it hard to continue to the weights workout that follows.

The 10km run is never really hard. It’s a little exhausting, being a one hour thing, and sometimes I get some leg pains, but nothing serious. I actually started thinking about trying for a 15km run, just to see what it feels like. I’m worried that it might hurt my knees, though – I’m pushing it far enough as it is.

Over the past year I gained some weight. I’m not very happy about the extra fat (I looked thinner after the first year of my workouts), but I think my body adjusted to the workouts and I was also much more strict about my diet (I still avoid eating junk food, sweets or snacks). That’s the reason I started doing the 10km runs – for diversity of workouts, but even though they don’t seem to help, I like having two different aerobic workouts.

So this is it, three years and counting. Congratulations and praises from all 5 readers are welcome.

I get a lot of positive reaction for the work I do at the gym. I take it for granted now, but I’m also always afraid that one day I might just quit. So far I’ve been doing OK :)

Anyway, I wanted to tell you why and how I started working out:
While working for Motorola, I tried to maintain a diet that would keep me more or less in the same weight. The problem was that it didn’t work. Even when I tried eating healthier – I quit eating sweets, candy or any kind of snacks years ago, so by healthier I mean less fat and less carbs – it didn’t help. I turned from being a little chubby to being fat. My colleagues at work commented on it and that made me feel more uncomfortable.

Obviously, I knew about the option of going to the gym, but my opinion was that I don’t want to try anything I wouldn’t continue doing after a while. I just wasn’t ready for another disappointment – I was thin before and turned fat and then thin again (thanks to a diet) and then fat again. So for me, going to the gym would mean a long-term obligation which I wasn’t ready for.

Eventually, though, I decided to go. A colleague offered that I try the gym that was inside Motorola. It was free for employees, and while it wasn’t so glamorous, it had all the basics you would expect from a gym. I didn’t want to tell too many people about it, and I didn’t, because I thought that it will be shameful if I stopped going after a while.

Luckily, on the day I went to the gym for the first time, the gym instructor was the best one Motorola had at the time. After asking me what my expectations were (losing weight, more or less) he drew up for me a workout schedule. It included mostly aerobics – I was to walk at 5.5-6.0 km/h for 45 minutes or more. I did that the first day and it was pretty easy. I mean, I was sweating at the end and my legs weren’t used to it, but it wasn’t hard.

“If that’s called going to the gym, I can do this every day”, I remember thinking. And that’s what I did. I went every day, 6 days a week, for almost a year and a half. The results were great. On the Internet you can find many websites that will tell you the benefits of working out, but here’s what I felt:

• Everyday activities are easier, and I don’t mean things like the fact that it’s easier to walk around, or being less lazy in general. Even stuff like that feeling you have after lunch, that you want to go to sleep, is almost completely gone.
• I definitely look better. After just 2 months I looked considerably better. Consequently, my confidence level is higher.
• I sleep deeper at night.
• Sex is better. Much better.
• My immune system functions much better than before. Previously, whenever the seasons changed, I used to get the flu or a cold. This year, for example, I was around sick people for days at work and didn’t need to take even one sick day myself. There were days when I felt a little sick, but the feeling passed as quickly as it came.

And these are just off the top of my head. Anyway, the workouts became more and more intense – first I increased the slope on the treadmill and later on I increased the speed, until I had to start running. And when I did start running, something I was somewhat afraid of, I found out that it wasn’t so bad. Then I started using the elliptical, which I now prefer a little over running, and… well, readers of this blog know the story from there… I work out 4 days a week now, every workout is 2 hours long (including the shower), I look better, I feel great and I hope to keep it up.

I noticed yesterday that I’ve been working out with the same schedule for exactly one year (here’s my detailed workout schedule). With the weights I’ve been slowly pushing harder and harder, but aerobics-wise I think my body has adjusted and I gained some weight. It doesn’t bother me too much but it’s always a good idea to change the workouts if you feel that your body adjusted.

The change is not too big: in 2 out of my 4 workout days I’m going to just run at moderate speed for 45+ minutes. Currently I do 25 very intense minutes on the elliptical and then another 20 (moderately intense) minutes on the treadmill. Anyway, in the other 2 days I’m going to work out exactly the same as I do today, because I like being able to reach high heart rates and it would be a shame to lose what I gained so far.

So today I ran at 10 km/h for an entire hour. It was very easy – my heart rate didn’t go over 160 (in my intense aerobic workout it can go above 175). My legs felt a little stiff at the end, but everything was normal after a few minutes of cool down. So I guess I’m going to give this new workout schedule a try for a while and see if there are any results.

Wish me luck :)

Today marks 2 years since I started working out. I still follow the same 4-days-a-week workout schedule from March this year. I must admit that having Tuesday off from workouts is a nice relief and also a chance to move workouts around the week when there’s a need to do that.

I think I’ve reached a certain point where my physique is pretty much the same, as well as my weight and muscle volume. I guess that if I want to make changes to my appearance now, I have to make some changes in my workouts. For example, I do 45 minutes of fasted aerobics every workout day (4 times a week). Fasted intense aerobics is not really recommended, but I feel good doing it so I’ll keep it up for now.

I can also make some diet changes if I want to look better, but I’m happy with the way I look and I feel good so that’s good enough for me. I just hope that things will stay the way they are as long as I keep working out.

Starting next week I’ll move to a 4 days/week workout schedule after following a 6 days/week schedule for almost a year and a half. The change comes because of quite a few reasons, but basically my workouts include 2 Pilates and 2 Yoga lessons which are nice to have but I don’t feel they’re such a necessity. I’m going to focus on aerobic and muscle training.

Writing this post down and noticing all the days in which I wrote “Rest” (see below) kind of scares me. I know that I’m still going to be just as fit as I am today, as I haven’t given up aerobics nor muscle workouts, but it’s still a big change.

Here’s the complete schedule:
Sunday: HIIT on an elliptical + 20 minute run at 85% MHR; Muscles: shoulders, biceps, upper-back.
Monday: HIIT on an elliptical + 20 minute run at 85% MHR; Muscles: chest, legs, triceps.
Tuesday: Rest.
Wednesday: HIIT on an elliptical + 20 minute run at 85% MHR; Muscles: shoulders, biceps, upper-back.
Thursday: HIIT on an elliptical + 20 minutes run at 85% MHR; Muscles: chest, legs, triceps.
Friday: Rest.
Saturday: Rest.

My HIIT workout is:
3 minutes warm-up
1 minute at 60% effort
1 minute at 70% effort
1 minute at 80% effort
1 minute at 90% effort
1 minute at 60% effort
1 minute at 70% effort
1 minute at 80% effort
1 minute at 90% effort
1 minute at 60% effort
1 minute at 70% effort
1 minute at 80% effort
1 minute at 90% effort
1 minute at 60% effort
1 minute at 70% effort
1 minute at 80% effort
1 minute at 90% effort
1 minute at 60% effort
1 minute at 70% effort
1 minute at 80% effort
1 minute at 100% effort
2 minutes cooldown
(total of 25 minutes)