Nice work tyrot1...always good to see a fellow 43 year old kicking butt. We may be getting "up there" in age, but we are NOT DONE YET! :)
Not just the same age - we are both in CO, too - I believe? But I hear you - between the Convict Conditioning, and riding my bike everywhere due to MMM's philosophy of saving money, I'm probably in the best shape of my life, or at least since high school.
tyort: He's already retired so you are never sure where he is :). I think he is primarily in the PNW. That's why he's able to do crazy kayaking instead of biking (pretty sure I told him to get a paddle boat, but it won't help with that awesome picture he posted...I can't see his name now without 'Sexy Farmer' going through my head). What are your goals for this year as far as CC goes? I'm loving it, and feeling a lot stronger too.
Oh, guess I'll need to retire too so I can do crazy kayaking also!
My main goals are just to progress to stage 5 for all the movements by Christmas. I'm not sure it that will be totally possible, but I've been making such good and steady progress that I'm hopeful. I've been doing it since March and this is the longest stretch of continuous improvement/progress I've ever had in my training life.
I used to train HIIT in the gym with lots of heavy weights. Mentzer, Darden, Arthur Jones - I was a big follower of their "brief, intense" approach to lifting. But it was so hard on the body that I could never sustain it more than a few months before I got run down, sick, or had an injury. So the CC approach of slow and stead and "strength in the bank" has been a bit of a revelation.
The other major change - back when I was going HIIT, it really had very little spill over effect outside of the gym. Sure, I'd be stronger the next time I went back to the gym, but otherwise I didn't really feel fitter or stronger in every day life. With CC that's been dramatically different. The type of strength you gain from CC has a HUGE spillover effect to every area of my life outside of the gym. A few examples:
1. Squeezing a lime - I bought lime squeezing utensils in the past because I couldn't get all the juice out a lime. Now after 4 months of CC I can crush a lime and thoroughly extract every little bit of juice from them
2. Getting out of a chair - in the old days, it was always a bit of effort to get up into a standing position after I' been sitting for a while. I'm 175lbs, so I'm not massively overweight or anything, but just getting the muscles going was a chore. Now I can pretty much spring out of a chair at a moments notice.
3. Playing with my 9 year old daughter - because CC focuses on getting you better at controlling and using your own body, doing things like the jungle gym or tree climbing are possible now where the just flat out were not possible before.
4. Financial strength - since I've been able to kick my gym membership to the curb permanently because CC is all done at home, I've been able to eliminate $35 in gym fees and invest those directly in my retirement fund.