Check In/Progress UpdateAh, the first week of 2016 is now complete. In recap, I'm primarily doing the 'Good Behavior' Convict Conditioning workout. This means that my main schedule is as follows: Mondays - push ups and leg raises; Wednesdays - pull ups and squats;Fridays - handstand push ups and bridges. I used to use my bike commute as a warm up, and it worked well when I still had an office. Since that is no longer the case, and I'm restarting at step 1, I decided a quick walk/jog for a couple of miles around the lake by my house would be a nice habit to get into. Hurrying it up and doing some simple 'just out of bed' stretches has been my warm up this past week, and it's worked well. One of the best things I've done so far was break down my understanding of different goal types. While they were pretty obvious, adding verbiage to them actually made them easier for me to stick to (at least so far). It also made things a bit more clear when explaining my goals to the other half, which has led to increased support from that arena as well.
All in all, it's been a pretty great 1
st week. I was able to consistently perform my workouts, and I was able to start creating the mindset I talked about earlier. Enjoying the workout for it's own sake, maintaining awareness of how my body and how my muscles feel. While I'm working out, I don't even get down on myself for letting myself get this out of shape. There were a couple of moments later in the weekend where I wished it were possible to just skip to the part where I've got a solid strength base, and can accomplish the harder and more fun things already, but it passed relatively quickly, and then increased my desire to build a super solid foundation so that I can do these more advanced things easier. So yeah, I'm digging the journey, which is already a huge improvement over last year.
I've mentioned before that one of the things I liked about the CC program was the slow progressions and the focus on foundational strength. In case you haven't looked at the links in the
goal description post, each of the 10 steps of the 6 exercises contains 3 levels of progression: Beginner, Intermediate, and Progression standards. What I've been doing, and what I was planning on continuing to do, was focus on each step of the progression standards. As an example, the standards for step 1 of push ups are as follows:
- Beginner - 1 set/10
- Intermediate - 2 sets/25
- Progression - 3 sets/50
So this past Monday, I did 1 set/10 wall push ups after my warm up. What I'm going to do moving forward is shoot for the progression standard on each workout. I will still spend at least 3 weeks on each step, even if that means I complete the progression standards 3x (foundation and all) with a focus on perfect form. I think that will add a bit of a challenge, and a bit quicker results, without losing any of the downside. While doing research on bodyweight training and injuries, I've found that injuries occur (at worse) right after one loses form. Since I stop the set the second my form becomes less than perfect, I've decided that upping the intensity of these workouts will, if at all, only nominally increase any risk of injury. It's time for week two!!!
Goals:
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I've got you added to the
tracking post. And since I remembered typing your name last year (because what I thought it was was wrong), I'd ask you and everyone else who participated last year how the goals went last year? This year I plan to do a recap of the year, but for now, I'm just mostly curious.