Me

2011-11-14 workout

/ hsoi

“Week 4”

  • Deload – Deadlift (working max: 285#)
    • 2x5x115
    • 2x5x145
    • 2x5x175
  • Asst. #1 – Good Mornings
    • 5 x 10 x 65
  • Asst. #2 – Hanging Knee Raises
    • 5 x 5 x BW
  • Metcon – jump rope
    • 1 Tabata set – all single hop
  • Grip
    • 2x10xT, 2 sec hold
    • 3x3xS, 2 sec hold
    • 1 10 sec hold, No. 1

Again, deload week so nothing special. I did feel a bit nicer on my deadlift form, pulling more “back” than up, so that was cool. I need to keep working on getting my eyes up; they start focused a little too close to the ground, not the best for pulling.

Good Mornings I went deeper on. Let the stretch happen, and yes if it rounds the lower back a bit, that’s fine because I need the stretch. Thus, why I’m using such light weight. I went deeper today, felt like the bar was going to roll over my head, better stretch and by set 5 it felt better, so yeah…stretch is helping, work effort was better. In the interest of time today I supersetted it with the knee raises. I was doing sets of 5×8 but noticing I was peeding out those last 2 sets and not getting quality reps on the last reps so… that’s no good. Take a step back and let’s strive for 5×5 and make them all high quality, full intensity, knees curled up to my shoulders every rep. 5×5 worked well today for that. Since next cycle starts soon, I will probably go 5×6 for quality reps all the way through and see how that fares.

And yes, I have been thinking about the grip work. My current thinking? Let’s try for 2x a “week”. Since deadlift days are so grip intensive as it is, let that act as a “heavy” day. So deadlift, all the hanging raises work my grip well too, so then just continue with a “heavy” work set on my gripping like you see above. Warm up with the “light” gripper for a couple sets of a lot of reps, then work sets with the medium gripper for 3×3 or at most 3×5 across (maybe even going 5×5?), then one final set of hold with the heavy gripper. That plus the work I got during the lifting portion of the workout should be ample. Then on my squat day, I’ll do a “light” workout, probably something like 3×10 with the light gripper. And just try 2x a “week” with this sort of heavy/light alternating and see how it goes. Try this at least for 1 Wendler cycle.

Aiding my grip

/ hsoi / 12 Comments

Grip.

It’s important. You don’t get through the day without using your hands to hold onto something.

Sure a lot of the tasks in our modern world don’t require much grip strength, but like many things in life stronger is better… rare is the time when something is “too strong”, more often you run into the problems of “too weak”.

In shooting sports, especially with a handgun, grip strength matters when it comes to management of recoil.

When lifting heavy weights, grip strength matters.

I started having some issues with my left hand’s grip strength when deadlifting. Switching to mixed grip helped, but I still want to work on my grip. Granted, one of the best things is to ensure a rock solid grip when I do any of my lifting no matter the exercise… no letting my hands just hook onto the bar, grip the bar. But the other day I was browsing around the EliteFTS website and thought why not… I’ll get some grippers.

These aren’t your normal grippers that you can buy at the sporting goods store

These are Captains of Crush hand grippers. They’re much higher quality and much more difficult to close. But how difficult depends, because they make a wide range of them.

I picked up the Sport, Trainer, and No. 1. The Sport is the second in their lineup, rated at 80# of pressure to close. The Trainer is next in line, rated at 100#, and the No. 1 is next, rated at 140#. I really wasn’t sure where to start, so I figured to get all three, especially because that works progressively because hey… getting strong doesn’t mean squeezing a light weight for thousands of reps. It’s like any strength training: doing a 3×5 or 5×5 set with maximum intensity. Plus a little warm up.

I have no problems closing the Sport, and the Trainer I can close well enough to provide me my initial workout — this is my work load. The No. 1? With my right hand I can close it if I’m fresh and dig in. My left hand can’t fully close the No. 1.

There’s a lot to grip training, well beyond “crush strength”, but this is a reasonable start for me as something to add in. Plus, I’m not just going to crush but crush-and-hold. Grip isn’t just grabbing and letting go, but grabbing and holding. So any work I do will involve crushing and holding for a period of time. Exactly what my workouts here will be remains to be determined, but I figure it will be something I do on my way home from the gym… just stick the grippers in my bag and squeeze while I walk home. Multitasking. 🙂

We’ll see what difference, if any, it ends up making on my grip strength.

You may have noticed another thing in the first picture: Liquid Chalk. Purchased that on a whim, knowing nothing about it. I can’t use true chalk in my gym but hey, if I can have something to help my grip, great. Now, from shooting I know about Pistol Pro Grip but honestly I don’t like that stuff because it leaves a white residue/mess everywhere and I just don’t like how it makes my hands feel.. almost too dry, but no question it works. But that won’t fly in the gym since it leaves a mess. So this Liquid Chalk? We’ll see if it helps any. I have sprayed it a couple of times on my hands at home just to see what it does and it does leave a bit of a “dry” chalk-ish-like feel on your hands, but I’m not sure how well it will actually help. Plus, as I now read various reviews, it appears the spray clogs up pretty quickly. Hrm. We’ll see.

In the end, improving my grip is good. I see no downsides to it. We’ll see how well these products help.

2011-11-11 workout

/ hsoi

Today’s workout didn’t go to 11, since it’s the start of deload week.

“Week 4”

  • Deload – Press (working max: 130#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 2x5x55
    • 2x5x65
    • 2x5x80
  • Asst. #1 – Press
    • 5 x 10 x 60
  • Asst. #2 – Supinated grip lat pulldowns
    • 5 x 10 x 115
  • Metcon – jump rope
    • 1 Tabata set – 3 reps running in place, 5 single hop
  • Grip
    • 2x10xS, 2 second hold
    • 3x3xT, 2 second hold, last rep pf last set hold as long as possible

In past cycles, I’ve upped my assistance work during the deload week because with the work sets being so low I wanted to ensure I still got a reasonable workout. But, deload needs to be deload and I need to realize that the workouts won’t be all the stressing or impressive, but they are important to the long term. I need to stick to that and hold myself back.

So that said, the workout was nothing to write home about, but it felt good and probably what it should be. 🙂

Jump rope, I was a bit of fumble feet on the running in place so I only got 3 “reps” out, but it was good and useful and I just have to keep at it until I get it. The single-hops were at the same rope speed tho.

And you’ll notice something new. Grip work. It’s a weak point that became evident on my heavy deadlifts and leg raises, so I want to see if adding some specific grip work can help me out here. Yes, I ensure my grip doesn’t suck during any lift that needs it (i.e. no hooks, no barely holding on, have a firm closed tight grip), but if a little extra work can help, great. I picked up a set of Captains of Crush grippers, the Sport, Trainer, and #1. With effort I can get #1 to close with my right hand, can’t with my left, so that’s a good threshold for me. My general approach will be strength building, just like they tout on their website… not a zillion reps with an easy gripper, but working in that 3-5 rep range with progressively heavier resistance. I’ll do it on my walk home from the gym. Start with the Sport to warm up, crank out 2-3 sets of 10 reps, and every rep isn’t just a “close and open”, but a close (and close means the bottom tips of the handles touch), hold for at least 2 seconds (and that means the tips remain touching the whole time), then a controlled release and start again. I think a hold is important because grip isn’t touch and go, it involves holding. Then I’ll go up to the Trainer and do some lower rep sets, like today I just did 3×3, again holding in between reps and on the last rep of the last set holding as long as I can.

Is that the most intense grip workout? Probably not, but like all things, you have to start somewhere and it’s better to “start light” and work up to it. On non-obvious reality for me is I cannot work so hard that I get sore and cramped in my forearms and fingers because I have to type for a living and crippling myself that way does me no good. 🙂 So I shall start “light” and work my way up. I’m also not sure how often I’ll do this, probably once a “week” for now, but I could see bumping it to 2x week as I adapt. We’ll see. Just got them yesterday and am figuring out what to do with them.

2011-11-09 workout

/ hsoi

“P” is for Personal Record (PR). “P” is for Prowler. “P” is also for puke. 🙂

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Squat (working max: 240#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x95
    • 1x5x120
    • 1x3x145
    • 1x5x180 (work)
    • 1x3x205
    • 1x5x230 (PR*)
  • Asst. #1 – Squat
    • 5 x 10 x 95
  • Asst. #2 – leg curls
    • 5 x 10 x 60
  • Metcon – Prowler
    • 90#, 4 40 yard sprints

Overall, today was good… even the fact that as I type this, I still feel like I’m going to drop dead. 🙂

The work set of squats felt good. I felt strong. I didn’t have any sort of mental issue. It was again a “squat, or squat not” sort of approach. In fact, as of Monday’s workout I actually tried to just not think about this workout as all. It will be whatever it will be, don’t think about it, don’t stress over it. And I think that helped.

During the final set, I did ask someone to spot me, just in case. I think that helped give me a little confidence that if in fact I did fail I’d be alright. And so I hit the bar, did 1x5x230. I consider that sorta a PR. It’s not truly because I have done 1x5x230 before, back during the PPNP stuff, but my form was horrible. My form is MUCH better now and it showed today. Sure there was some forward lean, it wasn’t 100% perfect, but it wasn’t the ridiculous struggle it was before. Plus, just getting back to this level is a bit of a win for me. So, it’s not technically a PR, but it’s progress. Now that I think about it, I should have went for 6 and made it more of a firm PR. Oh well, there’s always next cycle.

Assistance work was fine. I have been thinking tho, one thing I’ve been doing on my deload weeks is upping my assistance work so that it stresses me like all other weeks. I’m thinking no, don’t do that. Keep my assistance work as-is during deload and truly let deload be deload. I may not break much of a sweat, but that’s fine because it’s more about recouperation. I’ll bump when I start the next cycle.

No jump rope, because Mr. Prowler was there. Of course he’s been working every day on this and has worked himself up to 90# (2 45’s) on the prowler. Me? I haven’t, but I wasn’t going to let my situation interrupt his flow since he’s doing me the favor. I did figure however that it would kill me, and I wouldn’t get 10 sprints in, especially given all the heavy leg work I just did. So I did 4 40 yard sprints with 90# on the prowler. On run 3 I started to slow towards the finish line. On run 4 it was tougher still to finish up. I was sucking wind pretty hard afterwards, my glutes and adductors were screaming at me, and I felt like I was going to puke. 🙂 Didn’t, but I was sucking wind and sitting on a bench for at least a good 5 minutes just trying to recover. Heh. The walk home was weary. Right now my body is saying “go take a nap” because it wants to recoup. I think I just might do that.

Next up is deload. I want to take that rather seriously, really go light and easy tho let my brain focus on form. One form thing that I want to work on is breathing. I stumbled upon something today that I want to explore.

See, when I come up to the bar, I’m setting myself, getting my body in position, tightening things up, which includes the torso for the valsalva maneuver… so I suck in a big belly full of air, hold it, tighten up, get the bar unracked, get into position… and by then my head starts to feel kinda light or dizzy or whatever, and so when I take the first breath that just exacerbates the situation and it can make getting through the set difficult. Happens on any set, but is most noticeable on the heavier sets. Of course, that’s no good, and has been a source of some of my problems.

On the second to last work set of squats I came up to the bar, got under it, and didn’t take a big breath until I was lifting the bar off. It was like I was fully in position, then all at once I breathe, tighten the body, and unrack. That seemed to work a LOT better and my body responded better, no dizzy feeling or whatever. I attempted to do the same on my last work set, and didn’t quite get there, but it was better than normal. So I need to figure out the groove here. But I want to explore this more because it’s been a source of issue for me. A small technical detail, but makes a big difference.

Leaning out

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

You cannot serve two masters.

If you exercise, you can’t try to gain muscle mass, gain strength, and lose fat all at the same time. You can’t serve all of those masters. Pick one.

However, I do think while you serve one master you can at least acknowledge the others. For instance, if you are focused on building muscle mass, that’s generally going to work against fat loss. To gain muscle mass at any sort of decent rate, you’re going to have to eat more and that will mean some of your weight gain will be fat gain; however, you can be smart about it and not gain weight like a blob. So, serve a master but give a nod to the others.

My focus right now is building strength, with mass being secondary, and fat loss bringing up the rear. I want to get strong(er) and focus primarily on that goal. But, in doing so building muscle mass comes with it: muscles will get larger as they get stronger, tho not as much as a pure mass-building program. Plus, my flavor of the Wender 5/3/1 cycle is “boring but big”, directing my assistance work specifically towards mass building because to lift big you do need to be big.

But the big thing I struggle with is the fat situation.

I don’t want to become a fat slob. In fact, I’d love to shed the muffin around my middle. But it won’t necessarily happen with the path I’m on, and I’m OK with that situation. I have had some thoughts that in 2012 I may take a couple of months break from Wender 5/3/1 and focus on the fat loss goal, or perhaps stay with Wender 5/3/1 as a general template but modify the particular program. We’ll see.

The one thing that I am attempting to do tho in giving a nod to fat “maintenance” is my food intake. Of course, I must have a lot of protein in a day and strive to eat 30-50g about 6x a day (exactly how much depends on what I’m eating and when, but the goal is at least 200g a day). I don’t mind the fat that much other than ensuring I’m getting some but not overdoing it (e.g. eat 6 hard boiled eggs but give 1-2 yolks to the dog). Carbs tho are another matter… and have generally been my problem spot.

One thing that I’ve been toying with, tho have yet to fully master, is WHEN I have my carbs, in addition to what my carb sources are. I will say, getting our veggies from Johnson’s Backyard Garden Organic Farm is a boon because so much of it is green leafies and other “good stuff” that I don’t have much problem just shoveling it down and not worrying much about caloric impact. But still, I need some sources of carbs that have caloric value to help with glycogen stores so…. what and how to deal with this?

I read something that started me down a slightly different path. See, I was trying to avoid carbs as much as possible (quasi-atkins) but my body balked at that, and understandably so. So I needed to find what and how and when to take them in so they were beneficial but not harmful to my goals. What came up was consuming my carbs around my workout. Carb up beforehand to have energy for the workout, then carb up afterwards to replenish and the body should take them up well. But otherwise, don’t take in much for carbs throughout the rest of the day.

I saw a tweet last night from Dave Tate that sums it up well:

What has always worked best for me (getting lean) is 6-7 meals per day with 70% of the carbs before and right after training. #eliteftschat

– Dave Tate via Twitter

And that’s about the size of it. If you know who Dave is and the transformation he went through, there’s something to what he’s saying.

I’ve been trying that, tho haven’t mastered it yet (slave to old habits, working to change them), and so far I seem to be working well with it. I can see in the mirror that muscles are getting larger, and I do think fat may be going away because I swear I might be seeing my abs a little better and it doesn’t feel like there’s as much muffin over my belt. But my bodyweight remains the same, around 235-240 (fluxes depending on the time of day or what day it is, and I’m 6’3″ tall) and has remained pretty steady there since I got off the PPNP program. Strength continues to go up, mass seems to be going up (tho perhaps not as fast as if I was shoveling food), and fat seems like it might be dropping off… slowly, but that’s ok.

I am not trying to serve all 3 masters, strength is still the prime goal. But if I can keep a nod to the others in the mix and still make overall progress? Great. We’ll see where this leads me.

2011-11-07 workout

/ hsoi

At best, I’d give today a C+. A PR, but still a C+.

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Bench Press (working max: 205#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x85
    • 1x5x105
    • 1x3x125
    • 1x5x155 (work)
    • 1x3x175
    • 1x5x195 (PR)
  • Asst. #1 – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10 x 115
  • Asst. #2 – 1 arm dumbbell rows
    • 5 x 10 x 45
  • Metcon – jump rope
    • 1 Tabata set – all single hop

Today… well, sure I set a PR on bench press, but I hated how it went down.

As soon as I pulled the bar out of the rack, I started shaking. I expect maybe a little shaking because it is a new and heavy weight, but this was ridiculous. In fact, my knees started to shake like I was trying to work a bellows between my knees! WTF? I got to rep 5 and knew this wasn’t going to continue without something going horribly wrong, so I just racked it. Yeah, 5 reps @ 195 is still respectable and still a PR for me, but what the hell went wrong with my body?

So during assistance benching I worked to plant the hell out of my legs. My legs were pushing pushing pushing… so much that after each set my legs felt worked! They had a burn, and by the end of the 5th set my legs actually felt like they had a good isometric workout. But while I pushed, my body didn’t feel coordinated as a whole. My cue has been “tight” but it’s just not all there.

And that’s really what’s going on… it’s more of my mental game failing. I just wasn’t there.

Furthermore, I’m thinking too much. I’m putting too much thought into everything. I picked up a copy of “Powerlifting – Year 1” and had a bunch of “bench tips” on the brain… that is wrong. I’m going into my heaviest week, this is NOT the time to be futzing with form. Stick with what I have, for better or for worse, don’t be fucking around with things. I can futz during deload week, week 1, maybe week 2… but on week 3 I need to just focus on moving the damn weight and setting an awesome PR. I had too much going on in my head.

There’s just too much going on in my head, period… be it lifting form, doubt, day job, night job, my other jobs, life, family, whatever…. too many things. It’s not an excuse, it’s reality. And I need to fix it. But I guess I have to admit I’m not sure how. Or at least, I’m not sure yet about how to immediately turn it on and off on demand, so when I have to get under the bar, it’s immediately as it should be.

Anyways… chalk today up and move on.

On rows, speaking of the powerlifting eBook, I changed it slightly. Instead of rowing with elbows in, upper arm running essentially parallel to torso and weight pulled to stomach, I put the elbows out at about a 45º angle and pulling the weight to my lower chest — about the same angle and location as the bar is at the bottom of the bench press. This is a better angle of attack for my needs, but it worked me a bit more — posterior deltoid peeded out sooner. Good thing.

And jump rope? Geez… I think I was just so bummed that again, I wasn’t mentally there and couldn’t jump worth a damn. Did my best, and that was that.

Gotta get over it all. Wednesday is another day.

One longer-term thing? I had been tinkering with what I’ll do next cycle, in terms of jumps and so on. I’m going to perhaps go rather conservative… maybe even less of a jump than normal? Make sure I’m solid. That’s more important than trying to hit ego-satisfying numbers. Putting up a solid performance is a lot more ego-satisfying.

2011-11-04 workout

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Didn’t do jack, other than set a great PR.

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Deadlift (working max: 285#)
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x5x145
    • 1x3x175
    • 1x5x215 (work)
    • 1x3x245
    • 1x8x275 (PR)

Due to time constraints, I pulled an “ain’t doing jack shit” variant today. I also figure that’s better for me because I haven’t slept well the past couple nights and need the recovery. Glad the weekend is ahead.

The deadlift set just felt awesome. My head wasn’t cluttered with anything… nothing positive, nothing negative, and wasn’t really even thinking about the lift. Last night I started to think about it but just put it out of my head because it will be whatever it will be. Today, it just “was” and I set one heck of a PR with it.

I attribute the 8 reps in part to the mixed grip on the last set. That helps a lot. I actually felt like I could have done 9 or 10, but just stopped for whatever reason. Err on conservative I guess, since I need the recovery.

Come. Set PR. Leave. Felt good.

2011-11-02 workout

/ hsoi

Started crappy. Finished awesome.

“Week 3”

  • 5/3/1 – Press (working max: 130#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x55
    • 1x5x65
    • 1x3x80
    • 1x5x100 (work)
    • 1x3x110
    • 1x3x130 (PR)
  • Asst. #1 – Press
    • 5 x 10 x 60
  • Asst. #2 – Supinated grip lat pulldowns
    • 5 x 10 x 115
  • Metcon – jump rope
    • 1 Tabata set – all single hop
    • 4 40yd dashes with a 20# Prowler

Today started out crappy but finished awesome.

It’s “week 3” so it’s 5/3/1 week and time to set some PR’s. Last press session I accidentally did 125, which was supposed to be today’s weight, so I said heck, let’s just do 130 and see how it goes.

It didn’t.

The whole Press session didn’t feel right. Something just felt off the whole time. Then I put 130 on the bar, press 1, 2… on the 3rd time something didn’t feel right, and I go for 4 and my body just said, “No.”. I didn’t accept that. Rest a couple seconds, take a couple breaths, go again… “I said, no.”. Rack the bar. Fuck!

I’m not sure what the deal was. It wasn’t like my muscles were tired, it was as if my CNS just shut down and said “we’re not going to fire, we’re not going to do this”… the body just didn’t want to move. I had a conversation with someone before I left the gym and he said it’s happened to him before and he believes it’s just the body shutting down to protect itself. Maybe that’s the case. Maybe a little mentally off my game today. Maybe just one of those days. Still, 3 reps with 130 is a PR for me, just not the PR I wanted.

Assistance work was fine. I’ll bump up from here.

Rope jumping…. “warming up” with the running in place went excellent. So I started the set doing that, but became fumble feet… on the 3rd rep it was more fumbling and resetting than jumping so I did the last 5 reps double-leg.

Then… I saw it.

There’s a guy at the gym who I’ve seen only a few times before, but we hit it off nicely. He’s bigger than me, probably the strongest guy at the gym (if not, certainly one of the strongest). I saw him walk in, take 2 10# plates, then walk out to the back parking lot. And I heard it… the sound of scraping.

He has a Prowler.

After I finished jumping rope I went over to talk with him. He just got it. Tried it last week with a couple 45’s and it was too much. So like all things, gotta work your way up to it. He let me try it… I did 4 sprints and boy, you don’t feel it while you’re doing it, but afterwards? It hurts in a good way. I stopped at 4 because I figure I need to work my way up to it, don’t want to kill myself right out of the gate. But he’s going to be coming regularly in the mornings, and he said he’d love it if I worked with him… means he’s not the only one out back looking like an idiot. 😉

That was pretty cool. And if it means I can do Prowler pushes on a regular basis? Awesome. N.O.V.

So, today didn’t start out great, but ended on a cool note.

Milestones

/ hsoi

Pardon a little self-indulgent rambling. It’s zipping around my brain and I wanted to write it down… not that I expect you to care about it, but it’s just part of my recording of my journey in life.

Tomorrow begins “week 3” of my 3rd cycle on the Wender 5/3/1 program. This is the “heavy” week, where you push further, deep deeper, and set new personal records. It’s probably my favorite week of the program.

I’m giddy about tomorrow’s workout. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s Press day and I’ll be pressing 130#. Yeah I know, not a ton of weight, but big for me. I think what has me more fired up is that I was supposed to do 125 but accidentally did that last workout and knocked it out of the park. So I’m really fired up for tomorrow. Kinda crazy… never found myself so fired up about lifting things up and putting them down.

Then there’s deadlifting, which I really enjoy. Apparently Dave Tate hates the deadlift, but used that as a way to get lots of useful advice from other lifters about deadlifting. Some really good tips in the article, which I’ll probably put to use in Friday’s deadlift workout.

But what I’m really looking forward to is the next cycle. I can’t help but think about it now because the numbers are all there, just out of reach. And how I perform this “week” sets the stage for the next cycle.

The work weights will have me pressing 135. That’ll be cool because that’ll be my first venturing into 45# plates with my pressing. It’s a small milestone, but a cool one.

Deadlifting will just get me closer to 300# working weight. Nothing necessarily special, just progress.

Bench press will have the work weight be 200#. That’s another milestone, to break the 200# mark. 225 will be cooler, because that’ll be 2 45# plates, but to get to 225 you have to go through 200… and 200 is cool enough in and of itself.

And squats. This will be the big one. Before I did Wendler I was doing PPNP and got up to 230# but my form was horrid. I dropped back and have been slowly working my way back up. This week I actually will do 230. Next cycle, I finally break back into PR territory with my squats.

So next cycle will be interesting for me, because just about everything will be hitting some sort of milestone.

I enjoy seeing the results of my labor. I see the physical results of how my body looks, how my clothing fits (had to buy new jeans because my thighs and butt couldn’t fit into my old jeans any more… in a good way!). I do enjoy being strong, and stronger than I’ve ever been. Being strong is useful. Heck… I just got my medical profile from the life insurance exam and my results are stellar.

If my martial arts situation didn’t become what it was, I wouldn’t have gone back to lifting because I needed some sort of exercise. If it wasn’t for being ill and aimlessly browsing the web and seeing a video on the Beast Skills website, I never would have learned about Wendler 5/3/1 and then Mark Rippetoe. I would have continued to lift in the same “bodybuilding” aimless way I always did and probably stopped after a couple more months of minimal progress. But with these plans? Geez… I’m seeing progress unlike I’ve ever seen in my life. It keeps the motivation high, it keeps me going back to the gym. Tho, it’s well possible that just being a lot older and having a lot more self-discipline in life helps too. But certainly it’s seeing the results that keep me going.

I’m really enjoying this part of my life’s journey.

It may end tomorrow. I may lose interest before I’ve completed a year at it. Who knows what will happen. I’ll just take it day by day and enjoy it, and take from it whatever lessons it teaches me (and there’ve been a lot, so far).