Pre and Post Primal Challenge Pics

We mentioned we were starting a 21 day primal Challenge on the 2nd of January.

That ended a week or so ago and we are continuing with a slightly relaxed Primal Lifestyle (relaxed compared to the 28 day challenge anyway!).

To document I decided to take a before and after of my torso to see what changes came about.

Before

 

After

21 days made a pretty good difference! The results are quite visible in my love-handle area - look at how that went down! And due to seasonal and family health issues along with other extended family drama - I didn't even work out as much as I wanted to in that 21 days, so the results here are mostly from diet-based changes. No grains, no sugar, lots of fat and protein! Fantastic!

Next stop - SIX PACK BABY!

I actually lost 6 pounds and want to gain it back - but I want to gain back muscle and keep shedding excess body fat, so it's time to step it up!

Hopefully I'll also get some pictures of the new balance poses I can do now - Flying Crow and Peacock! Next goal is Handstand  - I think Kakes is going to beat me to that one because she is amazing.

The End of 2011

I can't believe it is already December!

It sure has been a great year fitness-wise!

 Here's some of the stuff I've done:

• Started Insanity a few times but never got too far because of other time constraints, 
• Yoga. Attended an average of 2 times a week (or more) between work and Infusion - which has been fantastic!
• I can now do some awesome poses that make me feel very strong
• Eka Pada Koundiyanasana II
  
• Astavakrasana: (such an awesome sunburn too!)
  
• Frog
  
• Yogic Arts - Awesome class my beautiful wife and I have been attending for the past 2 months
• Running:
• Turkey Leg - Ran it last year and had a blast, this year it was warm enough to take that Eka Pada Yoga picture AFTER the race. 40 degrees warmer!!
• First Half Marathon - Bonneville Shoreline Trail put together by my brother and his running buddy - the extra distance there being because I got lost and went off course! I kind of want to do a regular Half now to see what kind of time I can get on a more normal course instead of a ridiculous amount of vertical gain and loss! Over 14 miles; longest ever run for me.
• Utah Marathon Relay and Dirty Dash - Excellent events that I hope to do again!
• Ragnar Relay 2011 - Again looking forward to doing this with a full Family team this year, although I'm going to miss our Piratey theme!
• Runnin' With Ed - Fun race with my brothers! Sadly our non-brother runner (coworker of my older brother) fractured his foot in this race, doh!
• Other
• Still loads of Pullups and Pushups have been done and need to be done! My record for the Cindy Crossfit Benchmark (5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 air-squats repeated for 20 minutes) improved from 14 to 18 rounds in that 20 minutes - need to try it again soon.
• Future Plans:
• Weighted Pullups
• P90X again - need something to keep me motivated for a while again! SO close to my aesthetic goals!
• Yoga Balance Practice - I really think I could do a handstand and Forearm stand if I practice! Just need a good empty wall to practice against for a few weeks!

The Dirty Dash and more

Almost a month again! Sheesh!

The 17th I had a great time doing the Dirty Dash. I definitely will be doing that again!

Here are a bunch of pictures from the craziness:

   

   

 

Our costumes were hilarious - it was funny to hear what people said. American Lederhosen, Chippendales, Steve Urkel, Redneck whatever... Actually the lack of clothes to weigh us down made it a lot of fun!

The Last Two Months

Yeah...
I haven't been too good about updating my fitness blog since I stopped doing the daily digests...

It was a strange and crazy summer that's for sure! Trying to get ready to move and then having the whole thing fall through is really a pain!!

Some of the sites I am using to track workouts and progress though (and I've meant to write this post for a while - FINALLY getting around to it!) are the following:

• Bodybuilding.com - While I'm not fully into the full-blown body-building look. The art of building muscle is interesting to me. So I created a profile where I can track my weight and progress in a few different ways. If I ever get around to it I can join the community too!
• Runkeeper - I've used Runkeeper for quite some time and overall I like it a lot. My only problem with it now is my phone is starting to have issues, so I can't get the GPS to track my run properly. Frustrating, but still amazing that it even exists right? Plus I can always enter it manually and plot my run on the map. Awesome service.
• Nike + - for those times when Runkeeper doesn't work, I've tried Nike +... it does well when I can get it to work, but it too does all sorts of crazy things and due to my phone it too has issues with the right GPS tracking. I do like the way it handles music better than Runkeeper. Still the login screens take forever so when you are starting a race, it's hard to get it started.

Other than that - I have been doing Yoga VERY consistently (and I feel it in my shoulders when I miss - it really keeps me nice and loose) Running in prep for races, and pull ups, with occasionally other random workouts thrown in. Not horrible, but not a great way to achieve what I want. ALSO in the bad category, I have had WAY too much Sugar and Soda, and I can tell.

Saturday I ran in the Utah Marathon Relay with a team from work. We had 2 teams, the FUN team and the NOT FUN (i.e. FAST) team. Somehow they put me on the fast team! And we did amazing, got 2nd place overall and 1st place overall for the Mixed division. While I WAS the slowest on the fast team (stupid allergies, they've really given me some breathing issues lately) I was still faster than everybody on the 'Fun' team, even if it was only by a minute! Still it was great to run on a winning team. Here's my run. And here's a picture of the whole group!

This weekend I will be running in the Dirty Dash:



That looks like a TON of fun! Again this is with a team from work - I am filling in for a coworker who broke his foot. OUCH! While it will be fun, it is also a bit scary but not because it's a 10k and it will be very dirty, but because my team has a COSTUME. Short Jean Shorts, Bow Tie, Suspenders, Crazy socks if ya got 'em, and that's it!

I guess it's good Halloween preparation! And I always have fun getting into costume!

Finally - today I decided I needed (again) to get into a more intense workout schedule - so I did an Insanity Fit Test, hoping to continue the Insanity program for the 2nd (full) time. I probably won't update daily, but we'll see how it goes!

Here are the fit test results, along with the results of the one I did back in May:

• Exercise - 5/4/11 -  9/12/11
• Switch Kicks - 150 -140
• Power Jacks - 70 -69
• Power Knees - 102 -107
• Power Jumps - 82 -81 (Massive Asthma after this one yikes!)
• Globe Jumps - 14 -18
• Suicide Jumps - 28 - 26
• Push-up Jacks - 40 -42
• Low Plank Obliques - 85 - 114

Not bad, especially since I haven't been doing any of these moves since then!

Done with the Daily Digest, and More Thoughts

As you can tell, the Daily Digest is no longer being recorded.

I've still been working out a lot, just not as tracked as those I put on the daily digest.
It had served its purpose; so I won't be doing them.

As an update on today (ha, since the Daily Digest isn't happening, right?) I finally made it back to Yoga!

MAN it's amazing how much balance a fairly common yoga practice can bring into your life!

AFTER yoga I jumped up on the pull up bar and did 10 wicked wipers, dropped down and was told by a coworker who was hitting the heavy bag "Do you have any idea how insane what you just did is?!" It's nice to be able to do hard things! I did seven more in my jeans to show off how awesome I am to my beautiful wife!

A few days ago I read a great post that fits in line with my exercise philosophies over at Zen to Fitness:

"Activity is Key - Not Exercise"

The article made me think about what my purpose was in recording those daily digests. Mostly it was to make myself exercise daily and for that, it did great! I feel like I've improved to the point that at least for the moment, I don't need them right now.

Every day at work I jump up on my cubicle while talking to coworkers and do dips and L-sits (which is hard because it is a very wide grip). They think I'm weird sure, but I get good movement in all day! Plus they've always known I'm a bit off!

I think one thing to remember when looking at that article is that while Activity is MOST important, it isn't really saying that exercising on its own is BAD. Because I guarantee, as soon as we get our house totally sold and we are moved to the new place, I am going to start an Insanity/P90X hybrid program ASAP. :) Doing that makes me feel more READY for the daily activity. But if I miss a work out, as long as I have been active enough that day, I won't feel like I'm not doing something I should or something I'm supposed to.

Daily Exercise Digest 48

Today:

• 10 L-sit pull ups
• 5.56 mile run

Need some motivation, some change. Feeling good physically, just need some other situations to resolve themselves!

Daily Exercise Digest 47

The Ragnar Post was also D.E.D. 46 (yeah I'm grouping days a LOT lately! Doin' it again today woot!) so here's 47!

So this is the Post-Ragnar Post!

Monday was a rest day :) Because of this:

Yesterday:

• 10 Chin-ups - SO tired and those weren't tough strength-wise, but my body was not very happy!
• 1 Mile run in 6:58 Barefoot - Decided to give my shoes a break, but ran too fast for my feet to handle right now. It's been a while since I've gone barefoot like that. Whoops! Some blister-type pain in multiple places on my foot. Had I been going slower I probably would have been fine, but I was pushing it so I hurt my feet a bit.

Today:

• 3 Sets of 10 Dumbbell curls each arm, 35 lbs
• 3 L-sit attempts on the foot of my bed for as long as I could go (counted to 7, 20, 15... i.e. WEAK)
• 10 Standing to plank ab roll outs
• 10 regular (kneeling) ab roll outs

I've had to miss yoga for like 2 weeks now... No fun! Hopefully the work project I'm working on gets finished soon so I can get back into it as it was really giving me a balance to work around!