Welcome Back

On February 1 I sat in my recliner bored out of my mind. I had my brand new X-Box One control next to me but the system launch had unfortunately not come with many good games and I needed something to do. That is when I turned to X-Box Fitness. I had recently finally healed from a torn rotator cuff but had also quit my membership to LA Boxing which was now UFC Gym. I wasn't used to seeing a fat out of shape me in the mirror and it had to end. So I figured the X-Box Fitness was free. I started out alternating between a longer workout on one day and a short ten minute one on the next and then I progressed to two or even three workouts a day.

The biggest thing I did though was I didn't stop. My ankle, knee, shoulder, and wrists all took turns hurting but I didn't back off the workouts. I was careful with the areas that were in pain but I knew if I let my body stop me I'd never get back to where I needed to be. Fast forward a few months and I started walking down to the community gym every other morning to use the dumbbells and cardio equipment. I mixed that in with the X-Box Fitness and started to see even better results.

The Path to 1000 Push-ups Begins with 100

The photo on the left is from March, a month after I started working out, and the photo on the right is from this past Saturday. The lighting in the two photos is a little different and I am in a slightly different pose but you can see I've made some progress from then to now. The big reason for this post though isn't to show before and after photos. The photo on the right was really taken as a before photo, because for the first time in my working out I've set a real goal.

Hiking and Wining in Deleplane Virginia

Living right off of interstate 66 can have its benefits. The highway often creates a wall of traffic so impenetrable that it feels like I live in a walled city from which there is no escape, but on a beautiful Sunday morning in late June and heading west traffic is not an issue. As escapes out to the country go Sky Meadows State Park is among one of the best. It lacks the majestic waterfalls of White Oak Canyon or the views of Old Rag, but it is less of a drive and still provides a good hike.

It is easy to forget how steep the North Ridge Trail is until you're halfway up it and covered in sweat on a cool 70 degree morning. The entire loop which includes the North Ridge Trail, the AT, and the White House Ambassador Trail is somewhere between four and five miles long. You get some good views of Paris, Virginia and can even see Washington DC on the horizon if you look for it. Sky Meadows provides a good hike to start the day and that was what we were looking for as visiting some of the local wineries was our main goal.

Focus on What you Can Control

Recently I've developed a new outlook on life. For a couple weeks I was feeling overwhelmed by forces out of my control. I was reading other people's thoughts on social media on how people like me are everything that is wrong with the world. I was thinking of writing a counter to this, but it would do no good and maybe I'm a little too afraid of opening myself up for criticism (I should work on that). The fact is we live in a society that claims to value individualism but at the same time is quick to stereotype and has whitewashed many of our identities. Think about America like a stew full of beautiful and unique ingredients but if any stew is cooked too long it becomes a brown indistinguishable mush.

The other aspect of life out of my control that was bothering me is what has become of the American Dream. People have lost the focus on the actual American Dream and only think of the stuff. The American Dream is the little house with the picket fence and two and a half kids. Those are the benefits of the American Dream but it is not the dream itself. Think back to Thomas Jefferson and the ideal American, the yeoman farmer. The self sufficient man. The American Dream isn't having a great credit rating so that you can go into massive debt and have all this stuff it is to be financially independent.

The Easiest thing to do is Quit

I've reached a point in my workout routine where I look in the mirror and don't see the results I was expecting. In the first couple months of working out I saw amazing results. Belts that I wasn't even able to fit into before starting now can be pulled through to the second loop on my jeans, and I can fit into pants I haven't worn in ten years. Now that I've seen those results I want more, but as I've gotten in better shape the improvements have slowed down.

It is a little disconcerting to go from seeing very fast results to not seeing results because the progress is that slow, but progress is progress and while the desire exists to simply give up that isn't an option. Even if I don't make any progress forward going backwards is the worst thing possible. When you've dug yourself into a hole the first thing to do is to stop digging. While in four months of working out I haven't gotten to where I want to be I am in a hell of a lot of a better place than I was.

A Worthy Goal from a Petty Reason

The impetus for change can come from many sources. Some people wake up one day, look in the mirror, and decide they are tired of the person looking back at them. Others see a friend make a life altering change and wish to follow in those footsteps. Others still may be inspired by the story of the stranger that has made a great change in their life. My reason for getting back into shape was not so noble.

My wife's college friends picked this summer to have a reunion of sorts. I've met a couple of them intermittently throughout my association with my wife, but I've never gotten to know any of them. Essentially they are strangers. The important part isn't the friend's I've met that will be there it is the one that I haven't. When my wife was in college she had a boyfriend as many college females do and this boyfriend and her were friends with the same people. The big point out of all this rambling is that her ex-boyfriend, the only other male she had a long term relationship with, will be there.

Sprinting to a Finish Line that is Miles Away

When working out I've always had one problem. I have a tendency to push myself too hard. I have the constant feeling that I am not pushing myself hard enough because my body fails at certain things and it is when the body is tired and at the point where you feel the lactic acid burn that the real work is done. Because of my anger at those failings I push myself whenever I get the chance. My weakness in working out has always been core stability. It is because of this that I attack that weakness with plank jacks and mountain climbers. I find them difficult and need to push myself to get through it, and once I get into the mindset of pushing myself I don't stop.

That first paragraph is a lot of rambling to get to the point of this post and that is that the week before last I pushed myself to three workouts a day. It was a very hard week. I ended each day more tired than I'd been in a long time, but I made it through. The next week wasn't that difficult and I decided to continue doing three workouts a day, but I would make the second workout more intense. This could have been a mistake or the other mistake could have been to ignore what had been until this week a minor pain.

Getting Into the Fourth Best Shape of my Life

Let's start this story with an old advertising slogan. One that was popular when I was a youth and used to describe a product I enjoyed then and still do, and that slogan is, "Bigger is better." Where I heard it most was to describe professional wrestlers like Earthquake and Typhoon. It didn't matter that they were fat, they were bigger and that was better. My real idols at the time were Macho Man and Brett Hart. I enjoyed putting my four year old nephew in the Sharpshooter and running around the house in my underwear doing elbow drops off the back of the couch.

At that time I am going to say I was eight years old, and I wanted to be big. I made my mother buy me some dumbbells and I started lifting them as best I knew how. The next time I went to the doctor I asked him how best I should lift the weights. I figured if anyone was going to know about how to get big and strong it was the doctor, but instead of telling me to just work on running and body weight exercises while my body grew he told me to not lift weights until I was sixteen. With weightlifting suddenly taken off the table there was only one path left to me getting big, and that was cramming lots of food down my throat. This could have been done in a healthy manner as well but no one told me that one either.