New Gym, Different Feeling

In an effort to mix things up and wake up my excitement about working out again, I tried a new gym.  It was still a CF gym but closer to work and allowed me to break up my day with a new routine.  It was nice to see how other CF'ers workout and how the environment was different than what I am used to.  All-in-all, I was not all that impressed with the experience.  No one was there and the passion was missing for me that I get out of my other gym.  Part of that was there was only one other person in the boot camp style class and I like to feed off of others there to push myself.  Since this other person was brand new, I had to rely on myself which is not my strong suit.
What I really wanted to find out was if mixing up my routine would A) lead me to join this new gym and rekindle my passion for this or B) I would realize I have a great gym and really need to use it more.  Right now, I feel I just need to get into my current gym more and push past the hurdles that I am putting up.  That last sentence could not be more true.  I am putting up hurdles for myself.  No one else is telling me I cannot do it or that I don't have time.  The toughest part is getting there and once I do, I feel the passion everyone else has and feed off of that until we get started.  I just need to get my butt out of bed and get it done.  The framed art next to my bed that says, "Wake Up and Be Awesome" needs to be a mantra and not just framed art next to my bed.

-N

Metrics

 I am the type of person who seeks out progress in all ways in my life (as many of us would).  Our kids are growing up happy and healthy, check.  Our paychecks get bigger each year, check.  The same goes with my personal physical fitness goals.  I want to see progress and since I see myself every single day, it is hard to visibly notice over an extended period of time.  This is why I need data and metrics to pull from. This need had me going down a path of discovery to find some early data when I first got started and I finally found it.  It was a simple body scan I did at Complete Nutrition and the initial results were not good.  I was coming in at 218 lbs and 28% body fat in October 2016.  That was eye opening that just a mere 5% away from being 1/3 body fat.  I considered myself an athlete and this hurt.  It hurt mostly my ego but gave me the kick in the ass I needed.  After a year, I have new metrics to report.  I am now at 198 lbs and at 16.5% body fat.  In doing the math, I have dropped 11.5% body fat (28.4 lbs of fat) and put on around 8-9 lbs of muscle as of October 2017. This is the kind of data I love to see.  It really puts into perspective what I have done in the last year and makes it worth the money, time, pain and fun I put into getting here.  In the summer of 2017, I had actually been down to my lowest adult weight at 188.8.  This was a great thing to see but did not understand what my body was made up of.  What was my BF%, what did my internal metrics look like (glucose, cholesterol, etc.).  Now that I have the internal blood work done, I have the next thing I can focus on.  Ideally, I wish I would have done that first but better late than never.

-N

Finding your "Why"

Now is as good a time as any to bring this topic up as I am finding it tough to get back into the swing of things.  
Identifying your "why" can make a big impact on how you approach your daily activities whether they are pleasant or not.  It provides a reasoning and understanding of what drives all of us.  For some, it could be to be more active in our children's lives, for others it could be to improve your daily attitude.  And this isn't just for working out.  Your "why" drives each of us to pursue that in which makes us feel good about ourselves and what we have accomplished.  Your why can be different too for different activities.  I'll use myself as an example.  I truly enjoy helping people and making their day better.  This is a major reason why I love a job that most people would think that the job has "a face only a mother could love".  When it comes to working out, I tell myself (as mentioned in my previous post) that the feeling of starting my day off with a workout is so much better than the additional time in bed.  When I feel better about myself, I am more productive at work and feel like I have more energy at the end of the day to keep up with kiddo.  
I feel having this identified can be the difference between faking it and making it.  A lot of people can crash diet and have short term weight loss or "success" but that waivers over time.  Finding what motivates you and drives you each day to be better is going to be that push you need to get out of bed early or stay up late or push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of.  Once you have identified that, I feel everyone can make steps towards long term success.

-N

Back at it

Time to get back after it.  I took a few weeks to let my body recover by only running, I am needing to get back to it.  With a pregnant wifey and little man keeping most of my attention, I fell off the path and it took me a few weeks to get back on.  I made it in this morning to the 5:45a class and it felt great.  Waking up at 5:15a was no fun but my logic seems to help when it is tough to get out of bed.  I have been telling myself on those cold, early mornings that an additional 30 minutes in bed waiting until little man wakes up (which I am more than likely not sleeping for that time) is not better than the feeling I have all day when I go to my class.  At first, I kept talking myself out of that thought process and chalked it up to cheesy "You can do!" mantra but it is true.  I feel it starts my day off so well to have that done.  It also gives me a chance to move around all day and keep soreness from setting in (at least I think it does).  I have not medical backing to that but I'll run with it.  
To piggyback on that, it also gives me an excuse to eat better.  More often than not, I find myself giving myself a cheat day because I was not working out.  Not a good idea when you are taking multiple days/weeks off to "recover".  On top of my body recovering, I also recovered 5 pounds I had once lost.  No bueno.  So finding a reason to eat good after a few tough weeks is another good feeling.  I try not to waste my workout days with eating bad.  If I can string a few workout days together, I will be back on track before I can get back into AmeriCone Dream (you are evil people Ben and Jerry).  

-N

Push-ups Update

Well... I made it 34 days and hit a wall.  Mostly a wall comprised of knowing I had finished my goal of 30 days and 3,000.  On top of what I mentioned in my previous post about tracking things better, I want to make sure I have a target that is perpetual in nature or have another challenge ready to go.
I am brainstorming what we are doing for November so stand by.  We will have something determined shortly.

-N

3,000...and Counting

September has come and gone and so have the push-ups, for the most part.  If I stopped now, there would be something wrong about posting on TPUD so I will keep them going.
I really hit a wall on day 27 & 28 as I was battling a nasty chest cold. Every time I did a set of 10 (when usually I did sets of 20-25) by chest felt worse with each ensuing set.  I considered stopping but knowing how close I was to finishing out the month and that they really wouldn't hurt me long term, I decided to get it done.  Looking back, I am happy I did but during it was not comfortable and had me considering the unsavory alternative.
The experience of doing the push-ups was not exactly what I wanted out of it as it became a chore to power through them.  I really wanted it to be an eye opening experience where I tracked my progress on different levels (chest size, max number I could do in a row, etc.).  Now that I know more that it is possible, I may revamp the challenge knowing it is possible and start with a baseline on a number of different things.  As some of you may know, I LOVE data and spreadsheets.  Having data to backup what you are doing is a great feeling (for me).  I am not sure why but I think it is my nerdy-ness that takes over.

3,000 push-ups is a lot for a month but focusing on the smaller goal each day really made it more manageable.  Lots of small goals equal big changes.  One day at a time.

-N

15 down, 15 to go

Over the last 15 days, I have learned something. push-ups get easier and harder at the same time.  Let me explain...  The first few days it was hard pushing through the 100 physically and now it has become a mental game.  Not a game I particularly like to play but I am happy to play if it means the push-ups themselves are getting easier and they are.  I have got more in-tune with what my body is able to do in a given time and that is important when I had already worked out and want to prevent injury.  I pushed it a little much on Thursday this week as I did a CF class and tried to do all my push-ups in 5 minutes.  Not only was it a lot tougher than stretching it out by a few minutes, I woke up the next morning with a very sore back.  Coupled with a workout that was focused on legs and back, I think my form suffered and put a lot of pressure on my back muscles.  This experience will keep me reminded to spread the them out throughout the day and not to wait until 11:45pm to get them in.
Outside of that, keeping up with everything is getting tougher.  I have a 2 year old who seems to down an entire pot of coffee before I pick him up from school and an understandably sick/pregnant wife who should not be responsible for keeping up with his sport-focused mind.  This puts some additional focus on father-son bonding and keeps me from keeping up on eating and going to my classes.  This is no fault of either of them, I just have had a tough time finding the motivation to keep the wheels turning when I do have the time.  The push-ups have helped but I need to keep my focus.  Mama is headed out of town this week so I will have to put in the extra effort in being dad-of-the-year and keep my momentum.  Wish me luck...

-N

Why Push-Ups? Why NOT Push-Ups?

In the month of September, my older brother challenged the family to do 100 push-ups a day (hence the blog name).  That isn’t a tough number for the most part but day after day it tends to wear on you.  It is only day 6 but I can feel it in my arms and shoulders and they feel tighter.  I don’t know if it’s because they are not happy with me or if changes are already happening.  It is most likely the former but I can hope.

Check out the video below that prompt the challenge.  These two show that in just a little amount of time, you can see some real changes.  

Small steps lead to big changes.

100 Push-Ups

-N

Welcome to The Push-Up Diaries!!

First off, I want to thank you for taking the time to read this original post.  Hopefully you can get a good idea of what we are all about and come back for more.  

I wanted to start Push-Up Diaries as a place for anyone who wanted to share the story about their fitness journey and how they have either got there or plan to get there.  The idea for this blog is not a new one but for me, I was inspired while in the middle of a set of push-ups during a monthly challenge my brother set out in front of our family(which will be a staple for us if you want to join in).  I wanted a place to document and share and motivate and blah blah blah, etc.  No matter the stage in your journey, we'd love to hear it.  This is a safe (yet public) place to share all things ranging from workouts, healthy recipes, progress photos, all the way to the story of your path to fitness (whether goals were met or in-progress).  With that, I will start...

I need want to be good at sports. That's the long and short of it.  I don't care which sport either and it all stems from a long standing battle with 7 brothers and 4 sisters for athletic supremacy while growing up.  We were all roughly average height and weight so naturally, we thought beating each other at random (sometimes made up) sports changed that.  In our house, it did.  You walked a little taller knowing you had won.  It even got to the point where we developed the "Older Brother Advantage".  This didn't just develop with age, size and strength (even if you were bigger than the big), it was the fear of being the little beating the big and having a target on your back.  In most cases, you took your chance if you had it to win but those were few and far between. The OBA developed over time and became more of a psychological hurdle the littles had overcome. As we got older, those hurdles became less and less on the physical side but the psychological side remained.  To this day, we still call our littlest brother (12 of 12) "Drew Bledsoe" to try and remind him that when he was younger, he was slower than us.  He has seemingly got past that hurdle as he has accomplished more in the running world than I could dare to take on.  

This all leads to my present day, 35 year old self.  I was involved with random recreational sports but found myself wanting more no matter how much I would win or put forth to try to win.  No one could challenge me the way my family could.  

Randomly, in roughly October of 2016, a few of my brothers and I started up a text string that really pushed me to that next level.  We got to talking about what we were doing on a daily basis, what we were eating, etc.  This gave me the drive to make sure I didn't quit.  I didn't want to be the first person to break and that was an amazing motivator.  Now that we have all proven we can keep up, it has been a great source of motivation and inspiration seeing what they are doing and how they got there.  In the time we have started the text string, I have joined a CrossFit gym, lost 30 lbs and overhauled my eating to make sure it matches the effort I put in during a workout.  

For me, no matter what groceries I buy or who is next to me, pushing me to do more at the gym, having someone to hold me accountable on a daily basis that I truly respect and admire has been the biggest piece to my puzzle.  And once I found that piece, everyday became more and more fun to see how far I could take it.

If you would like me to post your story or want to be an admin for this blog, email me at pushupdiaries@gmail.com.  I look forward to hearing for you in the future.

-N