Archive for the ‘Fitness Blog’ Category
Getting In Shape – Why Bother?
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on January 26th, 2010
As I write this, I’m forty-six years young and in the very best shape of my life. I make posts on Facebook when I work out, and one of my friends there said that my wife, Jan, and I definitely had her beat on the physical fitness thing. I told her that it wasn’t always that way, and she and another friend (Florian, that’s you!) wanted to know more. So here’s my little story, and why I’m into fitness just as much as I’m into writing novels.
Wind the clock back to April 2008, when I had to go in to see my doctor for a routine checkup. I knew I was a bit overweight at 220 pounds (to put that in context, I’m six foot one inch tall) and wasn’t in very good shape, and hadn’t been for quite a few years. Like most guys my age, I sort of let things go a bit, although I liked to think I wasn’t a poster child for Weight Watchers or anything. I didn’t worry about what I ate, and while we got outside a bit, I didn’t exercise regularly.
When the doc came in, he gave me one of those looks, the kind you definitely don’t want to get. He had my blood test results, and as he went over the figures with me, he told me that he’d never personally seen anyone with numbers that high. My scores? Total cholesterol was 301 (the high end of normal is 200), and my triglycerides came in at almost 1200 – the high end of normal is 150. My cholesterol had always been a bit high, but this was ridiculous. Not only that, it was potentially lethal, and the men on my mom’s side of the family have a history of heart disease, with her father and his brother both having died of heart attacks in their fifties.
I got the message. Starting that day, my wife, Jan, and I sat down and started sorting things out: exercise and nutrition. The doctor wanted to give me some medication, but I told him I wanted to try and deal with this first on my own. We looked at a variety of exercise options, and finally settled on Beachbody’s excellent workout programs to get us started (if you’d like more information, feel free to get in touch with my wife – a Beachbody coach – through her Beachbody coach page). While I originally tried to order P90X, which you’ve probably seen advertised, the order didn’t go through, which was a good thing. Had we started with P90X, I think we would’ve tanked right away, because P90X is not for beginners! Instead, we started with Power 90 – which was just right for us – and worked our way up to Beachbody’s tougher (and toughest) programs, including P90X and Insanity. Throw in a lot of ChiRunning, and you get an idea of what our current routine fitness activities are nowadays.
The other thing was nutrition: it goes hand in hand with exercise. We went through the house and literally threw out the junk. All of it. If you want to see something disgusting, look at just about any ingredient label on the food we eat: it’s packed with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, fat, and chemicals. Yuck. More on that later, but the bottom line is that we replaced everything with healthy food, and organic food as much as possible. Doing yourself a huge favor (and one for your family) and get rid of all that garbage. We still go out to eat and even have pizza a couple times a month (and yes, the new Domino’s Pizza is really good! LOL!), but we do it with control and don’t go overboard.
Anyway, after four months of consistent exercise and eating good food (in reasonable amounts), I returned to see the M.D. to go over my latest blood work. The results, I’m happy to say, were nothing short of phenomenal: my cholesterol was down from 301 to 178 (the lowest it’s ever been), and my triglycerides were down to 109. On top of that, I’d gone from 220 pounds down to 190. My friend, that ain’t half bad for only four months and no medication! Since then, we’ve gone on to do things fitness-wise that I’d never imagined, including running in a half-marathon (which was tough, yes, but an incredible experience!).
Let me also say that I can’t exactly be called a fitness fanatic. I have tremendous respect for people who are, but it wasn’t my goal to get down to 5% body fat and be totally ripped: it was to stay alive and stay healthy. Looking better, even if I’m not ripped (I’m at around 12% body fat right now), is a great side benefit, though!
So, there’s my story! Hopefully there will be something in there that might help or motivate you. And with that, I need to get back to working on the next book!
ChiRunning – How To Run Pain-Free
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on January 24th, 2010
While I’ve mentioned it in passing in a post or two, I wanted to devote a post specifically to what’s called “ChiRunning” (or Chi Running). It may sound a bit odd, but it’s an incredible way to turn running into a potentially painful experience into a form of exercise that’s blessedly pain-free.
In a nutshell, ChiRunning uses the force of gravity to help pull you forward, with you leaning forward slightly from the ankles (not the waist) and setting your feet down – flat, or in what is called a mid-foot strike – just long enough to support your body weight. You move your feet in a circular motion to the rear of your center of mass, with the circle and your lean more pronounced the faster you go. Your skeletal structure, rather than your musculature, is used to absorb the impact shock, which is greatly reduced from what I’ll call “regular” running. While it’s not for sprinters, for casual or long-distance running, it’s the bomb!
There are more details to it, enough so that it isn’t something that will just come to you instantly: you have to learn how to do it and practice. I recommend that you start with the book, ChiRunning: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running. Much more importantly, I recommend that you take one of the ChiRunning clinics that are offered in various areas of the country. My wife and I attended one of these, and while they’re not cheap ($250 per person for the full day), it was worth every penny. The only downside was that I was suffering from tendonitis in my left knee, which – had we known about ChiRunning earlier! – I wouldn’t have had.
The bottom line, though, is that ChiRunning works. You have to invest some time and effort learning how to do it right, but after that, it’s smooth sailing. That’s been our experience, at least.
If you get the book, be prepared to read through some metaphysical observations by the author. I’m not discounting anything he says, but most readers are probably just looking for a better way to run.
Check out ChiRunning.com to learn more, and enjoy your run!
Fitness: Getting Back on Track
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on January 13th, 2010
I’m going to publicly confess that I didn’t do all that great with my overall fitness toward the end of 2009 (and I mean more than just the usual holiday caloric free for all!). While Jan and I ran the half marathon in San Antonio, I focused on training for that to the exclusion of everything else. That was partly because of time – going out and running five miles and more at a stretch at an 11:30 pace can take a while! – but also because it was easier.
So, enough of “easy.” As of last week, I started P90X again, and upped the ante a bit by substituting Shaun T’s Insanity cardio workouts and running (when it’s not so darn cold!) for the P90X cardio workouts. I also decided to replace the Y0ga X workout with ChaLEAN Extreme Dynamic Yoga, which is an awesome Yoga workout. For me, the Yoga X workout is just too darn long, and while I love Tony Horton, I like Chalene Johnson’s rendition of kick-ass Yoga better (sorry, Tony!).
I’ve been exercising consistently – so far. I need to do better on the nutrition front, however: I’m cheating too much (especially at work!), and eating too many carbs and not enough protein. So I still need to get on top of that. But recognizing where your weaknesses are is half the battle.
For those who’d like to join me working out, I’m in WOWY most days around 4 p.m. EST. So let’s hook up for a virtual workout – just look for KWarrior.
In the meantime, if you want to learn a bit more about why this sci-fi/fantasy author thinks that it’s important to take precious time away from writing to work out, head on over to the other site my wife and I have at www.FitClubToday.com, which is dedicated to helping folks just like you reach your fitness goals (or get you to think about how being fit can totally change your life!).
And welcome to 2010 – get out there and make the most of it!
San Antonio Rock and Roll Marathon Recap
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on December 21st, 2009
I see I’ve been terrible about keeping up my blogging – bad boy! Well, I decided to drop back and punt, picking things up with the San Antonio Rock and Roll Half-Marathon that we ran on 15 November!
First of all, I really enjoyed San Antonio and wished we’d had more time there. The River Walk area is like something the engineers at Disney would come up with (sorta reminded me of the Pirates of the Caribbean), and the town itself was very appealing to me. We saw the Alamo at night, which I think was a lot more interesting visually than it would have been during the day, although it was closed so we couldn’t check out the inside.
As for the half-marathon, well, that was an experience! First of all, outside of sitting in a stadium, I’ve never been in with that many people in my life: nearly 30,000 participants! We were staying in a Best Western near the freeway, and while we had the misfortune of being close to the railroad tracks in that part of town (honk-HOOOONNNNKKK! through the night), we were in a great spot to get to the shuttle buses to the start line, which we boarded at around 5:45 or so.
The bus dropped us off “near” the start line. I put that in quotes because we had to walk what seemed like half a mile to get to the start line, and then had to keep on walking to get to our “corral,” or designated start group. But that’s okay: everybody was in an upbeat mood, getting psyched for the race.
Then there were the porta-johns. Folks, one piece of advice if you ever want to participate in one of these things: do yourself a huge favor and bring along your own roll of toilet paper and some sanitary wipes in individual packets. I’ll wager that there were at least two hundred porta-johns around the start line area, and every single one of them was out of TP before the race started. And having to do your business without anything to clean your hands off with…well, you get the picture. One final note about porta-johns: make damn sure you lock the door. There were so many people lined up at these things, a new person would come to the head of one of the countless lines and check to see if a john was empty, only to discover that it wasn’t, but the occupant hadn’t locked the door! We saw a couple of hilarious incidents of this that morning – you’ve been warned!
The initial start of the race was a bit anticlimactic. I say “initial,” because with this many people you start in waves – that’s why everyone’s in a corral. It was probably a good forty-five minutes before our corral moved up to the start line, and then we were off! It didn’t take us long to realize that we were probably a lot further back than we technically should have been. You’re assigned to your corral based on your estimated pace time, and we’d put down 12:00, when we actually averaged closer to 11:15. But that’s okay – it was a great psychological boost to be passing a bunch of people! Besides, your real start and end times are marked by a little electronic tag you wear on your shoe, so when you cross the sensors at the start/finish lines, your time is recorded. Cool.
Now, this race is one of the “Rock and Roll Marathons,” which means – among other things – that they have a lot of local bands sprinkled along the course. This was pretty cool! However, we made the mistake of thinking there was going to be music along most of the way, so we left our iPhone headsets at home. That was a mistake: some of the bands were really good, but there were huge music-less gaps we had to run through. So, another note to would-be marathoners: always make sure you’ve got your music with you!
Another thing that was great was some of the signs the local folks put up. There were tons of people out cheering us on, which was great (thanks, San Antonio!). My favorite was this: “Beer all gone. Kenyans drank it…” Read the rest of this entry »
The San Antonio Half-Marathon: One Month Away!
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on October 16th, 2009
It’s only a month now until the San Antonio half-marathon that my wife and I are going to run in. We’re not serious runners, but needed a challenge and an excuse to see a town that sounds like a lot of fun.
So we’ve been training along the “half-marathon for noobs” sort of plan, and got up to six miles before our schedule was interrupted by our trip to Salt Lake City last week. We did get in some running there, but not the long-distance mileage we needed: last Sunday was supposed to be a ten-mile run. Ummm, I think we’re a bit short!
My wife, Jan, is doing fine, but I managed to pull my right calf muscle a bit while we were in Salt Lake, and so far can only run about a mile and a half before it starts hurting. Today we were supposed to do five miles: Jan ran the whole way when she went out (while I was at work), and I ran about a mile and a half and then walked the rest as fast as I could. Despite how it may look (aside from sorta silly, at least in my case), it’s darn hard to walk fast for long distances!
Anyway, I’m going to try and run/walk my mileage and hope that my calf heals up by November 15th when we run the race!
P90X Workout Sheets
Posted by: Michael R. Hicks in Fitness Blog on July 27th, 2009
Get P90X Workout Sheets!
Sorry for the extra click, but there’s a new home for the information I had here on P90X workout sheets, along with the workout plans for P90X Plus, INSANITY, ChaLEAN Extreme, and RevAbs…
