H.I.I.T. me with your best shot!

In preparation for when my ankles decide to play nice again, I've been researching this trendy phenomenon people have been calling H.I.I.T.

I am most definitely going to try this, however much I think I will hate it.

There seems to be pleanty of resources out there, like HIIT source, to help a poor newb like me along. And this HIIT stuff has been talked about plenty recently, like Crabby McSlacker's post on the Cranky Fitness version S.H.I.I.T. ^_^

This is going to be another ongoing fitness experiment ala MizFit or The Great Fitness Experiment.

Anyone else up for this?
-Meg

The girl hit hard like a barracuda baby

Last night I tried an experiment. Since I only have one ace bandage I wrapped up my right ankle and not my left ankle, took some Tylenol PM and went to bed. This morning, surprisingly, my left ankle felt better than my right ankle. I have no clue. In the process of getting myself up and mobile and to the gym I determined that stairs were no longer trying to kill me, and therefore I would be fine on the treadmill. So I laced up my sneakers and hit it.

I ran for half an hour and felt ok. I even pushed myself to run a little faster. My ankles started aching a bit towards the end but I figured I was alright.

I did day two of week six of the Hundred push up challenge, or rather I tried to. My arms gave out at push up 38 out of 42 in the max set. Part of my problem I've realized is that my palms get sweaty while I'm doing my push ups and my hands start to slide outwards slowly, making for progressively difficult push ups. Anyone got any suggestions? But anyways that means I'm redoing week six next week.

I kinda ran out of time for my strength set unfortunately. All I did was a set of 20 sensei mark specials. I'm planning on doing some more sit ups and squats on my lunch break to make up for it.

Then it was time for Treadmill Round Two! Yeah, no. Running produced a decidedly unhealthy shooting pain from both ankles. So I walked. I put the incline up to 5 and kept my heart rate up above 150. It was a fast walk, but it was most definitely a walk. So I sucked at the workout today.

I really need to figure out this ankle problem though. It's slowin me down.

I had this big long introspective post about me being a tomboy that I was writing in my head while I was doing the first half of my workout, but I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say...I'll try to remember and post a bonus post later.

-Meg

Take a deep breath, babe, cause we've just started

It seems like I just can't get myself to exercise on the weekends. I make grandiose plans to do boxing and hit the gym and then *bam* real life interferes. After getting a grand total of 6 hours of sleep Saturday morning so that we could get up and traipse around Brooklyn looking at apartments, there was no way my body was letting me get up in time for boxing. Now mind you, normal people wouldn't have a problem getting up for a 12:30 class, but being the night dweller that I am, that's early.

I got myself back into the swing of things today (Monday was spent looking at more tiny overpriced apartments), and man do I hurt from it.

I did the half hour on the treadmill, with my body complaining the whole way. Then I did Day one of week six in the Hundred push up challenge. Ow. Just. Ow. I'm in the lowest bracket this time, and I barely made that last couple of push ups in the max set. I foresee redoing this week in my future. I did a wussy strength set, just the crunches I usually do, stretched and then tried to hit the treadmill again. My body was having none of that thank you very much. So I spent the next 25 minutes alternately walking and then jogging for a couple minutes, walking again for like 10 minutes, trying to run for a couple minutes, repeat.

And yet I feel like I ran a half marathon at this point..
-Meg

Check in the appropriate box for Boy or Girl

First things first, I would like to apologize for my recent foul mood. I did a very silly thing, and agreed to work overtime on a week when I already wasn't at my best. Being overtired, PMSing and getting almost no human interaction outside of work? Not good.

I've considered taking down my last post, because honestly I could see how it might offend someone with or recovering from an eating disorder, however I feel I need to leave it up, for me, because sometimes I'm afraid I'm starting to develop *very* bad habits and thought patterns.I need to be careful, because I have a highly competitive nature, not to turn my food journal into a competition with myself to see 'how low I can go'. Let me say instead that I was speaking out of frustration and hormones, and I'm sorry.

I had a short, but good, workout today. The S.O. gets out early on Fridays so I met him at 3:00 for some gym time. I talked him into the treadmills and proceeded to fly. I had been feeling tired and out of sorts when we got there, I had only gotten 6 hours of sleep and was cranky, but let me tell you, after the two minute warm up, I cranked the music and just ran for 30 minutes. I even did an 'interval' for the last two minutes, pushing myself hard, sweating buckets, and hitting that 'no room for any thoughts' zone.

I did my Hundred push up Challenge set, day 3 of week 5. Again I barely made the last set. Those last few push ups were done teeth clenched and making my "I will KILL this" face. (Coined so by one of my Sensei's back at the dojo as it is the face I make that scares people ^_^)

I did Abs (25 sensei mark specials, 10 each side 'ab choppers', 10 each side side crunches, 15 toe touches with 12 lb weight), and a little extra arm work, just 2 sets of 15 tricep kickbacks with the 12 lb weight. Then I did a full stretching set for once (since I had time) and hit the showers.

One thing I noticed while running is that the appropriate music really helps me go. A small sample of my "I will kick @$$" music (and yes I'm weird so sue me):
"Infrared" by Placebo
"Boy or Girl" by Electric Six
"Mystery Girl" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Come out Swinging" by The Offspring (or really most songs by them work)
"The Libertine" by Patrick Wolf
"Machete" by Moby

Yeah there's more...I have a huge workout playlist...but that's a good sample for now...

So what do you listen to?
-Meg

Workout, with a vengeance!

I feel much better today. Later last night, after posting I had a wicked vertigo attack, so I do believe that my negative state of mind was in part associated with the oncoming attack. Gotta love the human body. I would like to thank tokaiangel very much for her kind words about my state of mind last night , it's always good to know that there are people out there pulling for you. ^_^

Today I hit the gym hard. With a Vengeance!! I got there earlier than usual, and jumped on the treadmill. I warmed up for two minutes then ran steady for a full 30 minutes. No stopping, No slowing. I even managed to run a little faster on a little bit of an incline for the last two minutes. I cooled down for 5 minutes then hit the mats for strength.

This is my second time through week 5 of the Hundred Push Up Challenge, today was day 2 redux. I'm still just barely making it through the required sets. I feel fine up until the last "max" set. Then I BARELY eek out those last few push ups.

After the push ups I did a set of 25 "sensei mark specials" (I'm trying to work my way back up to sets of 50 of them) a set of 15 "toe touch crunches" with a 10 lb weight in my hands, 2 sets of 10 "ab choppers" (one set on each side), 2 sets of 15 side crunches (again one set on each side), 2 sets on each side of 15 triceps kick backs with a 10 lb weight, and 2 sets in each direction side squats.

I stretched for a while until the S.O. showed up then we hit the ellipticals. One thing I'm noticing now that I'm doing running on the treadmill before I get on the elliptical machines is how freaking tired I am by the time I get to the ellipticals. But I managed to keep myself moving at a respectable rate with the resistance up at 10 for 30 minutes, even if every minute felt like I was trying to run in knee deep snow.

I hit the showers and then we headed to Starbucks for my daily indulgence (a tall iced skinny vanilla late...mmmm.)

I started keeping a food journal yesterday, and over the course of the day I racked up a total of 1606 Calories, 47.7g Fat, 188 Carbs, and a measly 58g Protein. I'm going to report my daily totals here and hopefully that'll help keep me accountable.

The word for today is Rededicated.
-Meg

Keeping myself moving forward

Yesterday, after I had posted my blog and was getting myself all set up to charge full steam into the challenges in front of me, I found out that the apartment I thought I was moving into at the beginning of September had been rented out to someone else. A few hours of anger and panic later, and we once again have a plan and a way forward. My stress level is hovering right below "I'm going to give myself an stroke" but there is a plan and this will be ok.

To say that I needed my time at the gym today would be an understatement.

I ran for over half an hour today. Well, let me be more specific. I did a 5 minute warm up, ran for 20 minutes, walked for a minute, ran for 10 minutes, walked for a minute, ran for another 5 minutes, then did a 5 minute cool down. The last two sets of running I was to the "can't think can only try to concentrate on keeping myself moving" stage. That blissful point where the exertion of your body takes away everything else in the entire world. The last time I remember feeling that was at boxing, the time before that, in the dojo.

I used to get to that point almost every class at the dojo. And then after class I would collapse into sesea and meditate with the rest of the class, my pounding heart and deep breathing the only sound in my world.

Today was like that. It was wonderful.

I did my set for the Hundred Push Up Challenge, today there are eight levels to get through instead of the usual five, but the levels had fewer push ups. I was doing fine until the last set, which is the max rep set. I BARELY made the minimum 35.

On to the strength stuff. My arms were dead from the push ups, so I concentrated on sit ups. 20 "sensei mark specials", 20 ab choppers, 20 toe touches, 20 side crunches.Then I tried doing some of these:Straight Leg Bridge With Ball, I did 15 and stopped, partially because my butt was starting to hurt, but mostly because I felt REALLY silly.

I did some stretching, then when the S.O. got there, we hopped on the elliptical machines to do the 30 minutes to end my workout. Yeah, well I *tried* to do 30 minutes. Running is so much more tiring than elliptical-ing (is that even a word?) So much more tiring that I no longer had the energy left to do a full 30 minutes on the elliptical after that marathon on the treadmill. Sensing my flagging energy I attempted to compensate by upping the resistance level to ungodly heights, figuring I would make the most of whatever time I did manage to keep myself on the machine for. I managed to stay on for 20 minutes, plus a 5 minute cool down...so only 10 minutes short of my goal. Not too bad, especially considering I was going at a level *10* resistance! (now is the part where you all oooo in admiration).

I am now chowing down on carrots, and realizing that my butt is very not happy about that resistance level...

-Meg

Motivation via Cheerleaders

And no, I don't mean having a personal cheerleader (although that would be awesome). No, today, while I was doing my strength training set I was standing near a window at my gym which happens to look out over Wall Street right in front of the NYSE. There were Cameras everywhere, Lights, stages, people all dressed up in fancy suits talking to the aforementioned cameras, and the Nets Cheerleaders posing in/on/around a car. Yes, directly in my tired, sweaty, frustrated line of sight was a cadre of robotic-aly perfect shining examples of *who I'm supposed to be

*sigh*

Anyways, today I was tired again, in that "idontwannagotothegym, youcantmakeme" kind of way. But I went anyways. I got on the elliptical and that same competitiveness that used to keep me getting my butt kicked at karate kicked in again and I kept my speed up and matched my 29 1/2 minute time for the 3 mile mark. Woo! I did a different set of strength moves today, my triceps are killing me from all the work I've been doing so I tried to give them an easy day. Instead of doing the full arm workout, halfway through it I switched to doing some exercises from another FitSugar plan, doing side lunges, reverse lunges bicycle crunches (which by the way, hurt, in a good way) and I did my standard "Sensei Mark Special" crunches.

I actually got a full fifteen minutes of stretching in before my S.O. showed up for the second half of my cardio. At this point (due in part to the shiny perfectness of the damned cheerleaders) I was feeling defeatist, and exhausted. So I decided I was going to take a different tact on this stint on the elliptical. Instead of keeping the resistance (relatively) low and going for speed, I switched it up and put the resistance (again relatively) way up to 15 and just tried to keep a respectable pace. I had to drop the resistance at a couple points down to 13 as my legs started burning from the unaccustomed work, but as soon as my legs recovered I'd push it back up to 15. And somehow I managed to do close to 2 1/2 miles in the 30 minutes. Which tells me I can run faster than I've been, and should push myself next time to see how fast I *can* go.

All in all not a bad workout. Even if I didn't want to go ^_^
-Meg