Back to the gym

After running on Monday night, last night's workout was in the gym. The workouts I'm following right now are deliberately broken into multiple phases, where you start with pure strength work and end up huffing and puffing from bodyweight exercises done at a fast pace.

There are four segments to each workout (note that the segment "names" are not mine; they come from the workout program):

Pure strength: 3 sets of 4 reps of two different lifts, 90 seconds between sets
Transition: 3 sets of 10 reps of the same lifts, only 60 seconds rest
Burn: 3 sets of 4 different lifts, rest for 60 seconds after every other set. At least one exercise hits the same muscles hit hard in the first two phases.
Metabolic: Bodyweight stuff like burpees, air squats, rope jumping, mountain climbers, etc.

Last night, the first two sets were snatch-grip (wide grip) deadlifts and bench presses. I hadn't done snatch-grip deads for quite a while and my shoulders are complaining today. I had forgotten how grip intensive the wide-grip is as well, and my grip was the limiting factor in how much weight I lifted.

The "burn" phase included explosive push-ups, which hit the same muscles as the bench presses. Three of the four lifts in this set last night were upper-body dominant. I thought I was going to throw up halfway through round 3 last night.

Today is supposed to be fairly warm and we didn't get any real snow yesterday, so I'm going to run outside after work - a short fartlek workout before my guitar lesson.

It might be tough to get in a workout tomorrow because I'm leaving work early to see Furthur (one of the many post-Jerry forms of the Dead that have toured) in concert.

But, it's nice to be working hard and feeling healthy again.

What an unusual feeling

All day yesterday, I was itching to do my workout. I haven't been excited to do a workout in quite a while. During the weekend, I was feeling exhausted, but a lot of that was probably stress related to the crowds at Sugarbush. When the mountain is crowded, I have to be extremely vigilant to make sure my students are safe and that they don't get lost. It's interesting how I get into a zone on days like this, focusing just on my group, and being almost oblivious to the rest of my surroundings. I only notice if the mountain is crowded when we hit the lift lines.

Anyway, given how I felt by the end of Sunday, I wasn't sure I'd even want to work out yesterday. But, all day I was anxious to run. Given our recent lack of snow, I was hoping to run outside. But, I had a few things to do around town after work, and by the time I got home, it was too late to run outside. So, I went to the gym and used the treadmill.

I did a short run, just like last week, with some 1-minute repeats at hard effort. Last week, I started at an 8:00mpm pace and gradually dropped to 7:30 pace. This week, I took a longer rest between each repeat, but I started at 7:30 pace and dropped to 7:00 pace by the end. Not too many miles, but it was a good workout.

Tonight I'll lift and tomorrow, I'll run outside after work and before my guitar lesson. However, if we get enough snow today, running outside might not be safe tomorrow. I'm just happy to feel healthy enough again that I'm looking forward to my workouts.

Still moving

After my one lifting day and one running day last week, I was sore for days. My left hamstring, the same one I injured last spring, has really bothered me since last Tuesday. So, I rested on Thursday and Friday, and then skied this weekend. Yesterday, as I was skiing in the trees with my group, I suddenly realized that I'd been skiing very statically and tentatively all weekend. We were skiing a line that I normally attack, because it's a moderate tree run and I know every root, rock and other obstacle in the run. But, I was sitting back and skiing stiffly.

Just that realization made me change the way I was skiing, and I moved much better for the rest of the day. It's very easy to get lazy when skiing and I try to not do that. I want to keep improving as a skier and my biggest weakness is that I'm not a dynamic, acrobatic type of skier. I think that years and years of running have robbed me of a lot of my flexibility and that really affects my skiing.

I was even working with a couple of my students on loosening up and relaxing their upper bodies while skiing this weekend, and then I suddenly realized that I was providing a poor visual example.

The mountain was incredibly crowded this weekend, so it was challenging keeping the group of girls safe. On Saturday, we skied in trees all day and we managed to avoid the crowds. But, on Sunday, the crowds were crazy, so we took it a bit easier - playing more and skiing a bit less than normal. I think the girls are more likely to have sore abs today from all the laughing we did yesterday, rather than sore legs from skiing hard.

I think the highlight of the weekend for the group happened in a steep section of trees we skied on Saturday. One of the girls in the group approached a particular turn very tenuously. It was steep, the obvious line had a tree root sticking up, waiting to trip an unaware skier, and there just wasn't an obvious clean line. So, my student asked me for advice on how to ski the line. Due to other skiers going that same direction, there was a banked turn option that had set up in the snow. I told Sarah to ski high on the bank, above the root, and then, just as she cleared the bank, she'd turn to her right to regain speed control. She didn't understand exactly what I meant, so she asked me to demonstrate.

I gladly agreed and skied the line I'd suggested. Regretfully, though, I skied too high on the banked snow and the bank gave way. I went down in a heap in the trees just outside the turn. Sarah and the other girls who were close enough to see this found it hysterical. I looked uphill at Sarah and told her "Do it just like that, only don't fall." She was laughing so hard that it took her a minute to compose herself before she executed the turn flawlessly.

In the past two weeks, I've taken an unusual number of falls while skiing. Part of it has been due to conditions, but that's not a good excuse. I'm clearly not being careful enough at times. The one good thing about falling is that the girls love watching the coach make an obvious mistake.

I ran! Sort of.

I had to take my son to the doctor yesterday afternoon. The doctor thinks he has pertussis (whooping cough). After my recent diagnosis of pneumonia, the CEO of the company where I work (an MD) said he thought my illness sounded more like pertussis than pneumonia. Now, with my son's diagnosis, it's more likely that I also had/have pertussis, assuming my son's diagnosis is accurate.

My son was almost happy with the diagnosis. He can't go to school today or tomorrow and he can't go to work this weekend. On the weekends, he teaches skiing in an area of the mountain that houses over 100 children. He would have the opportunity to infect many children if they weren't current on their vaccines. So, he gets five days to play video games right now.

By the time I took my son to the doctor and got him his prescription, it was nearly dark. So, I opted to run on the treadmill. I was sore from lifting on Tuesday and I hadn't run in 36 days. So, I set the treadmill for a total workout distance of 3 miles. After a 1 mile warm-up, I started doing one minute (somewhat) hard and then one minute easy. I did this nine times, starting at 8:00 mpm pace and doing the last 4 repeats at 7:30 mpm, with the other repeats between those two paces. After not running for more than a month, that was plenty.

I'm even more sore today than I was yesterday. But, I feel like I'm starting my comeback finally.

Finally, a workout report

After nearly 3 weeks away from the gym, I worked out last night. My workout was as follows:

Superset 1:
Squats - 2x6
Cable Rows - 2x6
90 seconds rest between each set

Superset 2:
Squats - 3x12
Cable Rows - 3x12
60 seconds rest between each set

Superset 3:
Static Lunges - 3x12 (no rest)
Lat pulldowns - 3x12 (60 seconds rest)
Dumbbell squats - 3x12 (no rest)
Barbell push press - 3x12 (60 seconds rest)

In the last superset, my quads really started to complain. I felt like I was going to cramp up and this was after taking it easy, weight-wise, in all of the sets. My heaviest squats where 205 and I didn't push the weight on any of the lifts.

After the lifting, I was supposed to do some metabolic work - rope jumping, burpees, mountain climbers, bodyweight squats, etc., in rapid order with no rest, but I was already shot, so I quit after lifting.

Tonight, I'm planning to do a running workout. I was going to run outside, but it sounds like we'll have just enough snow to make the roads slipper for cars and humans, so I might use the treadmill. The warmer air in the gym will be kinder to my lungs anyway. My last run was on 1/5 - 36 days ago. My lungs have been less than 100% most of the time since that last run.

Two weeks and counting

It's been two weeks since my last formal workout. It's been almost a month since I last ran. I did ski two weekends ago, but that's not really a workout when I'm teaching.

I'm still not going to work out today. I'm taking codeine just so I can make it through the day without hacking up a lung. This is really getting old.

It's not uncommon for me to catch a cold during the winter. My winters are usually pretty intense - ski instruction on the weekends, early morning treadmill runs during the week, lifting after work, my job, my family, etc. But, this winter has not been as stressful. I will admit that work has been stressful, but my workouts have been limited to one per day, no really early mornings, plenty of sleep, etc. I did have one week where I skied 7 of 9 days, and 3 of those days were fairly intense skiing where I was the student rather than the teacher. But, overall, it's been a lower stress winter than most.

And yet, I'm sick again. I imagine that having asthma, even mild asthma, may predispose me to lung problems. My son has a history of prolonged illnesses in the winter and his doctor has suggested that it might be related to us using wood to heat our house in the winter. The wood stove puts some fine particulate matter in the air, the house is locked up tightly in the winter, and the air in the house is very dry.

I don't know what the deal is, but I want to get back to working out. I want to run. I want to lift. I want to go snowshoeing. I want to go skiing. But, I'm afraid that if I jump right back into all of those things, I'm going to be sick for the rest of the winter.

The only good thing about being sick is it gives fodder for whining on my blog...

Mini Book Review: The Vegetarian Myth

I recently finished reading "The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability" by Lierre Keith. It was a book recommended on a blog that I read regularly. I've read many books over the years that strongly advocate a vegan or vegetarian diet for humans, for many reasons. One of the primary reasons is that modern methods for growing and processing meat are horribly inhumane and produce a product that is not healthy for us, especially in large quantities.

This book did not argue in support of factory farms. In particular, the author is just as adamantly against our current methods of meat "production" as the authors of books in favor of vegetarianism.

To open the book, the author took on the concept of vegetarianism from three perspectives: moral, political and nutrition.

In each chapter, she goes after reasons for people being vegetarian or vegan from the chapter's "title" perspective. In the "moral" chapter, she decries modern meat production and suggests that we should eat meat, but in a manner differently than most people eat meat.

In 2005, I spent a year as a vegetarian for many of the reasons listed in the "moral" chapter and some from the "nutrition" chapter. But, my athletic performance suffered badly that year, and after a year, I returned to eating meat. Because of the books I'd read while being a vegetarian, I returned to meat eating with a different attitude towards my food. I started to buy local grass-fed beef and refused to buy corporate meats. Most of the animals we eat were not meant to eat a diet of grains, and the grains make them sick. Their lives are miserable.

I now eat local beef that lives in a pasture for its entire life. No confined feeding operations, no grains, and no corporate slaughterhouse. My chicken is local and organic, but I'm pretty sure the chickens are fed some grains. Pork is local and not grain fed. I try to eat only wild-caught and sustainable fish and shellfish, such as Alaskan salmon and halibut. I feel that most of the animal flesh I eat lives more humanely than most corporate meat. The animals mostly get to eat the foods they evolved to eat. And, I think that food raised properly results in healthier meat. I also go out of my way to use every single part of every animal that comes my way. In this way, I feel that there is no waste from the death of the animal. For example, on Saturday night, I made duck for dinner. I made four different courses from two ducks, using the livers for a pate, the skin and fat to make cracklings, and I used the carcasses to make stock. The leftover fat will be used for cooking in the future - no waste at all.

So, I found myself agreeing a lot with what the author wrote in the first three chapters. She is really adamant that oil-based fertilizer is unsustainable and that mono-culture crops are destroying top-soil. The rotation of crops and animals on land is necessary for the creation of fertile nitrogen-rich topsoil. She uses the same example that Pollan used in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" - Polyface Farms in VA - as the ideal farm scenario.

I think it would be an interesting and challenging book for anyone interested in long term food sustainability to read. It will certainly challenge vegetarians and vegans, who will likely find many things to argue against. In the end, her solutions to long term sustainability are fairly extreme, but they may be the correct and necessary steps to save humanity and the planet: don't have children, don't own or use a car, and grow as much of your own food as you can. I can't imagine that many people could pull that off in today's world, but it's an intriguing goal.

My biggest problem with the book was how the author injected her feminist politics into the book in places where her politics seemed to be a complete non-sequitur. I don't object to her politics and I know that being a feminist activist is her primary professional role. But, I found some of her points completely out of place and out of context, and some of them seemed to be just plain mean. Yes, I understand and agree that men have treated and continue to treat women badly in our world today. But, the book, in places, seems to be full of outright hatred for men, which to me, seems unlikely to result in people thinking differently. It may be that fighting fire with fire is the only solution because others haven't worked. But in the end, I think that many men will be offended by some of the comments in the book. I'm not saying the comments are undeserved, but they will offend.

I'm almost afraid to hit the publish button with that last paragraph in there. But, I guess it will be a good way to find out if anyone who cares about the modern feminist movement ever reads my blog.