Fitness: Dealing with Illness...

So, I've come to develop a little technique over the last couple of years. I don't really have a name for it, but I'm sure it will be in fitness books in 50 years.

Let me explain. Everyone gets sick every once in a while, even if you get all your vitamins and eat the right foods and exercise regularly--it just happens. And, as far as fitness goes, it's a total bummer. It can really mess up your progress, particularly if you are sick for more than a couple of days. Sometimes, if you just have the sniffles, you can still pump some iron or go for a light job, although your results tend to be a little sub-par. But if you get smacked with something a little more potent, there is often no way you can avoid simply lying around in bed.

There is, however, usually a kind of buffer zone between healthy and sick. There is a moment when you can say with near certainty that you WILL get sick. It is not a question of IF, but WHEN. This is where my technique comes into play. When you feel that soreness at the back of your throat, and your body begins to feel tired, head to your gym or workout area of choice, and give yourself a final workout! It's not that doing so will have some sort of supernatural effect on your ability to recuperate, it simply ensures that you get one last workout in before you are confined to your bed.

I actually did this yesterday. It was our anniversary, and we were heading out to the Cheesecake Factory (should I even MENTION that place on a fitness blog???). Toward the end of the workday, I could feel the sickness coming. At this point, I had a choice: I could squeeze in a workout before heading out for dinner, or I could wait until afterward. With impending illness, I decided to suck it up and do my scheduled workout for the day: Plyometrics. Ugh. It was tough, but I was SO glad I did it. At dinner later on, I had no appetite--kind of lucky, because it spared the thousands of calories you can easily amass at that restaurant--and there was no way I would have been able to do my workout later that night (let alone walk across the room).

I'm doing a bit better today, but I may end up having to skip my workout altogether.

Thanks to my buzzer-beating workout yesterday, however, I don't think my loss will be as terrible as it could have been.

Moral of the story: Don't get sick.

But if you do...

Deal with it.

"What's Your Heart Rate? Check Your Zone!"

I don't have a lot to say for this post.

Check that.

I actually have a ton to say for this post. But there are a plethora of perfectly understandable reasons for me not writing a whole lot right now, some of which I will quickly enumerate:

1. I am at work. I should be working. But it's hard when we Web guys get into work an hour before everybody else. There is just a gleeful demon that possesses you when you're sitting in a corner cubicle with a silent, empty office. By the way, I have a new job; perhaps that can partially account for the dearth of posts from me in, like. half a year almost. I now work as a web developer for a scrapbooking company called QuicKutz (no jokes, please). It is an awesome job, which I should be doing right now.

2. Along with my change of employment, I've started realizing that when you aren't working for a health magazine, you aren't in the habit of coming up with unique fitness perspectives all the time. In fact, although my daily exercise and attempt at healthy eating has remained fairly constant, I would have to say that fitness occupies a much lesser portion of my brain's daily capacity.

3. In some ways, I really abhor blogging. I mean, it's pretty much the most self-centered thing an individual does. Think about it--we write all of this meaningless, diary-worthy stuff, and then have the gumption to post it in a place where all the world can see it, hoping that people will read our banal, meandering thoughts. Fact is, nearly all of us are such terrible writers, that the only interest our posts spark in other individuals stems from the hilarity of poor syntax and altogether odd word choice.

Anyway, I'm writing again, just to say that I'm deep into my second go-round of the popular fitness fad program P90X. Now, I am actually kind of wrapping this post up, so I'm not going to take the time to tell you all about the ins and outs of P90X, nor will I even so much as give you a link to their site. Google is alive and well, and I'm sure you can type four letters (No! Not THOSE four letters!) into an input box and hit ENTER. (If you're over about 45 years old, by the way, you may not have learned the impressively simple concept of filling out an input box--a password or something in a search engine--and merely hitting ENTER, rather, than using your mouse to click the "Search" button. My mom is still getting the hang of this. Try it, folks. Love it.)

P90X, in short, is an extreme home workout program that primarily uses dumbbells, a pull-up bar, a yoga mat, and tons of swearing and sweat to get you through hellishly intense exercises. It is based on the concept of muscle confusion--essentially you change up exercises so frequently that your body is continually adjusting to the new workouts, which reduces plateauing.

The first time I did P90X, I dropped a little over 20lbs, lost 3 1/2 inches in my waist, and increased my overall strength. After gaining a portion of that back over the last year and change, I have been working my way back into "supersonic X shape", and have lost 1 1/2 inches of waist and about 7 lbs of fat.

My basketball skills have been improving, as well. Last night I balled it up, and I was able to go up and hang on the rim without too much of a problem. Not bad for an almost-26-year-old, 5'9" whitey. The dunk still eludes me, however...

Oh, well. Till next time!