Recently in Plan Category

I have been started on my plan for working out for several days now, becoming most serious about it last Monday. I have been approaching this slowly, since last time I dove head first into this type of thing I gave up after only a few days. This time I feel more comfortable with myself and with my abilities, but at the same time I am not going at it in the same way I used to. My old approach was just a general disliking of my body, or being really disappointed with my abs, and basically working from just that. Well, that doesn't work so well. This time I am selecting areas to target and going for it. I am trying to do an overall body tone, but I am doing it in targeted ways, not trying to do it all at once or anything like that. I select a general area or two to work each day, and I focus on that area. Once I know what I am doing each day I pay a little closer attention to the general muscle areas and try to work one at a time. I do not have a great about of fitness knowledge, even though I have approached this type of thing numerous times, so for the present time I have a somewhat distracted approach to working out. I will decide what muscles I will work and if I know the exercise I want to do, I do it, otherwise, I have a large collection of books and of course Google to help me out. When I find a new exercise, I enter it into GITI and log when I do it. I suppose at the moment with the way I am approaching things, I am teaching myself how to workout (and how to deal with pain, stress, etc), and at the same time I am teaching my body the correct movements for things. I am not working with large amounts of resistance yet. Most of my resistance comes from 10lbs dumbbells. Not a lot of weight, but enough to help me know if I am doing things correctly or not. The one other thing that I believe I need to do is work on learning how to stretch properly. I am staying sore for way too long for the amount of exercise I am doing.

Due to lack of motivation and time getting away from me yesterday (Monday), I was unable to get started on my ab workout series like I wanted. So, instead of doing the Monday workout on Monday, I did it today (Tuesday) and will continue to follow the rest of the days one day off until Saturday, when I will do Friday's workout. That will give me Sunday to rest before starting the Monday routine again on Monday. 

As workout days go, this wasn't as productive as I like. I got nearly no ab work done today. What I did accomplish was quite a few chin ups, which for me, are hard as fuck, and I did do the sprints this morning. I will try to repeat all of these activities tomorrow as well, until I get more comfortable with them.

My prep work for today included reviewing my Men's Health 15-minute Workout DVD, and bringing out the ab books that I have. I'm going to work hard on my abs this year, I want awesome abs, so I'm going to have to work them 3-4 times per week (recovery time between days is required for development).

I am still very excited about all of this and I want to make things go as well as possible.

I have the drive and the motivation to start this, and I seriously want to take this on this time. This morning I mounted my pull-up bar on my door frame. I didn't originally want it on the door to my room, I wanted the privacy of having it on the door between my bedroom and bathroom, but with my no-defeat attitude towards things now, I mounted it and I will deal with the other emotions and any bullshit that may arise later.

I am presently petrified to look at my weight on a scale, because I know I'm overweight. I know my body isn't what it should be. I also know that to make any measurable progress I will have to take the initial measurements and start taking them each and every week until I am what I want to be.

I don't like my body. I haven't liked my body in almost a year. I am now going to do something about it. From the first Monday before my 23rd birthday, until June 1(March 3, 2008 until June 1, 2008) I will be working out at least 5 days per week. I am going to do a variety of cardio, weight training and strength training. My goal is to lose weight and gain muscle. I don't want to be a walking muscle, but I do want to have a body with more definition and more pleasing curves. My basic goal will be to prepare myself to meet the requirements of the basic US Marine fitness test.

This summer, I want to have a body that I am proud of and will have no problem showing off and making everybody drool.