My First Yoga Experience

I tried yoga for the very first time today and I think that I like it. Lately I've been working out at the Novell gym during my lunch break. I usually split my time between a stairmaster and lifting free weights. But five days a week of the same indoor activity can get kind of boring... not to mention my legs are often low energy by mid-week from very lower-body centric cardio.

Novell offers a yoga class several times a week in one of the studios in the gym. Several of the guys that I cycle with have been taking them forever and swear by them. So, today I decided to give it a try. It's a perfect solution to my stairmaster boredom and I'm excited about what it can do for my flexibility and core strength... two areas that are particularly weak right now.

I was called out as a newb within seconds of entering the room. Apparently I grabbed the wrong kind of mat and was the only one in the room wearing shoes. I guess I stuck out like a sore thumb. But the teacher was nice and slowed the pace down a little for me as well as gave me a little extra instruction. It was humbling to discover just how inflexible I am and how little core strentgh I have. I have a new hero though... one of the guys that I ride with was able to twist and balance his body in all manner of poses that I would have otherwise thought humanly impossible.

Swim Lessons

I have wanted to take swim lessons for a long time now. Growing up in Hawaii I learned to swim in the sense that I wouldn't drown if thrown into the water, but I never really learned how to swim athletically. I would swim with my head above the water and stroke really inefficiently such that I couldn't go more than 20 or 30 yards without stopping to take a breather.

Last weekend I stopped by the pool at the Orem Rec center and went for a swim. On my way out, I noticed that they offerred private swim lessons that were very reasonably priced. So, I signed up. My classes don't begin until August, but I'm already very excited about them.

Last night I went back to the pool with Rosey and she, being a fairly experienced swimmer, gave me some good pointers to get started. She makes an excellent teacher. I almost regret signing up for lessons now as I think that she could teach me everything that I really need to know. But the lessons are already paid for, so I figure that I can get twice the learning: from Rosey and my instructor.

I spent the night practicing swimming with my head below the water and trying to remember to breathe occasionally :) It's amazing how much difference it makes to wear goggles. It's much more comfortable to keep your head below water that way. It also amazes me how much more efficient it is to swim that way. I was able to swim the length of the pool without tiring as opposed the 20 or 30 yards that I could swim above water.

So, why swimming? I guess that there are really two reasons. One, after biking all week and totally stressing out my lower body it will be nice to have another activity that I can do that focuses more on upper body. Two, I have been dreaming for a long time of being able to participate in a Triathlon and the swimming has been my one weak activity. When's the Ironman in Hawaii? :)

A Whole New Century

It's taken a whole lot longer than I had originally planned, but this week I finally dropped under 200 lbs. I haven't been this light since I graduated high school. I want to keep working to drop another 10 lbs or so to clean up a few of my jiggly spots, but I'm getting closer and closer to my 'ideal' weight.

April Training Recap

It was my goal to ride 200 miles a week in April. That means that I should have hit over 800 miles over the course of the month. Unfortunately, I fell short of that goal and only got 714 miles of riding in. I think that the weather was the largest factor in not meeting my goal. There were still quite a few days that I couldn't ride because of the rain.

As I look forward to May, I want to keep the same total mileage goal, but I want to focus on riding fewer, but longer rides. In April my longest single ride was only 52 miles. Most of my riding was accumulated by lots of short 12-20 mile rides (i.e. commuting back and forth to work). I really need to get in longer rides to start building my endurance.

Flirting with Spring

The warm weather of the last couple of weeks has been making me restless. The temperatures have been reaching as high as the 50's mid-day. The snow has all melted and I have even been able to bring my bike with me to work and to ride at lunch. I love spring weather. However, the spring weather has a consequence. Once it's nice enough to do stuff outside, I feel like working out inside is a waste of time. Who wants to get up every morning to ride 20 miles on an exercise bike when I know that I can ride 20 miles at lunch time on a real bike on real pavement.

So, I have found myself for the last couple of weeks skipping my indoor workouts in favor of getting my exercise outdoors. The problem that I keep trying to ignore is that it is really still February. Sure there are some days when we hit the 50's, but some of those days are drenched with rain and there are still days when the temperatures drop into the 30's. And no matter how devoted I am to biking, it's just no fun riding into the wind in 30 degree weather.

The moral of the story is that I have all but stopped working out inside but it's still not nice enough to get all of the exercise that I need outside. It's starting to make me feel like crap. But the thought of retiring to my dungeon of a basement for yet another month of indoor workouts is more than I can take. I just wish that Spring would hurry up and come already.

Never Thought I'd See the Day

I bought a new pair of jeans last night. Size 34x30. I haven't fit into jeans that small since I graduated from high school.

Fitness Update

I can't believe that my pants have been my top blog story for so long. And yet, I have one more update to make in the saga of my pants...

Apparently, having my pants fit tight was exactly the kick in the pants that I needed to start focusing on my fitness again. I redoubled my efforts and after a little more than two weeks I've lost nearly 10 pounds and am actually below my low summer weight. Hooray for me! :)

My goal is to keep it coming off and to be at or below 200 by sometime in February. When I accomplish that goal I believe that I will actually weigh less than I did when I graduated from high school. Freaky!

Hypothesis Verified!

I guess that I can't really be sure that the reason that my pants fit me better today has anything to do with my hip flexors. But who cares? My pants no longer feel like they are cutting the circulation to the bottom half of my body. That being said, I still plan to step up the effort to get my weight back down to my summer low. The thought of even being on the verge of a problem like this scares me a little bit.

The Shrinking Pants Hypothesis

I have spent the day in a good deal of physical and mental discomfort thanks to my shrinking pants. Seriously it was all that I could think about all afternoon. When I got home I weighed myself again. 222 lbs. Exactly the same weight that I've been for the last two months. I even took a body fat measurement. I won't reveal the actual figure, but it was, to my surprise, statistically insignificant from the last measurement that I took. What could be going on here?

Just a moment ago, I was in my basement doing crunches in between sets of squats when a thought occurred to me. Not just a thought, but a new hypothesis. What I thought of was my hip flexors. I thought of them because these are muscles that normally get used while doing sit-ups, but do not get used when you do crunches... at least not if you do them properly. Hip flexors also get used a good deal while snowshoeing.

Actually your hip flexors get used all the time while walking. They are the muscles that help raise the trunk of your leg toward your torso. Snowshoeing, however, puts much more strain on these muscles for two reasons. First, because of the depth of the snow you must take more pronounced steps and raise your leg up further with each step to get above the snow. Second, the additional weight of the snowshoes as well as all of the snow that gets stuck on top of them adds quite a bit of resistance to the motion.

It then occurred to me that the first day that I remember my pants being uncomfortably tight was last week; the day after I went snowshoeing for the first time this season. I know that I stressed my hip flexors because towards the end of the hike my hips were so sore that it was difficult to lift my legs. Things seemed to be getting better by Saturday, but then on Sunday I went snowshoeing again and today I felt like my pants were cutting off my circulation. Coincidence? I hope not :)

So, officially stated, my hypothesis is this: My shrinking pants are not shrinking at all. Rather, my hip flexors are temporarily swolen as the result of overuse while snowshoeing. If my hypothesis is correct, then my pants should grow over the next couple of days until they resume fitting like normal.

What do you think? Is this a valid hypothesis or am I just making up new and creative excuses for my fatness? :)

Are My Clothes Shrinking?

Oh how I wish my clothes really were shrinking. But I'm afraid that's probably not what's happening.

Over the summer, I maintained a weight of about 215 lbs. That was down 110 lbs. from where I started a year earlier at 325 lbs. Sometime during early Fall, I noticed that my weight had gone up to the low 220's. I was concerned at first, but then decided that since my clothes still seemed to fit just fine that I was OK with picking up a little bit of winter weight... as long as it didn't get out of control.

Within the last week or two I've begun to feel the pinch of my pants growing tighter around my waist. The freaky thing is that my weight hasn't gone up any since the early Fall. My average weight is still 222. I can't figure out what's happening. What changed? I'm starting to fear that I've lost some lean weight and have replaced it with more voluminous fat weight. That's the only explanation that I can think of that would explain why I have gotten bigger but not put on any weight.

In any case, it's time to step up my effort again. I was OK with putting on a little winter weight, but not if it means buying new clothes.