Well time flies doesn’t it?

And when you sit about not exercising so much, the waistline grows - I went from 79 to 82 kilos over the last 10 weeks despite some fairly intense walking. Not enough of it I guess, and I like (no - love) my feel good, high carb comfort foods to keep the cold out…

Anyway, I just started back at the gym on the spin bike, and am crafting a heavy weight workout to do just before that, twice a week.

As we know, research has shown that if you want to build maximum muscle in minimum time and burn FAT, you need to do an intense weights session, rest for 20 minutes then do an intense cardio session.

Here’s why. The heavy weights  routine burns the sugar kept in your muscles and liver if you do it hard enough. Thus the only place you can get the energy for the cardio session after wards is FAT. Yay!!

My right shoulder is getting stronger by the way, but crunchy as heck!
I think there is some ligament/tendon damage there and hope the physio has some answers for me when I start rehab early in August.

Other news - I write articles for some online publications in a number of different fields including health and fitness - heck I can’t work as a trainer and need to do something that provides a cashflow in.

Plus I have teamed up with a designer to produce money sucking websites for the fitness industry and personal trainers ONLY.

Hey, how many of you have had a great experience with web design, or have heard horror stories or are just plain bored with your site. Imagine what your clients and potential clients think…

More news on that when it is up and running.

hmm…. oh here is a goodie

“A man truly meets himself in adversity…”

Cheeers for now - Rick

A few things have happened since my last post.

Went and had Xrays and Ultrasound and it shows my shoulder is healing up ok bonewise. There is a lot more freedom of movement, and the stretches and exercises I have been doing are getting easier and I am adding more resistance gradually.

Still a lot of crunching going on in the right shoulder though, as well as ribcage and left shoulder and upper back. Man I must have really wrenched it! The sessions on the foam roller are a real boon, they free it all up perfectly!

And I have now learned the ins and outs of the Gold Coast public transport system. If you want to use a bus allow about half a day for any appointment, more if you need to make a connection from East-West to North-South.

Oh and despite what the popular press might have you believe, Michael Jackson didn’t die because he was middle aged and exercising too intensely - my opinion is that’s an outright lie spread by specialists who need a steady stream of unhealthy patients to maintain their country club memberships

Cheers

P.S.

My Cardiologist gave me a clean bill of health last week too. I get to see him again in a year. Woo hoo! drug free and loving it…

Well it’s three weeks and 3 days and my right shoulder is still a wreck. 

I do think it’s on the mend bone-wise, but I suspect ligament and other softer tissue damage which may reveal itself in an ultrasound in a couple of weeks.

The good news is I no longer need so many pain killers - I had my first drug free night last night. It wasn’t as good as I hoped so I guess I will still use them for a few more days yet *sigh*.

Anyway, because I haven’t been able to do much gym type stuff I have ramped up my walking efforts.

I pace it out about 130 beats a minute for a good hour or more each day over some fairly hilly country hereabouts. I even walked over to my horse riding place, an hour and 15 minutes away.

I walked to the gym once from here (35 minutes away) and did some unilateral stuff on the left, but that shoulder is a bit tender still too. That may be because I tend to sleep on that side now, apart from the wrenching it got in the prang.

Anyway, the extra walking is helping me to keep my weight steady, I even went under 80 kg before the weekend.

So if you want to keep weight off or even lose it then a long brisk walk each day is going to help you do just that.

In other news, my wife moved my rower up into her gym today - seems she likes the Concept C2 better than the water rower. At least we can row together now (or is that “row” as in have a domestic lol).

No idea what the heading here should be…

Hey I finally sorted out the new design for this fitness website, and it should be alive and cute sooner rather than later. Too bad the changes we need to make inside ourselves take much longer. Why is it we are so impatient these days?

One trick I am playing with is to make the to do list smaller but with much bigger jobs - in fact now what I try to do is concentrate on only one thing during a working day. Research shows that if we continually interrupt thought processes and concentration our efficiency collapses by magnitudes.

For example I am a budding travel writer and as you can see, my current writing style is dull, colourless and boring… So every day what I do is write one travel article in longhand from the newspaper or a magazine in the hope I can “groove” my neural pathways into a nice writing style.

Bit like doing exercises in the correct manner - light weight and good form before loading up.

So I figured it might be a good idea to increase the volume and decrease the number of days I do the writing. It’s an experiment. Read the rest of this entry »

Well my luck is still in.

There I was minding my own business merging with the traffic on the local motorway 11 days ago.
Stuck the boot in to get over to the fast lane when the rear end decided it wanted lead position.
Now remember my car is (was) a Ford ute with a Tickford go extra fast engine package, and I like the fact it is (was) a motorcycle on 4 wheels - fast and nimble. However like a motorcycle it didn’t like wet roads and rain, and with the lack of weight in the rear was a sitter for an oily patch whilst under extreme acceleration.

Have you ever thought about what happens in your mind when your life may be ending?
First of all there was no noticable adrenalin shot - I mean I was calm and rational. This surprised me.
“First thought as the rear overtook the front “this is gonna hurt cos it isn’t a theme park ride…”
CRUNCH!
Second thought “bugger I’ve wrecked the only nice car I ever owned..”
CRUNCH!
Third thought “gee that bonnet looks interesting flying thru the air down the highway…”
Fourth thought “oh good the car has stopped moving and I am alive…”
Fifth thought was an emotion - relief and anger, mainly directed at myself.

It was about then I discovered I couldn’t breathe real well, and that my right shoulder hurt lots.

The passenger door opened up and the usual question (I have asked it often during my lifetime) “are you all right mate?”

“Sure I just wrecked the best car I ever owned at 100 kph plus and I can’t breathe - right as rain…” Read the rest of this entry »