Muscle Strains and Stair Hopping

A lot of the issues I found when I was trying to exercise, which I think i've mentioned before, were that my lifestyle simple wasn't up to it, I drove everywhere, was lethargic between locations, and wasn't really that interested in the gym or things like that, as it's not really how I was brought up.

In my past it was all about sport for enjoyment, and exercise was never anything that was done to keep in shape, just par for the course of having fun.

As with anything, it's a job of reconditioning, and something which i'm still working very hard on it taking every opportunity as it comes, and if there's a chance for a quick jog, or a little hop skip and a jump, go for it, it all counts in the end.

Something one of my old friends told me once, while not for the right reasons, has stuck with me.  He always claimed he didn't have enough time to exercise, nor to go to the shop, so whenever he did, he'd run, and his saying was that "any task shorter than 10minutes, i'll run to it", so he'd always run to the shop, run for the takeaway, etc.  He did this because he was mad, but it's a good way of keeping your body ticking over.

With that in mind, I tried to go to the extremes, and began to run up the stairs to my apartment (2 flights), jog around to the car, power walk to work, carry more shopping bags than usual to save on trips but also train the right muscle groups.

Not many of these things remain, but I have to say I still run up the stairs when I can, and I definitely carry all the shopping in one trip, regardless of what it is - as I hate going up and down the stairs twice for the same thing!

I will warn you though, something that I found very quickly was that because your body isn't used to running up stairs (2 or 3 steps at a time), or your arms aren't used to holding station for so long, small muscle tears were often, and I had an on-going niggle with my groin that kept coming back (treadmill, stairs, etc), but now finally appears to have settled down.

So be careful, but try to push yourself further than the level you'd like to eventually be at.

The Big Step

I mentioned in my last post that I'd be talking about my brush with a personal trainer.  Well, because things were going rather slowly, I figured why mess around, go the whole hog and try and get someone to force me to do things.

After looking around a little, I found a guy called Ian at ICFitness, who nowadays spends most of his time on ICNutrition, as a Herbalife reseller.

Note: I don't promote or use Herbalife, just thought i'd mention it!

Ian came along and did an assessment with me and at the time I was still near my peak weight at around 123kg, and he helped with proving to me that exercise is possible even if you're out of breath, just push through and it's only for a period a day (at the time they were 30-40minute sessions).

We generally met up 1-3 times a week, dependant on where I was working, or if I was around, and it would always be at my apartment, with the sessions focusing on high energy low rests workouts and routines.

I found it incredibly difficult at first, but it didn't take long for me to get used to using the kettle bells, dumbbells, and getting used to the fact I had 40 minutes of hard work to do before I could start my evening (or day in some instances).

While I no longer use Ian, it taught me that exercise can be done anywhere, and that it's very simple to put together a simple routine that suits the environment you're currently in, helping me with doing some workouts when i'm away on work, and even spontaneously either at home or out.

Unfortunately I don't have any of the measurements or the weight I was at when I finished having sessions with Ian, but I think I dropped around 6-8Kg, and a couple of inches around the waist.  For me, it was an extremely valuable step to take, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's struggling for motivation and has the opportunity to take the chance.

Attempting to move it

During my time working away, I often attempted to pop in to the miniGyms at the hotels and try my hand at various things, and being a complete novice at Gyms, it didn't always go so well, and my motivation was never really at the levels that I needed it to be.

As we all know, exercising is one thing when you're not used to it: hard work

I'd often find myself trying to run 1km, and very often coming up short, and only managing to last for periods of 1-3minutes, and even on the bike I was struggling to last more than 5-10 minutes.

My inability to perform when going to the gym was restricting my motivation, and it was only when I began to go swimming that I really started to feel that I could turn things around, but ultimately these brief visits would never stand me in a good stead to lose any weight, and much less improve activity.  I simply didn't want to stand on a treadmill for 20minutes.

At this point there were a few work friends that would come in and out which sometimes would help motivation, but even this wasn't really helping me move along, while it was an important part of progress.

Rather than push through the boundaries slowly, I needed to speed things up, so I looked in to hiring a personal trainer, which i'll come back to soon.

Helping hands

Well where do I start.. I've mentioned previously about having a couple of people that I spent a lot of time with in the few years while I was working away, and how they had a massive impact on how I spent my time away from home, so let's talk a little about the people I surrounded myself with, took advice from, and have learnt from to help me along the way a little.

I firstly started reading a really good blog after finding it reading about Nike+, which is a blog about a guy called Sean Willson, and is called LearnFitness.com, it really shows his struggle with getting the weight off, and what/how he used to get to where he is now (still going I should say!).

A friend of mine has been going through University as a personal trainer and nutritionist, and has his own blog which he runs over at SGTCoaching.  We've had many conversations about the type of exercise to do at what time, and what type of foods to feed your body either in times of no exercise or conversely, times of heavy exercise.

Something that i've really struggled with, is getting a regular gym partner who likes to spend the same amount of time as me (or as early in the morning!), when I first began it was really difficult as I barely had any stamina, but there was a couple of friends I worked with who helped me push through some resistance routines, while now I do a lot of cardio in the Gym I tend to do this on my own but have a couple of guys who tag along for short periods when possible.

Over time, i've found that having friends who receive your honesty is extremely important, because they'll give it in return and help out when they can!

The unknown beginnings

I guess it's about time that I started talking about what actually happened, and where I started, inadvertently, to change the way in which I saw, and managed my lifestyle.

As with everything...it started with a girl.......NO. Actually, it didn't.

A couple of friends decided to stop drinking for a few weeks, and it just so happened that I was working away with them at that time, so joined in (without really meaning to).  I should probably make it clear that my lifestyle had slightly changed prior to this, but I'll cover that with another historical post at a later date, as it's not hugely different at that stage.

At this same time as this 'dry' period was going on, I was having some, shall we say, gastric issues.  Essentially my stomach hurt, a lot, and I was regularly vomiting in the mornings (something which had been going on regularly for probably 15 years, but I was at this point in a "regular" phase).

Through this, I was trying to stay off any "heavy" food, and ended up eating different varieties of salads and water, with the occasional J2O.

Guess what? I not only felt better, but I also lost a little bit of weight. Nothing noticeable, but enough for me to know about it, and enough to set the foundations for what was to happen in November 2010, when I was on Holiday in Florida and lost my appetite completely, but not only this, on or around the 18th Nov (I can't work out the exact date!), three of our travelling party decided to go out for a jog near our Villa.  This jog would have been around 600m from door to door, and I have to say, while I never let on at the time, but with it being fairly obvious, I was pretty distraught and embarrassed at not even being able to make it to the end of the street, 150m).

This was the trigger, and while it took me some time after returning, it will always be the moment I decided to work on my fitness, and lifestyle.

I think everyone, in some way or another, always needs a little push.

The History

Before I truly engaged on properly losing weight, I attempted many a thing to see if any of them stuck, but mostly there were reasons behind why they didn't,  or at least why for me they didn't work.  Some of them are reasonably obvious as them being stupid, some are less so.

While living in Leicester and working at the university, I often attempted to do some small things to work on my weight, and ultimately none of them worked, but they were a good foundation for what later has begun to work, giving me an understanding of how many body works.

The Stomach Shrinking

There were times when I felt that shrinking my stomach may help me in restricting what I ate, something simpler than a gastric band, and all I really did was limit my eating to a single chicken roll per day (no breakfast/dinner).  While the shrinking worked, and after a period it meant I had a much smaller appetite but it never lasted, and let's be fair, killing your appetite won't help if you're eating the wrong food.

The Salad Obsession

I went through a week of eating solely home-made salad, limited to Lettuce, Tomato, and Cucumber.  Again, a fad which was never going to last, especially when you don't use dressing and you think salad is boring!

The Distant Gym

When my time in Leicester was coming to an end (not that I knew at the time), I felt there was a need for me to do something more towards losing weight, so I decided to sign up to a Gym for the first time in my life (Yes, at 20!), the obvious mistake here was that it was the complete other end of town, making it an extremely awkward triangle between home, work, and the gym.  I'd spend 20 minutes in the gym on my way home from work, which made my walk home take ~1h 40.  Annoying, and ultimately unsustainable.  As it happens, a month after registering for the gym, I ended up moving back to Wales from Leicester and was lumped with an 11month Gym membership I couldn't cancel.

While these things may not have been the most sensible, they taught me some valuable lessons and have formed part of the significant changes I've made over the last 4 to 5 years.

Annoyances...

I'm currently sitting on a plane on my way home from a brief visit to Munich for a business meeting, and it's just reminded me of all those things which used to annoy, which I am either now on my way to not experiences, or no longer experience.

Some of you may know exactly what I'm taking about while some of you may never experience it.  Below is a short list of things which I've time and previous to 2009 would cause dissatisfaction and I suppose pain, and it's those things we don't want to admit to ourselves hurt.

- extremely tight seatbelt on a plane

- unable to cross legs

- inability to sit comfortably (lean forward etc)

- taking up more than your seat

- football turnstiles (not that losing weight helps in all turnstiles!!)

I'm sure there's many more things which have irked me in the past that I'm unable to remember right now, but it's only really after losing weight I'm able to appreciate the difficulty I once had with those things.