The Best Part About Exercise

I recently got blocked from commenting on a Facebook page called The Sports Motivation because I got angry when I saw them posting memes like this:

In the real world, that's a load of bullshit. There's many things that happen to us that are outside of our control. A man who worked at the same car plant for 25 years didn't choose to be laid off when the plant closed down. A family who has their house foreclosed on because a bank made an error can still be made homeless despite making all their mortgage payments on time. Tonight, some crazy arsonist could torch your home. In the real world, bad things happen to people who make good choices because of things they can't do anything about.

But when it comes to working out, that's the exception. In the gym, life is fair. The weights and the treadmill don't care about your background, how rich you are, or if you are politically connected. All they care about is the work you put in.

A person who is born rich and a person who is born poor can both exercise and get the same results. It doesn't matter if the rich guy has the best trainers or the finest nutritionists, if the rich guy isn't willing to put in the work, there isn't a money number high enough that will buy him strength or endurance. If a poor person trains his body, it doesn't matter if he can't buy the best gym equipment or trainers. He will improve. Athleticism is not something that can be bought on a shelf. You can't pay someone to work out for you. It's all on you.

It doesn't matter what kind of body you have, either. If you're not bedridden, you can work out. If your legs are broken, you can train your upper body. If you have a broken arm, you can do squats. So long as you aren't a quadriplegic there's something you can do.

Time is no excuse, either. I work full time, I'm a full time student, and a parent. Even if I had no one to watch my daughter (thanks, mom!), I'd take her to the gym with me, like this guy:

I might start doing that soon enough, anyway.

Henry Rollins wrote an excellent article about weight lifting in which he said that the iron reveals the truth about you in ways that people rarely do. Outside of the gym you can be an arrogant s.o.b. and cover yourself in false bravado, but inside the gym all of your shit-talking means nothing. The iron and the treadmill will tell you the truth about yourself. If you're lazy, they will tell you. If you're taking shortcuts, they will let you know. The only thing that will make you improve is by training and giving it everything you have. And when you do that, they'll make sure to tell you. You'll see it when you're lifting and running better than you ever thought possible.

Your best friends will always tell the truth about you, even when it pisses you off. In that sense, you can consider the iron and the treadmill two of the best friends you will ever have.

That's the greatest thing about working out. Life outside might be unfair as hell, but in the gym, hard work has its rewards.

The Voice and the Beast

When I workout, there’s two voices in my head.

The first one, I’ve simply named “The Voice”. The Voice has been with me for years. Every time I workout or start working out regularly, The Voice gives me reasons to quit. It tells me that I’m not strong enough, that the workout is too hard, and makes excuses to not workout. It’ll say that I’m tired, that I can’t accomplish the task given to me. Sometimes it will even fake injuries, making me feel a little pain in areas that magically heal up after I’m finished with the gym. And when none of that works, it’ll try to come up with reasons to not workout that will actually sound noble or selfless.

For example, today at the gym The Voice tried to convince me to not do leg lifts because “I’ll get the equipment all sweaty and the other people working out will think it’s gross”.

Yeah. Gotta look out for the other people in the gym. Even though I could, you know, just wipe the equipment down when I’m done. 

There truly is no lengths The Voice won’t go to to get me to quit. If screaming doesn’t work, it’ll try reasoning with me. It’ll try smooth talking. It will attempt to use a logical argument to explain why it’s in my best interest to quit. Until recently, he won a lot more battles than he lost.

The Voice is the embodiment of my self-doubt, my fears, and my desire for instant gratification. The Voice hates hard work. The Voice wants everything to be easy. And if it’s not easy, he doesn’t want me to do it.

After my last diary entry, when I acknowledged the existence of The Voice, he became louder. Beating him didn’t make him go away. Acknowledging his existence didn’t make him go away or diminish his power. He just works harder to get me to quit. The Voice is one persistent son of a bitch.

This persistence gave rise to something different while doing my run yesterday.

As The Voice continued to talk to me, I imagined something in my mind’s eye. There was a man grabbing The Voice by the throat and lifting him in the air. The Voice was no longer speaking. All he was making was choking sounds. And the man doing the choking was me, but a much larger version. Ten feet tall, and ripped to shit. With arms the size of artillery cannons. He chokes The Voice like he just gave away his last fuck an hour ago. While he’s choking The Voice, he looks at me and simply says “Run.” And I do. The Voice remains silent.

This other voice is simply called “Beast”.

Beast doesn’t kill The Voice. That’s impossible. The Voice doesn’t die, no matter how many times you beat him. But Beast silences him. He takes away The Voice’s power.

I like Beast.

When The Voice attempts to talk me out of a workout, I simply tell Beast to “sic ‘em”. And he does. The Voice is afraid of Beast.

And he should be.

I'm also down to 276. Enjoy the video.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Treadmill...

Today I did a three mile run on the treadmill at my school. I started out at a 6 mph pace (10 minute mile) for the first half-mile, then increased my speed to 6.5 mph (9:13 minute mile) for the rest of the duration.

For whatever reason, the run started feeling difficult after I was about 1.24 miles in. I was wondering if I was going to be able to finish. I kept trying to pump myself up, remind myself that I can make it, but I kept having a nagging voice in my head telling me that the run is just too hard today. Maybe I should just quit. I ignored the voice and kept on running.

Two miles passes, and I'm happy with my time, but my heart feels like it's about to jump out of my chest and run away. The voice keeps nagging me, telling me "It's okay if you can't finish today. We all have bad days, you can just pick it up next time." Another voice in my head kept pushing me along, saying "YOU'RE TRAINING FOR A 10K! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RUN 6.2 MILES IF YOU CAN'T RUN FOR 3!"

I get to 2.4 miles and the nagging voice is now screaming at me: "THIS IS TOO FUCKING HARD! YOUR LEGS ARE SCREAMING IN PAIN! YOU SHOULD JUST STOP! IT'LL BE OKAY! LOOK, WE ALL HAVE BAD DAYS! YOU CAN PICK IT UP AGAIN NEXT TIME!"

Outside, my real voice was screaming with desperation. "C'mon! You can do this! Keep running!" I was so loud that the one other person in the gym was staring at me like I had lost my mind. Despite the positive affirmations, it's usually what I scream to myself just before I quit. My voice doesn't sound confident. It's desperate. It's begging. I was sure that I wasn't going to finish.

But I had another voice nagging at my subconscious. It wasn't speaking to me in words, just in my emotions. The feeling kept nagging at me until finally it found the words to use.

"You've been down that road too many times before. You know what it feels like to quit. The pain, the disappointment, the self-loathing, they all will hurt worse than if you run this race until the end. You can either quit now and hate yourself for it, or you can keep running and feel proud that you finished."

I keep going.

It's a 2.8 miles I start thinking I might actually make it. "You can do this. You have less than 2 minutes left. Suck it up, you're going to make it."

At 28:02, I finish. An average pace of 9:20.66 per mile.

Proud of my run, I post my time on Facebook. Later, my mom joked about my run, saying "Wow, you were running pretty fast. Who was chasing you?"

"The nagging voice in my head that kept telling me that it was too hard and I should just quit and go home. That's who was chasing me."

And I outran that fucking fuck.

I'm also down to 277 pounds. Enjoy the video.

88, 279, 127

Eighty-eight is a great number. Do you know why it's better than sixty-nine? Because you get ate twice. ;)

Eighty-eight is also the number that caused "Doc" Brown to make all time travel possible.

Uma Thurman laid waste to the "Crazy 88's" in Kill Bill:

And now, I'm 88 pounds down!

I now weigh 279 pounds. Which is less than I even imagined I'd get before my surgery. I used to tell myself "I'd be happy if I just weighed 285 pounds", because I couldn't even imagine doing better than that. But here I am.

I went to the doctor last Friday for a physical and to see why my knees can't seem to handle a lot of running. I've had to do just the elliptical for my cardio training for most of last week. The doctor told me that my diabetes has been reversed (something I already knew, but I'm happy that it's been made official), and that I now have flat feet. I had always thought that the whole "fallen arches" thing was a myth, but I guess it's not. I didn't have flat feet when I joined the Army back in 2002, so this came as a surprise for me. The doctor said I would need to get some new running shoes to protect my knees.

Which leads to the third number in my title. I had to spend $127 on running shoes. I'm a guy. A guy doesn't spend that kind of money on shoes. I am very mad about this. But nonetheless, the shoes do their job. I ran 3.5 miles yesterday and my knees are no worse for wear for it.

Í'm now just 39 pounds away from my goal, with 88 pounds down. Feels good!

5K Done! Now Onto The 10K!

Hey! I won a medal! For participation! Yay!

So this weekend was interesting.

My wife and I decided to use my 5K race as an excuse to do a dry run with our new camper, as the race was out in Dearborn and started at 8 a.m (about an hour's drive from me). Not knowing anything about how to set up a camper, I broke the hitch and almost couldn't attend the race because it was still halfway attached to my car. Fortunately another camper helped to get it unstuck and I was able to replace the hitch after the race. I also learned more about my camper than I ever thought I'd need to know. Turns out they're a lot more complicated than having a tiny house on wheels.

Anyway, moving on...

I did better than I had expected in the race, clocking in at 31:56. Still well short of my goal, but about three minutes better than I had done the previous Monday.

The best part of finishing the 5K is that now I get to train for my 10K, which will be in early June out in Owosso (also quite a way away from home, and probably needing another camping trip). The training is going to be getting a lot harder now, with me doing cardio at least five days a week. I've also decided to start doing weight training with my legs again, as I'm pretty sure that a lot of problems with my knees are due to the muscle that I had lost around my knees after my surgery. Gaining back some leg strength will hopefully do it some good.

On the cardio end, I'm doing Hal Higdon's novice program, except instead of doing 30 minutes of cross training on day three, I'm doing 60. I've been getting antsy if I don't do A LOT of exercise lately, so I wanted to push myself a little harder. Cross training is good on my knees, so I can spend more time on that than on running. On the anaerobic side, I've started level 4 out of my old workout book, The Truth, with the exception of the leg portion, which I'll keep at level 2 for now. Level 4 in the book is right about where most people scream "Dear God, why did I decide to do this?!", so I'm looking forward to it. :)

It still blows my mind how many things seem possible for me now. I'm going to be doing a half marathon later this year. I love running now. I look forward to going skydiving after I drop below 250 pounds. I have these big fitness goals that for years had seemed too far out of my reach to achieve and now I'm going for them. It feels so damn good.

Lions and Gazelles

When I was younger and I did martial arts, I remembered a saying all throughout my training: “The lion wakes up every morning knowing he has to be faster that the slowest gazelle. The gazelle wakes up knowing he has to be faster than the slowest lion.” I repeated it to myself throughout my training because I knew that I had to be better trained, better ready for battle than anyone that would ever try to hurt me or the people I care about. So I trained endlessly, for hours at a time, every single day.

A lot of people take that expression to mean that they need to be a lion. Of course they would. Lions are bad ass. They’re the kings of the jungle. They’re the predators.

But fuck that. I’m a gazelle. I don’t want to just be faster than the slowest gazelle, I want to be faster than the fastest lion. I want to be well trained enough to not just outrun the lion, but to taunt him. To tease him. Make him think he’s going to get me just before I burst off with another sprint. And then when he’s winded and out of breath, that’s when I’ll stab him with my antlers. And when the lion is laying on the ground wounded, he’ll look up and see me mocking him.

“Who’s the predator now, bitch?”

Plateau Busted!

I now weigh 283 pounds. The last time I weighed this little, I had just gotten home from my first overseas tour in the Army, "Hey Ya" was one of the top songs in America, the whole country was still worshiping George W. Bush like he was the second coming of Christ, the Iraq war was just starting to turn into a shit pile and I was wondering when I'd be taking a trip over there.

It was 2003, if you hadn't figured it out yet.

After last Monday, I got mad that my weight hadn't budged in about a month, so I took to the internets to get some advice. One guy said that I should lower my caloric intake by about 400 calories to see if that would help. It was an idea so simple you'd think I would have figured it out myself. So I did that. I also started a food log on myfitnesspal.com and have been maintaining it regularly.

The weight started coming off immediately after I cut back on the calories. Instead of getting my 200 grams of protein everyday through whatever means necessary (which was putting on a lot of fat calories), I started drinking a lot more protein shakes and limiting my meat to mostly lean meats like chicken or turkey. After a few days of this I started feeling dizzy after my workouts, so I have a couple of "carbo-load" days every week where I stock up my glycogen stores so I can workout hard without injuring myself. Those days I just drink Gatorade and eat some bread or potatoes with my meals.

Speaking of which, I had to stop running for a week because the treadmill was beating the shit out of my knees. Sadly, this has killed my run time and I won't have my 5K time down to under 30 minutes like I had planned when I do my race next week. It's alright, though. Eventually I'll get there if I keep working at it. In the meantime, the weather is just starting to warm up out here in Southeast Michigan, and I'm running outside now.