The Mind’s Psy

This year I have a new tool at my disposal – my iPhone.  A new app I found called FitFu allows you to schedule workouts and get notifications, as well as track progress.  It suggests exercises for you to do and counts your reps with the accelerometer… you can’t get much simpler than that.  By scheduling workouts throughout the day I plan to annoy the ever-loving shit out of myself until I actually exercise.

Welp, it’s January in a new year, and you know what that means.  It’s time for another attempt at getting in shape!!  I’m hoping I’ll really stick with it this time… we’ll see.
This year I have a new tool at my disposal – my iPhone.  A new app I found called FitFu allows you to schedule workouts and get notifications, as well as track progress.  It suggests exercises for you to do and counts your reps with the accelerometer… you can’t get much simpler than that.  By scheduling workouts throughout the day I plan to annoy the ever-loving shit out of myself until I actually exercise.  The exercises are very simple, but I figure I’ll start with those and move on to using my weight bench and such once I’ve established an active lifestyle.

I’ve also installed an app called “Water Lite” that simply tracks water consumption.  It gives you some “containers” that you can customize (I set them to contain the amount of water that common glasses in our house hold) and tapping on the screen adds a glass to a virtual table.  The best part is that it puts a notification badge on the app icon that shows the number of glasses you have left to drink for the day based on your body weight.  I think this is going to be a really good thing for me because I check my phone throughout the day, I’ll definitely drink more.  Between bad habits and medication that suppresses my thirst I’d guess I’ve been getting about 20% of the liquid intake I actually need… so that’s definitely something I need to fix.

We’ll see…

First, I’d like to say that Twain must have been a pretty cool guy.  Second, I’d like to assure you all that I’m still on the quest for beefiness.

After deciding to stop with the daily workout reports since that seemed like overkill, I sorta broke the cycle of reporting back   Aside from a little slippage off the wagon sometimes due to erratic work hours, illness, or forced relocation to a family member’s residence due to power outage, I AM still working out as close to daily as I can.

Sooo… progress.  I’m still hovering at right around 132 pounds.  I’ve been drinking the high protein Equate drinks which are very small, don’t taste bad, and give a decent bump to calories and protein intake.  I have a giant tub o’ whey protein, but it’s so gritty that I don’t really want to drink it so I end up not doing so.  I’m going to go out and get some icecream to plop in the blender with it, which I think will help with the taste (and throw some more calories in there too… what the hell).  Thanks for the advice Grant and Tam!

I’ve been doing much the same workout as before, but that’s all about to change since we just picked up a weight bench!  We had  a rickety one that was a little worrisome to use, but yesterday we picked up the walmart special.  It’s got an adjustable incline, a bicep pad for preacher curls (I think that’s right), and even a leg extension!  Quite cool.  I now know that I can bench about 135 lbs.  That’s all we could fit on the bar, but I don’t think I could do much more than that since it’s all i can do to press that up a time or two.  I think my goal will be to both bench and weigh in at 150 by 6 months from now.  I think it might be an unrealistic goal, but if I aim for that and actually hit 140 that’s still better than where I am

So there ya go!  You, my adoring public, are now up to speed on my trials and tribulations in this, the Year of the Ninja.  The saga continues!

Hey folks,

I decided it was pointless to blog every freaking day about my exercise… so long as I know I’ll write at some point and say that I’ve been exercising it’ll guilt me into not missing a day

So.  It’s been a little over a week since 2009 started and I missed one day’s exercise while I was sick (and Sundays.  I’m taking sundays off.).  That’s not too shabby!  I’ve started adding in more weights, and now that I’ve got my exercise room finished I’ll be doing a lot more weight lifting.  I’ll probably start adding in some running every other day or so as well.

I’m really quite happy with this so far!  It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had any sort of regular exercise (screaming obscenities at code doesn’t count) and I’ve never been able to keep up a workout schedule.  Good stuff.  I figure by next week I’ll be beefy.

Awesome.  Check it out:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090105/us_nm/us_usa_fbi

The FBI has decided that they don’t have nearly enough (qualified) agents, so they are embarking on the largest hiring blitz since… well, ever.  They’re hiring almost 3000 people, so if you are fluent in other languages, or are amazingly technically proficient, or are a bad-ass, you should apply.

Too bad the “Year of the Ninja” wasn’t last year…

Yup.  I took Sunday off.  You don’t want the Lord mad at me do you?

Beefcaaaaaake!

I’m gaining!  Either that, or I have a tumor and it’s getting larger. We’ll see.  But I weighed in at 133lbs tonight, so that’s… up.  I got so excited I added dumbbells to some of other exercises.

50 pushups

100 crunches (four ways)

50 half-squats (that’s what the knee bends are when you add weights)

50 ankle-presses with shoulder rolls

Dumbbells – hammer curls, flat chest flies, tricep kickbacks

I’m optimistic.  I will stick with this!  Oh yeah, you’re not going crazy.  Sometimes I post these after midnight and change the date so they fall ont he day I actually did the exercising.  Also, I’m sure just reading how many crunches I did is boring as hell (assuming anyone is actually reading this…).  I’ll be adding other, more interesting content soon in my quest for worldwide recognition.

I am strong, like bull. (repeat to self 700 times)

Well, I’m still at it and haven’t died yet – nor have I found myself 40 pounds heavier.  I don’t even have an eyepatch or an inability to make time in my schedule for bleeding like Jesse Ventura. I’m beginning to think this might take some work.

Tonight, I added the dumbells again.

50 pushups

100 crunches (25 front, back, and both sides)

50 deep knee-bends

50 ankle-presses (added in shoulder rolls front and back to keep my muscles in my shoulders loose)

dumbbells again – hammer curls, tricep kickbacks, flat chest flies

weight: 130.8 (Almost a pound!  That’s progress! *cries*)

Can you imagine how unbelievably cool it would be to fly?!?  Check it out:

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Wow.  Just… wow.  I saw a video of someone doing this a long time ago, but at that point I guess the suit was still under development and they didn’t do any of this awesome-ness of skimming along the rock face.  Too cool. 

So now we need to get a team together to dress like this and fly about:

Holy flying nuns, Batman!

Who’s with me?

Sorta what I'm going for. Sorta.

Did it again!  I’m really hoping I can do this every day.

Today:

50 pushups

100 situps (25 front, 25 to each side, 25 for the lower back)

50 knee-bends

50 up on the toes – let’s call ‘em ankle presses.  Why not.

Yay!

Weight: 130.  I know.

Teh burn. Let me show you it.

Dear Diary,

Today is my first day working out in 2009.  I hope it makes me awesome.

The end.

Okay, so here’s my “exercise” portion of the blog.  My goal is to get in shape and gain enough weight to feel stationary in a high wind.  I didn’t have a lot of time today, what with trying to get this blog up and running and hangin’ out for new year’s day, but here’s what I did today:

50 pushups
100 situps (50 regular-like, 25 to each side)
Dumbbells – curls and uh.. .backward.  Y’know for the triceps, I guess.
50 deep knee-bends
50 uhm… going up on my toes.  I don’t know if it’s an exercise per se, but it burns in my calves after a while, so I guess that’s good.

That’s it!  I can feel myself getting beefier by the second.

-Psy

Welcome to mah blog. Hopefully I will write many posts that will make you laugh, cry, crap yourself, simmer with rage, or just generally inspire you to come back later and read more.

For now, though, this is all there is. How depressing.

So, why a blog??

I’ll tell you why. For a very long time now I’ve been putting off things like getting in shape, learning awesome things and going awesome places… No more. I’m blaggin’ it. Now when I don’t exercise, or learn something new, I’ll feel bad about it. ‘Cause I’ll be letting down my vast internet audience who have doubtless been sitting on the edge of their rolly-chairs waiting for my next post – the next chapter in one man’s epic battle to get off his ass and do something.

Neat, huh? So if you read a post, comment or something. The more comments I get and the more apparent traffic I have, the more motivated I’ll be. On the other hand, if no one ever reads my blog I’ll probably just give up and sit on my duff some more. So really, my health and happiness are all on your shoulders. Don’t let me down.

-Psy