Day 104 - Snowdio

Hi folks. Just a quick post to say that I don't have much time to post other than to admit I didn't get my scheduled cardio session in at the gym today. I did however, spend an hour and a half outside in the snow with my nephew making snowballs, punching and karate chopping the snow, throwing snowballs at trees, shoveling snow, running in snow, jumping in snow, doing pushups in snow, doing squats in snow, and I even did a bunch of chin-ups and pull-ups on my old jungle gym that is still set up in the yard. So it wasn't the regular old HIIT workout that I scheduled, but I sure worked up a sweat. I also already have sore legs and shoulders, which might be from yesterday's workout, but the snow playing workout was pretty good too.

Also, even with all the holiday goodies around, I still managed 5 clean meals today...although the 6th meal was definitely a cheat! It was a nice piece of homemade apple pie and a gingerbread cookie! Oh well, 'tis the season. At least it was only a 1/8th size peice of pie and only one cookie.

Happy Holidays,
Raiden

Day 104

Day 103 - Feeling Nostalgic

Today I returned to where it all began for me. I went back to the gym where I first started to do weight training years ago. It's been about 3.5 years since I last worked out there. They've since added some new equipment and got rid of some of the old. A nice improvement overall. The nicest addition in my opinion was a world-class rowing machine, the concept 2, which is used by olympic rowers and is the recommended rowing machine for CrossFit. I had to try it out and I must say that rowing is quite possibly one of the best overall workouts you can do. I did 3x500m sprints on it and I was totally wiped by the end of it, even though that only took me a little over 10 min.

It was kind of nice to go back there and work out again. I even saw some familiar faces, people that I used to see work out a lot when I was going regularly years ago.

Well, I don't have the camera that I've been using (my gf claimed dibbs on it while she visits her family), so I'm relying on the webcam in my MacBook. Thought I'd have fun with the background feature of Photo Booth since my little cousins have been playing with it and having fun with it.

Anyway, I would just like to take this time to say thanks for all the holiday wishes that all the Shredders have been throwing out, and I'd just like to throw mine into the mix. Hope everyone is having fun enjoying good company and relaxing, while still staying healthy and merry!

Cheers!
Raiden

Day 102 - Home for the Holidays

Today was a travel day, so I spent most of the day on the road. I arrived safe and sound at my folk's house. Spent the evening playing with my nephew, so I'm rather tuckered out right now. My plan is to hit the gym in the morning before my sister and her family arrive.

I had some fun checking out my parents food stock. It's a good thing they're both eating healthier these days too. 3/4 of the fridge is filled with fresh vegetables. They've got a good stash of organic oatmeal and quinoa as well! It's strange, I never had quinoa when I lived there, but seems as though they probably discovered it about the same time I did. I even found a box of Quinoa pasta! They've also got a bunch of about 8 bananas and some other fresh fruit.

In other news, the charity hockey game I'm playing in has been advertised on the lighted billboard outside the rink coming into town, as well as an ad and article in the local paper. That might have to do with one of my old teammates though, who is now the sports section writer for this paper and will also be playing in the game.

I'm about to crash hard, so I'll have to cut it short again tonight.

Get your game face on!
Raiden

Day 101 - Last normal post before holidays

Don't be fooled by the title, my mission isn't over yet, but I will be starting my holidays tomorrow and will be on the road until after the new year. But have MacBook, will travel. I can plug in at my folks home until I leave on Boxing day. From there, I may not be able to plug in until New Year's, but we'll see.

Here's a picture of me using the Christy Commemerative Photo method. This is ME with my commemorative hockey goalie stick purchased on Sunday (Dec. 16) in celebration of having completed 95% of my mission goals. I have lost fat, improved my cardiovascular fitness, increased my strength and stamina, gained muscle mass, am eating healty, am fit and strong, and am confident in my capablitiy of returning to the ice to compete and excel in a competitive hockey game. The only thing left for me to do is shock my friends and relatives (should happen tomorrow!) and to play in the hockey game.

After my hockey game on Boxing Day is my "relaxed period" before I start up my second mission in the new year. Until then, I thought I would outline my exercise plans up to then. I've had an idea in my head what I'm going to do, but if I post it here, then I'll be more "accountable" to stick to it.

Friday 21 (tomorrow) - travel day, rest day
Saturday 22 - Strength/Weight training at my old gym in my old town
Sunday 23 - HIIT cardio and light weights
Monday 24 - Christmas Eve, rest day
Tuesday 25 - Christmas Day, rest day
Wednesday 26 - Boxing Day, milestone 1, hockey game day!
27-29 relaxed days, possibly some bodyweight squats and push-ups, but nothing extreme
30 - Strength/Weight training at hotel in city I'm celebrating new year's with friends
Dec 31 - Jan 2 - New Years celebrations (relaxed days)

Sometime after Jan 2 I'll start my 2nd mission. More details when the time comes!

I'd like to write more, but yes, busy, busy busy. For those that I haven't gotten around to commenting on, don't worry, I've been reading everybody's blogs! I'm sure I'll have more time to comment soon. I gotta go finish wrapping some presents now though, so the wrong people don't see them too early!

Get your game face on!
Raiden

Day 100 - The Century!

Today marks triple digits as I enter day 100 of my Return to Form challenge. I feel like I should make a big post or something, but I honestly don't have the time and I wouldn't be able to do it true justice, so I'll just make it simple and promise to make some more interesting posts in the future. I'll probably have time to over the holidays, but we'll have to see about that.

Personally, I've been busy finishing up things for work (school) as I have a big deadline for a conference paper submission this friday as well as some other big stuff that I can't talk about here :)

All this is going on while I also prepare to head home on friday to see the family. Craziness! Tack on top of that the crazy hours with my gym now, present shopping, wrapping, Christmas baking, and I'm all over the place.

Today though, I did get my strength training session in and upped all my weights again. I'm pretty pleased with my squat and deadlift progress, and I'm loving the weighted chin-up/pull-up/dips.

I also semi-fixed my image program problem, so the nice pics are back up.

That's all I got for today, need some quality rest!

Get your game face on!
Raiden

Day 99 - Just Pics

As the title says, just pics today. Got in a cardio session today, but no weights (weight room was closed, and today wasn't a weight day anyway).

I do have an interesting bit I'd like to talk about, but I'm really tired right now, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Get your game face on!
Raiden

Day 99

Day 98 - Shoveling/Weights Morning/Evening Split

With the snowstorm that hit us hard yesterday and continued on through the night, I started the morning bright and early with a shoveling and ice scraping workout. Even after my "pre-shoveling" last night, there was still a fair amount of snow on the car. There was also a nice layer of ice encasing the car as towards the tail end of the storm, a bit of rain fell and then quickly froze. I'm not usually a morning workout person, but this got my heart rate up and kept me alert for the rest of the day.

However, I think the extra energy expended this morning made my scheduled evening session a little lighter. I passed on the cardio tonight, but still managed to get all my weights in, just in the nick of time before they booted us out of the weight room, as an exam was about to start.

Also, today is my weekly fat pinching day, so here's this weeks updated stats:

Week 14: 2007-12-10 to 2007-12-17
Weight: 134.66 (-0.33)
BF: 20.80 (-0.16)
Suprailiac: 10 mm (11.6%)
Jackson/Pollock chest/ab/thigh: 8/13/12 (9.44%)

Here's where you can find the rest of my weekly stats.

My weight still hasn't switched modes yet, as it is still going down, although much slower. My body fat is still going down, which is good, but I think the muscle mass gains are too small at this point to be noticeabley measureable. I do feel stronger and my muscles feel a lot firmer when they're flexed. I might still be having a hard time shoveling enough calories into my body. It's a lot harder to get all those calories when you aren't pigging out on sugary fatty foods.

I'll probably have no problem getting enough calories over the break, but for now, I'm still concentrating on eating clean.

I still haven't solved my image editing problem as I didn't have much time today to try and fix it. So, instead of struggling with it, here's today's pics:

Day 98

Day 97 - Nordic Track

The day started off with a mini-milestone. I went to the local sports equipment store and picked up a new hockey goalie stick. It was a great feeling to be able to pick out a stick, feel it in my hands, take my stance and try it out. It was also a weird feeling to realize that I had been out of the game so long that my preferred model had been discontinued.

We got nailed with another snowstorm here, so most people were hibernating inside. I had planned to take another rest day, as I think I might have been over-doing the cardio lately. Well, it turns out that I had a movie to return tonight and the roads weren't in any condition to drive in. So, what to do? Most people would probably just pay the late fee and take it in when the roads were cleared. But there are few things that can match my love for freshly fallen snow. My gf bundled up in our scarves and toques and headed out to face the Great White Blizzard.

Walking through knee deep snow turns out to be pretty good exercise. All that snow can get heavy and add a lot of resistance! It was an eerie feeling, as the outside is always so quiet when it's snowing and there were very few cars on the road, and almost no other people walking about. We took some time out of our trek to make some snow angels, make big snow piles to jump in, and jump as high as we could and land in the soft snow.

By the time we had returned the movie and made it back to our apartment, we were wiped! We had wet boots, rosy cheeks, and runny noses. It's great to be a kid in Canada...Oh, I'm not 10 anymore? Ooops.

Well, tomorrow I'll be back in the gym, back on the regular, more traditional exercise program, working even harder.

Get your game face on!
Raiden

Ok, so my other image editing program isn't behaving right now, so I'll post how I was before:

Day 97

Day 96 - Christmas Fever

Today was my scheduled rest day, and my gf and I braved the madness that is the shopping mall at this time of year. We managed to complete a HIIT version of present shopping. We were focused with a well thought out plan. Before I arrived at the mall, I had visualized the targets that I needed to hit, and visualized myself completing these targets. Each target was attacked in a short burst of high intensity, resting, then attacking the next. Agility training involved ducking and weaving around other unsuspecting customers.

After we finished our shopping workout, we retired and put up some Christmas lights and watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We're really getting into the spirit of things. Christmas is actually close enough that it doesn't feel like a commercial cop-out to start doing the traditional activities.

I am wondering though if I should have given my relatives a heads up on my current progress. I suspect I'll be receiving a lot of clothing a size too big.

Get your game face on!
Raiden

Speedbump 4: Leaving the nest and adjusting my life

This is a continuation of my story documenting the parts of my life that have brought me to Day 0, when I decided to change my daily habits for life, and for the better, to ultimately achieve my goals of reaching the best shape of my life, being fit and healthy, and full of energy. For other posts, see the rest of my story.

I have a bit of extra time this morning since I woke up early, and the start of the ShredderSphere has given me a bit more incentive to revisit and explore where I came from, and reinforce my PRW (see Adam's My Biggest Secret).

My last speedbump left me getting ready for university and learning to deal with ulcerative colitis. I had spent the summer building my strength up and getting my UC under control. However, with UC, flare-ups have a high occurrence during periods of stress.

Well, I just found this site that documents stressful life events and their relative stress level. When I put in the situations that I was in when I moved away to college, even though I was lacking the big ones, like dealing with death and divorce, I still would have scored over 300 on this test. This would have put me into the high range. Well, that sounds like a recipe for a flare-up, even after I had brought my UC down to a more manageable level over the summer through medication, rest, and moderate exercise.

I was moving away for the first time longer than a week or so, living in residence, living with a roommate, eating residence food (blech), dealing with my UC, seeing a chiropractor for my back pain, making new friends, not seeing my old friends, no longer playing sports, all the while taking a full course load in engineering with the pressure of having to maintain a high enough GPA to retain my scholarships. I came from a small town, so I was really unsure of how the small, "hometown hero" would handle the big city (relatively speaking, I am from Canada...).

I was sick. I was on a restricted diet, eating almost nothing but plain broiled chicken breasts and boiled potatoes (no salt, butter, toppings of any kind). I had to severley restrict my intake of salt, spices, flavourings, fat, fruit, fibrous veggies, dairy, sugar, caffeine, and the list goes on and on. If it had any type of fancy taste, I wasn't allowed to eat it. Bascially, I dreaded eating, but I was so hungry all the time. I was starving, but anything I ate would make me naseuous. Not only that, but as a first year university student, I had to severely restrict my alcohol intake as well. I had maybe 2 or 3 drinks my first semester. Not really the Animal House frat party lifestyle that people think about when going to college.

In addition to this bland diet, I wasn't exercising. I wasn't playing any of the sports that I used to. At this time, I was concentrating on getting my UC under control and doing the best at my studies. My body slowly withered away. A lot of my strength and muscles I had built up from my years of playing sports was disappearing. I didn't gain the freshman 15, I lost 10, and I'm sure most of it was muscle. This didn't help my back either. I needed those back muscles to keep my body stable and the pain down, and sitting at a desk all day doing schoolwork doesn't help the matter.

I was tired, and miserable, but still trying to enjoy the university experience. I made a lot of new friends and still managed to enjoy myself on the odd occasion. But it was a very hard period of adjustment. I was able to relax a bit more in the second semester after I had received my fall term marks. I had scored a perfect 4.3 GPA, straight A+ in all my courses. I had made the jump from smalll town high school to large University standards. To keep my all my scholarships, I only needed to keep a 3.7, so I now knew that I had a little bit of wiggle room and didn't have to stress myself out more about my schoolwork.

I slowly adjusted, gained some strength back. My UC wasn't as bad, and I slowly added more things to my diet. I also signed up for a couple intra-mural sports that weren't too demanding on my body. I ended the year with all my scholarships intact. I felt a bit more myself and was staying more active, as well as enjoying all the new friends I had met. Things were a lot different in my life at this time, but it was a new life that I was adjusting to. I was happier, but I was still sad about the life I had left behind. Growing up is hard to do, and my illness and injuries were putting me through more growing up than I wanted to deal with at this point.

Day 95 - Odd Hours

I'm kind of at a loss for words today, which doesn't happen to me very often. Usually I have some idea of something elaborate that I want to write about. Not today I guess.

The only interesting thing regarding fitness today for me is that the my gym at the university doubles as an exam writing area, so the hours lately have been sporadic, as they don't want people banging weights while they write. So that meant today I had to do some extra planning and sneak off a bit early to get in my workout.

It was another great strength session on the StrongLifts program. Upped all my weights and am now doing weighted pull-ups. I didn't quite hit the prescribed 5x5 on those as I tapped out with 3 reps on the last set, but I'm sure I'll get it next time.

Tomorrow is a rest day, but I'll probably be pretty busy anyway. Well, now I'm off to relax for the rest of the evening with the gf.

Get your game face on!
Raiden

Day 94 - Entering the ShredderSphere

Today marks the first day of daily accountability through the ShredderSphere on Adam Waters' Real Time Physique Blog.

My current mission began back on Sept. 10. I've been blogging and posting pictures (almost) daily since Day 52 after I had seen the camaraderie grow among the original Shredder Council. I upped the ante so to say, to include public accountability as part of my mission and have also enjoyed the benefits of the camaraderie from other original Shredder Council members.

Although today is Day 1 of the ShredderSphere accountability phase, I will stay true to my original plans and goals for my current mission, which will end on Dec. 26 when I make my return to the ice for the first time in over 3 years and play in a charity hockey game with many of my old teammates from High School. I reached my fat loss goals early, and am currently following StrongLifts 5x5 strength training program w/ 2-3 additional cardio sessions per week, with strength gains (with some muscle mass) and cardiovascular fitness as my primary goals to be in peak condition for my hockey game.

After this, I will be taking a short break to rest after what will then be over a hundred days (107 to be exact!) of hard training and enjoy the rest of the holiday season with friends and family.

I will then begin a new mission shortly after the new year that will coincide with the remainder of the ShredderSphere timeline. I'll outline those goals more when the time comes, but in short, it will be more strength training, followed by an intense 4-5 week cutting period to trim my body fat even more using a similar self devised program that I followed for my original fat loss stage. The difference will be the inclusion of more compound lifts as well as working on technique for the power lifts, such as the power clean, clean & jerk, and snatches.

So for me, daily accountability trudges on. For others, it starts now. But whether you've already been practicing daily accountability, just starting, or restarting looking for that extra push, we're all in this together. Shred on!

Get your game face on!
Raiden

P.S. I also thought it would be nice to commemorate this occasion by celebrating with a bit of graphic work w/ my pics since I was doing some image work at "work" work today for a paper I'm writing and it got me in the mood to do some more. I've included a "ShredderSphere" comparison front pic to follow my progress over the next 100 days, but I want to keep my Mission 1 comparison pics because, well, I'm just so damn proud of them so far, and as I mentioned, my mission 1 isn't over yet.