So that's how much I weigh!

I mentioned in my last post that I will buy weighing machine today. Well, Alhamdulillah I bought it. Actually, I had been intending to buy one since… September. Yeah. It’s been four months actually. The truth is, that just like everyone else, I too don’t feel like doing something when there are too many unknown involved. What kind of weighing machine to buy? Where to buy from? How much does a good one cost? Do I really need one? Should I get a medical one that’s there in hospitals, well, because I am an accuracy obsessed nut? If I do, will it be too expensive? Where will I keep it? – Yeah, I work that way. But, one of my friends was very kind. She told me about the shop, googled and gave me the exact location of the shop. I just went there, and I got exactly the kind of machine I wanted. Not the medical one, the old-school one. It seems like it’s a really good quality one. It’s like the one I grew up with. Which was so durable! Anyway so I got it. It wasn’t too expensive. It was exactly as much as I wanted to pay for it. I got a perrrrfect deal. Alhamdulillah!

Now the even better part of the news, I weight today. The weight? Haha… Really… I am laughing as I am trying to write. So, basically, all this time I have been thinking I weigh 120kg, because well, I remember weighing that much. But today the machine showed I stand at 115-116 kg. That’s not bad. So that’s the news for today.

The workout? Hmmm… If truth be told, I was veryyy tired today. Tired and sleepy. Just whining, not excusing myself. I was so sleepy in the morning that after reaching the office I slept for another two hours In The Office! And even then when I got up, I was shaking, I couldn’t walk straight until I dropped hot coffee on myself. Anyway, back to the question. The workout went like this:

1 squat, 10 push ups, 100 rope jumps
2 squat, 9 push ups, 100 rope jumps
...
10 squat, 1 push up, 100 rope jumps

Though I know better to do a push up session again today after doing it yesterday, but I kind of enjoyed the soreness all day long, and wanted to do push ups with really good form this time. So today, I did 55 push ups with the best form that I can produce. As for the circuit, it went like this:

10 alternate dumbbell curls
10 military press

I did it thrice. That’s three sets each, and then followed it by 3 x 10 of standing dumbbell rowing. Just for the lulz.

That’s all for now!

The three day gap

On Thursday, I knew there would come a three day gap in my regime. And it did. And I didn't work out for three whole days. In my head, I was wishing that though I would not work out for three days, I would make up for it, by eating with discipline in that time. But I had done exactly the opposite of that. I ate like a horse!

When I did think of working out on Monday, I felt terribly lazy. Note: Eating badly makes you not-feel-like-working out, you need good kind and right amount of fuel to feel energetic enough to want to work out. So I was  feeling veryyyy lazy and sluggish about it.

But what did I do? Here, the fact that my workout is not a workout, but a small workout saved the day. I told myself, it's only 55 push-ups and 55 squats, so why not? And that's what I aimed at doing. And guess what? I ended up outperforming myself in the rope jumping I threw in between the sets :D

This is how it went:

1 squat, 10 push ups, 100 rope jumps
2 squat, 9 lateral raises, 100 rope jumps
...
10 squat, 1 lateral raises, 100 rope jumps

That's right. It was 100 in every set. Sometimes I would get too tired, and I would do it into three sets, like 30, 30, 40, but I still did 100 in every set. A total of 1, 000 Jumps! Take that, belly fat!

By this time, my 30 minutes were over, I was feeling a bit tired out too. So I thought I would call it a day, and not go for circuits, so I just did

20 hammer curls
20 military press

to end the session. And that was it. What will I do tonight? I don't know. It will be something very same. Except that tonight, I am planning to buy a weighing machine too :) Let's see how that goes. It's about time I start keeping a record.

I am thinking of starting a food journal too. Though I understand how tough it will be for to keep record of all the stuff I eat, but well, If I am looking at making small changes that can be easily incorporated into my eating habits, first I have to analyse the data and find out where I could fit those in. For that I need the data!

I guess I will start within this week sometime. Tomorrow? Depends on how much work I have. Maybe tonight. Maybe not, I am both busy and sleepy today.

On my other blog, I will probably write about where I went for the three days, and how it went. That would be fun. I hope.

Any suggestions on what I should change in my workout? Or should I just keep it as it is?

Thursday, January 24

Tonight, Alhamdulillah summa Alhamdulillah I did what I had in mind.

Firstly, when I was doing 55, just like yesterday I did rope jumping in between the sets instead of resting. This is how the first part of the workout went:

1 squat, 10 lateral raises, 60 rope jumps
2 squat, 9 lateral raises, 60 rope jumps
...
10 squat, 1 lateral raises, 60 rope jumps

But the awesome part? I hit the mark of doing 100 jumps with rope in one go! That was the glory moment for tonight. So that's the checkpoint worth noting, from now on, that's what I will be aiming for.

Then the circuit:

10 Side-to-side jumps
10 mountain climbers
10 side bends (for obliques)
10 goodmornings
10 alternate dumbbell press

Now the purpose of the last ten exercises was not to do muscle building of those areas that are targeted by those exercises, it wasn't even to get stronger, basically I had no 'building' goal in mind. The goal was just to do any exercise, and since I was too out of breath and un-creative to do any other cardio, I just did these.

Oh, and my workout has naturally grown to 35-40 minutes. That doesn't mean I am doing it slowly, though it may be possible, but I think that's because I am doing more. More reps in some cases, and completing the sets in other cases.

So that's all for now. Oh, and my made an account on Fitrocity! I don't know how many points I am gonna get for this one, I got 50 points just for logging ten minutes of rope jumping.

Now, that's really all for now :)

I am Saad, the keeper of promises!

Tonight (i.e. Wednesday January 24) I did as I promised on my blog I would.

I did:

1 squat, 10 push-ups, 25-60 rope-skips,
2 squats, 9 push-ups and 25-60 rope-skips,
...
10 squats, 1 push-up.

Obviously I was out of breath many time, sometimes so much so that I couldn't go on, there were many 30-second (or longer) rests sprinkled in between. I remember taking a few water breaks too :)

Then I removed rope-skipping and mountain climbers from the circuit mentioned in the link above and it became like this:

1) Side-to-side jumping - 15 reps
2) Alternate Dumbbell Curls - 10 reps
3) Bent Dumbbell Rows - 10 reps
4) Military Press - 10 reps

And I did two such circuits. Only taking a break when I was too out of breath to go on. Since I am not lifting too heavy, and the volume is totally non existence, I could afford to be so hard. After all, I was treating this as cardio, and not as bodybuilding.

Since I didn't give myself any day to rest after yesterday's push-ups, I was kinda weak today after the first 18 or so reps. I resorted to knee push-ups, then gained some strength, and was back to full push-ups, but I didn't go all the way down. Anyway, I am happy with substituting 2 sets of rope skipping and 2 of mountain climbers with 10 of rope skipping.

Let's see what I do tonight. I am planning on doing the same though, perhaps doing curling instead of push-ups in the 55, and doing mountain climbers instead of curling in the circuits.

In the beginning, there was nothing

It all started last week. Tuesday. In fact, it all started Monday, but night, but the first workout was done on Tuesday. I have wrote the whole story here, you should check it out too, it's fun.

Point is, I just started because I had to start. And because of that, I started small. And it was a huge success! It was enough to make an impact, and not so much that it would discourage, or tire me out. I will write about that happening too, because I have been there too.

Talal Khan (a friend since grade seven) once told me, we often think about advanced things, doing this and that, and making our workouts seem all serious and efficient. But really, even if we did petty, sissy exercises, but did them regularly, we would be better off. He's right. He's always been fit, he's always been an athlete (as far as I can remember), so he automatically got time here and there to play football. And that is a proof of what he said. So this time, I decided differently. I thought, instead of giving it my best shot, and doing it 'right', I would Just Do It. And let it fine tune itself as the time passes. But as for me, I have only one goal. To exercise, or do anything that can be, by any standard, qualified as exercise, regularly.

The first workout went like this:

1 Squat, 10 push-ups, 30 sec rest.
2 Squats, 9 push-ups, 30 sec rest.
...
10 Squats, 1 push-up, Voila!

This worked great. Man this worked great! The best part? Completed within 15 minutes. Even better part? Completed! and the most awesomestest part? I did 55 push-ups in one day, probably first time in my life! I needed a week till my triceps and chest could properly recover to do that much again. But it was fun, so much fun, that it set the feels rolling. I am gonna recommend anyone and everyone to try this from now :) Specially the heavy and strong kind who've trouble starting working out.

Why this blog?

I have a craze for keeping things organized. Though I fail at it miserably in the department of Thoughts, but whatever. Because of this craze I have ended up creating many blogs. Don't get me wrong, I am not a blogger, at all! I don't post regularly on any of them, but it just feels against my style to post one thing that's related, or in my opinion, confined, to a blog that has a wider more general scope, or worse, the one that's confined to another subject.

Perhaps, at a later day, I may be able to go through all this stuff, and filter out among all of them what's really worth keeping, and put them all in once place. That will be easy to manage, No? But for now, I find it easy to manage it like this, keeping all the different colored balls in their separate baskets. And therefore, I am starting this blog.

I read productivity porn a lot, and I know a thing or two about how making your goals public makes it a part of your identity, the way your mind sees your self, which in turns makes it easy for your mind to help you keep on track, because the mind gets very very upset when your actions are not in line with the image of self your mind has. I experienced this too, last week I told my friend I am gonna do workout. I have been telling my own self that I am gonna work out, but I never really did. But when I told my friends about it, it became a part of my image, and not just the image they had of me, but the image my own mind had of me, the identity, as we call it. So, I tinkered my identity a bit, and it was easier to do an action that's in line with one's identity. So, I have been working out for one week now.

Also what I did was write a post on my main blog about it, and share it on my friends walls, taunting them, telling them how awesome I was and what not; they probably think I am awesome by now... haha. What I noticed was, that doing that motivated me even further. It helped it make it easy for me to keep in track, i.e. less will power was needed. Then I blogged even more about it, and well, that also helped me in a way.

One more purpose that blogging was serving was of logging. Keeping accountability aside, when I posted the exercises I did in one workout, and what I was planning on doing in the next session, It became very natural to do them. The mere act of having a record was enough to improvements, without me making the Mental effort to improve. Now, the physical effort is still there, of course. But part of the mental effort is keeping record of where you were last time, where you should aim to be next time, where you finally aim to be, and where you end up. This logging every session, online, publicly, made this whole thing pretty fun! I could be honest with where I was, after all, I am trying my best. I could be practical with my ambitions, because I was making them public. And doing just these two for every consecutive workout meant I was automatically measuring performance between what was done last time, and what was done this time. And I hope that if I make a mistake, the documented existence of that mistake will even prevent me from making the same one again. More mistakes to try! :)

That being said and decided, I looked up online services to log my workouts. Some of them did have a whole fitness community with them, which would have helped in all these things I just mentioned above. And really, none of them made the cut. They were too rigid. As in, it was difficult to i) Make it personal ii) Record my assortment of exercises in it. So, here it is. Here's the blog, which documents how Saad gets fit, for the world to see, and be awed. And they're used to be being awed by now. Haha...