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I know you all have heard the old wives tales growing up, for instance my mother used to tell me that I could not go swimming for an hour after eating. Is there anything to that? NO. I missed a lot of swimming as a kid because the mom’s wanted to take a break.
Now I know the argument was you might get a cramp… but say somehow the science followed. So what? If a leg cramped up, all you would have to do is swim back to shore - no biggie with the other three limbs. I’m not going to go on forever on this topic but even at 50, I’m still mad about that “wives tale.” 
Before we get to myth’s I would like to mention that I have planted a tomato garden this year. I found a sunny, out of the way spot in the back yard and fenced it off from the dogs. I put in some good soil, bought some tomato starters and I have so many tomatoes that soon I’ll be set until the cold sets in (they haven’t matured yet). Here is a picture of the garden.
It is kind of funny but I accidentally ended up climbing Fortuna Mountain yesterday. You see I have not been working out much this week as it has been stressful at work and my oldest son (25 years old) had an operation this week (he’s fine).
I did get in one session of bag work but the day of the operation was one long day… I ended up working my 8 hour shift later in the day because work is crazy right now. I’ve noticed over the years that when I am overly tired, my will power goes out the window. Meaning that I continually ate when I was working. I tried to mitigate this somewhat by eating low-calorie foods and made sure I slept in the next day (so I could get back on track).
So as I alluded to, I went out hiking in Mission Trails Park and took a convoluted path up into the hills and ended up climbing Fortuna Mountain! In this post I’ll post the pictures and do some commenting on the hike. This more than made up for the lack of exercise this week.
San Diego and one of the Coronado Islands
The world is wonderful! The last post I mentioned that I was going to fix my mountain bike’s gears and then go on a ride. I was successful at getting the gears adjusted ok and went on the ride through Sycamore Canyon! Here is a couple of links about Goodan Ranch and a map of the park.
I am not going to focus on that trip this time as I forgot my camera but let me tell you it was a nice ride. Not too difficult or steep but I did have to ride through some sandy areas in low gear. In this post I will focus on some activities I did this last week to keep in shape and show some pictures. Here is one picture of a heel-hook kick on the bag.
As readers of this blog know, I purchased a couple of mountain bikes recently. The Walmart bike did not last but the Schwinn bike is still going ok. I went out riding last week but tried to do a couple of things.
I had to adjust the seat becuase my family jewels were getting crushed. I’m not sure how other bike riders can do this but the narrow seats do not seem all that comfortable to me unless the nose is lowered as far as it can go.
The chain gear is out of adjustment as the gears where shifting under a load by themselves. This was especially maddening when going up a hill as I ended up having to walk the bike up. I’ll speak about adjusting the bike as well as some of the issue’s I’ve faces and dealt with and will take about the some of the rides I’ve been on at Mission Trails recently. Here is a video that explains how to adjust the rear gears (I’ll go this today).
I have been touting the benefits of fitness lately because after writing the post entitled, “Is there a best diet?” I have been just watching my calorie intake. Fitness is one way for your body to realize there is life away from the couch!
When I was doing full contact karate training, I used to jump rope at the beginning of every workout after stretching. Now as I recall, jumping rope was easy. All you had to do is get used to the coordination but the actual mechanics were easy. Well fast forward 25 years and I have bought another good rawhide jump rope and have used it a couple of days. Let me tell you about an eye opener! I now have a hard time keeping the rhythm going for over a couple of minutes! Let alone going for 20 minutes.
In this post I’ll talk about how my boxing workouts contributed to my overall fitness and why one might want to incorporate jumping rope into your workout. I found this video of a gal that makes jumping rope look easy.
The Samurai were known for their swordsmanship but to learning, took many years. One of the martial arts I am considering learning is Kendo, a Japanese sword fighting. While Kendo does not practice with real Samurai swords, it is still intense training, that can take years to master.
Swordsmanship like boxing or karate, has ancillary fitness benefits that can be practiced like shadow boxing and Tae Bo. Moving with an imaginary opponent while not the real thing, can help the practitioner work on form, speed, agility, stamina as well as gain that all important (for our purposes) workout! I am going to review the merits of Forza as well as speak about possible applications and what I think of stick fighting.
Here is Yvonne Strahovski from NBC’s TV show, Chuck, demonstrating Forza with stunt coordinator, Robert Alonzo!
Last month in my post entitled, “Heavy bag workouts? You can get a good workout!” I pointed out some ways to use the bag along with rationals, so you could do your own heavy bag workouts. In this post I will try and point out some ways to create your workout as well as use some kicking drills. I will also critique some canned karate workouts sold on DVD’s or available on tv and the Internet. Here is one bag workout I enjoyed viewing that I think has some merit.
It is now the 21st century in case you have not heard. Yes, we all have new pressures our grandparents had never heard of! Back when my grandfather was young, men were expected to work hard to earn a living. There were not too many white collar jobs.
I believe people were more fit as they were a generation or so from living on farms and many of them were first and second generation Americans! Women had to cook from scratch! Even in the cities! Morbid obesity was nearly non-existent in the 1800’s. According to Lorens Helmchen of the University of Chicago,
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the fraction of Americans considered to be obese has reached “epidemic” levels, as a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association put it (Mokdad et al. 1999). “National survey data show that between 1976-80 and 1988-94 the age-adjusted prevalence of obesity … increased by 8 percentage points, from 14.5% to 22.5%, in the U.S. adult population ages 20-74.” (Flegal and Troiano 2000). According to the study, the percentage of Americans considered obese ranged between 12.5 for males ages 20-29 to 35.6 for women ages 50-59 in1988-94.
Ok by now you must be wondering where I am going with this post? I am going to highlight how being out of balance in ones life can lead to obesity! Take a look at this neat photo I found of Ying and Yang, a concept we will explore.
I have not been working out as much lately but I have cleared out the garage from the Christmas decorations and put out my heavy bag again! I have done one post on the merits of the bag workout but I thought I’d go into more detail in this post. First here is a video of TJ Miller pointing out the basics.
Have you noticed that people seem to cling to diets like they do to religion? Now I do not mean to impune religion importance in one’s life, only to point out that to many people - there is only one way to lose weight! Whether it be hi-carb, low-fat, high-protein, and yes even high-fat diets, people seem to say their diet works and the others are evil!
I found this story at CNN.com about a 4-diet study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The CNN story seems to say the study suggests that it does not really matter what diet a person decides to follow. All of the diets can work. In this post I will try and see what the study tried to accomplish and what the results mean for us.
Here is a CNN video discussing the study and what it means to us.
This might sound funny but many diet and exercise programs out there profess to have fast weight-loss and that speed arguably is the reason for the diet/workout plan’s popularity. But I say to you know if you lose weight too fast - you are probably heading for a train wreak!
What I am talking about is losing weight too fast means I will probably lose muscle too, let alone not be sustainable. I’m not going to stay on a diet forever, right? I think 2 to 3 pounds a week is about the fastest I want to lose fat. I’ll talk a bit about yo-yo dieting, why I am concerned about the 10 pounds I lost in the last week and a half and what I plan on doing about it. I found this funny video on youtube from Chris Graham that should set this concept up.
One of the items you may want consider if you have made the decision to go on a diet is keeping track of whatever measure you are tracking. In the old days before all of these new fangled diets - all one had to do is count calories. A doctor would simply put a patient on a diet and he or she would lose weight! Imagine that back in the 20th century - they did not even know about the glyecmic index and diets would still work after a fashion.
In this post I will explore this dreaded concept of keeping track of what you eat and why that might matter. I will also explore alternate ways to diet and then the big question - why do we lie to ourselves when we diet? Here is a picture of my spreadsheet - how I keep track of my calories when I am sticking to my diet.
One way to keep track of what you eat!
I knew today was not going to be a great day for my diet (or lack of one lately) because I did not feel like making my lunch this morning. Instead I packed my credit card and headed off to Burger King for lunch. Before I got there I was trying to talk myself out of the “I’m eating fast food anyway - so go ahead and eat!” logic and I decided to not “King Size” everything like I would usually do.
As I pulled in to the drive through I noticed that “King Size” was not an option. The new sizes were:
- small sized
- medium sized
- large sized
I went jogging yesterday and only made it past the one mile mark and I had to start walking. My wind was fine but I got a pain under my left knee cap. I’ve learned to listen to my body from my youthful errant ways when I followed the mantra, No Pain - No Gain! After almost losing the ability to run, I figured out that if you have pain - lay off! I’m leading into my work out this afternoon.
I pulled my mountain bike out of the garage and rode it to the mountain trail I rode last Sunday. The cool thing is up the trail I have to keep the 21 speed mountain bike in first gear. That is really slow but it gets my blood pumping and I get a great low-impact (on my knees) workout!
I took some pictures from my ride last Sunday and will do my first pictorial post today. Hang with me as I narrate my route from my house to the mountain to where I crashed!
From my front yard you can see the trail leading down to the right of the telephone pole. I rode around the block along Santee Lakes on the way to the mountain trail.
I have found one of the best places to get a little fun and exercise near my Santee home - Santee Lakes! I’ve often ignored the lakes even though twice in recent history I have lived near the lakes. I heard the Summer movies and events and could not figure out what would be so fun about hanging out by the lakes.
Well since I have moved back to Santee a few months ago I and I have bought a mountain bike for exercise; I have taken a ride around the park and found lots of fun things to do! The other day it was nearing dark but as I live a half-mile from the part - I rode around the 3 1/2 mile loop around the lakes. Boy let me tell you about relaxing and even found a path right next to the lake on the far side. Here is a picture from the lakes webpage.
A fun workout and activities