Last week I received some great news…. Better yet it was a win. It was a win in terms of this journey and running all together. This win is just as big as finishing my first marathon… Yes it’s really that big! I’ve been cleared to run! (I told you it was great news.) For those of you who is like wait you haven’t been running? No I haven’t been running, well except for that one occasion. But I’ve been suffering Achilles Tendonitis since June 15, 2015 and I’ve been miserable about it. So I took a break from running, seen an orthopedic specialist and went through a few weeks of PT (more like 14 week). Last week I went for my follow-up and he told me to continue PT for 4 more weeks and try easing into running…. If I don’t have pain while running within those 4 weeks I don’t need to see him anymore….Man that’s great news!
Anyways, today I went for my (second) first run… I heeded my own advice and took it easy, and did W1D1 of C25K. During the run I was prepared to feel some pain but I didn’t even feel a tinged. I was hyper sensitive about my Achilles waiting to see if it was going to give me a signal to slow down but it didn’t happen. I finished W1D1 of C25K without a glitch.
I guess the lesson learned from this situation is that you need to allow yourself to heal no matter how long it takes, don’t be so hard on yourself during the healing process, and once you’re healed be ready to start at zero… You’re not going to run a marathon your first week back from an injury.
This day starts a new chapter in this journey… I need to be aware of this as I move forward. There is no need for me to compare this chapter to the previous one. Yes I ran a marathon in the past but today I’m start at C25K…. Truth be told I’m okay that…
About a couple of weeks ago Robby from FatGirl vs World wrote this amazing blog post about feeling under water and not being able to get above surface of the water. It’s really a hard, terrifying, and frustrating place to be. In Robbys’ words, “it’s like wanting to climb a mountain but first having to dig your way out of a cavern with your bare hands. You exhaust yourself even before even getting to the point where you feel like you can once again take up fight.” After I wrote it’s hard and I received a boat load of responses letting me know that I’m not alone in the water struggling. The crazy thing about feeling under water is that you feel so helpless that no matter what you do, and who talk to you, you just can’t break the surface. I imagine this is what purgatory feels like and since we are in rough water and the fear of drowning is imminent so we kick, we scream, we scratch, and we claw but get nowhere and we wasted so much energy flailing in the water.
What if there was a technique that helps conserve energy when you are in rough water? It is…It ’s called the Survival Float. The thing about the survival float is that you have to put your face in the water. Even though it’s suppose to help us get through the rough water, most of us are afraid of putting our face in the water. We fear that the water it going to go in our nose or we don’t like the feeling of the water in our ears. I’m here to tell you that until the boat come you have to put your face in the water; you have to go through some uncomfortable things to make it through the rough water. Yea you don’t like the feeling but would you rather drown instead? Thinking of this example I wondered how could I apply this to life? Yea this works for water but how can we make this applicable when life gets overwhelming and we feel like we are under water? The point I’m making is that when things get overwhelming sometimes you have to stay calm and ride it out… To get a different result you have to do something different…
Lately I’ve been slowly turning it around… I’m in the boat for a lack of better words but I’m still wet and I feel like I could fall back in the water anytime now. But while I’m in the boat I’ve been working out, blogging, mediating, and doing yoga. There is still a chance that I might get knock back into rough water but at least I know about the survival float.
It’s been a couple of weeks since I started going to the gym. I figured I would give an update and some thoughts on my progress.
I had my second session with the trainer the workout was the same as the last workout. Afterwards he tried to sell me a package. I can’t knock him doing his job but I don’t think that I going to hire the trainer though. I’m a DIY type of guy and I get the thrill of learning new things and processes. Additionally, I just don’t think hiring a trainer fit into my health and fitness goals. The main reason I’m using the gym is as intermediary between now and I get healthy. I’m hoping by the time the weather breaks I will be healthy enough to get back to running and doing CrossFit. I wish I didn’t have to spend the money on the gym but my Achilles tendon is so damn iffy and I can’t pull myself to pay that hot 120-160 dollars a month for a service that I can’t even use to its fullest potential. I know many of my CrossFit friends will say something like, you can modify to compensate for my Achilles, I know I could but I know myself and I will end up not modifying my exercises and probably hurt my Achilles even more.
The other day I stepped on the scale and I’m 10 pounds away from my original starting weight. When I saw the weight I just shrugged and shook my head. I told myself that this has to stop; I need to do whatever I can to prevent this from happening again.
At the gym I’ve been doing mostly function fitness. I get all of my cardio from the C2 rowing machine. I usually do some type of intervals like Tabatas or 1 min on 20 second off. There have been days where I’ve rowed 2-3 miles straight and let me tell you that shit was brutal. I was thinking that I should do C25k intervals on the rowing machine just to give me a format to follow. After the rowing machine I usually alternate between upper and lower body and I do some type of ab work every day. Eventually I will make a work plan in November. However for now I just want to give myself some time to settle in and not rush the process. I have to be cognizant of my shoulder and neck injuries from the car accidents and now my Achilles tendon… Man, I’m falling apart…
Have you ever had life events that take you away from your workouts? It may have been a vacation, an injury, or maybe your work schedule has changed. Either way you haven’t worked out in about a month or two, or even a year. You get to the gym, box, or road, and you go hard on your first day back like you haven’t been in the for six months and end up hurting yourself. And now you’re on the sideline and who knows when you will be able to come back. Folks, this is what happened to me and I don’t wanted to happen to you. So today I’m going to share with you some advice that I had to learn the hard way. Now this advice is not groundbreaking or even revolutionary… This is some no nonsense advice to keep you injury free when you are getting started (again). So here’s how to get restarted without injuring yourself by doing something stupid:
1. Leave all the preconceived notion of what you used to do and what you could do out of the window.
If you haven’t worked out for three months or more especially when you get closer to the six-month to year mark. It’s time to leave the past in the past. Even if you’re in better shape then you were when you started. I would approach this come back as if you just started. Now this can be hard especially when your ego and the little voice in your head tells you to start where you left off. You ain’t about that life anymore. Your body doesn’t care about your emotions, your ego, or that you ran a marathon two years ago. That’s your mind playing tricks on you!!! If I could do it again I would leave the feelings, ego, and mindset that you should be doing something that you did a year ago, in the trash can and acted as If I was starting for the first time.
2. Start very slowly… Increase distance, time, and reps first before increasing intensity or weight.
On your first week back, take it very slowly and do some basic exercises to get your body used to those movements, if you’re running start with an easy a mile or half-mile. When you’re running or exercising your “inner troll” will tell you that you’re not going fast enough or the workout is not hard enough. This is perfectly normal feeling; your mind is trying to play tricks on you… Another tidbit of advice is to increase your time, distance, reps or sets before increasing your intensity, speed, or weight. I seen a lot of people get hurt because they either wanted to run or put on too much weight before their body was ready for it. This is something that happens a lot when I was a high school strength and condition coach. It never fails… A student would come and he hasn’t lifted a single weight all summer. He tries to bench press 275lbs. and now he has a nagging shoulder injury throughout the session. I don’t want that to happen to you so listen up. If you’re doing 3 sets of 7 reps, try adding a fourth set or increase the reps to 12, before jacking up the weight. Same thing goes from running instead of trying to run faster at a certain distance, practice running a longer distance first. By doing so you body will get efficient running at the longer distance, which in turn you will run faster at the shorter distance.
3. Incorporate a warm-up, cool down, and foam roll to your pre- and post- workout routine.
For some reason many people don’t warm-up or cool down anymore but this should be a part of your workout routine. The warm-up prepares you joints, muscles, and tendons for the workout and/or run. It increases the temperature and flexibility of your muscles, and helps you be more efficient and safer during your workout. A warm-up before moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic activity allows a gradual increase in heart rate and breathing at the start of the activity. A great way to warm up is through dynamic stretching.
The cooling down after a workout is as important as warming up. After the workout, your heart is still beating faster than normal, your body temperature is higher and your blood vessels are dilated. This means if you stop too fast, you could pass out or feel sick. Static stretching is a good way to cool down; your limbs, muscles and joints are still warm. Stretching can help reduce the buildup of lactic acid, which can lead to muscles cramping and stiffness.
Foam rolling is the icing on the cake. It can help increase the blood flow to your muscles, which improves delivery of oxygen during your workout. It helps to relieve muscle tension, increases your range of motion and decreases your recovery time. Foam rolling can help with muscle repair so you aren’t left feeling as sore and sorry the next day. The only caveat that I have about foam rolling is that if your muscles are tender, it can be very uncomfortable, but it is a necessary evil.
So to recap leave all your pre-conceived notions out the window, Start very slowly… Increase distance, time, and reps first before increasing intensity or weight, and incorporate a warm-up, cool down, foam rolling. Like I said these are things that you probably heard before but so many people never heeded this advice and end up on the sideline. I don’t want that to happen to you so take heed to what I’m saying to decrease you chance of hurting yourself…
What do you do when you lose all of your progress in your weight-loss journey? What do you do when you are trying to get back to normal, but you no longer know what normal is? Do you bitch and moan about it? Do you complain about it? Did you give up on yourself and accept the fact that you’re meant to be fat, unhealthy, and out of shape? Or do you accept this failure as a learning experience and dissect every piece of your journey, find out the best things that helped you get success in the first place and discard everything else that didn’t work?
While I did everything and more listed above the only thing that seemed to work best was to address my emotionally pain, my pride, and my ego, break it down and dissect everything to get at what works best for myself. In essence I was getting to the simplest foundation of what this blog was built upon. This was exercising, running, living life, trying new things, inspire others and blog about it. No more, no less.
Initially, I worried about the 400 email subscribers, the 8,000 Twitter followers, the 10,000 page views a month, the sponsors, the things that really didn’t matter at the beginning of 300 Pounds and Running. Most of those things were gone and quite frankly you can’t worry about the things that were in the past… Good or bad. My Uncle John once said to me, “Leave the past in the past… The reason it hurts so much is because your ego and pride needs to be checked. Because what it used to be will never be exactly the same.”
Carpe diem does not mean seize the past. It means to seize the now. You got to feast on the now, relish in it because that’s all you got. I’m going to tell you that it’s hard to not bring it up past. It’s hard to have a conversation and not say I use too ________.
Break things and remake something better…
Last month I read this book called, “The Way of the Seal: Think Like an Elite Warrior to Lead and Succeed” by Mark Divine. It’s about different principles used by the Navy SEALs to be successful during their missions and how you can apply them to your life (It’s a must read).
One of the principles of the book is to break things and remake something better. One of the anecdotes in the chapter told the story of Alden Mills, the guy who made the Perfect Pushup. Before Alden created the Perfect Pushup, he created the BodyRev, a product that supposed to develop your core strength and upper body. Alden raised $1.5 million around the concept and even produced an infomercial around the product.
The problem was that no one knew how to use the product. Needless to say the BodyRev failed immensely and Alden lost a very lot of money. Instead of going back to the drawing board with the BodyRev he scrapped the whole project. One day, he took it apart the BodyRev piece by piece. He took the pieces and started to remake something better. What he ended up with was the Perfect Pushup.
The point of the story (and blog post) is that most of the times you have to completely break things in order to remake something better. We see it everywhere… Whenever a bone breaks it grows back stronger. When you lose your baby teeth, stronger teeth replaces them. Just as I realized that this journey was broken, I needed dissect every piece of it in order to remake something better.
I urge you to do the same! If you lost your significant of weight and you’ve gained it back or your journey just went to all hell… I want you to “break” your journey, pick up the pieces, dissected them, take out the pieces you like the most, add some new pieces and start to remake your journey into something better. Look at your habits, your routines, and the way you think and break them. It sort of feels like you are building your own Frankenstein but give it some time, you will be better for it. Period.
I ask that you please bear with me as I pick up the pieces and start to remake something better and I hope that you do the same thing….
My first day at the gym was interesting one to say the least. When I woke up that morning I just knew my first day at the gym was going to be amazing. Your boy had the intention of lifting all things and getting a six-pack or at least 24 inch guns after the first workout. I had to the intentions of doing great things at the gym. That‘s all I could think of while I was at work.
So it’s 4:30pm and It’s time to go to the gym. I pulled up to the gym parking lot and couldn’t find a spot…. But that’s OK because when I get in there I’m going to lift all things. So after driving around for 15 minutes I finally get a parking spot. Now I’m really hype because this gym doesn’t know what the got in store. Shit, I’m 300 Pounds and Running I’m going to tear this gym up!!
As soon as I walk through the gym doors, I instantly feel small. The smell of humid sweat and steel punches my in the nose. My ears hurt from the sound of grunting and weights hitting the ground. I am also overwhelmed on how pack it is in the gym. It felt like every bench, every treadmill, and every elliptical machine was being used.
I felt out-of-place.
I felt like I did not belong even though the signed one-year contract said I did. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t been to a gym in a while or that I didn’t have anything planned but the feeling made me just want to go home and eat a tub of buttered pecan ice cream. At that point I understood what people meant when they said the gym was just too much for them and they just quit because I wanted to quit too. I found this to be odd because in a point in my life, I used to be a gym rat, hell I played college football and I was a strength and conditioning coach at a high school so I don’t know how this gym could make me feel out-of-place but it did.
It took me about 15 or so minutes of wandering aimlessly for me to snap out of it. I gave myself an internal pep talk.
“Ok Martinus, you are here now, you payed the money and you’re not getting that back, plus one of you degrees is in Exercise Science… You are 300 Pounds and Running! You’re the shit! You ran a marathon at 300 pounds for god sake! I need you get you shit together and do what you came her to do… Lift all things!”
I looked around to see what was open and I decided that today would be an upper body day. So I did flat bench press, incline bench press, decline bench press, lat pull down’s, seated rows, upright rows, chest fly’s, bicep curls, and triceps pull down’s. I might have over did it but once I got into a groove, all logic kind of went out of the window and I did what felt right. After the work out I still felt out-of-place but I guess I need to get used to the new environment.
If I had to do this again I would have had a workout planned, found a group of people and tried to jump in with workout or hire a trainer just to alleviate some of the stress of the new environment, because it can be overwhelming.
The gym offers two free trainer sessions so the next day I opted to use one of them. Before the workout with the trainer I had to fill out this packet filled with what I felt was endless questions. Some of them included my first week goal, three-week goals, three-month goals, and one-year goals. It also asked about my commitment level, my motivation level and etc. Lastly it asked what are the three things I hoped to accomplish. I answered to get back in the marathon shape and to run the Hartford marathon, to do an unassisted pull-up and to get down to a 36 waist. All of which are solid goals and I think those could happen within the next year.
Then the trainer took my blood pressure, height, weight, and body mass index. He told me all the things I already knew, that I was fat as hell and I need to get this weight off of me. This was followed by a very simple workout that kicked my ass… Air squats, mountain climbers, planks, and bridges. Afterwards he tried to sell me a training package. I knew it was coming because nothing in this world is truly “free”. But what are you going to do about it? I am just happy to be active again.
How was your first day at the gym? Can you relate to my experience? Did you feel like a person in a foreign land? What did you do to cope with that feeling? Leave a comment below.
