Monday, April 21, 2008

Sunday's Tiger Mountain Hike

So...

Sunday Tiger Mountain. Rather easy hike. We went up West Tiger Summit #3. 3 Miles up and 3 miles down. 2,000 feet elevation gain. Went down the Cable trail, which is a bit steeper, than the West Tiger trail loop. It was a fun hike.

I've been slacking with my weightlifting workout. Just gotta work out more. Arrggh. Gotta head over to the gym and do some weights. Got to get the hell off this computer.

Arrrrgggh.. Anyways, that's about it.

Oh and Thursday, I volunteered with the Washington Trails Association. Worked for about 7 hours. I was sore on Friday. Wicked Sore. Saturday I putzed around. Have no clue. Didn't go to the gym. Well today, I have to go. Gotta go!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Sunday's Hike and Monday Rest Day...

Sooo...

Sunday.

Hiked with Deaner and friends. His idea of hiking is well, a lot more advanced than mine, but I guess that's one way to kick my ass into gear.

We tackled Mount Si. There were a total of six of us, and one of the couples had over 30lbs. in their backpack as they went up to Mount Si.

Mount Si is basically a tourist spot with every tom, dick, harry, jack and jill climbing up to the summit. Dogs abounded the parking lot, the trail and the summit. It was a good place to not find solitude and very friendly for the solo hiker on weekends. (You'll run into someone every 15 minutes or so).

I just had a daypack with a light windbreaker and a hoodie, 3 liters of water in the bladder and 3 granola bars. Oh, and a camera. This time, I took the smaller powershot model, which is easily powered by twin 2AA batteries. I digress.

Oh yeah, the hike. I was still lagging hard at the end. The last 1000 feet to the summit was the hard part, especially since it was mostly snow. I would welcome mud, as at least mud you have some semblance of suction/traction. The way up was slippery with random people going down full bore on a narrow switch back. Yeah, this wasn't the fun part.

Don't get me wrong, the landscape was picturesque. Fresh air. Good.

So yeah... fast forward. Got to the summit. Ate 2 power bars. Ate some guy's half sandwich. Drank some water and slogged back down. The way down was hard on my knees, and quads. And as of Tuesday I still feel sore. Also my lower back is sore.

Sooo. Total Distance:

4 Miles. ~3000 feet eleveation gain.

Not a bad workout.

So Monday, I said, I need some rest, and just chilled.

So glad no one really reads this.... this weekends workout.

Soooo...

Where we. I should post more often, although I do tend to get distracted easily, and amazingly enough my life is weirdly busy with just the daily tasks of living.

I finally loaded Microsoft Outlook and synced it with Google Calendar. So now, I can see how often I really blow off working out.

Today's Tax Day Tuesday.

I'm sure there's crazy people running to and fro to give Uncle Sam his due.

So just like working out, procrastination seems to be a common thread. Why do something today, what you can put off for tomorrow? And the other famous adage. "If you only got a minute, it only takes a minute."

Ahhhh... so yes, where we. Well Friday was a beautiful day for Seattle, and for Seattle, this is rather rare. I took advantage of this and went running up and down Admiral Hill. Yeah, Admiral hill is about 500 feet, but it's a nice and quick dirty workout. It's about a theoretical 20 minute workout; and for running it's good.

The thing is, that you get the good part first, running down a 500 foot hill in about a 3/4 mile. Fairmont Canyon is heavily wooded, due to relative steepness of its sides and provides a very parklike atmosphere. At the end of the 3/4 mile downhill you run into a breath-taking view of the Seattle Skyline. There it's fairly easy to run about a half mile to enjoy the sights, should you choose to do 2 mile run. The run of course can be longer, by running on the flats. The killer is the 3/4 mile climb up the hill. This is the tough part and it's hard to maintain pace as it's pretty much straight up hill. I did this about 20 minutes or so. I probably did 8 minute mile going downhill and 15 minute mile going up.

It was a good Friday workout.......

So that pushed my weight workout to Saturday. Friday (now Saturday's workout) was upper body workout. Saturday mowed the lawn, cultivated the garden and weed wacked. It was quite a full day. By the time I was done with everything, I had only an hour to go to the gym for a workout.

This was my workout:

Barbell Bench Press x5 top 105. (I guess not that far off from the 50 lbs dumbells I usually use). I guess I could lift more, although I'm more comfortable with dumbbells than barbells. Just me, I guess.

Seated Rows x5 top 175. This was a good workout, I felt it.

Dumbbell Shoulder Press x5 top 30lbs. I felt good doing this workout, I think my shoulders are getting better.

So overall a good workout.

Friday, April 11, 2008

So, yeah I'm slacking.. Posting Wednesday's workout.

So... Wednesday, I found the joy of going to the gym early. If there is such a thing.

Yeah, Monday, Wednesday, Friday are supposed to be my weight days. Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays are cardio days. But lately I've been slacking. At least for Tuesdays and Thursdays. For some reason,there is a compelling reason for me to stay in on Tuesday and Thursday, that and the fact that Judo Practice is on Tuesday and Thursday is no coincidence.

I think I'm fairly useless past 7PM at night as far as exercise-wise. I just want to bask in the warm glow of an LCD computer screen and work on my pacific northwest tan.

So... what about judo. I just hate the feeling of pain, as most people do. I do like working out, although being catapulted across the room and down onto the mat, if done right is basically a free chiropractic adjustment. The matwork, is also a nice way to stretch those legs, and of course, when someone jams their knee on your inner thigh to pass the guard is well... fun.

I should just not be a wimp and not make excuses. After all I weigh in at a svelte 100kg. HA!

Anyways, I did weigh in Wednesday, I was down to 220 lbs. Probably water weight who knows. So to recap Wednesday's workout, here it is.

Horizontal Squat Machine. (Yeah I'm lazy and really hate to slap weights around on a barbell, so the machine it is... granted the old fashioned squat does wonders. But hey, for me just getting to the gym at the moment is an achievement. Yeah, I'm an under-achiever. So horizontal squat machine it is.) Inverted Pyramid - Max 195 lbs.

Abdominal Crunch Machine - 5 Sets, Increasing x 15, Max 100lbs.
Now this is a gem of a little machine. I hate crunches, I hate ab work, medicine ball, etc... Granted abs and core strengthening is very important to overall fitness. YES, it's been drilled into my head 100x of times. Now. This machine allows you to vary weights on the crunch, which is cool and it's quite comfortable, and you can feel you can actually feel it work. Soooooooooo you can slightly increase the weight, little by little and knowing that my little ab muscles actually can move 100 lbs, by any measurement, is well cool.

Leg Curls - 5 Sets, Inverted Pyramid, Max 100lbs.
Standard Leg Curls. I exerted decent effort, although I should be more on the ball in actually working hard for it. I didn't really break a sweat, so am not pushing myself hard enough.

Calf Raises - 5 Sets, Inverted Pyramid, Max 175lbs.
Wow. that was a good workout. My calves are still sore. It's a good sore.

----

So yeah, I think I have to not make excuses for judo and just do it.

Today, is upper body workout, and shouldn't skip it.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Monday Workout.

Got up 6:30 AM.

Went to the gym.

Dumbell bench press - x5, top 50.

Lat Pull Down - x5, top 120

Shoulder Press x5, top 30

Bicep Curls x5, top 50

Triceps Extensions x5, top 45

Then a nice relaxing time in the hot tub. Overall a good day.

Oh and I made a nice Eggplant Lasagna. It was delicious.

Saturday Workout.

Saturday's workout was a leg workout with barely some abs thrown in.

Horizontal Squat Machine. Inverted Pyramid. x 5, top 195

Leg Curls x 5, top 100

Calf Raises x 5, top 175.

3 x 10 Leg Raises.

Then a nice relaxing time at the jacuzzi.

Leg days are not the most fun, but necessary. My knees are creaking need to stretch more.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Last Night's Judo Practice...

So got back into doing judo....

It's been awhile, and am glad I'm back. So I started with the junior class first. Which is a bit different. I usually do the advanced class most of the time which is mostly one big workout.

So, did uchikomi, some fits. Got over some of the basics of Seio-Nage and worked on combos. It was an overall good class. It was awhile since I worked with kids and white belts, so it was a bit different to treating them a bit gingerly. Although this was a good time for me to work on my break-falls.

The senior class, was the standard routine. Warm-up. Fits, Show one technique. Then a full hour of randori, split between ne-waza first and then standing techniques.

The one technique shown was the finer points of o-soto-gari. Haven't really used it that much where I preferred the ouichi/seio combo. Mainly because I never really learned to apply o-soto-gari really well. I got my toe pointed, with my toe knuckles dragging the mat on my way for the sweep and then a good follow through.

It was a good session. I sat out for about half the randori session, as my right knee and my calves were cramping up. Got a bloody nose on one of the ne-waza session, but that was fairly easy to fix.

I was fairly decent on the newaza, did a good bridge and prevented a pin. I had some decent guard passes to the half guard. Had a hard time getting to passed both guards. I was good at protecting my arms. There were a few times where I did not have the dominant position and have to rotate quickly to prevent them clamping down. I'm pretty decent at passing the guard. It's just that when they rotate fast enough to get my back where I'm most vulnerable.

Still, I had some good rolls. I just need to be quicker. Basically it comes down to conditioning. I need better conditioning.

It's cool we'ere sending Tracy and Jacob to Nationals. I did some randori with jacob and noticed he lost a ton of weight to fight in the 100kg class.

Anyways, it was a good night to get back on the mat.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

So.. just started again.

Wow. 3 months or so from my last post.

And guess what. I ballooned to 222 pounds.

Amazing.

Did weights this morning.

Upper Body. Dumbells, inverted pyramid.

Bench Press x 5.
Lat Pull Down x5
Shoulder Press x5
Biceps Curl x5
Tri x 5

Overall a decent day, and then did a couple of laps in the pool. Gotta go running, probably tomorrow.

Not feeling that much in soreness probably tomorrow.

Got the start of a cold or perhaps pollen allergies. Hopefully it's just allergies.

Other than that, feeling fairly well. Gotta get back to Pacific Time.

Gotta get some shuteye.