OurBodyTransformations

This is my entry for #gethawt #4.  I’ll cop to it… I missed my update last week.  But there wasn’t a ton of progress to report.  I’m down 4 pounds.  I still have 18.5 pounds (of fat) to take off.  I’m making forward progress, but it’s slow going.

That’s why I’m happy to say I got back to the gym for the first time in a couple months.  Not only that, but a good friend of mine, Jason, also joined with me.  We’ve only gone once this week, but we’re meeting tonight (yesterday by the time this posts) to hit it again.

We’re working from the four hour body, like Jen is.  We’ll be using slow repetitions to really shred the muscles.  My personal goal is to put on muscle, so my base calorie requirements will go up.  It’ll also change my shape without really changing my weight.

And honestly, changing the shape is what #gethawt is about, right?

I suppose the real lesson for this week is this.  If you have time to make an excuse to miss the gym (or do something positive towards your goals), then you had time to put effort towards the goal.

You wasted it.

Plain and simple, if you aren’t putting your effort toward your goals, you’re wasting a commodity you can never get back.

Stop wasting time, and get out there and do it!

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Here we are before the run

This past Saturday, my friend Brandy and I did something neither of us had done before. We ran a 5k.

Now, let me be honest, running is stretch. We finished in 42:04. Faster than my previous run which was right at 45 minutes. But we made a commitment to do it, and we followed through. That’s the hardest part of making a change. Commitment.

It’s much easier to make an excuse as to why you can’t run a 5k than running one. But what do you get from an excuse.

Nothing.

Right before the finish line

What did we get from running the 5k?  Check out the last picture in this post.  What do you see?  I can tell you what I see.

I see a sense of accomplishment.

I see a sense of pride.

I see two people who took a step to better their health, and have committed to following through.

Finished!

Would you see any of that if we had not followed through?

I doubt it.

What’s holding you back from making the same change in your life?  Add them to the comments below.  I want to know what excuses people are making as to why they can’t be healthier.  I want to try to talk to those reasons…. I want to help you overcome them.

Together, we can be healthy.  Let’s do that together!

By the way…I just signed up for another 5k… This one is much more interesting!

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I’ve always wanted to go rock climbing.  Being a big guy sort of made that dream just that, a dream.  This past Saturday, That All changed.  My friends worked it out so we would go to the U.S. National Whitewater Center for my bachelor’s party.  Originally we were just going to hit the rafting.

But as soon as we got there, I saw the wall.  I’d always wanted to try it… so I said “we’re doing this,”  referring to the rock wall.  Immediately John and Blake said they’d go too.  We signed up for an early afternoon time to go climbing.

In the mean time  we went rafting.  That was a blast!  We took on both the class 2-3 run and the class 3-4 run.  We’d made it through four runs without throwing any one out.  We even got to play rescue when the raft ahead of us lost all their passengers, except for the guide.  We got to pull four  people out of the drink, and get them back to their boat.

Finally the guide asks us what we want to do for the last run, so I ask to go “surfing” again.  That’s where you get the raft in just the right spot it stays put while the water moves around you.  You usually get soaked doing this!  So we head back around to the class 2-3 side.  Our guide thought he’d add a little spice to the mix, by going in backwards.  The water started rushing by, and caught the boat in a way that caused it to flex.

I turn around to see what’s going on just in time to see Danny go flying off the raft, followed shortly thereafter by Jason.  I have never laughed so hard in my life!

We fished them out, and headed back to shore. We were ready for the next challenge…. The wall!

John was the first up.  He made it up the easy run no problem.  So I said, alright… let’s do this!  I made it up as easily as making it up a ladder.  So I head over to the medium… I make it up that no problem.

About that time, I see Jason cinching up his harness!  He heads up the easy and medium runs too without a problem!  Way to go man!

Blake proceeds to 1-up us by trying the hard run.  He makes it about 3 spots from the top.  We were all cheering him on, but he just ran out of juice.  So of course, I think I can do it better.  I get about 3.4 of the way up, and the hand-holds just disappear!  So I failed too.

Jason, with his bad-self gives it a go and makes it to the same spot as Blake… but still no dice.

I have one thing to say: That’s our goal!  We’re not stopping until we can beat all the runs on this wall!

We were running out of time, so I thought I’d give one more go on a run that had a “natural” look to it… I get about 1/2 way up, and I was just spent… No dice there.

But my challenge still holds.  We’re taming that wall!  Nothing can stop us!

Do you have a dream?  Do you have a goal?  How are you making it happen?  What’s stopping you? Let me know… I’d like to motivate each and every one of you to make your dreams happen. To quote Nike…Just DO IT!

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At my last job I worked with a couple Marines.  For those of you who have never been around Marines, you may not know they are a special bunch.  They have motivation the rest of us can only aspire to.  When I was early into my transformation, they were talking about a physical fitness test they have to take every year.
The test has three parts, and you have to do each part back-to-back.  You have to run three miles, do as many crunches as you can in two minutes, do as many pull ups as you can.  For my age, I’d have to run the 3 miles in 29 minutes or less, do at least 45 crunches in two minutes, and at least three pull ups.
The crunches weren’t a problem.
The running and the pull ups were.
So every week one of my cardio days is I put 34 minutes on the treadmill, crank the incline up to 2 (it makes it more comfortable on me), and after 5 minutes in, I hit the reset on the distance.  My best so far is 2.66 miles in the time limit.  I still have a little further to go on that one.
That left the pull ups.  I have never in my life been able to do a pull up.  Every time I would do weight training, I could never get my strength up high enough to compensate for the weight.  But that changed this morning.
Today at 6:00 I was stretching to do an arms routine.  I grabbed the pull up bar underhanded and used it to stretch my arms and back.  I was just curious how close I could get.  So I started a pull up, I got my nose over the bar, and my arms weren’t straining as hard as usual, so I kept pulling.  I pulled until my forearm and bicep were touching…my wrists were against my the fronts of my shoulders.
I had done it.
I look around… and no one was there.  No witnesses. Dang.
So I lowered myself back down slowly.  I was sure I was still asleep, dreaming.
I pinched myself.
I grabbed the bar again, sure it was a fluke.. This time I got to my nose, my arms refused to go further.  So I lowered myself back down.
Looked at the bar, I’ll be honest, I was a little mad at the bar.  So I shook out my arms, then grabbed the bar again.  I was gonna do one more pull up.
This time, I didn’t go slow, I gave it everything, and pulled up explosively.  I almost caught my nose on the bar on the way past it.  I was able to actually pull a little above a full pull up.
I smiled wide.
Then lowered myself back down to the ground slowly, and tried for a fourth… no dice.
I was still satisfied.
I’d done it!
After that, the arms routine felt like nothing.  It was all routine at that point.

Set your own goals.  Do everything in your power to reach them.  You will make it if you keep at it.  This isn’t just some saying.  It really works.

Now, get out there and GET TO IT!

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