Category: Fitness

More Complaining About Winter

I went shopping for a snow blower today. I haven’t gotten one up until now because we only get enough snow to make it worthwhile a few times a year, and some years not at all. But now we have snow and I really shouldn’t be shoveling it by hand, and it’s a lot for Jeannie to do solo. So there it is. A few weeks ago we went to Sears to look at dishwashers and refrigerators and they had a whole field of different kinds of snow blowers. I went back today and it’s all lawnmowers and barbecue grills. What the heck?!? It’s still February and there’s over a foot of snow on the ground. Also looked for a new winter coat, but as usual they have nothing in my size. I hate shopping.

I started working out again yesterday. I made some adjustments to the routine. Doing more stretching and far less weights. I’m going to reintroduce the weight and reps gradually. By the time I get back to full weight it will be spring, but I think next winter I’m going to make it a policy to seasonally adjust my workout balance with less strength training and more yoga and stretching stuff.

Snow Daze

Well I’m surviving the winter. I feel better about the season now that there’s snow on the ground. Last week we got a big snowfall, enough to pretty much close the entire New York City for a day. The kids had the day off from school and I helped them build a snow man amid interminable shoveling. But that was nothing compared to my friend John in D.C., who’s endured a few big snow falls, a power outage and a week of from school (He’s a teacher).

I was scheduled to another mixing session with Erik, but that got postponed. We ended up doing it a couple days later and now I have two songs done and sounding totally awesome. One of them, an R&B number with a horn section, almost sounds too clean. Once I get one more in the can I’ll post some audio files for you to hear.

The kids had off from school yesterday and we took them skiing. Another round of fresh snowfall made for a slow drive, but the best conditions I’ve skied on on the East coast in years, maybe ever. As an added bonus, we met our friend Seth on the mountain and it was his birthday. It was snowing so hard we had to stop and buy the girls goggles. It was Michelle’s first real day off the bunny hill and up to the top of the mountain. She was a little nervous abut it, but she did just great, and soon felt confident enough to try some blue trails. At one point there a was a steep spot and I skied a bit ahead, stopped and turned back to see if she could handle it. She just blew right past me going “Wheeeeeee!!!”. Now we can all ski together as a family, which is great, cuz it means we can plan a ski vacation out west in a few years.

Things have been contentious at work recently. My project is behind schedule, mainly due to the Bad Manager, not giving us requirements to work against in a timely fashion. This in turn stems from the fact that he does not have a technical background and is out of his depth trying to manage this project. Last Friday we had a meeting to work our requirements for a particular feature set and yet again he wasn’t prepared, didn’t take notes or understand what he needed to meeting, questioning obvious points but unable to contribute to the actual issues that need to be worked out. So my boss kind of lost her temper and the two of them got into a rather heated argument. Today was yet another meeting, and my boss’s boss and the Bad Manager’s boss showed up, and everyone was on their best behavior and in the end we hammered out the design of the panel resolved. Yeesh.

We’ve been watching some Olympics and been enjoying it pretty well. I like the winter sports, but I must say I haven’t watched regular TV in a long time and I find the pacing and constant interruptions and 50-50 ratio of ads to sports makes it kind of a drag, and my enthusiasm starting to wane. Most people don’t seem to mind or notice this, but TV ads have been out of my system and it’s kind of a shock.

Ski Season Woo Hoo!

We just got back from a great weekend skiing with our friends Seth and Cathy and their daughter Erin. Thanks guys for a great time.

We went up Seth’s place Friday night and got up early and skied all day Saturday. The grownups skied on our own in the morning while the kids were in lessons, and in the afternoon we all skied together. The snow was really good and Lizzy and Michelle both did really well. Michelle went up the chair lift for the first time, and skied down the mountain a few times with good form and control, doing nice S-curves. I spent my afternoon mainly with her. One run we tailed along the end of a lesson of two other kids who were at Michelle’s level, joining in their train.

Sunday only Seth and Lizzy I and went skiing, while Jeannie and Cathy and Michelle and Eric hung around the house and plated in the snow. Seth, who used to be a ski instructor, gave Lizzy a lesson and I followed along working on my form, which was a good thing to do. Lizzy is getting good, skiing blue trails and even some diamonds, to the point where I have to work to keep up with her sometimes.

We only skied a half day Sunday, and as an added treat we got to see an awesome Jets game. I haven’t watched much football this year because: 1. I’m generally pretty busy and usually have things to do on Sunday, 2. I generally don’t like television cuz of the ads, and football on TV is like one giant commercial, and 3. I’m still down about the Buffalo Bills losing four Super Bowls in a row. But if there’s ever a time to get into it, it’s when your team makes the playoffs.

Right around the kickoff I was loading the car for the trip home, but we decided to stay until it looked like the game was getting to be a blowout. It turned out to be a real game, and we ended up staying for the whole thing. The Chargers made a few mistakes for sure, some stupid after-the-play penalties and some missed field goals. And while no one on the Jets made any spectacular plays, they really showed some discipline and came together as a team. Good defense, good running game, the classic way to win a football game. So now we’re all getting psyched about the possibility of the Jets making it to the super bowl. Still one game to get thru before that though.

And now, it looks as if our month-long frozen streak has abated. The weather this week looks to be mild, with highs into the forties. Feels positively balmy.

Fall Groove

Well it’s more of the same over here. Nonstop busy. Work work work, making Jack a dull boy. My job situation with the clueless manager seems to have sorted itself out at least. The fall has come. Leaf raking season is upon us, although I expect I’ll still have to mow the lawn one more time. It’s getting darker and colder. We have to turn the heat on every night these days. Starting to get up before the sky is fully light. Ugh. And it’s no longer light or warm enough to go skating in the evening when I get home from work. So I’ve switched to using the Nordic Track indoors, which is not as much fun but I can listen to music while I’m doing it, so it gives me a chance to listen to the mixes from my record. Continuing to chip away at that, thank you very much.

I did some cool origami stuff. I made some “megafauna” models to donate to the American Museum of Natural History for their holiday tree. More on that soon. I’ll take some pictures tomorrow in the daylight. I’ve also started diagramming my Medieval Dragon. It starts with dividing the paper into ninths, which is something I always used to eyeball, but for the diagrams I worked out how to do it the legit mathematical way, which is pretty cool.

Jeannie and celebrated out Crytsal anniversary last week (I looked it up). It was a school night and so we did laundry and helped the kids study. Ah, married life after 15 years. We did meet for lunch in the city and go to a nice Thai place called Yum Yum. Afterwards we went to Toys’R’Us in Times Square and I bought her a lego dwarven catapult.

Denis and Sarah came to visit last weekend. We all had lots of fun. Carrie and Michelle always get on great and little Anna is walking already. Saturday Mary’s all came over and Jeannie’s parents too. Jeannie made a fantastic dinner for sixteen people. Chicken parmesan, eggplant parmesan and pasta. I was surprised to discover we had enough tables and chairs for everyone to eat once.

New Skates

I bought a new pair of rollerblades last week.  My old ones are 17 years old and from another generation of rollerblade technology, and though they are well-nigh indestructible, they’re at the point where they need new wheels and bearings, and the boots are pretty worn anyway, having been repaired once already with duct tape.

I generally hate shopping (apart from our local grocery store, which is nice and small and easy to get around).  I don’t really understand how some people really enjoy it as a form or recreation; it’s usually a big pain.  I do as much shopping as I can over the internet, or just leave it others.  But some things you have to actually go to the store for.  I did some research online first, but rollerblade.com is one of the worst web sites I’ve ever seen.  No useful information, and hard to navigate and slow respond to boot.  Ah well, off I went to the gigantic mall one day on my lunch hour to the giant sports store.  The store was dead, no customers, but somehow the people who worked there were slow and unresponsive.  They had a whole wall of skates, so I asked a rep to explain to me why one is $50 and the other $300.  He has some vague ideas, but no real detailed technical knowledge.  His beeper went off, an he excused himself, saying he had to go help some other customer, and complaining he can’t get any time to himself.  “Well you are at work.”  I reminded him as he shambled off.

So looked thru the selection and tried on a few pairs and picked one that had a comfortable boot, no obvious design flaws, and cost $150, marked down to $100.  I got them home and tried them out on the street, and they worked nowhere as good as my old skates.  Much less maneuverability, much more friction.  The skates didn’t seem to roll and pick up speed on a gentle slope, which is a problem.

One big reason was the skates weren’t rockered.  Rockering is when you raise up your front and back wheels so that only two wheels touch the ground at once.  I originally rockered my skates up about 7 years back when I was playing alot of hockey.  At the time I also put on new high-performance axles and bearings, spacers and mounts.  Well, apparently rollerblade doesn’t make skates anymore that you can rocker, and the chassis on my new skates use a totally different system of parts that are not interchangeable.  What people do nowadays when they want to rocker their skates is put on different sized wheels.  So I ordered some smaller wheels and the other night I put them on the font and back, and while I was at it, I took out the middle wheels and oiled up all the bearings, and removed the brake.  There doesn’t seem to be any analogue in the new setup for the bearing spacers, which seems like a potential weakness down the road for stress and wear and tear, but there’s nothing to be done about it for now.  I supposed I could look into replacement axles in the future.

Yesterday I went out after work and the good news the performance is much better.  So on we go into a new season of skating.  I doubt we’ll get 17 years but we’ll see how these new skates hold up.

Skating Season Start

Another sign that spring is approaching is that the other day I was able to go out on my rollerblades after work, marking the official start of skating season.  The earlier shift to daylight saving time is good for something after all, allowing me to take advantage of a mild day.  Felt great after a whole winter of the Nordic Track. But I need new wheels and my skates are more than 15 years old and pretty beat up, so this spring might be time get new skates.

The next day it was cold and rainy. Lousy Smarch weather.

Update: the next day, today, the eve of the equinox, we had a freak but intense snow flurry.  Giant fluffy flakes.  I had to brush an inch or two of rapidly melting slush of my car this morning!

Enter The Lion

You can forget what I said about spring being in hoping distance. We got walloped with an unseasonably late snowstorm yesterday. The endless winter continues.

Ironically, Sunday, the day before the storm, we went skiing. It had been a bit warm last week, so we were keeping an eye on the weather report, figuring this would probably be our last opportunity for the season. It was our third time this year, which is pretty good. We took the kids and everyone did a good job of getting up early, so we were at the mountain by 9:00. We put the girls in a lesson so Jeannie and I got the morning to ski on our own. It was a bit icy but not too bad. The girls both did great in their lessons. Lizzy is now skiing blue trails with confidence, although her style is not super aggressive. Michelle can make it down the bunny hill under good balance with control over her speed and direction. She’s ready to go up on the lift next time out.

It was a good time and we were glad we went. But Sunday evening we were checking the weather again and saw a major snowstorm was on the way that was not in the forecast the night before. Kind of late in the year for this sort of thing, and by morning the whole city was under a good 6″. School was cancelled and alot of people didn’t come into the office, so all my meetings were cancelled too and I might’ve just as well worked from home. Had we known, it would have been the perfect day to hit the slopes. Ah well.

Ski Day

Well after all my complaining about the cold, it seems like someone finally listened and we’re now enjoying a nice mild spell.  All the snow has pretty much melted in the last two days.

Last Saturday Jeannie I went on a day trip skiing without the kids, up to the Berkshires.  And we just barely beat the weather.  When we woke up at the break of day it was 12 degrees out, and by the time we made it to the mountain it was 28 or so.  Just perfect.  Conditions were good and our energy level was high, and we both had a fantastic day skiing.  All that Nordic Track has really been paying off.  By early afternoon the temperature had crept above freezing, as evidenced by the snow sticking to our skis and melting on the ride up the lift.  Still it made it pleasant to be out, so we kept on going, and by the time were ready to go home they had turned on the lights for night skiing.  When we got into the car the thermometer said 44 degrees.

Workout

This post is inspired by friend Nick who recently started doing is own home-rolled workout.  I’ve been doing something similar for years.  I started doing it in the year 2000 when I was living in Brooklyn, and I had been sick for most of the winter and had lots of problems with my back and shoulders from using the computer too much, and had been gaining weight too.  I also had an injured ankle that needed some kind of rehabilitation.  I’d been in pretty good about getting regular exercise in thru college, but once I got a regular desk job I kind of let it slide for a few years.  When I lived in California I biked and skated alot year round, but when I was back in New York City that became a seasonal thing.

So it was time to get back into a workout groove.  I had a baby and was living in an apartment, so it wasn’t feasible to either go out to a gym or get lots of a equipment.  I started with just pushups and situps and a few stretches and sort of added in new things and changed them around over the course of the first year or two. Alot of the focus is on core trunk strength, the back, abdomen and shoulders. The basic idea is to alternate between strength and flexibility exercises in sets or short sequences.  When I got weights I decided to limit myself to a pair of dumbbells that could be easily stowed.  After I got my house I got a bench, cuz I had to modify some exercises where I lift weights over my head so as not to hit the ceiling.

I got most of my stretching ideas from two books:  Yoga for Health by Richard Hittleman and Body Control (Pilates) by Lynn Robinson and Gordon Thompson. Yoga and Pilates are alot alike, except with Yoga it’s tied in with the holistic philosophy and vegetarianism, and the ultimate goal is to be in good enough shape so you can spend hours sitting in meditation without getting tired or losing concentration. Pilates is more western and non-spiritual but both have the goal of using the body as a lever to work itself out.

My workout goes like this:

warmup: 60 jumping jacks
stretch: chest expansion, rishi’s posture (touch opposite knee), toe touch, abdominal lift
25 pushups
stretch: chest expansion, rishi’s posture, toe touch, abdominal lift
25 more pushups

stretch: triangle, waist twist
weights: shoulder roll, arm curls (10x @100 lbs.)
stretch: neck roll, trunk roll
weights: shoulder roll, arm curls (10x @100 lbs.)
stretch: balance posture (stand on one foot), leg stretches
weights: shoulder press (10x @100 lbs.), bench press (10x @100 lbs.)

stretch: leg lifts, ankle rolls, knee-thigh stretch
weights: upright butterfly, tricep curls, horizontal butterfly, backstroke (10x each @ 70 lbs.)
stretch: shoulder stand, plow
weights: upright butterfly, tricep curls, horizontal butterfly, backstroke (10x each @ 70 lbs.)

10 squats
40 full situps
40 oblique crossovers
80 crunches
80 oblique crunches
80 reverse situps
cool down: headstand (2 minutes)

I can usually do it in an hour and 10 minutes.  If I push myself for speed I can do it in an hour even, but this is only possible if my energy level is really good, and when I’m tired I tend to take the stretching slower.

A funny thing, it used to take more like an hour and a half to do the workout.  Then about a year ago I started listening to music while I worked out.  It’s important to have a good CD to workout to, and after trying a few I fell into a groove with Steely Dan Alive In America, which is a great album, but only half the songs are really uptempo.  A few months ago I switched to Moving Pictures by the great Canadian power trio Rush.  A good high energy record and perhaps their greatest disc.  I had thought the record was 45 minutes long, and really hustled to stay on pace, and when I was done I realized the album was only 40 minutes long and I had shaved 10 minutes off my workout!

Another thing: I never did a headstand in my life until I was over 30. Now I can do it for 10 minutes or more.

Nowadays I usually work out 6 days a week. I do the workout I just described three times a week and on the alternate days I do a cardio thing, which when the weather is good means rollerblading or bike riding, and now in the winter it’s the Nordic Track or sometimes just a walk.  The Nordic Track is new this winter for me and seems to be working pretty good so far.  As evidenced by the recent ski trip…

Winter Workout

Well winter is here. One morning last week we had our first snow flurry of the year to the absolute delight of the kids and the mild consternation or utter indifference of everyone else. I work out regularly with weights and yoga-like exercises, but on the days I don’t do that I like to do some kind of aerobic (i.e. speed-oriented) thing, which is rollerblading or biking most of the year. About a month ago when it got too dark to go rollerblading after work, I switched to night biking, a mode of transport that has a light and a brake. Now it’s too cold out to do even that. So I need an indoor aerobic activity to see me thru until the spring.

Jeannie has a NordicTrack cross-country skiing machine that she’s been using happily for years. Just a few weeks ago when the clocks shifted an hour she started getting up early in the morning and doing a few kilometers on it before everyone else gets up for school and work. I must say I am really impressed at this; it’s something I could never do. She says it’s better than working out after the kids go to bed, which is what I usually do, and can indeed be harsh at the end of a long day.

I have not used the Nordic Track all this time, but last week I finally decided to give it a shot. I’ve never really liked the idea of working out on a treadmill, stationary bike or anything like that, because it makes you feel like a droid, in an existential post-modern post-industrial post-ironic kind of way. Meh! I’ve always thought it would be cool to hook an exercise machine up to some kind of VR or videogame to provide some fun and adventure, or at least some scenery. Ah well, I can listen to music I suppose.

Once I tried the NordicTrack I remembered another reason why I don’t use it. I’d tried it once when it was new, only to realize that it was not designed for really tall people (as is the case with so many things). It was simply not high enough or long enough for me to use properly. The pad you’re supposed to lean against was too low for proper balance, and I kept kicking the back of the machine. So it was time to start hacking! It turns out the pad is on arm that can swing up and forward when it’s time to put the machine away. I was able to make a shim and jam it in under the arm, so that it would stay in a semi-deployed position, which made enough of a difference that I could use it comfortably.

And now, having used it a couple of times, I can say it’s a pretty good workout. I can go 5 kilometers in 25 minutes or so, which is comparable to what I do on real skates, and with a similar level of effort. So it looks though it will do to see me thru the winter. Now I just have to find the right music to work out to.