At The Finish Line

So here we are - March 24, 2007: "D-Day"! It's been 5 months in the making and now it's time to see who did the best job of sticking to the plan. To give you a refresher, here's where I started out:

• Body Weight: 175 lbs
• Squat: 205 lbs x 10 reps
• Flat Dumbbell Bench Press: 70 lbs x 6 reps
• Chin-Ups: Body Weight (BW) x 13 reps
• Mile Time: 6 min

And the goals:

• Body Weight: 165 lbs
• Squat: First Tier (205 lbs x 12 reps) ; Second Tier (225 x 10 reps)
• Flat Dumbbell Press: First Tier (75 lbs x 5 reps) ; Second Tier (80 lbs x 5 reps)
• Chin-Ups: First Tier (BW + 25 lbs x 8 reps); Second Tier (BW + 25 lbs x 12 reps)
• Mile Time: Second Tier (5:30 min)

Last - but not least - my final results:

• Body Weight: 164.8 lbs
• Squats: 245 lbs x 10 reps - A personal best
• Flat Dumbbell Press: 75 lbs x 5 reps; 80 lbs x 2 reps - A personal best
• Chin-Ups: BW + 25 lbs x 11 reps (and oh so close to 12!) - A personal best
• Mile Time: 5:30 min (The most excruciating 5 and a half minutes in recent memory - the only reason I didn't quit that day was because I had people watching me and my pride wouldn't let me give up in front of them!)

As you can imagine, I was quite pleased with the my performance, but I had to wait until the end of the day to find out how I matched up against my fellow competitors - we had to wait for OJ to report his results from Vancouver. I'm pleased to say that everyone involved had some success during this contest, but that I was able to come out the victor this time around!

At times it felt like these 5 months would never end - especially the past couple of weeks - but now that it's all over, I must say I've really enjoyed the whole process (except for maybe the last 3 weeks where I cut out booze and sweets!). This is easily the strongest I've ever been, as evidenced by the 3 personal bests I achieved during testing. I have been leaner on a couple of occasions, but I weighed almost 10 pounds less, and was told by one of my clients that I was "too slight of a man" (not exactly great for the ego!). And even though I had once ran a 5:20 mile about 8 years ago, I weighed less and wasn't nearly as strong, so I'd have to say this is the best overall fitness level I've attained in my life. In fact, while we were doing the final testing, I told my friends I didn't really care whether I won or not and that I was just happy to have made all the gains that I had...although winning certainly felt great too!

Now that this contest is over, I'm not really sure what I'll be working towards next. However, at times during the contest, I felt like my life was dominated by diet and exercise and that I needed to add some different pursuits to give myself some variety. So far I've been thinking about taking Spanish classes again, learning to cook, and reading (but not textbooks!) - I'll keep you updated on how that goes in future posts. Until then, here are some pics to let you see how I finished off...and to show that I still haven't learned how to smile for pictures!

Peace and love, ladies and gents.

Progress Update

So here we are, three months down and two to go. I must admit, I'm much more anxious to take off to Vegas than to finish this contest off - not that I won't enjoy taking it a little easier on the exercise/diet front! I will say this, I am very pleased with the way things have been progressing and am feeling pretty good about my chances of hitting all of my first-tier goals, and probably most of the second-tier ('drastic') goals. As a refresher, here are my baseline results and my goals:

Baseline Results: Weight (175 lbs), Chin-Ups (13 - Bodyweight only), Flat Dumbbell Bench (70 x 6 reps), Squats (205 x 8 reps), 1 mile time (6 minutes).

First-Tier Goals: Weight (165 lbs), Chin-Ups (8 with 25 lbs added resistance), Flat DB Bench (75 x 5 reps), Squats (205 x 12).

'Drastic' Goals: Weight (165 lbs), Chin-Ups (12 with 25 lbs), Flat DB Bench (80 x 5), Squats (225 x 10), 1 mile (5:30 min).

You may recall that when I started this contest, I was doing 4 sets of 8 reps (to failure if necessary) on my heavy days with 90 seconds rest between sets - on the light days, I was doing 3 sets of 12 reps, with 1 minute rest between sets. Although things had been moving nicely towards most of my goals, my dumbbell bench press was really lagging behind - I had only been able to lift 75 lbs for two reps, not even halfway towards my first-tier goal of 5! As a result, three weeks ago I started a 'strength phase', doing 5 sets of 5 reps on my heavy days, with 2 minutes rest between sets - on the light days, I'm doing 4 sets of 8 reps again, but never to failure. I'm still working out every day, sometimes two a day if I'm doing cardio.

Speaking of cardio, I'm still only doing that 2-3 times per week, usually no longer than 20-25 minutes. One of the workouts is a 3-mile run, running at 8.6 mph (7 min/mile). I also do one interval workout where I'll jog at 6 mph for 2 minutes, then run at 12 mph for 1 minute, alternating between the two six times totalling 18 minutes of work time. Lastly, I do one run where I try to maintain 10.9 mph (5.5 min/mile) for as long as I can - obviously I wouldn't go past 5.5 minutes since that time is my goal, making any time beyond 5.5 minutes unnecessary.

My diet's still pretty much the same because my weight has continued to drop, although I've put sweets/desserts back in and taken booze out. However, I only kept the booze out for two of the past four weeks, but the nights I had any drinks were special events as opposed to just another weekend! With that said, I'll keep the booze out for the remainder of February, and perhaps longer if my weight is still above where I need it to be come March 24th.

Now that I've told you where things are at in terms of my current routine, here's where I'm at in terms of my progress:

Body Weight: 167 lbs (only 2 more pounds to go)

Chin-Ups: 9 reps with 25 lbs additional resistance (1 rep above first-tier, 3 reps away from second-tier).

Squats: 245 x 8 reps (Although my second-tier goal is 225 x 10, I've already hit that and am now trying to add to my cushion)

Flat Dumbbell Bench Press: 75 x 4 reps (1 rep from first-tier, not even close to second-tier but a 100% improvement in 3 weeks is still pretty good!)

1-mile Time: I ran a 5.5 minute mile once 3 weeks ago, but I haven't been able to repeat that performance the last two times I tried - in fact, I wasn't even close last time! I think the reason for my inability to repeat my performance has been due to less sleep the night before, poor carb-loading the day before, not enough time between my last run(s)...and extremely sore legs from a killer leg workout the day before! With all that said, I think I'd be able to run 5:45 consistently right now so I've still got some more work there, but I feel good about coming through in the clutch in two months.

Aaaaand, now what you've all been waiting for, more stone-faced, shirtless pics of me! Hopefully these ones make me look less like a prisoner at Gitmo... as some of you have so kindly pointed out to me in reference to the pics I used in my first post!

Note: These pics were taken on Christmas Day (after a huge Christmas Eve dinner with my roommate's family) so they're not exactly representative of how I look today - a month later and 3 lbs lighter - but they're still pretty close. I know, I've been pretty bad about writing my posts (this post says Jan. 4, 2007, but I'm actually finishing this on Feb. 3!) but I'm no longer borrowing my roommate's computer so I promise to be better...which means you should start checking out the site more frequently.

Until next time, peace and love, ladies and gents.