stay with my personal trainer for at least 4 months

I have to say my personal trainer is awesome. I asked her to look at CrossFit and she embraced it wholeheartedly. Today’s workout, 4 rounds of 20 overhead squats, then 35 seconds of max reps jumping pull ups. This was so intense. The overhead squats were with 12, 15, then 18 lbs for the last 2 sets.

I also discussed my concerns with moving too fast trying to learn the clean. It is a scary, highly technical skill and I want to make sure I have great fundamentals before I start adding a lot of weight.

I’ve been working with my trainer since April. She has literally changed my life. I’m healthier now than I was a decade ago and I have the foundation for a lifetime of fitness.

If you live in the St. Louis area and you are considering changing your life, let me know and I will put you in contact with my trainer. I really can’t stress enough how much she has helped me.

I can hardly believe how much has happened in the last few months. I started training on April 12, 2007. I was 288 lbs and 41.5% body fat. I couldn’t walk up stairs without labored breathing. I never slept well. I ate poorly. I never had any energy to do the things I wanted to do. Most of the time, I didn’t even feel well enough to enjoy going out with my wife.

I am now slowly moving from 265 lbs to 260 lbs and my body fat is around 24%. Michele comments regularly on my disappearing belly. Muscles are appearing in strange places around my body. I’m more energetic and I’m eating much better. I drink between 2 and 5 liters of water a day. I work out 3-6 days a week, doing everything from personal training to capoeira. I may be in better shape than I have been at any time in the last 10 years. I still weigh more than I did 10 years ago but I can’t recall the last time I could run this far or this fast.

The first month of training was very hard. I started out with an hour twice a week. I had to stop between almost every set and pant until I could breath again. Usually, I had to stop mid-set to catch my breath. Once I hit that wall of cardio endurance, usually about 20 minutes in, I was wiped out for the rest of the hour.

Three to four weeks in, I started training for an hour, three times a week. I was fanatic about pushing myself. I was coming in to do cardio most days when I wasn’t training and even some days that I was. On off days, I sometimes did cardio twice a day. Being alive was great and feeling my body function and function reasonably well was a new and invigorating experience.

Towards the end of the second month, my left hand started feeling numb. Some exercises, like push-ups on the ground, actually hurt. Then, my hand started to get worse and my wrist and elbow started aching. I saw my doctor and he told me to do three things, get tests, see a neurosurgeon and stop lifting weights completely.

The next few weeks were miserable for me. I felt like a carpet had been pulled out from under me. Finally, I start doing something right and my doctor tells me to stop. I had many tests. I saw the neurosurgeon. They wanted to cut my elbow open.

I got a second opinion. I saw a physiatrist and his answers made a lot more sense than those I’d had so far. He could explain what was happening and could answer questions the other doctors didn’t even come close to. And above all, he prescribed physical therapy not surgery.

For the last month, I’ve been going to physical therapy a couple times a week. They’ve done ultrasound (for deep muscle heating), trigger point massage, hot packs, and talked to me about the root causes of my problem. I’ve been doing daily targeted stretches and more recently started a series of rotator cuff exercises. I’m slowly correcting my posture which we hope will stop the symptoms as I no longer need to compensate for weak muscles in my back. And above all, I can exercise again.

A month ago I started capoeira and also starting training again. My training sessions are targeted now to avoid making my arm worse and to help speed my recovery. I do a lot more legs. Capoeira is very intense for my legs as well. I’ve also started doing a lot of high intensity interval training in my cardio. The all out bursts, several times a work out cause a post work out increase in metabolism that really burns calories.

The point is, four months is enough to change your life. Are you in shape? Can you do the things you want to do without worrying about passing out along the way? Do you have the energy to love the people around you or even yourself? If you don’t, there aren’t any valid excuses. Get up. Do something about it right now. There is no better time to start.

I’ve started training again. I’m going to try 2×1/2 hour sessions of lower body work until I can resolve my nerve problems in my arm. Things feel like they are getting better but I’m trying hard to avoid over doing it.

Sunday I did a half hour. Body weight squats, step backs from a stool and an ab exercise (lay down, arms above head, legs flat, bring up arms and one leg to touch directly over waist, reaching high, go back down, repeat with other leg) were the first rotation. The second rotation was stool cross overs (start with left leg on stool and right leg on floor, stand up on stool, hop from left foot to right foot and step down with the left leg to the floor, reverse, repeat) and the sideways crouch walk, down and back. The first rotation seemed easy but my concentration and balance were way down. The second rotation sent my pulse into the stratosphere. I hope we incorporate some weights on Thursday. I’m not doing cardio work outs right now as I think capoeira will more than make up that particular need and it is much more fun. I might try some capoeira conditioning if I can’t make it to class some nights.

The slump has been very hard. Doctors recommending surgery on my elbow and forbidding me from continuing to lift weights was a lot more difficult to respond to in a healthy way than I would have expected. I think I’ve been in mental hibernation for a couple weeks, through several tests and constantly worsening symptoms. I stopped doing nearly all cardio and of course I wasn’t doing any lifting. My weight stablized but it has been hard to resist bad habits without the recurring reminder of a training session to focus me on my goals. I’ve been moody and hard to get along with.

Tuesday, I took the day off to wait for the dishwasher installer. I took the morning off to mope and learn how to tie monkey fists. My obsessive personality of course suggested that I take the rope in to work and I’ve tied quite a few of these decorative knots over the last couple days. I don’t know if it is related but for the first time since my symptoms started, they have gotten a bit better instead of only getting worse. Maybe working my hands is helping. For a couple days, my hand has been mildly numb, there is almost no tingling and the pains have dropped almost to the point that I can’t feel them.

To top everything off, I had an amazing lunch today with my wife. I really wish you could have been there. Morels are still in season and Cafe Balabans makes them into the most amazing pasta I’ve had in ages.

Oh, and I think I might start studying another martial art tonight. Have you heard of capoeira? It is a Brazilian style, looks a lot like dancing and looks like a lot of fun. I think we will be going to class tonight. Maybe I’ll get a post up about how it goes.

For over a month, the ring finger and pinky finger of my left hand have been numb. After about 4 weeks, I saw my doctor about it. He seemed concerned and scheduled me for a couple tests. The X-ray of my neck was normal but then last Wednesday, I had a nerve conductance and EMG test. The nerve conductance part was interesting. They taped or hooked electrodes to different parts of my hand and wrist and then administered shocks of various strengths to different places.

The EMG part of the test was not fun. For that, they stuck needles in different parts of my hand and arm, apparently to measure the strength of the electrical signals my nerves are producing. The needles were very small but a couple of the placements were quite uncomfortable. Also, after getting a baseline (by twitching the needle she just stuck in my arm, I mean WTF?!) the doctor would ask me to tense a muscle in a particular way. One time, I did so much too quickly and too hard and believe me, it wasn’t a mistake I repeated twice. It really didn’t feel good when that happened. And finally, the needle she put into my tricep felt like being stung continuously by an angry bee. It also left a visible bruise. I suppose that needle was more painful because of the extra fat it had to go through to get to the muscle.

The whole test changed what was a mild day for my numbness to a bad day and my hand felt worse the rest of that day and the next. It also left aches, similar to arthritis, I think, in my wrist and elbow for the rest of the day. The result of the test, the testing doctor told me there is a problem with my ulnar nerve (duh) and it is causing damage (did she just say damage? I’d like to know what that means.) to the muscles it feeds. She also said we should take it seriously and my doctor would tell me more about what that means.

So now, I am waiting. My doctor didn’t call me on Thursday or Friday. The not knowing is gnawing at me inside. Fortunately, my wife is a saint because she has had to put up with a miserable spouse for a week and a half now. I don’t know how she does it.

When I saw my doctor about it the first time, he told me to stop lifting weights until he finds out what is wrong. As much as I’ve been looking forward to, and enjoying my lifting sessions, not lifting has been very hard on me. My mood is way, way, way down. I started the Couch to 5K running plan with my wife but it hasn’t felt like much exercise yet. Maybe if we do it on treadmills we can set our own pace.

The days when Michele meets with her trainer are the worst. I barely want to get out of bed. Today, I did cardio while Michele met with her trainer. Facing the gym, knowing I wouldn’t be lifting felt like my spirit was being buried alive. I think it might have been the first time I went in since I talked to my doctor and I can’t believe how hard it has been.

Anger and frustration do make good fuel for working out though. I managed an average heart rate of 159 for an hour. My peak heart rate was 184. I spent 20 minutes doing speed intervals on a step mill and I was apparently working hard enough to impress one of the trainers. I spent another 20 minutes on the treadmill trying some silly program (forest walk I think) but at the end I cranked the speed up until I spent the last 3-4 minutes running at 6mph. Despite that being when I hit my peak heart rate, I could have kept going. I only stopped because Michele was done.

At the tail end of my workout, I found a theme song for my last couple of weeks. It got through to me strongly enough that I listened to it twice. Stabbing Westward, Crushing Me. “I’m feeling the weight of the world and it’s crushing me. I’m feeling the weight of everyday life and it’s crushing me. How much more will it take? How much more until it breaks me?” Today would be a great day to take up a fighting sport, well, great for me, not so much for my partner.

Or in this case, six days. The old me (see earlier thug picture) was carying a lot of baggage and that baggage was getting heavy. At the end of last week, I snapped. I couldn’t stand to see that person in the mirror anymore as he hadn’t made any of the changes I’ve been working so hard on. The changing, vibrant, active, even happy, me was screaming to get out.

Looking for a little extra psychological edge, I decided to bleach my hair. My next door neighbor’s daughter is a hair stylist and she helped me out. The result is here and it is staring me in the face every time I look in the mirror. This face is happy. This face has energy. This face doesn’t care what you think because you can’t bring it down.

Welcome to the world, may you enjoy your stay.

I think too much. I cast my mind’s eye inward and constantly sift and weigh. I magnify my faults and insist I could always have done better. I make small of my achievements and belittle my spirit. Humility is a virtue but so is honesty especially with yourself.

I’ve been working out. Part of me believes I am working very hard. The narcissistic critic in my insists I give in too easily, that I take little things and magnify them as excuses and that I could always have given a little bit more.

Sunday, as I lay on the ground with the dry heaves, my inner voice wondered where the water I’d been drinking was and what had happened to the meal consumed only 110 minutes before. Surely, if I were really that taxed, they would be there on the ground before me.

Monday, as I contemplated another 3.5 minutes of pure torture on the stepmill at level 5, as my heart beat blood fit to burst my veins, as my legs screamed they could no longer support me, my inner critic assured me that I could do more if only I were just a little stronger of spirit. And as I collapsed at the base of the machine, without the will to continue and managed only to stand for that last 3.5 minutes of shame, my critic raged, ranted and railed.

Slowly, as I work to quiet this voice who belongs in the pantheon of inner speakers and who exists to spur me on to greater heights, but only when he is one of many speakers and not the one, holding sway in some endless filibuster of the soul, as I work to give strength to other voices inside myself, my inner champion, my herald, and all the other facets that combine to make me whole, as I work to combine all of these into a healthier whole, I find myself attempting this compromise: if I can set myself a target before I start, then it is ok to stop there, but if I set my target too high, I must kill myself to attain it. I know this is not healthy. I know it cannot be sustained. I do not know how to give in gracefully, before I go to far, before I tap reserves best left untapped and before I deplete the very resources that I am trying to increase.

Is it possible, like the bull in the ring, to run myself until my heart bursts? I’ll never know because I don’t have the mental stamina for it. I but wish I could stop for reason when instead I stop in shame. I am not Atlas to carry the world, nor Thor to drink the sea. I hope only to be myself and as strong as I can be.

If I look at my larger progress, it seem clear I should not be ashamed but when I look at my smaller failures they seem to be all I see. If you know how to look past the small barriers to see the heights that you have achieved, please, share your secret with me for while climbing the mountain, I feel blind to the vistas and see only the ridges behind and before me.

It was bound to happen eventually. Today, after the 3rd set of shuffles down and back (sprint sideways with your entire body in a very low squat) followed by tossing a 7kg medicine ball 10-12 feet in the air sideways from a kneeling position, I got the dry heaves. Sad to say, Laura had challenged me during the shuffles with “if you throw up I’ll be proud of you for pushing yourself so hard.” I didn’t have the energy to ask if dry heaves counted as I nearly lay with my face in the dirt wondering where the food I ate an hour and a half ago and where the water I’d been drinking for the last 50 minutes had gone. Nothing came up but my stomach sure thought it should be. Oh well.

Yesterday, I felt miserable. Faint, poor concentration – even when I was trying really hard, dizziness, nausea, the shakes; it really sucked. Not to mention the numbness in my left pinky and ring finger that I seem to have traced to a nerve in my funny bone and that has been like this since Tuesday.

I think this was all a message from my body’s enforcers. The message was, “if you continue to expect certain things from your body, yeah, then your body expects certain things from you.” Certain things, things like 1) Don’t skip cardio 4 days in a row, no excuse is good enough, 2) Get more sleep, 4 or 5 hours and we are going to start breaking knees, 3) When you only have 35 hours to recover between one lifting session with your trainer and the next (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM Wednesday to 6:00 AM – 7:00 AM Friday), don’t even think about smoking a hookah and drinking half a bottle of mead plus a glass of port, you stupid, stupid, careless man!

Yeah, I got the message. Time can only tell if I am smart enough to listen or if the enforcers will be back for another round.

And like any frightened enforcee, I did exactly what they wanted this morning, and I didn’t let anything get in the way. When the gym wasn’t open at 6:30 AM, I did walking lunges and body weight squats for 10 minutes getting my heart rate up over 155 and then did a medium to high intensity walk for 20 minutes followed by 7 minutes of speed intervals on the step mill because by then the gym was open.

This week has been very hard. I have not done a single cardio session since Monday. My mood has gone steadily downhill. To top it off, I smoked a hookah yesterday and polished off half a bottle of mead and a bit of port. If it weren’t for scheduled sessions with my trainer, I think this would be enough of a crisis to crush my will to continue and would be the point where I usually fall off of any exercise I start.

Trying to see changes in my body is like watching a glacier melt. Global warming is happening and the rate they melt is faster almost every day but the changes are still so slow that the changes you do see seem almost illusory. My body is changing though, just as the glaciers are melting. And global warming is an apt description of the pace of change as I don’t think changes could happen any faster. I’m eating every 3 hours, keeping my metabolism high. Usually, I am doing cardio at medium to high intensity 4-6 times a week for 40-60 minutes. I’m strength training 3 times a week with a trainer. My portion sizes when I eat are way down. I am not getting any simple carbs like high fructose corn syrup, white rice and non-whole grain flours. And I appear to be losing about 3 lbs a week which seems insanely fast but the slowly appearing definition of muscle suggests it is all being lost in the right places. But still, the tire rolls on and I’m not completely happy when I look in the mirror.

Without my trainer Laura’s help and support, I don’t think I could keep this up. Still, it seems every session I push harder, ignore a little bit more pain and hard breathing and accelerate my pace. And I am getting stronger and more fit. It took 15 years to get in this miserable condition, but maybe it will only take 1/10th of that to get out.

As a mental aid to keep up my will for the drastic changes I have made, I’m going to bleach my hair blond. It is the most drastic appearance change I can think of to shake me up and I’ve really wanted to do it for years. I will try to get before and after pictures posted so those few of you who are curious can see what it looks like.