Archives for June 2008

100 Pushup Challenge: Week 2, Day 1

Monday evening I began my second week in the 100 pushup challenge. Week 1 was tough, but not exceedingly hard.

After doing my reps for day 1 of week 2, I felt pretty good after I finished. At the end of the sets I was able to max out my pushups with 15 pushups, which is the most I’ve done since starting the program. I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but it does make me feel like I’m working in a positive direction.

Week two starts out with a few less pushups (42) than week 1 ended on (44). So for tonight, my pushups went as follows: 9, 8, 6, 4, 15 (max). Total of 42 pushups for the day.

Wednesday will be day 2 of week 2. Stay tuned – will I break my new max pushups of 15?

Building a basic home gym doesn’t have to be expensive!

By Peter 2 Comments

photo credit: mrflip

A few years ago I decided that I wanted to build a home gym in one of our extra bedrooms, so that I could stop paying my high monthly fees to the gym we belonged to, and just start working out at home.

I wasn’t sure how expensive it was going to be, but after all was said and done we had probably spent almost $1000 for a treadmill, dumbbells, weight rack, weight bench, TV and mount, exercise videos and more.

Looking back I now realize that we could have gotten much the same value for a lot less money. If I were going to do it over, I am sure we could get everything we need for less than $150. Here is how I would do it.

Equipment

Dumbbells: I would buy a set of dumbbells for weight training that range in weight from 10-40 lbs or more. I bought individual weights, but probably a more frugal way to do this might have been for me to buy an adjustable weight set. I have seen a 40 lb weight set at my local Wal-Mart that adjusts from 5lbs all the way up to 40 lbs. It is similar to this one found at Wal-Mart.com ($150), but it wasn’t as nice or fancy. It cost about $65-70. Or if you want a fancier set, keep an eye out on Craigslist.com for a set at a greatly reduced rate. Craigslist is your friend when trying to find expensive workout equipment, you can find things for pennies on the dollar!

Weight Bench: Buy yourself a weight bench. Having one of these makes it a lot easier to exercise and get the most out of your workouts. I bought a cheaper bench that has worked just fine for about 4-5 years for $50 at a local sports store. If you look you can also find one with a built in weight rack to save you some money on a rack.

Shoes: Buy yourself a decent pair of running shoes if you don’t already have some. After you’ve been running for a couple of weeks you’ll be glad you’ve got some good shoes. You don’t have to buy an expensive pair to get a good value. I buy my shoes on sale at a local kohl’s, and can usually get them for $30-40.

So for around $150, you can get everything that you need to get started working out. You can obviously get fancier equipment, and spend a whole lot more money, but in my opinion you won’t get results that are any better.

The Plan

After getting the equipment you’ll need a plan for working out. There are a ton of free resources all over the web designed to help you in getting fit. I would suggest reading up on a bunch of them and finding one plan that you think will fit your lifestyle.
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For me, I chose to follow the Body For Life fitness plan. Basically it boils down to this:

Eat healthier
Exercise more (6 days a week, with one rest day).

Through the plan I’m eating leaner foods, more vegetables, and eating smaller portions more often during the day. I end up eating about 6 times a day.

For exercise I’m working out six days a week. Here is how it breaks down:

Day 1: Aerobic exercise, usually in the form of running, a workout video (The Biggest Loser Workout is a good one), or riding my mountain bike.
Day 2: Upper body weight lifting using the dumbbells and weight bench. I’ll do pecs, shoulders, back, biceps, triceps and stomach. All these exercises can be done using your cheapo dumbbells.
Day 3: Aerobic exercise again
Day 4: Lower body weight training using the dumbbells, and your own body weight.
Day 5: Aerobic exercise.
Day 6: Upper body weight training, same as day two, but possibly doing different exercises.
Day 7: Rest

Right now I’m also doing the 100 Pushup Challenge to augment my other exercise. So far so good on that front, but it’s only going to get harder from here on out. You can follow my progress on both the fitness front, and the pushup challeneg e right here. Good luck on your plan, and I hope you stay tuned for my own progress updates.

LINKS:
Build a home gym for less than $200 @ FrugalDad.com

How to build your home gym

100 Pushup Challenge: Week 1, Day 3

By Peter Leave a Comment

Saturday was day 3 of week 1 for my 100 pushup challenge. I didn’t get to my pushups yesterday because I was entertaining, and people showed up early. So I performed my pushups this morning.

One hundred pushups

Day three was a bit harder than day 2. Once again the reps on each set of pushups was slightly more than the day before. Since I was in the second column, the sets went from 10 pushups, two sets of 8, to 5, and then a max set where you do as many as you can.

I was feeling a bit stronger this day, and though it was tough, I was able to get through the sets doing 10-8-8-5-13. My set of 13 at the end was the most I’ve done so far. Not exactly impressive, but I was happy with it.

Here is my progress so far in chart form. As you can see the amount of pushups is going up, ever so slightly, ever day.

Next week, the pushups increase. I hope I can keep up!

LINKS:
100 Push-Up Challenge Website

100 Pushup Challenge: Week 1, Day 2

By Peter Leave a Comment

Wednesday was day 2 of week 1 for me in the 100 pushup challenge. Tonight I’ll be performing the day 3 routine. But first, how did day two go?

One hundred pushups

Day two was similar to day one, but the reps for the number of pushups you performed were slightly increased. If you wanted the rest period was also increased.

Pushup Challenge

On day 1 I was able to complete the reps without too much problem. Day two was a bit more difficult due to the fact that I was a little bit sore from day one, but I completed the reps again without too much problem. They went as follows: 9-8-6-5-11.

Once again as before the last set of at least 7 was a struggle all the way, but I pushed myself. Day three promises to be the hardest one yet. Stay tuned!

LINKS:
100 Push-Up Challenge Website

100 Pushup Challenge: Week 1, Day 1

By Peter 2 Comments

Last week I decided that I was going to start getting back in shape by joining in the 100 Push-Up Challenge that several other bloggers have been talking about the last coule of weeks. J.D. over at GetFitSlowly.com started the trend last week by asking who else would join in the program. I decided to join after several other bloggers I’m familiar with, including The Happy Rock, decided to jump on board as well.

One hundred pushups

The one hundred pushups program requires joiners to do pushups three days a week for six weeks. Each day you perform five sets of push-ups, with a 60-120 second rest period between each set. The number of pushups you perform every week increases until at last during the final week, there is a slight cool-down week. A few days after you finish week six, you try for the magic number of one hundred push-ups.

Can I do it? I don’t know, but I’m certainly going to try! I’m going to be re-starting my Body For Life program at the same time, and I think they’ll work nicely together.

Last week I performed my initial push-up test, and it was extremely humbling. 10 push-ups was all I could manage! Because of the number I completed in my initial test I started the pushup challenge earlier in the week by doing a series of push-ups as shown in column 2 below:

I was able to do the recommended reps. My reps looked like this: 7-7-5-4-11 (with 60 seconds of rest between each set) . After I was finished doing my pushups my arms were shaking. The next day I was sore, so I know I was working some muscles that hadn’t been worked in a while.

I know this isn’t going to be easy, but now that I’ve started and I’m blogging about it, I’m committed. Will you join in and start the pushup challenge too? If so, let us know how you’re doing! Stay tuned for Day 2 of the challenge!

LINKS:
100 Push-Up Challenge Website
100 Push-up challenge @ GetFitSlowly.com
Exercise for Free @ TheHappyRock.com
Free Workout Program @ TheHappyRock.com

Free online resources for losing weight and getting fit

By Peter 8 Comments

Running to get fit

Over the past few days I’ve been putting together a list of some free online resources that helped me in losing weight last year, and I’m sure that can help you as well.

A caveat I should put here – I’m a firm believer that there is no big secret to weight loss. Any successful weight loss plan comes down to two simple steps:

1. Eat healthier.

2. Exercise more.

I know a lot of people who make excuses for their weight gain or inability to lose by saying things like, “I just have a different body type than you”, or “I never seem to lose when I work out”. My answer to those people is that you’re probably not doing something right. Either you’re still not eating healthy, or your exercise program is leaving something out. (not enough exercise, or not enough of the right kind of exercise). A lot of those people just don’t have the patience to stick to a workout plan as long as it takes to see some real results. Sometimes it may take 30-60 days for you to notice any real progress, but trust me, if you stick to it you’ll lose weight!

With that said, on with the weight loss resources! The ones in red are my current favorites, and the ones I use the most.

Free resources for getting fit:

100 Push-Up Challenge: website that will get you on track to do 100 Push-Ups in 6 weeks, or your money back! (You don’t pay anything, don’t worry).
Traineo.com: Traineo is a website where you can track your weight loss, hook up with other individuals to keep you motivated, track your workouts and a ton of other stuff. You can even get a cool little badge to put on your blog to show your pounds lost, or pounds to go until you reach your goal. Great site, I would check this out.
Bodyforlife.com: Great motivational website with lots of stories of regular people changing their lives, losing weight and becoming fit. Tons of great healthy recipes, workout programs and more to get you going on a lifestyle of fitness. I used the Body For Life program to lose 40 lbs last year. You can get the book through my link below as well if you’re interested in the program.
StrongLifts.com: The tagline for this website is, “Build Muscle & Lose Fat through Strength Training”. This website has a ton of practical weight lifting exercises for regular people. Lifting weights is probably THE best weight to drop weight. When I started lifting with dumbbells at home, the weight dropped MUCH quicker.
Read diet and weight loss blogs: GetFitSlowly.com, Drop the Fork, Skinny Kat and The Better Body Blog are a few, although there are a ton more out there.
Eatright.org: The American Dietetic Association’s Web site will give good nutrition advice.
thedailyplate.com: – This site helps you track foods, exercise, carbs, protein, water, sodium, fiber, sugars, sodium, fat and fiber.
Easy Ways to Lose Weight: 50+ Ideas: Quick and easy tips and pointers on how to lose weight.

User suggestions left in the comments:

Gyminee.com: I just signed up, and it seems to be quite similar to traineo.com. Worth a look! (thanks L@spillingbuckets! )
The Hacker’s Diet: I haven’t checked this one out too much yet, but it looks interesting. (thanks TUDrewser!)
Sparkpeople.com: track your eating and exercise. Lots of articles about health, nutrition, and fitness. (thanks Eponine!)

So there you have it, some great free resources for losing weight online. Keep in mind that losing weight is still going to be up to you, and you’ll need to have the discipline to get it done. Get crackin!

Don’t forget to check out my recommended weight loss and workout plan in the book “Body For Life“, and at their website discussed above.

Welcome to Quick to Fit!

By Peter 1 Comment

Hello everyone, this is the inaugural post for QuicktoFit.com! I started this blog as a way to keep myself accountable for my fitness life, in a similar way that my other blog, BibleMoneyMatters.com has helped me to remain accountable in my personal financial life. Blogging about the subject means that I have to think about it, and the fact that I’m writing about my progress means that I’ll be embarrassed when I backslide or don’t follow through with my exercise plan.

photo credit: Seth W.

So with that said, I’ll start out by giving a quick rundown of my personal fitness level, where I’ve been, and where I hope to be.

I am 32 years old, 6’4″, and at my heaviest last year I weighed 255 pounds. I was overweight, but because I’m so tall I was able to distribute the weight well enough that I didn’t look as overweight as I was. When I mentioned to others that I wanted to lose some weight they would say things like “Oh, you don’t need to lose weight, you don’t look that heavy!”, or “You DON’T need to lose weight, I do!”. I wasn’t happy with my personal fitness level, and knew I needed to make a change – no matter what other people told me.

The final straw that really got me going on a fitness regime was when I was driving home from work one day, and every time I hit a bump in the road, I could feel my fat jiggling. That was just gross, and I knew this needed to be fixed.

A few years previous I had lost 10-15 pounds using the Body For Life system, and I knew it worked well for me. It was also a plan I knew I could stick to, so I started doing the plan in February. I began exercising 6 days a week by lifting weights 3 days a week, and doing aerobic exercise (interval training) 3 days a week. I also began eating healthier, 6 times a day. Over about 4-5 months I lost 40 pounds through the program. I was down to 215 pounds, and was feeling more fit than I had in years.

Over the last 6-8 months since then I have let my exercise and eating regime slip. It’s been a tough 6 months where my wife almost died from a complete leg blood clot, and we had a death in the family. I just haven’t been motivated to work out or eat well. In fact, when my wife was in the hospital for a month, I ate at Mcdonald’s almost every day, and probably gained 5-10 pounds that month alone.

Well, this past week I realized that I had gained 20 pounds back of the 40 I had lost, and knew I needed to stop the bleeding before I gained it all back. It is time to get back on wagon, and lose the remaining 35 pounds to get to my goal weight of 200 pounds.

So here we are. I’m currently at about 235 pounds, and ready to start back on a weight loss plan. Time to start. Here we go. Join with me, and we can all go from slow to fat, to quick to fit!