HIIT

HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. I've ran across it a few times over the last couple of years and thought is looked interesting. The way that they work is after you warmup you have 6-10 intervals of going all out for a short period of time, then you take a little time to recovery at an easy/medium pace. They say this jacks up your metabolism for the next 24 hours so you can keep buring calories and it is also supposed to be some miracle workout that helps well trained athletes cut their time down 2% in just 7 weeks. All this stuff came from the Wikipedia article, check it out here.

Anyway, it was actually kind of cold out today and rainy this tonight. And on top of that tonight's game had already start by the time I got up from my nap (have I mentioned I don't sleep normal?). So I decided to give the treadmill in our clubhouse another shot.


Ok, let me back up a bit. I tried to run on the treadmill in our clubhouse awhile back (on 5/12 to be exact), but it didn't go great. The treadmill acted funny for me. I don't really know how to explain it, but I'm going to try. As I was running it was like I'm too fat for it or something and the tread would slow down when my foot landed. I had to catch myself a few times so I wouldn't fall. But Amy ran 5 miles on it last night and didn't have any problems.


And now back to the post. I decided that Tuesdays are going to be speed days for me and I had seen some HIIT podcasts before so I talked to my best bud, Google and he pointed me to GetFitPod. It had exactly what I was looking for, thanks again buddy. They have a 25 minute HIIT treadmill workout (get it here) which was exactly how long I wanted to run.

I started out on the treadmill, went through the warmup and the first interval, with the treadmill doing the same damn thing it did before, but only it only happened when I was going fast. Then on the second interval it was doing it a little bit more and then it just shutoff. I must have tripped something in it because I had to reset it after that. Anyway, that was it, just 5 minutes on the treadmill, and those will be the last five minutes I'm ever on it. So I moved over to the Elliptical machine and started over. I was able to complete the workout without killing the machine or anything like that, but it did sound like it was going to fall apart when I was going all out.

The podcast was great. The dude talking told you a little bit about what was going on during the warmup and then pretty much just left you alone until it was time to speed up or slow down. This workout was in a ladder structure, the hard parts where 30, 45, 60, 90, 60, 45, 30 seconds with a minute of recovery time between each.

I loved the workout. When I was going as hard as I could for 90 seconds (and the intervals after that) my legs burned like hell and I felt like I was going to die, IT. WAS. AWESOME. I'm going to make my Tuesday runs be HIIT workouts for the foreseeable future. I highly recommend checking them out.

Pushup Update - Week 2

Week 2 of the hundred push up challenge didn't exactly go great for me. In fact I think it would be fair to say that it completely kicked my ass.

On day one I missed the minimum for the max on the last set by 4. I manged to do a total of 58 though.

On day two I took tons of time between sets instead of just the 120 seconds I was supposed to, probably five minutes at least. That helped me come up just three pushups short. My total that day was 68.

Tonight I did day three. Well that isn't quite accurate, tonight, I attempted day 3. I knew from the very first set it was going to be a tough workout. I had to take a break halfway through the third set, manged a few more after that and then I quit. It just wasn't going to happen tonight. I did 11 out of 14 for the third set, skipped the 4th set of 14 and didn't even attempt to max. So I only manganged a total of 44.

Since I was so brutally defeated by week I'm not even going to attempt a max to see where I'm at like I'm supposed to. I'm just going to pretend that it never happened and do it again.

P.S. How do you spell pushups anyway? Is it pushup, push up, or push-up?

2009 Kearney Community Olympics - Schedule

In a recent post I presented some of the information I had on this years Community Olympics. Here is the tentative schedule of events. Apparently it may be altered slightly depending on the number of teams entered.

Friday, June 26
5:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. -- Jazzercise, Kearney High School
5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. -- Men's Doubles Pickleball, Horizon Middle School Gym
6:15 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. -- Track & Field (Long Jump, 200M Dash, 4x400M Relay), Kearney High School
7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. -- Women's Doubles Pickleball, Horizon Middle School Gym
8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. -- Women's, Coed & Men's Obstacle Course, Harmon Park

Saturday, June 27
7:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m. -- 5k Run/Walk, Good Samaritan Hospital (east parking lot)
9:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. -- Coed Inner-tube Water Polo, Harmon Pool
9:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. -- Mixed Doubles Tennis, Harmon Park
10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. -- Men's Two-Person Scramble Golf, Elks Country Golf
12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. -- Women's Two-Person Scramble Golf, Elks Country Golf
3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. -- Men's Croquet, Harvey Park (west soccer fields)
3:30 p.m. - 10:30 p.m. -- Coed Kickball, Harvey Park
4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. -- Women's Croquet, Harvey Park (west soccer fields)
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. -- Coed Doubles Horseshoes, Fairgrounds
7:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. -- Coed Doubles Cup Stacking, Harmon Park Activity Center

Sunday, June 28
7:15 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. -- 3 Mile Mtn. Bike Ride, Cottonmill Park East Shelter
7:15 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. -- 3 Mile Wellness Walk, West Lincolnway Park
9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. -- Women's Kayaking, Harmon Pool
9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. -- Men's canoeing, Cottonmill Park Marina
10:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. -- Women's 6-on-6 Hard Court Volleyball, Horizon Middle School
11:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. -- Men's Over-the-Line Softball, Harvey Park
12:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. -- Hot Shot Basketball Competition, Sunrise Middle School
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. -- Kearney's Best Dance Crew Competition, Merryman Center
5:15 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. -- Barbecue and Awards, Harmon Park Sontorium

100 Pushup Challenge

Last year I was working on completing the hundred pushup challenge. But I got busy with school and I couldn't commit myself to finding time to do my pushups. It's actually kind of weird. I would have had plenty of time to do it, but I just had so much stuff to do for school that I was always stressed out about it. Now I have all the time in the world. Since school got out I've been learning about web developement and am starting on a couple personal projects and I also started working out again. I think it was just the stress of school that stopped me from doing this stuff before, but I'm done now :-).

Sorry for the tangent, back to the post.

I started doing the hundred pushup challenge again and I just finished day one of week two. I amazes me how quickly the number of pushups I can do increases. When I did my initial test I managed to do 18 reps, which was more than I expected. I felt it for the next couple of days though. For my last workout I did a total of 58 pushups in 5 sets with shorts breaks between sets. So I did substantially more than I did that first day. With each workout that I have done I have been less and less sore afterwards.

I still have a very long way to go and 100 pushups without a break still seems impossible to me, but I'm going to keep plugging away at it until I get it done.

2009 Kearney Community Olympics

There doesn't seem to be much information on the Kearney Community Olympics that are held here every summer. This year I have some of the information early, instead of the day of like usual. So I thought I'd share it with the world.

PURPOSE: To encourage exercise, community spirit, teamwork socialization and fun.

TEAMS:

• Team members must be 18 years of age or older as of June 26, 2009.
• Teams are usually comprised of co-workers, neighborhoods, service clubs, churches, friends, etc.
• Teams must consist of at least 10 people, but no more than 30.
• Each team shall appoint a team captain and an assistant captain.
  

EVENTS:

Jazzercise	Pickleball	Track & Field
Obstacle Course	5k Run/Walk	Inner-tube Water Polo
Tennis	Golf	Kickball
Croquet	Horseshoes	Cup Stacking
Mtn. Bike Ride	Wellness Walk	Kayaking
Canoeing	Volleyball	Over-the-Line Softball
Hot Shot Basketball	Kearney's Best Dance Crew

I'll get the tentative schedule posted sometime in the next couple of days, but all of the events will take place June 26th, 27th and 28th.

I'd love to be able to just link to the Parks and Rec page with all of this information but I haven't been able to find it online. This page is all that I could find on it: Park & Recreation. If anyone knows of a better source of information please let me know.

Flexibility

I may have mentioned it before but I'm pretty much as flexible as a board. I always have been. I decided to do a little test. I sat with my heels against the wall and a ruler between my feet and I reached as far as I could. Now most people wouldn't be able to do the test this way because they would hit the wall. However, I was 3 inches short of it. According to this article, that is actually Fair for a guy.

I haven't done any research on it yet, but I suspect that I can improve my flexibility by just stretching more. I enjoying doing Yoga so I figure that will be a good way to improve my flexibility. YOGAmazing is a site that has free podcasts and stuff and he has one on Flexibility that I liked so I'm going to plan on doing that once or twice a week. Then I'll measure my flexibility the same way I did before to see if I improve any.

I Graduted

I am finally done with school. Today I received my bachelor's degree in Computer Science. It was a long road, 9 years and 4 schools. But I stuck with it and finally achieved my goal. The last semester I was extremely busy with three classes and working 40+ hours a week. So that didn't leave me much time for working out. But now I'm done and I feel like I have all the time in the world, so I'm going to start training and blogging about it again.

Last weekend Amy ran her first half marathon and she did great. She had an awesome experience and ran about 10 minutes faster than she was expecting to. It was definitely a motivation to see all the hard work she put in really pay off.

I've decided to train for the Buffalo Run. It is a 5 mile race in Lincoln on 9/13. So if I start the clock on Monday 5/11 that gives me 18 weeks to get ready, which should be plenty of time. I think I'm going to follow Galloway's 10k training plan. It is only 13 weeks long though so I'll have to make some adjustments to it. I might just do the first few weeks twice to get back into the swing of things. I also decided that I'm not going to worry about monitoring my heart rate for now, I'm just going to run.

That's all for now.