Tag: gym

Time to combat the dad bod

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the challenges that have emerged during the journey of raising a second child is that I’ve basically had to give up running.  I haven’t run since October, and it’s been way longer than that since I’d last had a formal workout in a gym.  Raising kids has a tendency to make stuff like exercise expendable in a day’s agenda, and it was bad enough I had to forfeit gyms due to pandemic, but throwing a second kid into the mix has taken running off the table for me as well over the last few months.

Needless to say, I’ve watched my weight do some rollercoaster-ing since the original lockdown occurred, and now it’s not headed in the right direction.  At first, my weight started to drop because I wasn’t eating well, often not eating enough, and with the gym off the table, muscle mass began deteriorating, so the weight from muscle mass presumably started coming off.  Eventually, running became my only real exercise, and doing cardio with no weight training meant that I could really only lose more weight, and I actually got my weight down to almost my peak high school weight, in the 170’s area, and I actually felt like I was looking pretty decent, in spite of the loss of all my gains.

Eventually #2 showed up and life went into hard(er) mode with two kids in tow.  With my job also ruining my life at this point and the challenges of raising two kids simultaneously, the running eventually ceased, and mythical wife and I more or less went into survival mode as far as our eating habits went.  We never had the time and/or energy to cook not-trash food for ourselves, and with the little time we did have, we have been eating a whole lot of garbage over the last few months.  My weight has been creeping up in this time, and it’s been especially noticeable when I’d be doing virtual job interviews and putting on dress shirts, and feeling the bulge and tightening in all the wrong places.

I normally don’t like to put too much stock into weight numbers, since when I worked weights I always spouted the whole muscle weighs more than fat thing, but with no weights in play, I knew that each and every pound that I’d gain was solely based on my own poor choices.  At the time of starting this post, I’d crept up to 192.4 lbs., and with the reality that I haven’t exercised in months, that means I’m 192.4 lbs. of fat fucking American embodiment of failure.

Anyway, my intention is to stop the bleeding, and to try and get back on the horse.  Due to the fact that #2 has been sleeping at night fairly well as of late, I had the confidence to get back on the treadmill and go for a run, the first one I’ve done since October 7th, 2021 (thanks Garmin fitness tracker).

It was the worst run I’ve had in probably 16 years, since I’m basically starting from scratch.  I was running at a pace that I had to keep slowing down .1 at a time because I was blowing out and getting gassed, and it took me nearly 40 minutes to traverse three miles.  Now I say traverse, because I definitely didn’t run the whole time, like I used to do my old workouts of non-stop running.  My pace was probably around 12 minutes a mile, a far cry from my old 9:50 pace, and I feel like I have a long way to go before I can competently get back to those kinds of splits.

But it was also the best run I’ve had in a very long time, because I actually got to do it.  And one thing I’ve always stated is that at no point ever, does running ever feel like a waste of time, and that’s absolutely one thing that I love, because I abhor feeling like I’m wasting time.

If all goes well, I’ll get back to a general routine of running every other day, which is good because running is also when I can try to catch up with watching things, since I can watch things on my iPad.

Furthermore, at the new gig, I’ve done some recon and my access to the fitness center has been activated, so I now officially have a place where I can hit some weights again, which I’m super excited to get started with.  I’m not really looking forward to the fact that I’ll be starting from scratch there, which means the inevitable soreness from doing, everything, is going to be pretty prevalent, but once it dissipates, I’m hoping to try and build back some of the muscle that I’ve clearly lost over the last two years.

It’s not the best stocked fitness center there is, but it doesn’t cost anything and has some free weights, so I can at least not feel entirely like a geriatric living on machines.  I intend to make the best of it, and declare war on the flab that I’ve amassed over the last few months, because how far I’ve fallen off the wagon is not okay, and there’s little I want more than to change that.

Changing the eating habits is probably going to be a bigger hurdle to clear, but at least if I have some exercise back into the rotation, that should help suppress some of the physical decay I’ve been allowing to happen to me.  I’d prefer to have the dad bod that actually looks like I work out occasionally versus the dad bod of the guy that’s let go of everything and will have to start buying bigger clothing because of it.

New Father Brogging, #037

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honestly?  Maybe it’s because I’m months past the period of infancy where babies do not sleep throughout the night and I’ve long forgotten the rigors of sleepless nights and daytime fatigue.  Or maybe my daughter has been particularly amenable as far as babies go.  But if you were to ask me how difficult raising a baby for the first time has been, and I think I would say that it wasn’t nearly as hard as people made it out to be.

Sure, early on there’s the endless amounts of fear and anxiety at the start as new parents, we don’t know what the heck we’re doing.  And then there’s sleep regressions quarterly that make me want to jump out windows.  And then there’s teething, and the introduction of solid foods, and then more teething that make running with razor blades seem like a mercy.

But once routines are established, reinforced and set in, things actually operate fairly smoothly.  The days become somewhat predictable, and once you know when you might actually have time to manage, things become somewhat more manageable.  So either I’ve been cruising on a nice little routine for a while, or I simply was not prepared for the difficulty jump that comes with the start of being able to say “years” in age, instead of just months.

Needless to say, the photo above has been a frequent view of mine throughout the last weeks since my daughter turned one year old.  It was almost perfect at the rate in which she hit 12 months and it just kind of clicked for her to go from awkward army crawling, to not just full-fledged crawling so much as she often uses her little left leg to thrust her further and faster, and covers ground at an impressive pace.

When I saw that there was a class of Huggies diapers called Little Movers, I just had this feeling that my child was destined to become one of those kids.  And at one point, mythical wife and I had a little concern that she might be falling behind in mobility, and prepared for more time of constantly disclaiming adjusted age since she was premature.  But then came army crawling, and like lightning striking she’s not just crawling at a rapid pace now, she’s been experimenting with getting up onto her legs and standing without assistance periodically now.

Continue reading “New Father Brogging, #037” →

Pour one out for my dead treadmill

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My treadmill died this weekend.  I feel like I’ve lost a limb.

Ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic really began, one of the first things to obviously go, was, the gym.  Something that I’d been consistently doing for literally ten straight years, and if I were factoring in the sporadic working out I did intermittently while I was freelance, butted up against the time before that when I was working and had a gym membership, then probably 15 straight years.

It was not an easy pill to swallow, but it was made easier by the fact that it also coincided with the birth of my daughter, so frankly I was too busy to even consider working out in the first place anyway.  But once things starting settling down (for the time being), I began to notice that my shirts were starting to feel a little loose in the arms, and tight in the stomach.  Obviously my body was beginning to revert back to a lesser state because I wasn’t exercising at all, and most definitely not aided by the sleep schedule of a new father.

Eventually, I reached a point where I couldn’t take it anymore, so I dusted off the treadmill that my mother-in-law bequeathed to us, and began running on it.  I remember the first time I really did a lengthy jog on it, I did probably about 40 minutes at a light pace, and I felt absolutely incredible afterward.  I was soaking in sweat but my body felt alive again, and I most definitely felt elation at the endorphins that were popping anew in my system for the first time in a long time.

Needless to say, running, and running on the treadmill has been the only real substantial exercise I’ve been doing since like, April of last year, and it’s been the only real saving grace to my rapidly shrinking and deteriorating physical state, since I haven’t lifted weights in quite literally, almost an entire year.

My angst and rage at the legions of ignorant fucks who couldn’t be bothered to wear masks and eradicate all this bullshit in just a month and that ‘Murica is still in this fucking predicament to where I still can’t work out, knows no end.

Anyway, I eventually settled into a pretty good every-other-day running routine, and I always feel pretty good after running, because as I’ve always stated as one of my personal exercise mantras, is that time is never wasted when exercising.

But a few days ago, I noticed that my treadmill was starting to make a really loud sound.  Typically I wear my AirPods and am often times watching shit on the WWE Network, so I can’t really hear the ambient noise of the treadmill, but when I was winding down, it was noticeably loud.  I chalked it up as an anomaly, and hoped it would be gone the next time I ran.

It wasn’t.  I popped open the mechanical panel, to see if there was anything obvious about why it was making such noise.  Nothing seemed amiss, and I ran it on a low setting, with the panel open to see if there was any loose parts.  If anything at all, it sounded like body noise that was causing things, which I guess with the aging, vibrating, and the fact that I probably run with an elephant’s stride, shit had jarred around throughout its age.

I closed up the panel and decided to just run anyway, and brace occasionally on the console, to see if I could settle the noise down.  It seemed to be okay at first; but then three minutes into my run, everything just kind of clunked to a stop, and I’m surprised I didn’t hurt myself in the process being brought down from 6.5 mph to 0.

I got off the treadmill and watched it abruptly reset and made a noise, reset and make a noise.  Obviously, something was wrong with it, so I pulled the plug.

As far as I can tell, the treadmill was dead.  I haven’t ran since.

Obviously, I’m at a crossroads where I definitely want a new treadmill to replace the dead one, but I’m not sure if I want a fairly inexpensive direct replacement of what just died, which would probably run me around 300-400, but mythical wife is really suggesting that we spring for something way nicer.  But at the same time, I want to believe that maybe 2021 will be a year in which with vaccinations, I might be able to return to a gym, to which in those instances, my running at home will definitely reduce dramatically as I would be working out at gyms again, to which why would I want to have an expensive treadmill collecting dust?

I don’t know, really.  For the time being, I’m going to have to resort to running outdoors again, but I’m at the mercy of the elements, and the fact that there are still occasionally fucks without masks out there, and I definitely don’t want to catch their coronaHIV while I’m just trying to exercise.

But I’m super sad that my treadmill died. 😢

The 100 Push-up Year (~ish)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It was easy for me to remember, since it happened during last year’s National Championship game, but I started on what I had discovered was the 100 Push-up Challenge, where I had to do 100 push-ups a day for 30 straight days.  It seemed attainable enough, and I’m always game for ways to improve my physical well-being in simple and cost-efficient ways.

In short, I succeeded in doing 100 push-ups in 30 days, realized some physical shortcomings in how sore I got from the start but then finding some marginal gains throughout the month, and I was pretty pleased by the free gainz gotten from what was basically a fairly basic exercise regimen for a month.

Naturally as the creature of habit that I am, I decided to why stop at 30 days, and just soldered on to see if I could make it an entire year of doing 100 push-ups every single day.  The last thing I wanted to do was to stop cold turkey, and if I ever decided to pick it up again, end up being sore as shit all over again, so why put myself in a position for that to ever be the case?

So, one year later, and I can successfully say that I did my 100 push-ups (almost) every single day.  I unfortunately have to add that almost, because there were some days in which I slipped up and simply forgot to do them, or worse off, I started doing them, but then didn’t finish all 100, to which I still count as a loss.

The funny thing is, even in the hectic period that was the birth of my child, I still did my 100 push-ups, on the cold hard floor of the hospital in the recovery room of my wife.  Newborn baby or not, I was still determined to not let the challenge rest, as long as I could still remember to do it.  It wasn’t until after the baby was home, and then I was adapting to the brave new world of being a new father, working from home, and staying there because of coronavirus, did I have the occasional slip-up and simply forget and fail to do my push-ups.

  • Statistically, my first slip-up happened on March 13, 60 days after starting 100 push-ups a day
  • The longest continuous stretch of push-ups was 132 days, starting on May 23, and ending on October 3
  • On November 5 and 6 were the only consecutive days in which I failed, and worse off, both were days in which I did 60 push-ups earlier in the day, but then forgot to the remaining 40 later on

Overall, I had nine days in which I failed to do 100 push-ups, so in the grand spectrum of the year, I had a winning percentage of .975 which is pretty outstanding, but in the grand spectrum of high-expectations Asian father, it was still pretty unacceptable to have anything short of 100%.

For the first few months, I alternated between doing flat palm push-ups and dumbbell push-ups, but eventually I scrapped the dumbbell ones, because I didn’t feel they were giving me enough variation and I thought they were easier than flat palm, and frankly to me easy = less effective.

Throughout the year, I’d also change my intervals periodically, going from 34, 34, 33 to 50, 50, and every few days do like 10 sets of 10, or four sets of 25.  But towards the end, and up to the last few days, I’ve been doing 70 and 30, just to really push myself by doing 70 in a row, which never ever really got easy at any point.

Frankly, doing 100 push-ups a day was never easy, and if it wasn’t physically tiring, it was just a pain in the ass to do on some days in which I just didn’t feel like doing them.  But what really got me through it a lot of the times why I’m using the image above, was I’d think about that scene in Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt, where she talks about how anyone can endure anything for ten seconds, and tell myself that anyone can endure ten push-ups, so when I’d count my push-ups, I’d do loops of ten, while mentally keeping track of how many tens I’d do before stopping.

Some days it worked better than others.

Ultimately, what I had hoped was that this would be a great exercise to do to supplement my gym routine, but seeing as how I have not been to the gym since March 10, 2020, I have no real idea how the physical results have been.  I’ve lost weight despite not at all dieting throughout the year, which means I’ve lost muscle mass, which is obvious because some of the shirts that were flatteringly snug in the arms aren’t even close anymore.  Frankly, the push-ups have been the only thing that have probably kept my arms from atrophying entirely over the year, and I impatiently wait the day in which I can actually go back to a gym and lift some weights again.

Either way, (almost) one entire year of doing push-ups every single day.  Not sure how this would have transpired if we weren’t in a pandemic, and my days probably would have had a lot more variables and outside-the-home happenings, but regardless, I succeeded in doing push-ups every single day at a 97% clip.  Not too bad, and one of the few things that’s kept me relatively physically active.

And for lack of wanting to regress, I’ll probably keep going, as best as I can.

I’m going to be screwed when/if the pandemic ends

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often the case, I struggled immensely to come up with things I wanted for gifts for Christmas.  In the end, my general listed pretty much revolved around all sorts of sweats, compression gear and athletic apparel, and I was fortunate enough to be thought of by enough people to have gotten quite a good bit of it.

That being said, since none of this stuff really serves me much purpose outside of the gym, or at home, or while working out at home, when and if the pandemic ever ends and I have to start going back on-site to work, I’m pretty much going to be screwed as far as the usefulness of all this stuff is concerned.

I’ll definitely be better equipped for the gym, outdoor running, or when I feel like feeling like a sausage at home, but in the grand spectrum of time spent in this kind of stuff is going to pale in comparison to the kinds of clothing that I’ll be expected to wear in the workplace, or going out for societal functions again, not that I couldn’t just be that guy who always wears athletic gear everywhere he goes.

It’s just kind of funny though, since this just feeds the narrative that as we get older, the more and more practical our gift choices become, and how ecstatic we are to get things like socks, accessories and mundane clothing.  Because this isn’t in the least bit facetious or resentful for my gift haul, I couldn’t be any happier with all the things that I got, because they’re all things that I’ve wanted, but been too cheap to spend my own money on, and now I don’t have to, but can have all the athletic gear I always wanted in the end.

A sad reminder of how much I miss the gym

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A week ago, I ran 13.1 miles to fulfill the obligations of the Disney Dine & Dash Wine & Dine Half Marathon that mythical wife and I signed up for months ago.  We were itching for redemption to run it this year, as we had to bow out the year prior with lots of sour grapes on how runDisney handled it, because of a little unexpectedly quick turn around on pregnancy, but we signed up for it in 2020, thinking we would have our opportunity to redeem ourselves as well as introduce our little one to her first Disney trip.

Among other things ruined on account of coronavirus, this too was denied to us again for a second year, but we opted to stay registered and run our half marathons virtually.

Mind you, in spite of having obligations of a half marathon, I’ve basically been living on auto-pilot for large swaths of the year, and I hadn’t really done any proper distance training leading up.  I run regularly, but only around three miles per run, mostly for maintenance and health purposes, and not necessarily with a distance goal in mind.  Regardless, because I was planning on doing run/walk, I was still confident that I would be able to pound out 13.1 miles without killing myself.

Sure, some preparation probably would have made things easier, but I did just that, and finished my half marathon’s distance without dying.  I admittedly hit a wall a little faster than I had hoped, and by mile 10 I was running out of gas pretty quickly, and my right calf was telling me that it was very unhappy with my choices in life, but I still finished, and under my goal time of 2 hours and 30 minutes to boot.

I figured I would be in pretty rough shape afterward, seeing as how such was usually the case whenever I’d done any prior 10K or 10-milers in the past, with training, but the following day, it was nothing more than the atypical tender quads and achy ankles, leading me to be quite satisfied that I wasn’t a complete train wreck of a physical specimen after having not been to the gym in literally eight months.

A day ago, as is something that always has to be done this time of year, I went outside and raked leaves, as I have three very large trees on my property, and therefore have a metric fuckton of leaves to have to rake.  It was a massive pain the ass last year, as I had but a cheap wire rake that I had procured from Amazon, so I decided to not be a cheapskate and get myself a real, effective rake, even if it meant that I had to leave my house and go to a Home Depot to buy one. 

Continue reading “A sad reminder of how much I miss the gym” →

Even gainz take a backseat to safety

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because of the timing that I’m raising a child now, I don’t think I’ve gotten nearly the cabin fever or feel that I’m missing out on as much as other people are when it comes to staying at home and doing my best to social distance.  Sure, I miss going out to eat, and occasionally getting in my car and going somewhere frivolous, but with a newborn in play, it’s not like I’d be doing such regardless of if there were a pandemic or not.

One of the few things that I do miss like crazy, is the gym.  For obvious reasons, the gym in my workplace is closed, and even if I wanted to pay another business, most regular gyms are closed as well.

For nearly the last 13 years, I can say definitively, that I’ve gone to the gym at least once a week, for at least 98% of that time frame.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times I went longer than two weeks without hitting a gym at some point, and it gives me great satisfaction in not being too overly sore from working out on a regular basis, because my body had become pretty primed to the feeling of lifting weights regularly.

But with Georgia (foolishly) reopening, gyms have been given the green light to open up for business as well, as long as “proper” social distancing protocols are put into place.  For a while, LA Fitness had opted to stay closed, regardless of the green light, and I kind of respected them as a company for doing such, even though I had less than fond memories of when I was a member for several years myself.

However, even LA Fitness decided to want to make money again, and has begun opening up their Georgia gyms as well.

Regardless, this is where I have to say that even though gyms are now once again open, and I could theoretically get back into a gym and start lifting weights again, the gym is about the last fucking place on the planet that I’d want to go to in the middle of this pandemic.

Continue reading “Even gainz take a backseat to safety” →