Everyday Systems

So, I've been doing my Urban Running (on a treadmill) and that has been going great.

I have been shovelgloving, which has also been going great.

What has not been going great? The fact that I still have a round belly. While this doesn't bother me, for inspiration, I've been following the following website:

http://bendoeslife.tumblr.com/

It is great, but when Ben weighed 280 lbs, he was in pants smaller than I am. We are the same height, but I weigh 40 lbs less. The major thing that he does differently than I do is, he is doing boot camps which compose of ab workouts (and a lot of other crap )

So, I figured, why not throw in some ab work and see what happens. I have found the following website:

http://www.twohundredsitups.com/

...And did the initial test. I was able to do 60 crunches without stopping. I would like to take a second to thank shovelglove for the abs, without you, I would have nothing...

This allowed me to jump to week 3 and start the program from there. Day one, I really feel my abs and it was a good workout. I think instead of 3 days, I am going to do it every other day and see how it goes. Worst case, I can always cut back.

The key to adding any additional component is to ensure that it doesn't affect the other aspects of life. If it will affect running or shovelgloving, I will need to re-evaluate. Until then, lets see if I can do 200 situps in 3 weeks!

Oh and in honor of the everyday systems, I was done in less than 10 minutes.

Apparently, I may not be doing my crunches correctly, my neck is sore moreso than my abs. I will need to work on this...

So far though, so good.

hi koopa, you might want to get one of those "ab roller" tubular metal crunch things.. they're great and not too much of an investment.. rather than straining your neck and arms, it gives them a padded cushion, and place to rest, and takes them out of the equation, and then you can concentrate on isolating the contraction of your abs when doing the crunch.
people often do crunches and situps wrong by getting the movement/momentum from jerking their heads and arms forward.
when i was doing crunches in the past i used that and i got results and could do 200 crunches within a month. i think i just convinced myself to get one again as i no longer have the old one.

good for you on your new fitness goal! strong abs are a good thing!
keeps you from hurting your back to have fit abs, and it's nice not to have so much bulk in front
how's the baby doing btw?

gratefuldeb67 wrote:hi koopa, you might want to get one of those "ab roller" tubular metal crunch things.. they're great and not too much of an investment.. rather than straining your neck and arms, it gives them a padded cushion, and place to rest, and takes them out of the equation, and then you can concentrate on isolating the contraction of your abs when doing the crunch.
people often do crunches and situps wrong by getting the movement/momentum from jerking their heads and arms forward.
when i was doing crunches in the past i used that and i got results and could do 200 crunches within a month. i think i just convinced myself to get one again as i no longer have the old one.

good for you on your new fitness goal! strong abs are a good thing!
keeps you from hurting your back to have fit abs, and it's nice not to have so much bulk in front
how's the baby doing btw?

Debs,

I will have to look into one of them but for right now, the old fashioned way will have to do!

Family is doing well, Hope is 19 days old, time flys! It is strange to have a "normal" baby, people take that for granted wayyyy too much!

Well, week 3 day 2 is completed! For the final set, I was able to rip out 70 crunches over my 60 from Friday, so improvement has occurred!

that's great to hear Hope is doing well and healthy!
congratulations!
good to hear you're doing well with your crunches!

A quick tip on strength training: slower is better. Don't try to get it all done as fast as possible; you'll end up kicking off with the wrong muscles and using momentum to drive the movement, leading to possible injury. That's probably why your neck is sore. It's a lot more beneficial to do the exercise correctly and for fewer repetitions than it is to crank out loads badly. Good luck with upping the numbers.

ThomsonsPier wrote:A quick tip on strength training: slower is better. Don't try to get it all done as fast as possible; you'll end up kicking off with the wrong muscles and using momentum to drive the movement, leading to possible injury. That's probably why your neck is sore. It's a lot more beneficial to do the exercise correctly and for fewer repetitions than it is to crank out loads badly. Good luck with upping the numbers.

ThomsonsPier: thanks for the advice, will keep that in mind. Week 3 day 3 finished. Last set I was able to rip out 100 crunches, so I think 200 is achievable.... time will tell

Week 4 day 1 in the books.

Week 4 day 2 in the books.

For the last set, I've been hitting 100 crunches. After about 40 or so, I start to feel that burning sensation and then I can go farther. I could push it even farther than 100, but I don't want to hurt anything. Besides 100 crunches seems pretty decent to me

I have a feeling I will have no problem hitting 200 crunches in 2 weeks.

Week 4 Day 3 done.

So far, I'm still maxing at 100 crunches at the end, though if I wanted to, I probably could do more. I am "feeling the burn" pretty good after 50, and I push through it to 100. Considering the max for week 4 is 60, I'm still considering myself ahead of the game...

Week 5 Day 1 is complete.

Final session did 150 crunches. 200 crunches seems very likely within the next week or so.

Week 5 Day 2 is done.

The only interesting thing to note is that I did the crunches while on a conference call. It was definitely value added to those boring calls.

Last set was 150 crunches, but felt like I could do more.

Week 5 Day 3 is done.

Last set was 150 crunches. Again, could have done more, but why?

Week 6 Day 1 in the books. Again, did the 150 at the end thing.

Week 6 day 2 in the books. I think I'm just going to try 200 crunches and see if I can do it today....having to deal with all those sets is starting to make my head spin.

Mission complete. 200 crunches performed by me!

Still doing 200 crunches. I try to do it every work day. Abs of steel, baby!

Congrats on the situps. I personally can't stand doing them. I would rather do ab roll outs, they are harder for me, but on the positve side, I can do less reps than situps.

For the record, I gave up on this workout aspect

Thanks for the "full disclosure."

Always helpful to know what winds up sticking and what doesn't.

Self-improvement is experimental -- you have to try stuff to find out what works. Some/most of it isn't going to work. That's fine. If you're afraid of trying you're never going to get anywhere.

Reinhard

And hey, it did work in terms of the goal you set out to achieve.

I'm curious, too. I know naturally thin people may need abs work to make them stand out, but Tom Venuto, fat loss coach and competitive bodybuilder, said he once went an entire year without doing any targeted abs work, but he still had a six pack because his body fat was low. He claimed that most people already have abs. They just have fat on top.

Not that we want to turn you into someone living by the almighty bodybuilder mind set. But for health's sake, smaller waists are better. My understanding is that most of the abdominal fat is underneath the ab muscles in the cavity and thus responds more to calorie deficit.

Maybe it's a moot point?

Obviously, I am not a thin person I now have a "two pack" which divides where my abs are to where my fat covers my abs. I have always had a large gut, and it makes it seem that I am much heavier than I truly am. I currently weigh 223, and look as heavy as other people who weigh 260 or 270.

My goal was to strengthen my core which it did achieve. It did not make my stomach any smaller which is why I finally abandoned the project