I'm a yo-yo

Take a sledgehammer and wrap an old sweater around it. This is your "shovelglove." Every week day morning, set a timer for 14 minutes. Use the shovelglove to perform shoveling, butter churning, and wood chopping motions until the timer goes off. Stop. Rest on weekends and holidays. Baffled? Intrigued? Charmed? Discuss here.
Post Reply
MustardTiger
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2012 1:47 am
Location: Salt Lake City,Utah

I'm a yo-yo

Post by MustardTiger » Sun Apr 08, 2012 2:16 am

My wife and I have been yo-yo's for years. I have lost and gained the same 60+ lbs 4 separate times in the last 12 years. I'm currently doing modified Body for Life workout (started Feb 1), which has been the way I've been able to lose weight in the past. I have lost some weight in the last couple of months - almost 25 lbs - and I can run and lift more than I could before I started.

With that said, I was so fortunate to stumble upon the shovelglove. I am thankful for my good fortune. I have spent the last few days reading everything, and today I made a kick ass shovelglove of my own. I am starting this on Monday, with excitement and enthusiasm mixed with a bit of anxiety as I've practiced some of the moves today and I am not convinced I can go 14 minutes.

I am very inspired by the "My Progress so far" by SlothLike. I very much identify with having a hardwired need for quantifiable, measurable progress - which is not something I will ever shake, I'm afraid. In any case, I am grateful and thankful to this great idea and I appreciate all of the great and inspiring posts.

BTW - my friends think I'm crazy. They do not get it, even after a detailed description of why I am doing this.

User avatar
reinhard
Site Admin
Posts: 5918
Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2005 7:38 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA
Contact:

Post by reinhard » Tue Apr 10, 2012 2:37 pm

Welcome, MustardTiger.
I very much identify with having a hardwired need for quantifiable, measurable progress - which is not something I will ever shake,
Hey, self-knowledge is a valuable thing. Work with it.

What I might suggest is make 14 minutes of N-daily shovelglove the "baseline," and indulge your measurable progress with other metrics.

For example, create a spreadsheet with a column for "14 minutes shovelglove?", "weight", "7 day moving average weight," and some "metric" bodyweight exercises like max pushups, max pullups, max chinups, max squats. Perhaps "miles run" if you're an ocasional runner and want quantitative credit for that too.

The shovelglove column is just yes/no (habitcal, essentially). Although kinda boring spreadsheet-wise, it's the most important column. You want a "yes" there every n-day (or go totally habit-cal and use green/red/yellow).

The other columns exist mostly for psychological reasons -- so you can get your quantification fix. They don't need a number every day, but if you have something to put there semi regularly you should see an upward trend. Every row is a day. You get one number per column per day as a safeguard against obsessing too much over these numbers and also to throttle your ambition to a sustainable level.

I've been experimenting with doing exactly this for the last couple of weeks, partially to hash out some ideas for a habitcal-on-steroids that would make it easy to track lots of things unobtrusively for variable periods of time from a variety of devices.

Warning: the upward trend will hit plateaus and eventually a ceiling. One method I'm toying with the help deal with that psychologically and also the related issue of exercise hubris is to pick just one "metric" exercise to do every month. This month pushups, next month pullups, month after than chinups, etc. Reduces danger of frustration and burnout, gives you a little dip in performance to climb again next time around, and greater likelihood of hitting a new peak number because your efforts are focused and have the pressure of a deadline (if I want to hit a new max, I have to do it by the end of the month).

Reinhard

slothlike
Posts: 86
Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2011 5:16 am
Location: Minneapolis

Post by slothlike » Fri Apr 13, 2012 3:06 am

Hi MustardTiger,

I am honored to have inspired you. How have the first days been going? It takes a while for your body to get used to it.

My friends think I'm nuts too; they refer to it as the ove-glove workout whenever I try to evangelise them about it. Even after I posted before and during pics on Facebook it doesn't get much respect.

Reinhard, I like your spreadsheet with the different strength metrics.

-ted

Post Reply