Well, since the wedding I have to confess that I'd lost many of my gains and gained back a lot of the weight and, more disturbingly, much of the fat. However, with Jill's encouragement I've started back onto my fitness program and I'm already regaining my previous conditioning!
For those of you wondering, start with the Diet and the Exercise pages to see what I did before...then continue below to see the results. (Yes I know that's a clumsy organization; I'll fix it soon)
So what are the results I'm getting? At the beginning my body fat percentage was over 24%! At the peak of my fitness program my body fat percentage had dropped to approximately 12.7% while my weight was 203 pounds. That means that I'd lost more than 30 pounds of fat and added nearly 20 pounds of muscle. I felt great, looked pretty good and was a whole lot happier with my body. Now I'm working hard to get back to that place.
In the coming weeks I'll be adding a lot more content to this section. I'll expand on my exercise programs, strength training, talk a bit about triathlons, talk about nutritional supplements and give a little more detail on my theories of health and fitness.
UPDATE: For most of the fall I participated with Brian Clarke's marathon training group. It was a great excuse to get out running on a regular basis and as a result my body fat percentage is slowing crawling back under the 16.5% mark.
Free weights vs. Machines. I tend to prefer free weights because they force you to balance the weight through the repetition and I think that helps to build the complementary muscles. Also, odd as this may seem, there is a bit of benefit to having to load and unload the weights - just handling the weights forces you to use your muscles quite a bit more, and in new ways and angles, than just switching a pin on a machine.
Machines do have one advantage, however: the well-designed ones force you to work the muscle through a longer range of motion.
It never ceases to amuse me when I see people who don't do a full range of motion on their exercises. Usually it's a guy who throws an awful lot of weight on the bench, breaks the weight from the supports, then moves it 3 inches down and back up, grunting all the way, re-racks the weight and feels like he accomplished something.
I prefer to use a lighter weight and CONTROL the weight all the way through the full range of motion both up and down. You get a better workout and better developed muscles. Not to mention this is a LOT safer - if you can't control the weight you're working with, you're probably using too much weight and that's unsafe.
No matter how fast you think you are...there's always somebody faster. Don't let it stress you out. Do the best you can and have fun. Ultimately the race is only against yourself.
Don't skimp on the warmup when you run. Start your run at a gentle walk, then walk more briskly, then into a slow jog and so forth. I've found that I suffer substantially more injuries AND I don't enjoy the run as much, if I just jump right in and start running at a fast pace. Start slowly, let your muscles and joints get loosened up, then you can work up to your faster pace.
Hulaman - a Hawaii-based triathlete who posts a nice site with some good triathlon information.
Total Immersion - An excellent site for coaching and information on swimming.
Triathlete Magazine Online - This site is a bit flashy and takes a bit of time to load, but has some nice content including a link if you want to subscribe to the print version.
Brian Clarke School of Running - This is the running coach that Jill and I work with. He's quite good, especially for beginners who may be apprehensive about getting started.
More to come...soon