Oh. My. Ass! Never did I imagine that I would feel this way. I feel violated. Chocolate, I need chocolate. Actually, it’s not entirely true I didn’t suspect the oncoming pain. On the evening of day 1 I suspected that day 2 would be a royal pain. Parts of my body had begun aching, lower body to be specific. Legs to be even more specific, actually, my bum somewhat more specifically. The regular and backward lunges have made me aware of those areas I apparently don’t exercise enough, such as the aforementioned bum. Ironically though, or perhaps sadistically, I love it… the pain that is. The pain so clearly illustrates that something has been done and that’s a good feeling.

Quite a few have asked about the workout program I’m using for the challenge and here it is. This is the workout I’m doing 7 days a week for the next 30 days. (Starting 7th of June 2010).

These exercises are all done without break, even between parts. I only stop for a sip of water or, if necessary to catch my breath, but not for more than a few seconds.

I’m using approximately 15 KG of weights, curled bar with 2 * 5 KG weights. Following the exercise it takes me approximately 45 minutes to do the entire thing without breaks. It’s extremely tough, well for me it is, and I strongly recommend a good warm-up. (I do 30 minutes of walking after having had a green smoothie!)

Part 1 – Legs and chest
40 squats – fast
40 chest presses – wide grip – fast
40 squats – slow
40 chest presses – wide grip – slow
40 squats half way up – regular pace
40 chest presses half way up

Part 2 – Legs, lower back and shoulders (repeated twice)
20 regular squats
20 half squats
20 Deadlift
20 Bent over row

Part 3 – Legs, shoulders (repeated twice)
20 regular lunges
20 upright row
20 standing shoulder press

Part 4 – Legs, triceps (repeated twice)
20 backwards lunges
20 skull crushes (bar above head, folding towards head)
20 backwards lunges
20 close grip presses (lying flat on ground, with elbows resting on floor pushing arms upwards from stomache)

Part 5 – Legs (calves), biceps
20 calves rise, one leg at a time
20 biceps curls
20 calves rise, both legs at the same time
20 biceps curls stopping halfway for a half a second then continuing to top
xx max out calves rise

Part 6 – Stomache, legs (inner thighs)
20 crunches
20 inner thighs, one leg at a time. Lying flat on the side with one legged crossed over the one to be exercised.
20 crossed crunches. Left elbow lifted towards right leg. Kind of like cycling with your legs alternating elbows to touch knee.
20 inner thighs.
20 crunches

Done! :-)

5:02 am – What the fuck have I gotten myself into? Am I insane? Should I perhaps stay in bed… if only for a moment?

No, a promise is a promise and this promise I had made to myself – to do a full body workout (approximately 45-50 minutes) every day for 30 days. The purpose is to see whether or not it’s actually possible to reach some fairly visible results in a very short amount of time. I’m not entirely sure what to expect, but I obviously hope that it will give me some results.

Each morning will start with a green smoothie for initial energy consisting of one banana, some spinach and a water to make it blend properly. The warm-up routine is a quick walk for about 30 minutes outside to get the body working and pumping. (The walking I’ve already been doing every day since august last year, so this is just a continuation of that routine.)

At 5:50 I commenced the workout and finished around 6:40ish. I have never in my fucking life sweated as much as I did today. It was divine, haha! Very tired, and it was tough on my legs as I’m not really used to exercising my legs as much as this, still it was very nice.

The workout routine will be altered each day in regards to used weights, some days less and some days a bit more. I intend on also combining the workout with long distance running, twice per week (Wednesdays and Saturdays).

/ Christoffer

PS: I will be putting up a before and after picture when I’ve finished the challenge for those curious about the results.

PPS: If you’re curious about the program I use, leave a comment and I’ll be sure to put it up.

This morning I managed to reach a personal goal in my physical strength domain. One month and 12 days ago I set out to improve my physical strength. I did this for a couple of reasons: a little bit of vanity and more importantly because I’m deskbound behind a computer screen pretty much all day long. As you might understand it’s not exactly physically draining to type on a keyboard. Over the years my back have been come increasingly bad and if I don’t do anything about it now I’ll be screwed when I get a bit older. I’d prefer to avoid that thank you very much.

Then and Now

42 days ago I could barely manage a meager 20 push-ups, today I managed to push through on to 50! Yes, I’m proud of myself, and I’m not shy of admitting that. For the first time, in … probably ever, have I stuck with something, continued through the shitty days and the good days, not once giving up. Why did I manage to follow-through this time? Honestly, I don’t really know. I think it might be related to all the introspection work I’ve been doing over the last year or so. I’ve thoroughly analysed myself to try and understand who I am and what I want from life. Achieving goals have never really been part of that and when I’ve tried I’ve given up at the slightest bit of resistance.

The lesson

Over the last couple of months I’ve learnt two very important things that have allowed me to build momentum and motivation. Patience and perseverance. These have been key to unlocking my potential and it sounds cliché, but, patience is a virtue. I’ve said to myself that it’s okay if I don’t notice results immediately. I’ve told myself that no matter how hard I try, results will eventually show up… it’s almost impossible for your body to actually become weaker.

While patience may be one aspect of reaching a goal, perseverance is another. There have been days when I’ve felt like total shit, barely wanting to get out of bed. I guess self-dicipline is also involved, but anyway. This morning I felt rather ill after coming back from my morning walk. Screw it I thought, let’s do it tonight instead. But, as quickly as I tried to dismiss my morning workout I said, screw that… do it now, not matter how bad you’ll be. Well, the rest is history.

Perseverance (I like the word, even the look of it) has really, and perhaps obviously, helped me to reach some of my goals. I’m quite excited to see what things will look like in a year from now.

About one month ago I decided to undertake yet another 30-day trial. The first one, getting up crazy early (4:45 am), went splendid. August went fantastic and I think I only slip once by about 15 minutes. During September I slipped back into old routines a couple of times but overall I’m very pleased with the results. It has gotten a lot tougher now since the sun is no longer there to greet me in the morning. The cure? A sun-rise simulator alarm clock. Just bought, not collected yet, but on Sunday I will have my first experience with it. Will report back what it’s like to use.

Anyway, I didn’t really want to talk about the getting up early trial, but rather my push-up trial. I completed the first 30 days yesterday and I’m very excited about the results. While I can’t really say that I’ve visually changed all that much the results speak for themselves.

The schedule

The schedule was pretty simple. Get up, early in the morning, go for a semi-long walk (around 30 minutes), come back (obviously), do a salute to the sun yoga session then push-ups. I wanted to always do maximum amount of push-ups and I had planned to do three sets and in each set do the maximum amount I could muster. Oh, I just remembered, I did this every other day, so one day rest in between.

The first round of push-ups were rather disappointing. I managed to complete two sets, and in the first set I did 16 push-ups, and 4 in the second, none in the third. However , I’m happy to report that after one month of consistently doing push-ups I can now do about 1:26, 2:10, 3:5 which totals at 41 push-ups. I’m very pleased with those results considering what I began with.

Here’s a chart of my results. I had a very interesting dip on the 14th of September, can’t really remember why that is. I should probably try and correlate this with nutritional intake in order to see if I can boost my performance by eating certain types of food.

It just dawned on me. Every successful business have some sort of a business plan. I’m not talking about those overly ambitious ones where everything is staked out in minute details, no not those. What I’m talking about are the business plans that merely describe the outlines of the business, those that give guidelines as to how one should move the business forward in a meaningful way. Attempting to foresee all possible details will make the business very static and not very good at adapting to changing conditions.

I don’t have this kind of plan for my life. Why don’t I? It’s so obvious. If i want to succeed in life I must have a plan that describes, in broad terms, what it is that I want to achieve, where I see myself in 5, 10 or 30 years from now. How could I possibly expect to get anywhere without knowing which direction to go? Exactly, it’s so dead obvious. Though doesn’t comes as a real surprise, I’ve been working on this for the past two years, I’ve never thought of it as a life plan until now. Only now did it become clear to me that I need to write this down, put it on the wall and then start acting upon my grand plan.

Once this plan is written down I’ll share some of it with you, perhaps it can be some inspiration. Do you have a life plan?

I’m an expert at procrastination, although in later years I’ve become much better in recognising procrastination when I ‘see’ it. My very special combination of words usually was, and still sometimes is, ‘When I …’. This is a very dangerous combination of words because it removes control from myself and places it into an item, or someone else.

When I get this car I will finally be popular.

When I have one million in my bank account I will be happy.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work this way. I’m sure we all have these ideas with some alterations in the perceived solution. One of my personal favourites is how efficient I would be once I acquired two computer screens. Boy-oh-boy would I be productive. Finally would I be able to produce all those documents that I for so long had wanted to write, but been hampered by the limited computer desktop space.

Seriously, it’s NOT the desktop space that is the limiting factor. I have these ‘episodes’ quite often and they seem to slip past my procrastination radar all too often. Most recently I got it into my head that having a Mac Book Pro would definitely give me the productivity boost that I so desperately require. Clearly, it will not. It’s not like my three other laptops isn’t good enough… sigh. If I sat down and analysed exactly why I think about a given item I’m confident it would sooner, rather than later, become obvious that I have no need for yet another gadget.

Overcoming the ‘When I’ problem

I’m not quite sure why I believe that these items would somehow make me stop procrastinate and get on with things. Maybe it’s related to some sort of fear for learning more about myself? Learning about my issues regarding self-discipline and self-worth?

Overcoming my ‘When I’ situation is tougher than it may sound. I’ve found much comfort (still am unfortunately) in pushing the real doing into the future waiting for the solution to arrive or magically appear. ‘When I’ is a combination I’ve been using for a long time but I’ve decided to attempt to eliminate this ‘tool’ from my procrastination arsenal.

The following items, listed in no particular order, I believe may be useful when attempting to overcome the ‘bad’ side of procrastination:

• Prioritization (efficient and useful procrastination)
• Questions, questions and questions! (Is this X really going to help me achieve my goals?)
• Honesty

It shouldn’t have to be necessary to revert back into the habit of ‘When I’ when using these tools. Procrastination can be good, if done appropriately… but one has to be careful not to confuse the good with the bad. Let’s see how it all works out. I guess becoming aware of the problem and acknowledging it is step one…