Mike’s Take
I’ve dropped the ball over the past week. Turns out that traveling and exercise isn’t as easy to do in tandem as I’ve been led to believe. Mind you, I think that those beliefs have overshadowed whatever willpower and discipline I had going into the last week or so. So, despite bringing along exercise gear on my travels, I didn’t complete any of the NerdFitness workouts. Nor did I proceed into the second week of Run 2 5K. That’s not to say I didn’t do any sort of exercise while in New York City. I did a lot of walking. And I mean a lot of walking. I walked for over 10 hours last week throughout Manhattan. That caused me to burn over 2600 calories alone. So i wasn’t all bad. The eating part…a bit of a different story. I ate less pasta, but still ate out a lot. And my lack of anaerobic exercise and less-than-stellar eating habits over the week led to the following weight and measurement results (initial results are in parentheses):
Tale of the Tape: Mike Vardy
Weight: 178.8 lbs (177.4) Waist: 36.1 inches (35.75) Hips: 40 inches (41.75) Biceps (flexed): 12.6 inches (12.5) Legs (mid-thigh): 19.8 inches (21) Total inches: inches (111)
CM’s Take
I feel like I made some great process this week. I increased my workouts considerably, doubling my weight on my deadlifts, DB presses and DB rows. This was the exact right amount of weight because it was easy to work at first, but at the end of each set I started to feel the burn. I also increased my reps on pushups (moving from inclined pushups on the stairs (8) to knee pushups (15) ), squats, hips raises, pretty much everything. I’m loving NerdFitness so far and can’t wait to dig in even harder this week. One thing that caught me off guard though (and something that Mike was very adamant about last week) was not paying attention to proper form. I got a severe cramp in my back on Sunday afternoon when I wasn’t keeping my back straight for deadlifts. So, word to the wise; make sure to keep your form when working out. The running has been difficult this past week. I found that increasing my running from 45 seconds at a time to 90 seconds proved to be difficult. I also cramped up during running. After talking to some people that have completed marathons and the like, all of them said I was probably dehydrated. So, I made sure to keep up with my water intake during the day, and boom, cramps are gone. I may redo week 2 of the Couch to 5k to not make Mr. Vardy feel so alone (actually, so I can complete the workout, but don’t tell him that). My diet has been awesome. I’m eating a “modified” paleo diet and have done an awesome job of keeping out the processed sweets which have been my downfall in the past. I had a day where I had some fries, but nothing terrible. I feel like when I concentrate on working out that my diet just “falls into place”. Here are my results for the past week (initial results are in parentheses):
Tale of the Tape: CM Smith
Weight: 202.6 lbs (208) Waist: 42.1 inches (43.5) Hips: 42.5 inches (43) Biceps (flexed): 14.25 inches (14) Legs (mid-thigh): 24 inches (23.5) Total inches: 122.85 inches (124)
(Photo credit: Dumbbell on Red via Shutterstock)
