Getting into a routine

Oct19-450,Oct20-513,Oct21-458,Oct22-383,Oct23-385

Total push ups/chins 445,045

The last few days I have been settling into a routine of getting some chins and some push ups done each day. Of course now that I am blogging about it I may have just jinxed myself, but let's knock on wood and assume I am just going to keep pounding out a few hundred each day. I have been getting up a little earlier for work each day this week and making sure I do about a half hour of chin ups and push ups before I have a shower. We have a home gym down stairs and we have a freestanding chin up bar downstairs but I am not even going down to the home gym. I just throw the doorway chin up bar up in upstairs. I don't want any reason not to get started-it's too cold downstairs, I don't want to bother going down to the gym-nope-no excuses -just get it done. For the most part I have been super setting sets of push ups with a set of pull ups or chins then I rest for 30 seconds to a minute. I vary the rest times between sets each day-sometimes I do more than one superset together. I might do 10 or 20 push ups then immediately go to the bar and and do 3 or 4 pull-ups , drop to the floor do ten more push ups and stand up to 3 more chins. I might keep pairing sets like this until I have done a total of 50 -60 push ups and 9-15 chins. After these sort of giant sets I will usually rest a minute. If I am only doing one super set I will usually only rest 30 seconds. Anyway all this writing about push ups makes me think I better go pound out today's. Off I go.

Fit Bit Surge

Oct/13-448, Oct 14-492, Oct 15-937, Oct 17th-528, Oct 18th 508

total push ups/chins 442,856

          In a way part of my interest in doing a million push ups and chins is related to an interest in keeping in shape- or fighting against the bodies ( or my bodies) tendency to age. In and earlier post I talked about some of the on-line tools I use to help with my fitness efforts. I think I included the fit bit app- but really the fit bit surge is the complementary wearable tool that collects the data. Before the Surge was available in Canada I had done a good deal of research about it. One of the most attractive features of the Surge is that it calculates heart rate without one of those cumbersome straps around your chest. Most people are not going to wear these straps all day long -so the Surge has an advantage that it can calculate your heart rate and calories burned all day long- not just when you are exercising. If you want to see how the device does this go check on the specs on the company website:https://www.fitbit.com/ca/surge .

        I like the fact that the device accurately calculates how many calories you burn each day while exercising and while at rest. I mentioned before that I use the myfitnesspal app to calculate calories in versus out. The nice thing about the fitbit app is that it will allow you to calculate your calories eaten versus calories burned. It will also allow you to automatically sync with an app like myfitnesspal, so when it syncs it automatically populates calorie burned data into your myfitnesspal. The watch and app have a number of cool features such as daily or weekly tracking of steps, kilometers travel weight change, average sleep duration and more. If you want to learn a little more about the watch and the app, check the link about. If you are looking for one more reason to consider the app consider my experience with the company described in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqS0nFfe5hs

Slump busting

Oct/5-430, Oct/6-209, Oct7-52

Total push ups/chin ups 439,943

        I have fallen into a slump in terms of push ups and pull ups. Until today I hadn't done any push ups/chins since the 7th. I did get up early this morning and pound out a few hundred push ups and I am planning on doing some push ups and chins tonight as well. I am determined to get back on the wagon.  Anyway not going to beat myself up about this -just going to get back to business.

A couple of my favourite online fitness tools

Sept/29-703, Sept/30-325, Oct/4-68

Total Push ups/Chins 439,252

In my last blog post I made reference to using the myfitnesspal app and the Fitbit Surge to help me monitor my fitness progress. This is a screen shot from the myfitnesspal app.
I took this screen shot early this morning so I hadn't yet added all my food for the day and as you will notice the app is registering zero calories for exercise. As I mentioned in my last post the calories in versus calories out theory of weight loss is probably fairly over simplified, however at some level if you want to lose weight you do have to burn more calories than you eat. We have worked with trainers and nutritionists who have helped us with our diet and workout routine - and the other nic thing about this app is it does help you track your macros fairly accurately. If I am being very focused  on my diet I Amy be cycling carbs and watching every closely at how many calories are coming from each protein, fats and carbs. If I am mainly focusing on losing weight I pay a lot more attention to creating a calorie deficit and maybe some attention to getting enough protein. 

I also mentioned that I like the Fitbit Surge as a fitness tool. There are a number of reasons for this but probably I should do a future blogpost about the FitBit Surge. However for this post I will say that one of the things I really like about the Fitbit is it will automatically sync with myfitnesspal. So the zero calories you see in the exercise section above will soon be replaced by an accurate estimate of the calories burned after the apps sync with each other. If you enter the number of minutes of each activity you perform in myfitnesspal it will give an estimate of the calories burned ,however the Fitbit gives an estimate based on your actual heart rate which is more accurate. Below is a screen shot of one of the Fitbit apps reports and this is a benefit to the Surge -there are a number of usual measures and fitness/health data points that the app will report on and graph. Overall these two make a great duo when it comes to technology to support your fitness program and goals. 

Calorie Burn

Sept/25-49, Sept/26-75,Sept/27-545

Total push ups /chins 438,156

Nice thing about doing lots of chin ups and push ups is they burn some calories. If you are looking to lose some weight this can be a way to do it. Below is a graph of my weigh over the last week. The graph comes from the app Myfitnesspal. You enter all the food you eat in a day into the app and it calculates all your calories and your macros ( I'll talk more about macros in a future blogpost).  Nutritionists would say I am oversimplifying but essentially more calories burned than calories eaten and you loss weight. The app will tell you how much you have eaten but also if you put in the number of calories for each activity it will also calculate how many calories above your BMR or basal metabolic rate ( the calories you burn each day just living ). Most days I do sets of chin up and then a set of push ups and rest for 30 seconds before doing the next super set. If I workout for about a half hour at this rate I usually burn about 9 to 10 calories per minute.  If I am really interested in burning more calories I will do a set of 50 to 100 reps on the skipping rope before taking the 30 second rest. This keeps the heart rate up, and in general the longer you keep you heart rate up and the higher you get it the more calories you will burn. In a future blogpost I will talk about how I get a more accurate calorie burn estimate than the myfitnesspal alone will calculate.

Training other than pull ups and push ups

Sept/16-460, Sept/19-143, Sept/21-100, Sept/22-170, Sept 23-211

total push ups/chin ups 437,487

I have not been hitting the chin up bar or doing push ups everyday. That is good to avoid over training but not so good in driving more quickly towards my goal of one million push ups and chins. None the less what is it they say? Slow progress is better than no progress. Cathy and I are doing a round of Insanity and for sure I will be counting any push ups or push up jacks that we do during those workouts towards my total. Anyway below is a video for this weekend to give you an idea how I train when I am not doing push ups or chin ups.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVOnQHgpkbE

Supplements for an old guy

Sept/13-360, Sept 14-390

436,403 push ups/chins

Not a bad couple of days, I think if I am getting at least 300 push ups and/ or chins a day, I will make progress towards my goal of one million. I think after I have been at it a while and I can handle the daily volume I will probably try to ramp up to around 1000 push ups or chins a day. I am a little older than I was when I first started this blog. Recovery is a lot more important to me, or at least getting some good rest and decent diet and supplements. My wife and I were working with a coach and personal trainer and he got us into a little more serious supplement program. He turned us onto a couple of things that I think are making a big difference in our recovery. One of the things he had us try out were BCAA or branched chain amino acids. The idea is that these help prevent muscle wasting if you are working out really intensely. They really seem to work but below is the link to a video where I talk about the overall supplement program we are using.

Supplement program