Tag Archives: workout

6am Gym Goers

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I’ve been going to a gym, rather than doing home workouts, for about 5 months now. My usual time is to get there by 6am. One thing about the 6am crowd is that they are dedicated. You see all the same faces almost every day. And, you start to acknowledge the regulars when you see them. 

I always see one guy who paddles with a weight like he’s paddling a canoe. He does a lot of exercises I don’t really get… but he’s there every day doing his routine. There’s little miss cardio who attacks the elliptical for long periods and at a pace that I could never maintain. There’s the calisthenics dude that pushes his body to the max on every set he does, with an effort that I’d struggle to maintain day-after-day. There is the somewhat self-conscious overweight guy who keeps to himself, who works hard and ends his weight session on a stationary bike. There’s the old guy (I might call him that, but he’s probably just a few years older than me) who chats up everyone, and is always smiling. There is the girl who does RDL’s with such a perfectly straight back that I think you could use her back as an ironing board – impressive! There are two couples, the younger ones work out together, the older ones are obviously together but don’t spend a lot of time on the same machines and do completely different workouts. I could go on and on… because I don’t just see these people once in a while, there are there every weekday. 

I often wonder what their back stories are? What got them to be diehard gym goers who are so dedicated? What makes them push, what makes them commit to consistency? Showing up consistently and dedicating regular time to being healthy is a life changing habit. It doesn’t matter if a person is trying to build muscle, increase their max VO2, or just in maintenance mode. It doesn’t matter if they do exercises that make sense to me, or if they struggle with good technique, or if they lift way heavier or way lighter than me. These gym goers have one thing in common… they start their day in the gym. I tip my hat to the 6am gym goer crowd. 

…and rest!

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The one area of my life that most needs fixing is sleep. While I don’t dwell on the numbers, (that would stress me out), my Garmin watch averages my score at 48/100 over the last 4 weeks. That is by no means something to be proud of, especially when half of that time was when I was on holidays.

I have a few strategies in mind to improve this, but I’m also keenly aware that worrying about my score is not a way to improve it. Still, if there is an area of my life that I know can improve my health and longevity, better sleep is probably my highest priority.

Another related area is rest between workouts. My discipline and dedication to fitness has not necessarily been all positive. After all, it was extended rest (with accompanying massages and physiotherapy) that finally rid me of months of sciatic pain down my leg. Then I came fully back into working out and today I could feel my pecs, my lats, my triceps, my quads, and my hamstrings, which are all a little sore. Yes, it’s a good kind of ‘I worked these muscles well’ sore, but that’s a lot to feel all at once. So today I rest.

After writing this, and before bed, I’ll meditate and stretch. I need to remember that giving my muscles a rest is as important as giving both body and mind a rest during sleep. It doesn’t matter if I’m working different muscle groups on different days, I still need to put full gaps in between workout days.

I thought I was being smart, not yet going back to weekly sprints to work on my Max VO2, and giving my legs and back a little longer to recover. This week I was also working with slightly lighter weights, not getting near my maximum weight on any sets. But my body still told me that I’d done more than enough. That said, 6 months ago I would have made this a cardio day instead of a full rest day. Maybe I’m learning.

Maybe I’ll go beyond listening a little more closely to my body, giving it needed rest when it tells me. Maybe I’ll integrate rest as a regular part of my routine. Thats my new plan. It starts today with a stretch and meditation to end a very mellow and exercise-less day.

Decompression time

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First day back from my holiday started great. Woke up, met my buddy and went to the gym for the first time in 12 days. Had a great workout then he treated me to breakfast at his place. Then I had a couple appointments. I met my new doctor for the first time (my previous one is retiring), and I had a physio appointment.

And that made for a full day. Besides that I had a very long nap, and listened to my book. I then watched a bit of tv with my wife. All-in-all a great day. What really made it feel good was just having the time to flake out after a busy morning. No agenda, nothing pressing, no hurry, no worries. Just a good dose of decompression time.

Tomorrow I’ll do the Coquitlam Crunch walk after taking a month off. I hadn’t missed a month since my buddy and I started doing this in January 2021. But my lower back/discs has settled down and I’m not getting any nerve pain down my leg anymore. I’ve done a few completely painless walks, including one that had a bit of a climb during my holiday and so I think I’m ready, and my physio thinks so too.

It wasn’t just today that was about decompression time, it had been almost two weeks of it, and I’m feeling really good. It’s taken me 58 years to figure it out, but a little down time isn’t just good for the mind, it’s good for the body too.

That one song

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I’ve realized than when I workout certain tasks require a specific song. I get ready and think, “I need my music for this!” Not just any music, that one song that gets me going. A 10 minute stretch starts with Enya’s ‘My! My! Time Flies’… twice. If I’m going to do a plank, well then it’s Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’.

Time to push my max weight or go for a personal best? I’ve gotta listen to ‘Higher Baby’ by Sean Brown. What about when I’m about to start a set I’m not a fan of doing? Well that’s easy, I just put on ‘Remember the Name’ by Fort Minor. And those time I need to cool down, or slooow down a set and work on technique? Then nothing sets the tone quite like ’He Got Game’ by Public Enemy.

What’s a workout song you can’t live without?

And what other activities do you find require a song?

Leg day

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One of my health goals this year is to increase the size of my legs, specifically my quadriceps. I think that for their size, they are pretty strong, but that’s relative because they are pretty skinny.

Proportionally I look like a guy who chooses to skip leg day. That’s not fully true, I work my legs almost daily, but that’s usually a weighted walk on the treadmill, or once-a-week sprints, and of course, mentioned many times here, the Coquitlam Crunch walks weekly.

Basically, I exercise my legs more than any other part of my body… but almost always walking, and for cardio rather than explicitly to strengthen and grow them. If I look back at last year, I’d guess I did about 40 or so leg days, barely over once a week for only 75% of the weeks in 2025. Then to start this year, I did legs on the 1st, then today, on the 11th.

My goal, which I will be tracking, is to get at least 78 dedicated leg days in this year. That’s an average of 1.5 times per week. This is harder that it would seem because I need at least 2 days rest after a leg day before my training to Everest the Crunch, because climbing the Crunch progressively more times to train is by no means fun after a leg day.

One thing I hate about leg day is that I find of all my body parts legs hurt the most for the next two day. That means over 150 days this year that I’m going to feel sore legs. Yuk. But if I’m going to gain another 10 pounds, another goal I have for the year, most of it will need to be on my legs. I’m not going to get much bulkier in my upper body, so legs are the place I have the most potential to grow.

So there it is, I’ve put my goals out into the universe, now I’ve got to make them real. Leg day #2 done for the year… I’ll link back here at the end of December.

Healthy Living Goals – 2025 Reflection

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It’s that time of year again where I go to my big tracking calendar and add up my totals for the year.

Once again I was very consistent with my workouts and meditation, and I’ve yet again maintained my daily writing for another year. I’ll break a few things down as I reflect on the year.

Workouts: After taking a look at my 2024 calendar, I realize that I haven’t missed 2 days in a row in over 2 years. This year I was a little less strict in my definition of a workout, sometimes only doing 15 minutes of cardio, and sometimes not doing both weights and cardio, but still committing to a workout 326/365 days in 2025.

In my 2024 post I said regarding one of two goals, “Gain 7-8 pounds of muscle… Now I fluctuate around 167-169 pounds and would like to bring that to 175 pounds.”

For the last couple weeks I’ve been bouncing around 173-175 but I hit 178 a couple months ago and I’ll get back there after the holiday break. So, I totally achieved this goal, and couldn’t be happier. For 2026 I hope to be in the 183-185 range. I think this is a huge challenge, my body seems to like the 174-176 range and I’ll have to work more on a consistent diet rather than just focusing on weights and training.

Meditation: This is something I need to improve. While statistically I did well with frequency of meditations, about 85-90% of these were done when walking on my treadmill. Although I listened to a guided meditation, I was almost always distracted and allowed my monkey brain to wander instead of truly meditating.

I’m actually not going to try to change this at all in the next 6 months, but once I retire I’ll attempt to meditate for longer, and be more dedicated to meditation. This will include a more formal setup and a setting other than on the treadmill. For now I’ll stick with the status quo.

Daily-Ink: I’ll continue to write every single day for 2026. This started in July 2019, and I have no plans to change this in the short term.

Creativity: This was a failed goal but I’m still happy to track it. I wanted this to increase, but it decreased. Essentially, the only thing I tracked this year was meetings with my uncle where we discuss our Book of Codes project and just as importantly, life, the universe, and everything. Again, I’ll have new goals after retirement, but for now I’m in maintenance mode and just want to keep going as-is.

So, my main goals this year are calorie tracking and building muscle mass. I only want to get to 185lbs, this isn’t a plan to keep gaining weight after that. I actually like the weight I’m at right now, but at 58 with a not-so-great back, I realize that I’m one injury away from having to take a few months off and potentially dropping 8-10 pounds. Hopefully such an incident is a couple decades away, but even if it’s only 5 years away I’m keenly aware that I will have a much harder time regaining weight in my older years. So if I can sit at 185lbs as my normal weight, I know that I likely won’t drop below 175… which again is a weight I’m quite happy to be at.

185lbs by the end of 2026 is my goal, and to get there I will focus on hypertrophy in the gym and a higher protein and calorie intake than I have normally consumed.

Fitness, meditation, and writing are things I no longer need to track to ensure that I’m on track. For this reason, I think I might be retiring my large calendar and stickers. I recently got a Garmin watch with Lifestyle Tracking and I’ll still record these daily, but it’s time to put an end to the calendar. It has served me well but having joined a gym, I no longer go to my basement every day and tracking this month has been less diligent since I could go a full week without adding stickers. That said, if you are starting a new goal, I can’t recommend this strategy enough.

2026 is going to be a great year of continued progress… Gradual at first, but picking up speed after my mid-year retirement.

Tracking training

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I’ve got to say that I love my new watch, the Garmin Venu 4. I’ve been very interested in tracking my training, but have only been tracking my number of training days until getting the watch. Now I get to see what my speed and heart rate are during my workouts, among other things.

I try to do most of my workouts in Zone 2, but my watch says I’m actually in Zone 3. My next bit of research is determining if I’m going harder than I should or if I am just in good condition for my age. More data needed before I decide.

Today was my second time with my watch on an interval run. I do a warm up walk then 8 intervals, high intensity for 1:15 and low intensity for 1:10 eight times, then a cool down walk. The high intensity is really just for a minute and about 3 seconds because it takes 12 seconds to get the treadmill from 3.4 at low intensity to a range between 8.6 to 9.4 for my progressively faster high intensity intervals.

What’s really awesome is getting the data about my workouts from my watch. Here is just some of the data:

This is just my second data point for intervals so I’m creating a baseline from which I can hopefully see progress. Until now my only data has been how tired I feel. Now I can dig a lot deeper and actually see gains. I can also make sure that I’m training at the right pace. High intensity intervals aren’t exactly fun. Collecting data on them and getting results to compare over time will make them just a little bit more enjoyable.

Light but right

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I just joined a gym and they had a great promotion on 5 sessions with a personal trainer, so I took advantage of the deal. Today I met my trainer, but not until after I’d already done the Coquitlam Crunch (3x up, once down – 9 kilometres with 3/4 of the time going up hill).

So I wasn’t exactly fresh and ready, but I was excited to get started.

My trainer asked what I wanted to work on. I definitely didn’t want to do legs after the crunch, and my buddy and I did a hard chest and back workout yesterday, so I chose shoulders. He had me doing some exercises with 2.5lb weights, and some face pulls that I’d normally do with 60 or 80lbs, but he had me working with 20lbs doing a technique I’d never tried before.

Here’s the thing, I definitely got a good shoulder workout in. I don’t need to go heavy, I just needed to focus on technique and to work my muscles in a way that I’m really not used to. It was hard to get a full set in with these light weights and both my form and technique definitely faltered as I progressed.

It’s a nice, humbling reminder that it’s better to go light, and do it right, than it is to slap more weight on and have crappy technique. I’d say, ‘lesson learned’, but I know that’s actually just an observation rather than a shift in practice. It’s going to take a few more sessions for me to really understand how to push my body properly with lighter weight rather than muscling through workouts sloppily, with heavier weights.

Doing hard things

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My workouts have stagnated a bit recently. I’m doing the minimum, but the good news is that I’m still showing up. Yesterday I did my first interval training in about 3 or 4 weeks. I want to do it weekly, but I haven’t made it part of my routine yet.

The reason I haven’t made interval training part of my regular schedule yet is embarrassingly simple: It’s really hard. The purpose of doing intervals is to maintain and improve my Max VO2 levels. To increase Max VO2, I need to not only do intervals, but do them at a very physically taxing level. That’s hard to do when just showing up is a challenge for me right now. But yesterday was a day off work and so I used the day as an opportunity to get an interval workout in.

I did a warm-up then eight 1-minute sprints. My sets are actually 1:15 hard and 1:10 easy, because it takes about 13 seconds to get my treadmill from my easy recovery speed to full sprint and I want the sprint to be a full minute. It’s not fun, but it’s much easier than the Norwegian Protocol which is four 4-minute sprints with 3-minute rest intervals. And I think that’s going to be my ticket to get back into regular intervals. When a task is hard to do, break it down into something more manageable. I can talk myself into 1-minute sprints even when I’m not feeling fully motivated… four 4-minute sprints feels like torture right now.

Through all this I’ve still been very consistent with my zone 2 training, but I think even that has not been ideal. I’m not sure how effective I’ve been because I haven’t been tracking my heart rate and so I’m not certain if I’m getting and staying in the zone. That’s changing this month, when I buy myself a Garmond watch, then I’ll really be able to track my cardio workout progress. I’m hoping the extra data will help motivate me to push myself.

When consistently doing hard things, maintaining motivation is important. I’ve become a master at showing up. My dedication to my workout habit is unwavering. Last year I did 326 workouts, and I’m on schedule to be around that total this year. I know how to show up! But if I were to rank myself on an intensity scale, this year would be much lower than last year. So my focus is to finish the year hard and strong. And I’m fortunate that I’ll have the tools to help track this. It benefits no one to lie to myself about how hard I’m working, and so the extra data the watch will give me will both inform me, and keep me honest about my progress.

Met in the middle

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My buddy Dave has been on an amazing fitness journey, and has lost a bunch of weight while also building muscle. I’ve been on a journey to add healthy weight, lowering my percent body fat, while gaining muscle. At the start of this year we joked that we were going to meet in the middle, with his weight going down and mine going up.

Before heading to work this morning we went to the gym and worked out together. Then we took turns stepping on the scale. I weighed over a pound more than him! We did it, we met in the middle. Well, almost in the middle… Dave covered a bit more of the gap. Still, this wasn’t a real goal, just lofty target we put out into the universe. Now we are there. Next steps are for both of us to make gains together.