Miss Mighty Mouse

I was up late stressing over life last night, didn’t get enough sleep, and on top of that woke up with very uncomfortable back pain this morning.

I kept telling myself to just sleep through my workout time, that I could make it up tomorrow, but for some reason I just got up, got ready, and walked out the door.

I thought about just doing my reading instead of going to the gym on the drive there. I thought about starting essays on my walk in from the parking lot.

And then I was in the gym, starting my warm up. I hated every single exercise. Not that it sucked, it just hurt more than normal, and planks at the end of it all were the devil.

BUT I finished, and PR’d five out of six exercises. Moral of the story: motivation isn’t even necessary. Stop thinking, just start doing.

lgoulet earned 581 points for:
Spinning:
0:05:00 (+7 pts)
(+5 pts)
Warm up
Chin-Up:
11 reps || assisted (+51 pts)
3 reps || assisted (+9 pts)
Set 2: WTFail.
Close-Grip Front Lat Pulldown:
40 lb x 8 reps (+6 pts)
50 lb x 8 reps (+8 pts)
60 lb x 9 reps (+10 pts)
Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown:
40 lb x 8 reps (+13 pts)
50 lb x 8 reps (+16 pts)
60 lb x 9 reps (+20 pts)
Seated Cable Row:
40 lb x 10 reps (+14 pts)
50 lb x 10 reps (+18 pts)
60 lb x 11 reps (+22 pts)
Plank:
109 sec (+49 pts)
Side Plank:
109 sec (+99 pts)
Ice Skating:
1:00:00 (+234 pts)
Half time because it’s a race weekend and lets not kill my legs this time.

Woke up with back pain, wanted t go back to bed the whole time. Hated whoever invented training the whole workout, but finished it all.

I wanted to be less than 105 lbs. I had 107 lbs lean body mass the last time I calculated.

What the eff was I thinking?! So very happy to be past all of that now.

Last week’s results: all accomplished!

This week’s goals:

Racing this weekend!! I want to be under 58 seconds. Hoping for 55-56, will be happy with 57.

And a little training update:

My lifting schedule has had to change a lot since New Year’s, and as a result I’m not lifting as much. My 500m races have been going well, but I generally die out pretty bad for anything longer. So I’ve been focusing more on muscle endurance. This means I’m doing interval training on the bike in the mornings I skate at night instead of squatting, and only doing so on the Fridays when I don’t have a race that weekend.

In addition to leg focused lifting, I’m skating and doing low walk/plyometrics exercises. I’ve also had to completely change my upper body workouts to focus on back muscles. Strengthening anything on the front of my body (ie: chest, delts) results in overdeveloping those muscles to compensate for the weakened back muscles. And so any training of these hinders the muscles I really need to build up. Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, I can progress back to a somewhat normal balanced routine soon enough.

Mutual dislike of the silly boys who do half-assed squat marathons at our gym:

“Not gonna lie, I laughed really hard when you sent that one message about standing under the bar.”

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It was a little while ago, and I didn’t want to comment on it while everyone was still all hyper about it, but i still feel the need to put in my two cents.

None of these are THE ABSOLUTE BEST. I’ve tried different ways of eating. I tried ‘clean eating’, ate vegetarian for over a year, almost went completely vegan, tried eating paleo/keto, and ended up throwing some IIFYM and IF into the mix, too. And you know what? I found value in all of them. There are parts I enjoy about all of these lifestyles, and parts I don’t.

At the end of the day, you have to do what works for you. I wholeheartedly agree with eating natural, ‘clean’ foods, and love finding healthier alternatives to junk food that make you feel good, as opposed to making you feel like you want to puke. I don’t like eating many grain products, so I find grain-alternatives. I use agave nectar over processed sugar and other syrups simply because i like the taste better. And a small confession: I don’t LOVE most meat. I eat it mostly because I need to fill protein requirements.

I liked clean eating, but didn’t like the food guilt. I liked vegetarian/vegan, but I couldn’t get enough protein without heavy supplementation. I liked Paleo, but I couldn’t eat enough calories.

What all the other lifestyles also lacked for me was the amount of wiggle room I had for the unhealthy food I actually love. Every little cupcake I would eat sent me into a guilt spiral, and took the enjoyment out of eating it. This is where IIFYM comes into play. I do find counting calories can be stressful, which is the downfall of this lifestyle, but I’ve worked around it. I have macro goals that I work up to, instead of a calorie cap that I have to stay under.

But the real beauty is using IIFYM in conjunction with ideas from all these other ways of eating. That I don’t have to stress over things like having a bowl of ice cream. It allows me to go out and occasionally have some junk food and eat with my friends without going into anxiety about having cheated from my diet.

And finally, I incorporated some IF mostly because eating in the morning makes me want to puke, and it helps me stop mindless snacking at night.

So I took the things I liked from ALL of these, and that is how I live. It’s not how you have to do it, and I don’t care if you think it’s right or wrong.

Actually, I don’t give a shit what you do, as long as you do it with conviction. You eat Paleo and love every second of it?! Hardcore vegan?! Cleanest eater in the world?! Awesome. You get points for trying, and for being passionate about something in my books. Do what makes YOU happy, not what everyone else tells you to do.

It’s called “relaxing.”

Friday’s my first day of the weekend. I usually spend Friday, Saturday and Sunday working at school for 10-12 hours since I don’t have class. Yeah, not so much fun.

My goals for today:
- not do all my homework
- make something yummy
- listen to some new music
- have a dance party while listening to said music
- work on my brain drawing and enjoy it
- go to the gym and not worry about taking too much time
- go out and have fun tonight

Happy Friday!
:)

This was my third week back at school (um, holy shit the semesters 1/4 of the way finished now?!) and it still baffles me. ‘It’ being the stark difference between the people I encounter at the gym and in my classes.

Aside from the two other guys who take art and actually work out. But really, everyone at the gym is generally in good shape. They take care of their bodies, and they work really hard at it. I see a lot of the regulars in there every single day, getting shit done.

And then I go to class, where I hear people talking about their daily lives, eating what they normally eat, and answering complicated questions from the prof. What I want to know is when did it become okay to partake in hugely unhealthy behaviours all the time (not just every so often), completely avoid exercising, and shovel your face full of crap, in favour of intelligence??

I am not the smartest one here, or the most critical thinker, or the one who can come up with interesting questions and answer everyone else’s questions, I’ll be the first to admit it. Art classes intimidate me, because most of the people are such brilliant thinkers. But I can’t help but pity (I don’t think that’s the right word for it..) them when I observe them.

What happened to ‘sound body, sound mind’? AND why is it EXPECTED in university that we all just generally become unhealthy? In school, you hear about ‘the Freshman 15’ and late night pizza runs, and overdoing it on the beer. Why are we expected, in an institution of higher learning, to go out and make terrible common sense decisions??

I felt like I was overdoing it in first year: I lost three pounds (all of it muscle), I had late night pizza twice, and I had my first and only experience drinking multiple beers. By January I started really watching what I was eating, trying to make healthier decisions (not the best ones, but still trying); I joined the gym and started doing bike intervals, some longer distance running, and core work (again, not the best method, but TRYING). Point is, I never really COMPLETELY fell off the wagon, and I still felt like shit.

After all of that, what I just really want to know is why don’t people take care of themselves? How can a person be so so literate in one topic, yet so completely ignorant about another? And why is the topic that absolutely directly affects YOU and your health taking the backseat to other studies?!

Jeebus, who promoted me?!

Either way, sup guys. Happy to see you all!

I have an hour to kill before class (FREE TIME, WHAT?!). Talk to me if ya fancy.