WOW!!! Time to catch up AGAIN!!!

Whew! What a trip it’s been!!! So last week I had business travels that carried me to the upper central portion of the U.S. & luckily timing worked out so that Suz was able to join in the fun! Monday morning I pulled out of my drive at 4AM in order to meet a couple time based objectives; (1) meet Suz as close to “on time” as possible when her flight arrived in Chicago around 1:30 PM & (2) catch the Harley-Davidson museum in time for a quick tour before they closed at 6PM! Given the Midwest has 2 seasons; football season & road construction season I was about 30 minutes late meeting Suz but given the 575 miles between points A & B that wasn’t TOO bad! We then battled Chicago & Milwaukee construction & had a great time in the Harley museum followed by a yummy healthy dinner at their onsite restaurant.

Worked all day Tuesday training suppliers, running a bit late since the afternoon supplier is midstream building a brand new factory that they wanted me to tour after the training, but Suz & I still managed to find Milwaukee’s Planet Fitness where we tore up a great leg day although I could tell it drove her nuts taking turns going through each workout. She’s used to her home gym & just cranking along but I wanted to take this opportunity to hopefully learn from each other so we each blasted our individual sets then watched & cheered each other’s. She suggested a different foot placement on a couple stations that definitely seemed to improve their effectiveness while reducing the knee & back pain! Afterwards we found a hole in the wall Roadhouse for a kinda late fajita dinner that turned out to be awesome!

Suz had found info regarding a nearby Milwaukee conservatory which was 3 huge geodesic domes, each housing a different ecosystem, she wished to visit & knowing we only had about 390 miles to cover to Minneapolis taking the scenic route Wednesday we slept in a little then headed over there for her to capture some really cool pictures. The first dome we hit was the “Tropical” dome & OMG!!! It lived up to its name!!! It was hot & humid in there WHEW!!! Next we hit the desert dome & what a relief!!! It was a “dry heat” LOL! The final dome is one they change all the time & while we were there it had a European floral flavor complete with a Dutch windmill in the center.  After she got done shooting the domes we cruised downtown to the Lake Michigan shore line & grabbed a yummy late lunch at The Harbor House & enjoyed a nice breeze then beat feet trying to escape Milwaukee just before rush hour. Stopped at an old fashioned A&W Root Beer stand along the way, just before sunset and grabbed dinner & given events of the day rolled into the Minneapolis hotel right at Midnight LOL!

Rolled through Thursday’s training without any hiccups then decided to pre-feed before hitting the Minneapolis Planet Fitness to save a couple wardrobe changes. Bad idea!!! I had selected an Osaka Japanese hibachi grille just up the street from the hotel for dinner believing that to be a fairly healthy choice but apparently something just didn’t settle well =( By the time we returned to the hotel the internal pressure was horrendous & I felt absolutely miserable!!! I’ve had hibachi MANY times & have NEVER had such an experience although this was the first time I’d had salmon at one. Spent the entire evening miserable & dreading the 18ish hour drive home coming Friday so we opted out of Thursdays UBWO & crashed early to help make the 3AM rise Friday more tolerable. Although long the drive back wasn’t too bad. There was a WICKED storm over Chicago as we approached which delayed Suz’s flight home about 20 minutes but overall I shaved about an hour off the Minneapolis – Chicago leg & 90 minutes off the Chicago – Memphis leg arriving home about 19 hours after the day began.

Hit Helga’s house of pain Saturday for a righteous UBWO slaying making up for Thursday’s miss then Monday shifted to evening workouts for the week since the side job is on Holiday shutdown this week & tore up UBWO again but this time utilizing the free weights instead of machine stations like I usually have which was a real eye opener!!! I’ve always known free weights require additional stabilizing effort over the machines but WOW! Did that ever tax my whiney shoulder! Anyway, the work got done along with a full 9 minute HIIT session both before & another after as “warmup & cool down”!

Tuesday night I tore into a vicious LBWO at Helga’s jumping back on the hack squat sled that I herniated my lumbar disk on, trying Suz’s recommended foot placement. I got up pto 540 LBs before things began to twinge but being I was easing back into it I was running double reps to the FiCX format, 16, 12, 12 & 8. All said & done I just exceeded 80,000 LBs in volume which I paid a bit for Wednesday morning LOL! Spent Wednesday morning going through LKs back care yoga stretches getting my whiney lumbar happified but it was worth it to hit those numbers again!

Getting ready to head back up for another weekend in Suz’s world which was already planned before we knew about last week’s travels so we’re getting a little spoiled but that’s okay! ;-)

Rock on pals! Gotta keep working on the COMPLIANCE part of FiCX to get the progress needle cranking up!

Happy Hump Day!!!

Happy hump day pals! I hope your week is just kicking butt!!! It sure feels good to be healed up enough to get back after it this week! Launched it Monday with leg day as week 6 calls for but in order to keep cranky knee on the mend I focused on the same muscle groups but attacked’em utilizing the stations available at Planet Fitness, being seated calf press, leg extension & leg curl. Now the other adaption I needed to employ was a slight tweak on the extensions station as orthodoc said to get this critter healed & need to focus more on high reps than higher weight on extensions so I followed doctor’s orders like a good bear & just double the recommended reps but at about 2/3 the load I would’ve otherwise gone after & overall the workout felt awesome especially considering I’d been out of it for over a week!

Tuesday I lit into HIIT as prescribed but then in order to keep up come Wednesday I pulled BIs & TRIs ahead & hit intensity PRs on every exercise!!! My BIs & TRIs were fried by mid afternoon & full on throbbing DOMs this AM when it came time for chest, shoulders & back. Had a skull cramp & had printed my sheet for today before leaving but forgot & left it lying on the desk. I knew it was UBWO day but slipped a gear thinking it was higher reps so hit 15s on all the sets like last time duh!!! Having been away a bit there weren’t any new PRs on the docket especially since the BIs & TRIs were already half running scared BUT the work got done! On the last superset, going for 15 reps, wound up hitting 8s or 9s then had to stop, breathe a few seconds then crank out the last 6 or 7 reps but again… the iron got ground!

Found out for certain yesterday AM that next week I’m going to be on a supplier training tour of the great white northern regions of Wisconsin & Minnesota so, while on the road, living out of a duffle bag I’ll have to do my best to make proper food choices, focusing on Compliance extra hard, but I’m nearly positive that the hotels I’ve selected all offer cardio gear of some sort but weather permitting this Griz loves to walk too! Last Saturday, since I didn’t have to work the side job all weekend, even being 96F outside when I started I hit the bison park & tackled both the woodlands & wetlands 5K loops and even got some cool pics with my new Android smart phone while chatting with my sweetie Suz. I love hiking in that park & can‘t wait until this fall when we’ve planned a visit for her to come share it with me for a great day either before or after we head over to explore the Ozark Mountains during the nation’s second largest motorcycle rally, “Bikes, Blues & BBQ” which will be an experience ALL its own!!!

Rock on pals! Your crazy Memphis pal, Griz

What a week! FiCX Rocks!!! Cranking Along HARD!

Okay, so it’s been a caarraazzyy week! Had Monday & Tuesday evenings off from the side job but have also had a full blown FDA on site audit going on at the day job all week which always adds a completely different stress level in ANY medical device setting!

As you may have already read, Monday morning I hit legs as week 4 called for then chilled around the grill Monday evening. Next I hit HIIT cardio Tuesday morning but once I found out I had Tuesday evening off, after Tuesday’s crappy morning start I decided to get a jump on the week since Friday at 8AM I’ve got my orthopedic surgeon’s appointment to get this cranky knee looked into.

Now about a month ago I joined a brand spanking new gym that had JUST opened. It’s 10 minutes closer to the day job so being an early “0” Dark-Thirty workouter that seemed ideal as the closer you get early the less insane traffic you have to deal with PLUS being a brand new facility ALL the equipment is sparkly fresh & fully functional which is always a plus!!! It’s a Planet Fitness franchise which is more geared toward out of shape folks like me that are looking to transform rather than the uber heavy iron, power lifter, body builder style of gear like my old gym BUT PF has everything I need for the foreseeable future.

Well, as I eluded to, having Tuesday evening off I decided not to waste the opportunity to hit Helga’s House of Pain (actually the name is ATC Fitness) for one last heavy UBWO blasting dose of iron before my membership swished down the drain & I’m telling you…the volume just rolled & MMM!!! The old GROWL came roaring back!

Normally being a morning blaster I know that my lifts aren’t as heavy duty as they could be since PM workouts almost always rival the early morning numbers. I can only assume that’s because you body’s awake, more so fed & already somewhat warmed up from the day SOOO I kinda sorta applied Suz’s previous program’s pyramid approach, tearing through my first superset at all my previous AM personal record weights then when I began the second lap of the gears I upped every station at least 20%, whatever the nearest plate beyond that was, & MMM!!! It felt GOOD & OMG did the old guttural growl come roaring back! One of the differences at Planet Fitness is that they do cater to very modest folks so to keep them from being scared away by “iron heads” fully courteous behavior by all is required. Now, that kinda flys in the face of one little previous behavior that helped earn me the Griz moniker.

Back in 2010 when I was going through Body for Life & was working out at the workplace gym one thing several people noticed, the site fitness center manager included, was that I tend to zone out during sets & growl through the reps. I don’t spit or swear like lots of intense lifters tend to but rather emit a deep guttural GROWL at the iron as it gets incinerated. Well, that’s not allowed at Planet Fitness so I keep a conscious lid on the volume BUT at Helga’s the other night, shredding ALL of my former PRs for UBWO it felt good to just let’er rip!!! There were a couple teenie bopper high school track star looking jock boys & a couple cheerleader types standing right in the middle of everything just gabbing away, which is always VERY annoying! Now I chose machine stations that focused on the muscle groups identified in week 4’s day 3 so I pounded Pecs & Delts on the pec deck then immediately across the main aisle is my arch nemesis (since my 3^rd & ensuing 4^th right shoulder dislocation) the overhead shoulder press. After that I cranked off hammer curls & tricep extensions with Helga’s rubber plated dumbbells then on Supersets 2 & 3, when I went crazy heavy (for me), I added in seated tricep press downs as I love the way that station focusses the tricep BURN!

SOOO anyhow, the social hour teenie bopper club had convened right in the main aisle between the pec dec & the o’head shoulder press stations. I caught them kinda side glancing at me as I growled through pecs & delts of superset 2, going heavy, then as I ambled through, kinda sorta around them, glaring into their young souls as I passed & settled into o’head press it was on! My nemesis was going down & as I rolled through rep 9 & beyond each rep cranked the growl just a bit deeper & I couldn’t help notice they were looking my way then about rep 13 they just scattered, boys went one way, girls the other LOL! I know I know, I’m just a big ol’grumpy bear meanie but if they want to hang out & chit chat…there’s a McDs right across the parking lot & a Tropical Paradise smoothie bar right next door!

Anyhow, I blew through supersets 2&3 at record (for me) weights then dropped back to my former bests for superset 4 to close it all out & WHEW!!! It felt SOOO awesome! 54,600 LBs (LBs * Reps) of iron went by the wayside & I was sweating like an old nag Clydesdale tied up out front of a glue factory by the time all was said & done! WOW!!!

Hump day came along & I blew through day 4’s HIIT then worked last night back at the side job. This morning back at Planet Fitness I cranked off another bone warming leg day & tomorrow I’ll see about getting core & long haul cardio knocked out before my ortho appointment although I may have to hold all that for Saturday depending on mood & time, making sure to give it the justice & time it requires. If that gets delayed I’ll just add in an extra HIIT day into week 4 to fill the calendar!

Hope y’all are having an awesome week & I’ll make sure to put up a post doc blog, provided this doesn’t turn into a waste of time pre-diagnosis, deductible claiming, appointment LOL. Yes, I do have a bit of disdain for MOST docs even though I’ve spent my entire adult life serving the medical device industry from a manufacturing standpoint!

Rock on pals!!! It just keeps getting better as the steam builds!

I'M BAAAAACK!!!

Happy Friday Eve pals!!! Remember me?!?!? The Griz LOL?!?

So, after my awesome trip to Panama City Beach, FL with my sweetie Suz I returned for a couple days of fairly normal life then headed up North, back home, to visit my oldest son & his new baby boy, my first grandchild, for Memorial Day weekend which thanks to construction meant roughly 12 hours on the road Friday & 13 hours coming back Tuesday so my workouts have been very impacted, although while up there I did take regular advantage of my hometown’s greenway walking network logging 14.4 miles walked on the greenways alone!!!

As for compliance…well…meals were admittedly social events most of the weekend while visiting family & old friends. Although remaining conscious of choices made there were multiple meals at places we’ve missed since moving away in 2007 that admittedly don’t even offer truly compliant options but were either childhood favorites or places the boys grew up enjoying, the youngest made the trip with me. We’ll see what the scale & tape measure has to say about the last 2 weeks this upcoming Sunday!

Due to all the travels & craziness Suz & I decided to cover FiCX week 3 partly last week & finish it this week so we’ll be tearing into week 4 with a vengeance come Monday!!! We’re already planning our next adventure & it’s going to take place around her stomping grounds in just a few weeks, halfway from now to her birthday, so we’ll work on keeping up with our workouts & compliance when I’m back up there!

My knee that gave me some fits while in PCB stood up to the greenway walking pretty well & wasn’t even TOO whiney this AM but I decided that since I can’t get into an orthopedic surgeon to check it out until June 8th I adapted today’s leg day a bit so as not to end up armchair quarterbacking! Pulled off 4 supersets of seated calf press, abductor & adductor for a tidy total of 30,000LBs along with HIIT sessions of upright biking mixed throughout. I kept alternating the HIIT between the 1 of 3 minutes hot format & the 20 seconds per minute hot format which always yielded slightly higher calories burnt count according to the bike gizmo LOL! Sitting here now almost 4 hours post grind the legs are roasted & quivering well!

Hope you’re all having a GREAT week & for all my American pals…happy belated Memorial Day!!! Let’s never forget to whom we owe our freedoms to!

Rock on pals!!! To roll through the rest of week 3’s work, tomorrow will be a righteous UBWO thrashing & Saturday will be industrial core & long haul cardio!

BtW, just thought I’d introduce y’all to the 3rd generation Griz! Little rascal’s already got a pretty good grip LMBO!

PCB2 & MORE!!!

WHEW! What an awesome past few days it’s been!!! Suz flew down from Detroit to Nashville last Friday AM where I picked her up & we headed south for Panama City Beach, FL! We only had a little construction & 1 short detour to feed the rental mobile & grab a bite of lunch heading down. We arrived in PCB mid-evening, got settled into our beach facing suite on the top floor of the Seahaven Beach Resort in time to soak in the tail end of a beautiful sunset then walked next door to Sharky’s for a yummy, fairly healthy, dinner while a decent cover band cranked it up. After dinner we took a walk on the beach behind Sharky’s still listening to the band while gazing at the stars & listening to the waves crashing on the beach…JUST AWESOME!

Saturday morning we arose & headed down the road a few blocks stopping at an old fashioned stainless steel diner for a great breakfast then walked next door to a beach attire shop to get Suz a hat to block a little surplus sun then cruised across town so I could get a quick haircut after which we spent a good long while WAY out on the county pier & walking around the beach before grabbing some lunch. In the afternoon we went walking around the open air Panama City Pier Mall doing a little surprise shopping for a special Suz souvenir, pictured below! After walking the mall for a while we headed back to the Seahaven to chill for a bit until wedding time for Myl & Marine. Attended their really sweet beach sunset wedding service then journeyed over to the reception where we hung out a while then came back to Sharky’s to round out a set of PCB souvenir mugs for Suz’s kids & some more beach time. Sunday came along & we headed west along the coast a few burbs over until it seemed “town” was getting scarce & we stopped at a little mom & pop joint for some brunch. I’d never ever heard of a grilled shrimp omelet but it was fantastic! We then spent a good while beachcombing & walking up & down the gulf’s white sands. Ended up walking the Pier Mall again Sunday evening a while then spent Monday back in the saddle getting Suz to her flight even a few minutes early after stopping at a really cool H-D bike shop around lunchtime along the way.

Another thing that was neat was a benefit through my day job insurance, to track some of my fitness efforts, they’d given me a cool little “digital accelerometer” aka a schnazy pedometer that talks to my computer uploading my steps each day. Looking at the weekend numbers they made pretty good sense except Saturday looked way short compared to Sunday even though our walking  was about the same then I remembered that Saturday I wore my sandals a good deal of the day without the gizmo attached. Anyhow the results showed we walked just shy of 9.5 miles not counting a good half of Saturday so even though I missed a couple days of FiCX’s week 2 I felt pretty good about staying active while in PCB!

Got back Monday night & realized all my FiCX info was on my laptop that I’d dropped off at the office heading home so I wasn’t sure what Week 3 days 1 or 2 was even supposed to be SOOO, knowing I’m heading north to visit the grandbaby Memorial Day weekend I just blasted a beastly core & cardio morning then today being Week 3, Day 3 was leg day you KNOW I burnt it down!

I’ve been having increasing problems with my right knee since starting the squats & lunges in FiCXs lineup & while in PCB I really managed to piss it off, walking in the shifting white powder I think, so even though I had my leg day sheet this AM I was forced to adapt to what I could do, sticking with seated calf presses, abductor/ adductor & a slow & gingerly ground out set of glute back kicks, setting a new PR for seated calf press along the way! I’m now acquiring a list of English speaking knee docs who are “in network” on my insurance to get it checked out. About 13 years ago I slid down a creek bank while deer hunting, having my left leg slide out in front while my right foot caught & folded back. I ended up slamming full force down, folding my right leg shut TIGHT, sitting my hiney down on the bottom of my right boot with a solid thud followed by a loud grinding crunching ker-pop! Being a bull headed guy I limped & gimped for about a month until it seemed to get better enough not to garner attention but either squatting or lunging seems to have reaggravated it to a point of severe discomfort hence the doc’s list. I’m hopeful it can be tweaked back into happy without much fuss but time will tell meanwhile I’ll keep after it best I can.

Rock on pals!!! Kicking FiCX off right before PCB2 with a visit back to the hometown immediately following wasn’t the best of planning on my part but as I always said while in Body for Life…life will always happen so there’s no time like the present!

@ZZ KICKING HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

FiCX; Week 1, Day 5, awesome & intense upper body workout!!! Legs were still good tight & whiney this AM so the warm up was upright biking. I had planned on hitting that WICKED Cybex Arc Trainer for all of my warm ups, trying to build up to where I can tackle that mean beast come full on cardio days, BUT the legs just weren’t quite back ready to handle it from Wednesday’s BEAT DOWN & yesterday’s cardio so this AM, biking it was!

I LOVE the upright bikes as WAY back when, in high school (pictured below immediately after my favorite 100 miler, note the left ankle pant leg chain protector LOL) I pedaled all over north central Indiana, covering 1,200 miles during my summer vacation between 10^th & 11^th grade for example.

I also love biking since it’s basically zero impact on the knees but so is the Arc Trainer so that excuse no longer washes LOL! The evil ellipticals are also zero impact but are @ZZ kickers as their short little stride just makes me crazy but I’m slowly adapting as I know variety is critical in not burning out!!!

Speaking of burning out, this AM’s UBWO was an INTENSE burn!!! Tried sneaking up a notch on all the weights & managed a couple new PRs & brought a real BURN! I swear, my fingernails were even throbbing & I was honestly STILL sweating over an hour after my post grind shower!!! Absolutely loving the program & can’t wait to tear into week two, right after day 6’S long haul cardio of course!!!

Normally I put in a good chunk of hours at the side job on the weekend so prolly won’t be chiming in much again until Monday so here’s wishing y’all an INTENSELY awesome weekend! Rock on pals & keep it grinding!!!

Hump Day Philosophizing & Iron Grinding!!!

So, for those of you who don’t know the Griz all that well, one thing you will find is that I’m a self-professed music nut! I’m primarily rooted in classic rock with ballads from hard rock bands being some of my very favorite songs as these showcase their true talents as they stretch past their usual comfort zone, just as intense diet & fitness efforts show themselves best in us when we stretch beyond what we had previously called normal! There are also many pop country songs that I really enjoy as well since they tend to touch on more emotions than rock but please! You can keep the older “country & western” beer drinkin’ twangy whiny, “my coon dog done run off with my best girl” kinda stuff! Not my gig!

ANYHOW, often as I’m working out in the gym, while my 400ish songs scroll across the iPod adding hump & hustle to the early AM workouts, certain lyrics strike me. Sometimes they fit a recent conversation, sometimes they fit the mood, sometimes they just fit what’s going on in life & often these feel like an epiphany! What really strikes me is how you can hear a song for like the bazillionth time & suddenly something either in your heart or head just clicks!

So, today for example, while warming up to 5 minutes of random hills LifeFitness upright biking, leading into today’s @ZZ kicking leg day, Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven fired off. Now I’ve blogged about this song for friends facing tough spots in the road many times before as the overall concept always leads me to the same conclusion; even if you have a perfect stairway directly to heaven it won’t do you ANY good unless you get stepping! It’ll be a long hard climb so once you begin it’s just one foot in front of the other, always envisioning or visualizing the goal of taking that final step onto your cloud but that’ll NEVER happen if you FIRST don’t get started OR if you EVER give up along the way! But today there were also a couple specific verses that caught my soul relating to this fitness LIFE journey I have chosen to adopt;

“And a new day will dawn for those who STAND LONG & the forests will echo with laughter.”

This is not going to be a short road or ANY KIND of quick fix! It took 20+ years to get this far gone so STANDING LONG to be able to enjoy life’s laughter down the road is paramount & worth it!

The other verse, “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on.” Being near, if not past, life’s midpoint it’s critical to NEVER let myself even entertain the thought that it’s too late to make good decisions, regardless of the past!!! As long as I’m “on the road” undertaking this journey it’s NEVER too late to choose the BEST path & make the RIGHT decisions like grinding those last 3 reps…yeah they might really burn but THAT’S the point!!! Deciding that stopping for that creamy Starbucks on the way to work or having that big greasy cheeseburger for lunch that you’ve always loved SOOO much just is NOT worth the quality of life you’re trading for them!

So, enough philosophizing!!! I’ve got my FIcX affirmations figured out, my visualization is solid & my gratitude log, admittedly still a mental exercise rather than a physical one, grows daily.

NOW, let’s get down to the work! LEG DAYS ROCK!!! Being a manufacturing engineer for MANY years, too many sometimes it seems, I am also a self-professed numbers nut & leg days just RACK UP the volume! Let’s face it; I’ve got a fairly beefy set of sticks from hauling this carcass all over a fourth of the planet all these years! As I’d mentioned in an earlier blog, I’ve acquired a few injuries over the years, that my additional heft doesn’t help any with, so I have to kind work around those but that’s okay, the work still gets done, trust me!!! As I’ve explained in an earlier blog, part of the Griz nickname comes from my funky way of growling at the iron rather than grunting or swearing as so many do & given a good hard leg day…MMM!!! The growls just feel SOOO good! When I mentioned joining Planet Fitness on my Facebook page recently one of my longtime fitness pals out in Oregon warned me of PFs “Lunk Alarm” as apparently she or someone she knows has actually been kicked out of one for grunting & she’s repeatedly warned me that my growling may get me in trouble there, as it did at the workplace gym which is more like a country club rehab center than a gym LOL!

Anyhow, today was the first time I’d gotten comfortable enough there or deep enough into it to get a good growl on but luckily none of the folks around me seemed to mind LOL! One lady & her workout gal pal even stopped me & asked where I’d gotten my workout schedule she’d seen me carrying around on my clipboard! Of course I gave her the FIcX web addy & she was tickled! Anyhow PF has an awesome seated calf press station that allows me to load up the weight without loading my grouchy herniated lumbar disc so the final 3 reps of set 4 at 240 pounds got their fair share of deep belly Grizzly growls!

I also had a minor hunting accident back in the ‘90s, slipping down a muddy creek bank & folding up my right leg under me hard which has left some long lasting fussiness in my right knee that is also impacting my ability to really squat deep or lunge long & low but squatting as deep as it would tolerate with only 120 LBs on the bar worked pretty well (in addition to my own torso tonnage) & lunging as long & low as I can with 30 pound dumbbells in each hand, added to my already substantial body load, definitely sunk the burn deep! Calves, hammies, quads & even my glutes are ON FIRE today & I can honestly say that this is the first time my glutes have ever lit up, WOW!!!

I’m slowly getting a better handle on the nutritional side of FIcX but it still seems daunting to get 3K calories in daily without expecting to need a bigger car to commute in LOL although I DO get the logic! Feed the muscles all they need to grow efficiently & lure my metabolism out of hibernation! Makes perfect sense…just gotta get used to it!

Rock on pals & happy hump day!!!