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!!!
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