TL Fitness Initiative (Weight Loss/Gain) - Page 13

On January 04 2009 10:10 JeeJee wrote:


'better' in terms of footstrike isn't well-defined, and any opinion does not have empirical science (as far as i know) backing it up. there was a study done at UCT for Pose running (forcing mid/fore landing as opposed to heel; this is a gross oversimplification of the technique but whatever), and the results were reduced load on the knees, reduced vertical oscillation and increased load on the ankle (this last one you won't find on their website (posetech.com), you will have to read the study. Although you'll find "REDUCE LOAD ON THE KNEE" in big red letters on the front page. What can i say, it's marketing)

basically drastically altering the way you run will probably be counter-productive and induce injury 'cause your body isn't used to it. just keep it natural.

as for the trail, you've made huge progress, congrats! as you're building up the distance (well it's a little moot now since you can cover 80% of it but can still help), try introducing a walkbreak, maybe every 1 km. Length of a minute or so, or however long is necessary so that you can walk-run the entire trail. once you find how long of a walk break you need, start gradually reducing it. it should be more effective than running the first 80% and walking the rest.

oh and take a day off too! running every day is great, but your legs/body need to recover as well. rest is pretty important. you could always do something else if you're bored on your day off (a la elliptical, strength training etc.)

On January 11 2009 14:41 Bockit wrote:
So the last week has had its ups and downs. In terms of my eating habits, I've been really good keeping to the diet that I've set myself. My cardio this week though has been pretty poor, I didn't run on monday, tuesday, wednesday, or thursday. Monday was because I went to the beach so I figured swimming and running around for the whole afternoon was a good enough substitute, and tuesday and wednesday were ridiculously hot, I should have swum more to make up for it but I didn't.

So the negative was I broke my pretty decent streak of cardio. As a result, my good eating meant I didn't gain any weight, but I didn't lose any either, which is a bit of a hit to my goal because I still need to lose 6.5kg by the 8th of feb if I want to reach it.

The good news though is that although on Friday I did a shoddy run time, on Saturday I broke my personal best by almost a minute dropping it to 35:45 and then today I set out with the goal to break 35 and missed it by only 6 seconds. That means either tomorrow or Tuesday I'm expecting to break 35 and then once I do that I'm going to convert one of the sections of the trail that I walk into a run which should lose me another 1-2 minutes and get me even closer to this elusive 30 minutes.

EDIT: I used to ride a lot however my seat is reasonably uncomfortable and since I've stopped I've noticed that every time I pick it up again I have to stop because after the first session I can't bear to put my weight down on the seat again. I'm thinking of getting a new bike seat, properly aligning it and then picking up cycling again so I can interchange it with the running. I don't know if I'll do that before or after I break 30mins on my track though.

On January 11 2009 14:59 eshlow wrote:


What's your diet look like? "Good eating" is kind of.. subjective and may not actually be good eating. I mean, switching from like candy to say pastries might be very slightly "better" for you but it's not actually good eating. Not that you're doing that but just an illustration.

You should use something like http://fitday.com (free) to log what you eat AND drink in a day. That will give you a fairly good calorie estimate and if it's similar to the amount you had been eating them you should cut about 300-500 cals off.

Of course, QUALITY of food matters significantly... stay away from anything processed among other things. Macros can be played around with some as well...

On January 11 2009 19:30 Energies wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

I have added a lot of muscle mass since that second photo. I'll add a third image to that in March without a shirt on. I will hopefully have a six-pack by then!

On January 11 2009 14:14 Binky1842 wrote:
ive just been doing a lot of simple things to gain some muscle and to tone up. i'm really skinny already so it's not that hard for me. pullups, crunches, pushups, and been using our free weights a lot more reguarlly. i shoveled the snow out of our little courtyard, patio the other day and my arms and lower back got pretty sore, so that's a good sign :D
i'm using a 20lb for my left arm and a 15lb free weight for my right, since my left side is my dominate side. i'm wondering, if i should just stick with the same weight for both arms? i can do the 20 on my right, but i cant get the same amount of reps with it if i were to use the 15. i figured doing the same reps on both arms is better than a lot less with the same weight for both arms.
still the same weight. gl everyone

On January 09 2009 18:08 Energies wrote:
Bump. Weekend is coming up people, make sure you remember that Saturday and Sunday count as actual days as well. Which means whatever you do and eat will still count. I'm going to hit the gym for a couple of hours Saturday morning and try some new things as it's usually pretty quiet on the weekend.

On January 11 2009 14:58 Demoninja wrote:
The main reason I'm working out is so I can get stronger for Muay Thai and this other team called Raiders. For Raiders, we compete once in May. We basically have to do as many push ups as we can in one minute and as many sit ups as we can in one minute. It also involves a lot of running. I was wondering if you could tell me this is a good routine or if I'm over training.

Monday: (Workout A)
3x5 Squats
3x5 Bench
1x5 Deadlift
(Ab exercises, I haven't figured out which yet)

Tuesday: (Cardio)
3 mile jog
5 sets of 20 push ups

Wednesday (Workout B)
3x5 Squat
3x5 Standing Military Press
3x5 Power Cleans
(Ab exercises)

Thursday:
Cardio

Friday:
Workout A

Saturday:
Cardio

Sunday:
Rest

Monday:
Workout B

Tuesday:
Cardio

Wednesday:
Workout A

Thursday:
Cardio

Friday:
Workout B

Saturday:
Cardio

Sunday:
Rest

Then I start over from the top. Would I be slowing down my strength gains by doing so much cardio work?

On January 11 2009 15:43 Bockit wrote:



That's a good point heh I guess to me good eating is very different to someone else

Breakfast is 2 slices of french toast a banana and a glass of milk (today though I had an extra 2 slices of toast for extra energy cos I really wanted to break 5 minutes)

Then lunch can be a few things, either a chicken and lettuce sandwich with a bit of mayo or if I have cooked up a pizza recently, pizza is a thin base with pizza sauce, (now) small amount of pepperoni, ham, cheese and mushroom. If I can be bothered to cut it up I'll include capsicum/chili too. It'll be either 1/4 or 3/8ths of a pizza if I go this route. I also have another glass of milk with this.

In the afternoon I'll have 2 cruskits (http://www.arnotts.com.au/varieties/CruskitsOriginal.aspx) spread with vegemite and an apple and a glass of water.

Dinner is whatever gets served by my mum. I have little control over this except asking her for more healthy food. Typically it's a combination of a garden salad / vegetables, red/white meat with some kind of sauce, bread and then 'something else'. Usually 2 glasses of milk with dinner.

All my milk is lite (not skim, but not full cream) and I drink a lot of water throughout the day. These are the only things I drink (Unless going out heh), not really a fan of juices but could drink orange juice if it was gonna have an amazing benefit and I hate fizzy drinks so that rules out soft drinks

I have no idea really how that compares to other people, I worked it out with a friend of mine who knows a bit about dieting and fitness, I'd be interested to hear other opinions on it.

How my routine fits into this is I wake up at 9am, jump in the pool for 50 laps of our 10m pool (Pushing off the wall covers about 1/3 - 1/2 of the pool each time but it's all I've got heh) an then cook breakfast. Then at about 11 or 11:30 I'll do my run and have lunch at about 40 minutes to an hour after getting back.

On January 11 2009 14:54 eshlow wrote:


Considering how many knee injuries there are in running... I would say it's a major deal. However, the main "point" I would say is that proper running technique (mid-foot-ish strike) reduces the loads on the joints specifically and transfers it over to the muscles because they are properly bent at the time of impact. If your heel's going into the ground your leg is fairly straight and all that nice shock runs all the way up from your heel to the knee to the hips to the lower back.. hence a lot of knee, hip and lower back pain in runners with heel strike strides.

The one way to "fix" your stride fairly quickly is to run barefoot on flat grass as doing it incorrectly will pretty much force your body to the right way to run otherwise it hurts.

Anyway, if you don't really believe me that's okay, but most of the earlier runners like pre 1950s barely wore any protection on their feet at all (and most african runners now don't either and most are forefoot/mid-foot strikers). Their injury rates are significantly lower too.

On January 12 2009 14:58 Demoninja wrote:
I'll just post here. I knew it was based on something, I didn't know it was a whole book though. I'll pick it up whenever I have time. I guess my goal is to build strength for Muay Thai and endurance for the competition. That's basically what that competition is about since it's a day long thing. Is it possible to build strength and endurance?

On January 12 2009 15:44 Demoninja wrote:
We run a mile, then we walk to an area where we run an obstacle course, then we walk to this far off place, then we run around fields, up hills etc. then we run back to the place where we ran the mile. If I had to pick a goal, I'd pick the competition since I don't plan on doing this next year.