RandomHavoc's Training Log

In 2 months, I'll be on an academic exchange to Singapore. I'll be there for 6 months (with some travelling here and there). There is one thing that is certain: By the end of that period, I will be at the fittest level of my life.

It's not to say that I won't ever become stronger, faster, or better at gymnastics. However, it will be the longest period in my life that I will be as active as I can possibly be. When I return, after another semester, my working life as an auditor begins. They include long hours, and lots of time siting in front of the computer. It's not my intention to discuss how I can mitigate this period of inactivity when I return, but rather make the most out of my stay in Singapore.

Why utopia? Two reasons.

First, I WILL BE ABLE TO EAT MEAT AS MUCH AS I WANT -- ALL THE TIME! (for very cheap too!) Right now, I live with my parents who suffer quite a bit of health problems. They are morally vegetarian/vegan. That doesn't bother me, except for the fact that up until 2 months ago, I was not allowed meat in the house. Now I can. I have a small fridge in my room to store some meat. But they are usually limited to cold cuts and pre-cooked chicken, since my dad cannot stand the smell of me cooking meat in the house... not that I can cook anyways. On a good day, I can get 100g of protein in me. For the past 20 years of my life, the average was probably more like 40.

Second, the lack of responsibilities is something I've had not had in many years. My only priority will be school work. My goal is not to get A's or anything, seing as how those courses will only count as a pass/fail when transferring the credits here in Montreal. Therefore, as long as I put an average of an hour a day of reading/studying, I should be more than fine.

That leaves me with 23 hours a day to balance everything else. That includes training, eating and sleeping for the most part. Training is vast field and I wanted to add flexibility, mobility, stability, postural health, to the elements already incorporated by the WoDs. I also wanted to include the following:

• * Meditation/Breathing exercises/Contemplation
  * Cultural/Spiritual/Personal development
  * Learning how to be a kid and have fun

The purpose of this thread is to act as a sketch book. I have 2 months before I depart. In this time, I will post some thoughts and some potential programming and ideas about what I want to do, and how I want to do it. I invite anyone to comment or criticize on my goals. I know I will get caught up in my the vastness of my goals and either overreach, focus on useless things, or simply loose sight on the fun of being on exchange for half a year.

Words cannot describe how excited I am for this life altering journey.

niiiiiiceeeeeee man!! Twice a day coming up I assume!

Hah! Probably not in the beginning at least. I know I'll be free as a bird and all, but if training hard twice a day will give me less results than once a day, I'll choose the smarter training method instead. However, mobility, prehab, balance, flexibility is not really "training", so I can definitely have those everyday!

I thinking about doing before/after pictures and videos too.

It would be foolish to start thinking about anything if I didn't define some goals I wanted to accomplish. But when I thought of goals, my mind was all over the place. I can accomplish a lot in 6 months. And I'm not just looking at specific moves like Front Level for example. So I first had to brainstorm and put my thoughts in an organized manner. So far, I have something like this:

Made with a handy software called XMind.

So my goals are the following:

Flexibility

Pike

Sit on my knees

Strength

Free handstand

L Sit

German Hang

Faster recovery of heart

Mobility and Stability

Erect posture

Proper gait

Personal Development

Understand myself

Photography

Not hating nature

Clearly the last section is more qualitative and I'll need to think outside the box on how I would approach them. Of course I understand that these are not S.M.A.R.T. goals, but it's a beginning for me to work with. Once again, comments and criticisms are appreciated, since those thoughts will help me through my own!

For your postural goals of proper gait and erect posture, you will get there in a hurry with Pain Free. A nice bonus is that the program is almost completely non-taxing on your body, so it won't impact anything but the 15-30 minutes a day you spend on it.

Singapore is beautiful. Eat lots of food from the malaysian vendors, it's great and cheap! I remember paying 2 sing for a massive plate of food! The American restaurants are ok, but way too expensive. I can't justify that cost in the face of such cheap and satisfyingly delicious and healthy food from local shops! In Orchard (I think this is where it is) Mall, NOT Orchard Towers (Lovingly known as the Four Floors of Whores), there is a fantastic indonesian place on the bottom floor. I paid 16 sing for dinner but it was fabulous. A fantastic place. Enjoy Sentosa Island!

Singapore can truly be a training utopia!

I've been to Singapore twice, beautiful place and the food is awesome - huge varity and really nice, couldn't get enough. I saw some of your goals were photography and not hating nature - take a camera to the Bird Park and go to the Lory Aviary

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/XQ ... directlink

Ha, very interesting thread and brainstorm.

I would propose to you some of these crazy things:

-read 1 book per week (typical book is 300 pages /7 = 42 pages a day)

-watch 1 good documentary per day (examples: Food.inc, Michael Moore's ones, training ones, ecc.)

-getting clean air every hour

-learning a new language

-learning juggling

-doing gymnastics for eyes

-learning minimalism and selling stuff

Slizz, I own a copy of Egoscue Method Health through Motion. I read that twice, and it was indeed one of the more epiphanic moments of my life. Actually, you were the reason I picked that book up all those months ago. I guess I should thank you for not finding attractive women appealing anymore since most of them have terrible posture!

I will definitely enjoy Singapore, and all its surrounding areas. I plan to do quite a bit of travelling during my stay.

tpo, that is indeed a beautiful shot. I've always had a strong artistic side to me. For that very reason, I'm shopping for a camera now so that I can take lots of shots. My last trip to India gave me a little more than a 1,000 pictures. Going through them to delete will be tedious. In fact, I'm in the process of shopping for a new camera now. I'm finding it difficult to find a camera in my budget ($250 CAD) with GPS geotagging capabilities. Maybe I should look at a external geotagger instead? :?

Felipe, I appreciate all that you have suggested. However, there are some things about me that you should know. I must read (and understand!) a lot in my program. Additionally, I already read for too much for my own good. Besides logging in this forum twice a day, I have a host of other fitness, dietary blogs that I visit frequently.

What may be hard to believe is that another one of my passions include style/fashion. I actually have more blogs about those than fitness at the moment that log in to read on a daily basis. Then there are the art, and technology blogs. I really read to much, so much so that I end up staying logged on to my macbook for far too long and promote the disease that is sitting :!: In fact, it is one of my intentions to roughly estimate how long I sit a day, so that I keep it to a minimum! I know, I'm crazy

BTW, can you elaborate on "doing gymnastics for the eyes"?

Although, you have gaven me an idea to tweak my goals a bit. I'm going to remove the Strength section since it's far too encompassing and it will be covered by Gb WoDs anyways. Instead, I will replace it by a Skills section. I will also add Hollow holds/rocks and Perfect squat/pistols there. However, I'm no longer sure where to put my weak heart recovery.

So now I have:

Flexibility

Pike

Sit on my knees

Skills

Free handstand

L Sit

German Hang

Hollow Holds/Rocks

Perfect Squat/Pistol

Mobility and Stability

Erect posture

Proper gait

Personal Development

Understand myself

Photography

Not hating nature

That's enough for tonight. I'll soon add my weirder goals like reducing time sitting, and vision training, maintaining a travel blog, etc. Hopefully, by this time next month, I'll have a realistic program set to conquer all these vast goals. Until then, does anybody with a passion for Yoga (Mr. Bardy comes to mind) know any site/blog with a Yoga move of the day/WoD. On that topic, any new skill blog resources would be great to spice things up.

Thanks again for all your inputs and keep them coming!

HAHAHA sorry about the ladies!

Health through motion is very good, it just isn't as accessible as Pain Free. It is, however, more detailed in some respects.

For gymnastics for eyes I mean things like Bates method, but there are tons of other ones.

For the reading, I also spend a lot of time on the internet...but at the end of the day I regret for some of the hours on news and forums, that quite always are not useful and add nothing to my life...would that hour be better if you use it on more insightful, coherent and systemic essay? I'm still thinking on it...

I think you could stand to shoot for loftier skill goals. If you have alot of free time, grease the groove levers and try to hit a straddle 360 pull or something.

mobilitywod.com is a good resource for pre-hab.

Felipe, that Bates method is amazing! Do you have other such methods I could look into? My vision is quite poor (-5 each eye). I have however found websites that state that with proper eye exercises you can improve your eyes to the point where you can drive without glasses. It's not to say that this will happen even in the first year or two, but it's something that definitely interests me in the long-term.

As for reading, I have a much bigger challenge in mind and that's:

Not reading.

The fact is, I'm a knowledge absorber, I love knowing more and more. This is my favourite Ido quote, and it starts at 5:25.

4NKRjYGZG7g

I've got to stop seeking knowledge, because I have tons already. I have what I need to transform my body into anything I realistically want it to be. It's time to stop learning, and it's time to start doing. I plan on logging on to my laptop to update my training log, update my travel blog, and any related school work. Anything beyond that means I will need to punished somehow. Maybe some lacross ball myofascial massage on my IT band :shock: Yeah, that should be painful enough.

Amebix, I understand where you're coming from, but I don't necessarily aim to become stronger, or do specific moves. I believe I'll be challenged enough with the WoDs. Rather, I would like to set a very strong athletic base for which all other future skill learned will be dependent upon. If you look at the skills I've written so far, they are the prerequisites that everyone has said time and time again that we must all be able to do: Perfect german hang before any back lever; perfect Lsit will open the most doors for all other moves; handstands will benefit everything, etc.

For example, if I can become flexible (I mean right now, I can't even sit on my knees! When I sit with my legs crossed, my right thigh doesn't even touch the ground either), and if I can build a good base for my posture, than I should keep it for the rest of my life with minimal maintenance. I would literally have to not move in order to lose it.

Another skill that I realized I needed to add is the false grip. So that increases my list to something like this:

Flexibility

Pike

Sit on my knees

Skills

Free handstand

L Sit

German Hang

Hollow Holds/Rocks

Perfect Squat/Pistol

False grip

Mobility and Stability

Erect posture

Proper gait

Personal Development

Understand myself

Photography

Not hating nature

I realize that some goals will be quicker to gain than other. But I'm also looking at milestones to increase the difficulty down the road. So for handstands, it would be something like this:

Wall Handstand --> Free Handstand --> Wall Handstand Run

RLL --> RLL (with head elevated until arms locked) --> Straddle press to handstand --> Pike press to handstand [while improving hamstring flexibility]

Maybe I'm not going about this the best way possible. Maybe I should use a box and increase the range of motion slowly and start with locked arms from the get go. I'll figure it out, but I plan on making more measurable objectives for each goal. One thing is for sure, In the beginning, emphasis will be placed on posture/gait & flexibility. I plan on spending a lot of time on that so that it will benefit the rest of my training as soon as possible.

While still just loosely imagining this, but here's a preview of what my schedule might look like:

-Wake up

-Leave the house immediately (or risk being stuck to the pc)

-Find a park, do some skill work to get extra volume in. (Maybe some stretching here too)

-Go home, eat, get groomed and officially start the day

I haven't really figured the rest yet. I'm still struggling to decide what to do first.

I'd like to ask, what factors should I consider when trying to figure out what my ideal bodyweight should be. I'm 99% sure I'm severely underweight at the moment. I want to understand what is healthy for me without necessarily doing a mass gaining program. Thanks for sticking with me so far guys!

RandomHavoc said:

Slizz, I own a copy of Egoscue Method Health through Motion. I read that twice, and it was indeed one of the more epiphanic moments of my life. Actually, you were the reason I picked that book up all those months ago. I guess I should thank you for not finding attractive women appealing anymore since most of them have terrible posture!

Not heard of that book, will have to look it up!

RandomHavoc said:

tpo, that is indeed a beautiful shot. I've always had a strong artistic side to me. For that very reason, I'm shopping for a camera now so that I can take lots of shots. My last trip to India gave me a little more than a 1,000 pictures. Going through them to delete will be tedious. In fact, I'm in the process of shopping for a new camera now. I'm finding it difficult to find a camera in my budget ($250 CAD) with GPS geotagging capabilities. Maybe I should look at a external geotagger instead? :?

Thank you squire. I love trying to get the right shot, my last trip to Singapore was for 9 days and I took ~ahem~ 3477 photos...!

I'm not sure exactly what CAD converts to in Sing$ but you'll find cameras and equipment much cheaper in SIngapore, and MAKE SURE YOU HAGGLE! I got a lens that was the price I was hoping for, and then haggled another S$100 off and got the filter for S$30 instead of the S$100 on the price tag...I would definitely have thought a built-in GPS geotagger would only be on the top-end cameras, and not sure which other cameras can take an external geotagger to be honest (I have only had Canons!). It's very easy to geo-tag a photo on the PC afterwards thought, I think there's specific software for it which might be a better option?

Just to add, I think your planning of goals and sense of purpose is really inspiring

-TPO.

You are severely underweight. You should try to gain some while you over there. You could gain 50+ lbs and still be lean and strong. I don't know if you want to gain that much, but I would definitely make sure you eat a ton while you are working out over there.

Do you have other such methods I could look into?

Bates followers like Emily C. Lierman, W.B. McCracken, Ruiz Arnau

Biofeedback: Accommotrac Vision Trainer

PINHOLES/RASTERBRILLE glasses

PVSystem

tpo, heck, how many of those pictures did you keep?! Also, for anyone interested, I found a $5 app called GeoLogTag that will work with any camera and geotag my pictures. Can't get cheaper than that!

And thank you for those kind words. My original intent was to write things down and hopefully get some feedback to put things into perspective. I never considered that maybe this thread could affect others.

Felipe, thanks for the resources. I will have a thorough look at them.

To address my weight. I always knew I was underweight, however I never understood how significantly I was. I hope I won't contradict myself, but I don't plan on doing a mass gain program. I'll still only do the GB Wod, as my main conditioning, and supplement with elements that will reinforce my athletic base. The only thing I need to do is make sure to eat... a lot... and from good sources. If I do that, I believe I will make the progress I want, and the while gaining weight (and mass???) to a point where it reflects my needs. When I reach that point, I assume I will be neither under or over-weight. My rational seems simplistically logical... I just hope I'm correct.

I think I had a mini-epiphany today (I think I've had too many epiphanies in one lifetime to still call them epiphanies). I realized how much simpler my thought process would be if I simply divided my day into sessions. I'll fit everything I need to fit in their appropriate sessions. That's it. Here's what I have so far:

Morning

Mobility Wod

Skill work

Stretching

Early afternoon

FSP

Gymnastic Wod

Stretching

Late afternoon

Mobility Wod (another)

Prehab

Play

Eye exercises

Evening

Contemplation/Meditation/Breathing exercises

Contemplation: I plan on writing a journal, where I question things about my life. Like "Why did I choose this field to study in", "Am i happy with my relationship with my family", "Why do I act X way, when Y happens", etc.

Clearly, this is oversimplified. I haven't taken into account the days which I have school, days I travel, nights I party, and that play can be switched around the day. But I think this is very representative of what things should look like. Opinions about the timing of my structure of my day?

After taking a stroll through Eat Move Improve again, I came across this article: http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/2010/10/a ... -the-feet/

Now that I'm fresh with the concepts of my deficiencies, I'll address how I'll go about taking care of them. First a background:

Background

I'm 22 years old. Growing up, I was very sedentary. I quite literally would watch about 10 hours of TV a day. This was my childhood... yes quite sad. Today, I have flat feet/collapsed arch, valgus hallux (toe caving in), hallux limitus (range of motion of big toe during the windlass mechanism -- important for proper gait function while running), some external rotation of the foot, and knee valgus (more pronounced on 1 legged work). Now I definitely have bad posture in my shoulders, and I'm going to go ahead and assume that my pelvis is probably also anteriorly rotated.

Since my obsessions with how the body works and specifically gait work started, I've made huge progress. Most notably, the amount of external rotation of my feet has significantly reduced. Now, when I wear shoes, my feet appear to be pointed straight; and while wearing vibrams, they appear to be 15 degrees externally rotated. However, I've always had trouble fully understand what exactly a neutral pelvis is. Pictures are easy and all, but on my self, looking at a mirror, it's difficult to tell whether I'm hallowing, or arching.

Solution

- Mobility Wod twice a day. One for the prescribed one of that day, and one starting from the first MWod ever made. I should be able to complete every MWod in 4 months time if I start in January.

- Specific flexibility work. Tailor made flexibility routines to address my most problematic area. Hamstrings, pec minor, calves, quadriceps, and illiopsoas come to mind.

- Constant focus on posture. This includes shoulders retracted and depressed. Head looking forward and chest leading. Feet pointed forward and laterally supported (not caved in medially). Knees pointed in same direction as feet (especially hard while using the stairs). If I do all that correctly, I'm assuming my pelvis will be in the correct position.

- Specific exercises. One thing that comes to mind is running on sand. Whether walking, jogging or sprinting, I'm going to try and make a conscious effort to quickly move around on sand for at least 10 minutes as often as I can in a given week. While I've never seen this on the MWod, gravity drops (Egoscue method) are awesome and very effective. It's basically the opposite of a calf raise. I'll be doing these often as well.

- Avoiding specific positions. Probably the hardest one: avoid sitting. I know this is not completely feasible, but it will be severely limited. Sitting on a chair will have to be done at school. Conscious effort will be made to eliminate it in all other part of the day. This will give me incentive to focus on flexibility work that will allow me to finally sit on my knees. Similarly, I'll be wearing vibrams very often and when that isn't possible, weak supporting (but still stylish) sneakers like chuck tailors, vans, and jack purcells.

I think this is very comprehensive but if you have any other ideas, that would be great.

Random keep it simple, too many goals and you'll just get overwhelmed. You've got your whole life in front of you, the time will pass faster than you think. The important thing to to make a start on the lifestyle and keep it up as best as possible when you return.

Enjoy the new culture, its one of the most important experiences you can have as a young adult.

Thanks guys, sometimes its good to hear that. But let me reassure you that I won't be so lost in my own goals that I'll loose sight of the beauty in front of me. Everything I write here is my ideal, optimistic daily routine. This of course includes sightseeing, travelling, and picture taking. And I am a very social creature too! And I'm well aware that things won't go as planned, I'm still going to enjoy the ride.

Slizz, I guess the posts about your military field trips to the 4rth floor was too much for the forums? Regardless, I was able to read them yesterday and cracked up. I was really wondering when the topic about girls will be mentioned on this thread.

Can someone confirm the following:

Effective flexibility = inhibition, stretching, strengthening antagonists.

If the above is true, then doing some lacrosse ball massage before stretching (like on the pic minors in the fix your shoulders thread) would give me better results?

And has anyone done research on sunscreen and vitamin D? So far I'm thinking about putting sunscreen on only between 10AM to 3PM and soaking up the sun without protection the rest of the day. If it helps, I've never put on sunscreen in my life and have never gotten a sunburn. I'm a tad darker skinned than most white folks.

Sunscreen is better than burning your skin, but the optimal would of course be no sunscreen, no burn.

Razz said:

Sunscreen is better than burning your skin, but the optimal would of course be no sunscreen, no burn.

I'm looking beyond the sunburn part, and considering the likelihood of skin cancer. I'm just not sure if this is one of those myths we've been led to believe (like squatting below parallel is dangerous!) or if there is actually some truth to it. I definitely want my Vitamin D, and without taking supplements, but I also know the sun is harsh in Singapore.

I guess so! I forgot that this is all ages and that was inappropriate material, should have been a PM. Regardless, even though Sing is a small place it has a lot of character and doesn't have to be boring. I think it is the perfect place to get into a training routine.

I think my comment was a bit too risque too, apologies for that!

As for the sun, Singapore does get really hot and if you're out somewhere like one of the big parks/nature areas you are in the sun for a long time without much cover, so although I don't tend to use a lot of sunscreen I'd definitely recommend what you said about using it between 10-3pm. Outside of the midday heat it's fine, if quite humid sometimes.

I'd take hot and humid rather than the cold and wet outside my window right now!

-TPO.

Consider this thread revived.

I finished my exams 2 days ago. A few more days of partying and prepping ahead. But I'll start putting effort back here so that I'm ready to go in about 15 more days!

I also had a bit of an epiphany (yet again) My mastery is in the realm of business. Therefore, to manage all of my various goals, I'll be using all the business concepts and theories and cases I've done over the past 6 years to do so. I especially think the Balanced Scorecard will be especially effective in this regard. If there's any interest about these business concepts applied to managing fitness, then I'll go ahead and post a balanced scorecard that fits my needs and take it from there.

Post! That would be cool!