Reflection

This past week has been an interesting week for me, generally not for good reasons! I managed to undo a lot of hard work and graft that I put in October to lose 6.5kgs this past week. I did only TWO days of exercise out of six and ate junk FOUR out of seven days. Effectively, I feel like I'm going backwards and I just don't know why.

It's funny because last week was a week where lots of people spoke to me/contacted me about my blog too. I didn't realise so many people were reading it! One common thing they mentioned to me was how different I'd look in a years time from starting this blog and how they were looking forward to seeing a different me.

I felt a bit crappy when I heard that because here I am, just trudging along, going from one month to the next, a little bit of exercise here and there, not really pushing myself. In my head I feel like when people see my next June or July, the only difference is I'll be a few kilos lighter than I started.

That's not what I wanted when I started this blog. I wanted to push myself as far I as I could and I wanted this to show physically after a year, be that with t-shirt filling arms or a six pack or a bigger chest.

At the moment, it's not happening and I don't feel like I'm making good on the challenges I set myself. That's why I need this post now to take a step back and really see where I am with this challenge. Writing it down and putting it out there will be better than just going over it in my head.

So as a recap, here's what I wanted to achieve in a year (I only have six months left!) and here's how I'm getting on:

5km Runs
The idea behind this was to run an official 5km race every month in order to improve my stamina for a larger goal at the end of the twelve months. I've made good on this so far as I started in June and have run every month, as well as having my place booked on several other runs up until February.

Things were going great until I hit a plateau last month. Each month, I managed to improve my running time, starting with approximately 35 minutes and getting it down to 27 minutes, only to clock in at 28 during my last run in October.

This hit me hard because I really trained hard for that run and was so certain I could get down to 26 minutes. I've totally altered my training for my November run, but I'm not confident that I can break the 26 minute barrier this month due to my pathetic, lazy, almost exercise free week last week.

The good thing is that I'm going to keep going and I'm booked up months in advance. Of all aspects of the challenge, this is the one that I'm proud of the most.

The Splits
After getting back into Kung Fu following a ten year gap, I realised after a few weeks I wouldn't be able to stick it out because of long term work commitments. I have a punch bag at home and still continue to practice my moves on it as it still always works as a good cardio session.

One thing I took away from it that I still wanted to achieve and knew I could work on is performing the splits. I was always more into my kicking than punching in Kung Fu, so I added this challenge a few months ago to the Twelve Month Mission because it would be useful for my kicking and would be great for warm up/cool downs. It's also beneficial just to keep the body supple and flexible.

To be honest, I've got nowhere with this so far. I do stretch a few times a week, but after reading many articles about the splits, you need to be doing at least two sessions of stretching a day. One here or there won't do jack.

This is something which is more than achievable in the remaining six months, but there's lots of work to be done there. I'll get started on that tonight.

Six Pack
I'm one of the many millions of people who know exactly what to do to get a six pack, but don't have the discipline or drive inside me to do it. This attitude MUST change.

When you see these models on the cover of magazines with their abs out, believe it or not, they're not always like that. To get abs, you generally need to get your body fat to roughly 8% or below. These models will be about 10% and when they know they've got a photo shoot or an appearance, they'll up the protein and working out and cut out the carbs for a couple of weeks to get their abs more defined.

Point is, I have a long way to go to get to 10% body fat. During October, I managed to lose 6.5kgs, but my body fat % is still quite high. I went down from about 25% to 23%. If we say for arguments sake I can drop approximately 2% a month, I'd be on target for a six pack in the middle of next year. That would take a lot of work and discipline and is just speculation, because as you may know already, the more fat you take lose, the harder it becomes to lose the remaining fat.

It seems unachievable, but as I said, that's not the attitude. This challenge may not happen, BUT I'M GOING TO GIVE A DAMN GOOD TRY.

Hundred Press Ups
This is something that admittedly I've dipped in and out of. I downloaded an app for my phone which helps you to achieve a hundred press ups in a row in about six weeks. I am now attempting it for the fourth time. Each time I seem to do it, I get to around the fourth week and then get too 'busy', meaning I have to start from scratch. I'll tell you now, I'm into the fourth week of the programme (again) and I'M NOT giving this one up this time.

Soon enough I should be able to complete this challenge and once I have, you'll get the video evidence up here!

Three Peaks Challenge
This is going to be culmination of the Twelve Month Mission. All the hours of weight lifting, all the running, all the stretching for flexibility, all of the correct eating for energy and muscle growth, everything will be brought together for The Three Peaks challenge... trekking on a mountain in England, Wales and Scotland in 24 hours.

I'm going to have to dig in and pull out all the stops for this one. I WILL do this. I have made the enquiries, got the costing together etc and it's looking like it'll be in mid July.

I feel a whole lot better getting this off my chest. I'm motivated following my miserable week, I've got all my food and protein shakes for tomorrow and I'm going to do some stretching and press ups before I go to bed this evening.

I thought I finally got a grip of this in October, but then I made major lapses last week. It has to stop now.

Time to up the game.

Stretching

Ever since I've started doing Kung Fu again, I've been adding some basic stretches to my work out routine and I've been noticing a lot of difference. I've never been someone who can touch my toes without bending my legs and though I still can't do it, I am getting closer and I'm able to kick higher too.

I started doing a bit of hunting around on the splits because I know this will be useful in Kung Fu and general flexibility and I found plenty of websites saying you can learn the splits in a week, which I think is a load of rubbish. That's probably possible if you're a dance or gymnast, not if you're an everyday, tightly wound, limited flexibility person like myself.

Anyway, I found this site http://www.wikihow.com/Stretch-for-the-Splits which looks pretty useful. I think I'll try to add these stretches to my routine in the morning and possibly before I go to bed at night. In fact, we'll add the splits to the challenges on the Twelve Month Mission.

On that note, here's how things are looking so far:

Football Tournament - Completed
5km Race every month for a year - In progress
Splits - In progress
Six pack challenge - In progress
Hundred press up challenge - In progress
Kung Fu - In progress
Three Peaks Challenge - June 2012

There's still plenty of work to do. Woah.

Positive Comments

Got some really good comments over the weekend. Saw some family that I haven't seen in a while and a couple of them commented on how I'd got more definition around my shoulders and bigger arms (although I still think there's only a slight increase in them!)

I guess it helps if you're doing something like this and you see people who you haven't seen in a while because they'd really be able to see the big differences in you. When people see you everyday, including looking in the mirror yourself, you may not be able to see the differences as much as others.

Anyway, they were positive comments for me to take on board and to keep me carrying on. Brilliant.

Kung Fu Fighting

Had my first lesson in Kung Fu last night in yen years and it was brilliant. My body is in so much pain this morning and that can only be a good thing. I remembered some of the moves and techniques from when I used to practice years ago. Main thing is, I enjoyed it, I found it challenging and hopefully I'm in it for the long haul.

Only thing is now, I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew! Thing is, Kung Fu won't work if I only go to a club once a week. I'll need to practice the techniques at least every other day, and this comes with having to stretch every day to get the flexibility for better techniques, especially kicking. Add this to the Press Up Challenge, running and weight sessions, basically I'm going to go mad!

Sod it, it's done now, I'll stick with it!

Got a 5km run coming up, will post up after it's done.