Jul

2

Whole Body or One Body Part At A Time; Which One Is The Better Workout?

Filed Under Building Muscles, Time Management, Work Out | 1 Comment

A few months ago I talked about my four day workout.  At the time, I was splitting up my routine to work one or two parts of the body per day.  Since then, I’ve changed my routine to work my entire body each time I work out.  I’ve had a few questions from readers on which style I found best.

Whole Body Workout

A whole body workout means just that, work out your entire body.  It’s 24 different exercises and I usually do 1 set of each for a total of 24 sets.

Body Part Workout

The body part workout works one or two individual body parts per day.  I would typically do abs and back one day, legs the second day, biceps and triceps the third day and chest and shoulders the fourth day.  You can do different splits but it’s still the same idea.  I would usually do 6 different exercises and 4 sets of each one for a total of 24 sets.

Advantages of the Whole Body Workout

  • Speed - I get through the whole body workout faster even though it’s the same number of sets.  This is because I don’t have to rest as much between sets since I’m not constantly working out the same body parts.
  • Schedule Flexibility - With the whole body workout, if I miss one day, it’s not as bad.  I still workout my whole body on other days.
  • Variation - This workout keeps me more interested in the workout since I’m doing a new exercise each time.

Advantages of the Body Part Workout

  • Targeted - You’re working out a specific body part every day and you’re really targetting that part.  I seemed to be getting a better workout overall when I was consistently doing a body part workout schedule.
  • More Rest - After doing an abs and back workout, you have a week before you workout that area again.  That lets you rest that area and allows the muscles to recover.

Which One Do I Recommend?

Well, it depends on how serious you are about your time in the gym.  If you have at least three or four days to spend and a good amount of time on each of those days, you should probably go for the body part workout.  You’ll get a better workout for each body part and you’ll see better results.  However, if you’re like me and you’re trying to juggle working out into an otherwise very busy schedule, I think the whole body workout is a better option.  It guarantees you that you workout all your muscles equally, it’s quick and you’ll still see good results, if not quite as good as those of the targetted workout.

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There’s really no right answer here.  Neither workout is clearly better or worse than the other.  Try them both and stick to what works for you, but don’t be afraid to change things up and try something new once in a while.

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Jun

11

Biking, A Healthier, Cheaper and Cleaner Commute

Filed Under Biking, Money, Time Management | 11 Comments

Before last year, the most common reason I would hear for not working out was not enough time. People were busy, they had things to do, places to be and people to meet. No one seemed to have time for working out even though they knew it was important. These days, things have changed a bit. All of a sudden, it’s not that people don’t have time, it’s that they don’t have money. The gym costs too much, exercise equipment for the house is too much money and no one can afford a personal trainer.

Well, those things may be true, but health and fitness do not have to take up a lot of time, nor do they have to cost a lot of money. To illustrate this example, I am going to use my commute to work.

First, The Cost Comparison

I traveled around 2000 miles on my bike last year. I spent around $10 in maintenance. The previous year I spent a bit more since I also tuned it up so I’m going to use an average yearly cost of $20. That means my bike costs me an average of $.01 a mile to operate. That’s a cent per mile that I’m on the bike.

My car is a 1999 Infinity Sedan. It’s not a gas guzzler but it’s also not the most efficient of cars. It gets an average MPG of around 25. With today’s gas costing about $4 in California, that means a cost of 16 cents per mile. I also spent about $500 in maintenance last year and drove 10,000 miles. That’s an additional 5 cents per mile for a total car cost of around 21 cents per mile.

By the way, I’m not including calculations for the purchase price of the car, which was much higher than the bike obviously, or the lower healthcare costs I incur by being in shape. Those are just a bonus. The above figures are already good enough to illustrate my point.

My Old Commute

With my old house and office, my commute was about 5 miles or a 10 mile round trip. So doing the math, commuting on the bike cost me around 10 cents while commuting in the car cost me $2.10. That’s $2.00 saved every single day. Actually, it was a bit less than that since gas prices weren’t so high back then but it was still around $1 saved every day.

Commuting on the bike took me about 20 minutes each way while the car commute took around 10 minutes each way. So yes, I was spending 20 more minutes per day on my commute. However, I was getting a decent workout and I was enjoying myself far more than spending 20 minutes in traffic.

My new commute

Since we moved homes and I moved jobs, my new commute is about 20 miles each way. In the car, this would cost an average of $8.40 every day. Yep, that’s right, with current gas prices, I am paying $8.40 every single day just to get to work. My alternative is to take the bike to the train station, take the train and then ride the bike from the train station to the office. This means 10 miles per day on the bike for a cost of $.10 and a train ticket. I buy a ten ride ticket which works out to about $5 per day’s worth of commute. Total cost is $5.10 which means I save $3.30 per day.

Time wise, the car would take me 45 minutes each way due to awful traffic. The bike / train commute takes around 1 hour each way. At first that sounds like I’m losing 15 minutes each way for a total of half an hour each day. However, please consider that time on the train can be productive. For example, this entire post was written while on the train this morning. I could also read a book, do some work or just nap. Whatever it is, it’s a lot more stressful than 45 minutes of stop and go traffic. So both time and money wise I come out ahead.

So What’s The Point?

Some of you might be saying “woopty doo! You saved a couple of bucks and a minute or two here and there. Who cares? This is too small to be significant.” However, you’re missing the point. This isn’t a blog about time management or personal finance and so the money saved and time not wasted are nice, but they’re not the point. The point is that I got a workout and I did it while saving money and not wasting time. Every single day, even if I don’t go to the gym, I am getting 20 minutes of solid physical activity and I didn’t have to spend an extra cent for it! In fact, I saved both money and time by doing it this morning.

Now this doesn’t apply to everyone equally. Some people have commutes where public transportation or biking is not possible. Others may not enjoy biking as much as I do. Still, the point is that you can get more physical activity into your day without spending extra cash. That day out to the movies with your friends? Why not make it a day out to the park with a frisbee? It’s a lot cheaper and more fun. That fancy dinner with your wife or husband? Why not wrap up a picnic and go hiking? Cheaper, healthier and far more romantic. There’s so many options out there that are both cheaper and healthier that money should never be an excuse to not be fit and healthy. In fact, money can be a motivator towards fitness.

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Stop thinking about health and fitness as things that use up money and time. Done right, living a healthy lifestyle can save both time and money.

NOTE - corrected my math based on Alex’s comment below.  It’s a good thing my stats teacher didn’t see me fail basic division. :)

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Jun

9

Back To School

Filed Under Eating Healthy, Motivation, Time Management | 4 Comments

As some of you know, I recently started graduate school. It’s a part time program, which means I spend 1 weekend out of every three at school. Each one of these school weekends consists of a Thursday, Friday and Saturday during which I’m in class for 12 to 14 hours. I’m finding the schoolwork challenging but enjoyable and in general, I love being back in school, but my health is suffering.

The Problem With School

Actually, there’s more than one problem with school. First is the constant food. Starting from breakfast and lasting all the way to the end of the day, we are constantly surrounded by food. Apparently, the program administrators have decided that food makes people happy, which is true. They have therefore made it their mission to make sure that a student cannot turn around without hitting finding some kind of snack. Some snacks are healthy (fruit bowls are great!) and some are not (brownie bowls not so great) but even if all the food options were healthy there would still be too much of them. To make things even worse, the food is always high quality and very tasty. Yes, that does in fact make things worse since it’s harder to resist.

The second problem with school is the schedule. I am in class from 7am to 8am on average. Sometimes a bit more and sometimes a bit less. After class there is socializing to do, homework to catch up on, school books to read and of course, work to catch up on (all the students maintain a full time job while going to school). With all these time requirements, I’m finding it nearly impossible to work out.

The First Weekend

The first school weekend was two weeks ago and it didn’t go very well healthwise. I think I gained about three lbs and I felt really bad when I got home. I knew I had overeaten for four days and spend those same four days completely inactive. My body felt it and I was stressed out by it.

The Second Weekend

This past weekend I started finding solutions. First of all, I decided to get out of the classroom more often. We get a 10 minute break in the middle of each three hour class. Rather than spending those breaks in class snacking, I decided to take a walk around the campus (The UC Berkeley campus is amazingly beautiful by the way). On some of these walks I invited fellow students along, since socializing and making friends is part of the school experience. I also did mini workouts during some of the walks. Nothing special, just a few stretches, lunges and sqauts.

Second, I made time for real workouts. Yes, I had to sacrifice a bit of my socialization time, but I felt much better. Also, next school weekend I intend to find a workout partner so that I can workout and get to know my fellow students at the same time.

Finally, what really helped with the food being more aware of it. Rather than mindless eating, I paid attention to what I ate and how much I was piling on my plate. I usually don’t have to do that as much since my eating habits are relatively healthy these days. However, surrounded by so much food, I had to be more aware of when, why and how much I was eating. I constantly used my rules for eating to make sure I was eating healthy and not too much.

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I’m looking forward to school, it’s an incredible opportunity.  However, I don’t want to spend my school weekends stressed out about my health.  Spending just a little bit of time on being healthy should make this whole school experience far more enjoyable.

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Apr

7

One Thing At A Time: How To Properly Set Goals

Filed Under Motivation, Time Management | 4 Comments

I usually link to interesting articles on my weekend roundups. However, I happened to find one article that I thought deserved a bit more discussion. It’s from the New York Times and discusses the limitations of human willpower.

Specifically, the article makes the point that our will power is limited. If we try to use it on something like fitness, we might have less of it for things like finances. Here’s the exact quote from the article:

The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others.

Multitasking Often Leads To Failures

It’s an interesting assertion and one that has a lot of applicability to fitness and health. I know that I can’t focus on more than project at a time. When I try to do too many things at once, I end up overextended and usually fail at all of them. For example, I recently decided to try and expand my interests. So I picked up some language tapes and tried to learn conversational Chinese. I also started music lessons, something I’ve always wanted to do.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t devote enough attention to either of these pursuits and so I ended up doing badly on both. I never had enough time to practice the new words or notes that I learned and my progress was slow from lesson to lesson. Then I decided to focus on just one thing, the Chinese lessons, and delayed the music lessons until next year. All of a sudden, I was making much better progress.

The Big Bang Theory of Fitness Rarely Works

A similar thing happened when I first started working on my fitness. I wanted to accomplish everything the first week. I had an exercise plan, an eating plan, a plan to cut down on sodas, a plan to jog more and a plan to come up with more plans. It was crazy. I split my will power and focus among so many things that there was no chance of me being successful at any of them.

It Takes a Month To Form a Habit

A few miserable weeks later, I started with a new approach. I made gradual changes, one or two at a time. No big bang theories for me. No more trying to do everything at once. Instead I picked one or two things and worked on them until they no longer seemed like work. Remember, it takes at least a month for something to become a habit and you need something to become a habit before you move on to the next thing. I waited until a change had become ingrained into my life before moving on to the next change I wanted to make.

Prioritize Your Goals

There are probably a few things you want to do. Some of them may be health related and some may not. They all require focus and attention, which means you can’t do all of them at once. What you need to do is be selective. Make a list of the goals you want to accomplish and the things you want to do. For example, here is my list:

  1. Save money by eating at home more
  2. Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
  3. Get my graduate degree
  4. Eat more vegetables
  5. Learn another language
  6. Learn a musical instrument
  7. Start a hiking blog
  8. Start a movie blog
  9. Get a promotion at work
  10. Weigh 200lbs
  11. Run marathon

These aren’t in order of priority and I don’t think I could easily prioritize them since they’re all so different in terms of time requirements. However, I can already see a few that I simply don’t have time for. For example, #3, 7 and 8 are all long term goals that require quite a bit of work. I just don’t have the time right now to work on an extra two blogs since a lot of my time for the next two years is going to be devoted to school. #5 and #6 are similar in that they’re learning a new skill. I doubt I can do both at the same time so one of them will have to go.

So after looking at all of these things, I can cut down my goal list to the following:

  1. Save money by eating at home more
  2. Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
  3. Get my graduate degree
  4. Eat more vegetables
  5. Learn another language
  6. Get a promotion at work
  7. Weigh 200lbs
  8. Run marathon

Now if I do #4 and #8, that probably means my weight will go down. So let’s remove #7 since I’ll be working on it through other goals. #1 and #4 are related, so why don’t I just combine them into one goal that will be easier to follow.

  1. Prepare at least two vegetable base meals at home per week
  2. Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
  3. Get my graduate degree
  4. Learn another language
  5. Get a promotion at work
  6. Run marathon

So now I have 6 goals. It’s still a lot but, since each of these is different, I can probably manage these as is. When school starts, I might want to cut back my language lessons but we’ll see.

Try It Yourself

This isn’t a hard exercise. Just write down a list of very specific goals. They can’t be too general like “I want to be healthy.” Instead, they need to be as specific as possible. Then take a look at your list. Is there a lot of overlap? Are there goals that can be combined? If you have too many similar goals, you’ll never accomplish them all. Make sure you pick a few that you can work on at the same time. That means you shouldn’t pick two goals that have the same time requirements. For example, if you pick two goals, both of which require you to go to some kind of weekend lesson, you probably should eliminate one of them.

What you end up with should be a short list of goals or things to do. Each of them should be unique and there shouldn’t be much overlap in terms of requirements from you. Now you can start detailing each of these goals with specific steps you need to take.

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It’s easy to write down a bunch of things you want to do. Unfortunately, trying to do them all at the same time is a sure way to set yourself up for failure. Pick your battles and your goals. Do a few things, do them well and make them into a habit before you move on to something new.

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Mar

31

Schedule Your Exercise

Filed Under Motivation, Time Management, Work Out | 6 Comments

How many times have you canceled your workouts because you were going out? How many times have you cut them short because of some social appointment? Have you ever gotten in your car to drive to the gym and then decide that you simply have something else to do or somewhere else to be? If you have, then you’re not alone.

I used to do this on a regular basis. It was never intentional, I simply have a busy life and things would pile up. I had appointments, meetings, friends to see, family to have dinner with and in the middle of it all, my workouts were relegated to a lower priority. I knew that I needed to work out but when faced with the choice of going to the gym or going to hang out with friends, I always chose to avoid the gym.

Then I discovered a quick and simple method to avoid this problem, my calendar.

Schedule It!

I’ve been using calendars for years. I have one for work through Microsoft Outlook and one for personal activities on Google Calendar. Because I hate forgetting appointments, I put every single activity on these calendars. Meetings, dinners, conference calls, movies with friends, they all go on my calendars. That way I avoid scheduling conflicts where I accidentally book myself for two different events at the same time plus I can set reminders. These reminders pop up ahead of the event and remind me that I need to do something.

Unfortunately, even though I’ve been using calendars for years, I never thought to actually schedule my workouts. The gym was something I did in my spare time, right? So I just assumed I would find some time for it everyday. Well, guess what? I didn’t. Until that is, I started seeing the gym as an important activity that I shouldn’t avoid, and that’s when I started scheduling it.

Gym Appointments

If you don’t use any kind of calendar, I would recommend starting. It’s a very useful organizational tool that comes in quite handy in all areas of your life. I use Google Calendar which you can get a free account for right here. Because it’s online, I can see my schedule from any computer. Google Calendar also allows me to share my calendar with other people. So I can put appointments on it which my wife sees. For you readers out there in a relationship, giving each other visibility into our calendars has been one of the best relationship tools my wife and I found! But since this is a fitness blog and not a relationship blog, I’ll stick to telling you about my scheduled workouts. :)

Schedule a recurring appointment. This is an appointment that occurs multiple times. Any calendar will let you do this. You can set something up like “every weekday between 3 and 4:30pm” or “every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday between noon and 1pm.” Whateveryour gym schedule is, set it up with a specific time and day. Now just follow this schedule.

Stick To Your Schedule

You have no idea how much this little tip helped me. Putting my workouts on my calendar increased my success rate (the percentage of times I was supposed to be at the gym and actually went) from somewhere in the 50% to above 95%. I still miss the occasional workout but it’s usually due to serious issues.

Extra Tips

  • Think about letting people know about your gym time - Some people will respect gym time and some will not. I have my gym time on my calendar as “Personal Quality Control”. My wife and friends know what this is and they respect that. I’m also honest with those coworkers who ask about it and I let them know that this time is important to me. I have no problem meeting with them during this time but they better wear their gym clothes to this meeting and be ready to sweat. Everyone else simply sees an appointment on my schedule and assumes that they shouldn’t schedule meetings for this time.
  • Add others to your gym appointments - One of the best benefits of a gym partner is the extra incentive to actually show up. It’s easy to skip the occasional workout when it’s just you. It’s not so easy when someone else is counting on you to show up. So schedule you gym appointments and then see if anyone else wants to go with you.
  • Don’t forget the commute time - Make sure your gym appointment includes enough time to get to and from the gym.
  • Not too late - Late night workouts will sometimes cause sleep issues. Try to finish your workouts two to three hours before your bed time.
  • Make it regular - Try not to change your workout schedule too often. A regular day and time really helps you get into the gym habit.

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Your workout time is just as important as any other meeting. In fact, it may be more important than most since I can’t think of too many conference calls I’ve attended lately that can prolong and improve my life. Why not treat it like the important appointment it is and get it on your schedule?

UPDATE - One of my readers sent me in a link to the schedule application they like to use. I looked at it and it seems like it has some neat features. So I figured I would add a link to it here.

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Dec

21

Airport Gyms

Filed Under Gyms, Time Management, Work Out | Leave a Comment

My wife and I are about to spend the next 24 hours in various airports and airplanes. Since travel is relatively common this time of year, I thought I might share a link with you that I find useful.

Airport Gyms is a site that has exactly what its name suggests, lots of gyms near various airports. It’s a good resource for finding something to do while you’re waiting for your next flight.  Take a look and, next time your travel, put that layover to good use. It will make the whole trip feel better.

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Dec

19

The Improvised Workout

Filed Under Motivation, Time Management, Work Out | 2 Comments

The hotel I spent the last two days in had no exercise room. That’s rare these days, almost every hotel targeted at business travelers has some kind of gym, but this one didn’t. Going outside to run was out of the question since the roads near the hotel had no sidewalks and were covered in ice. While I may think that exercise is good for me, I don’t believe in putting myself in danger of being run over for the sake of a good cardio workout. Instead of skipping my workout, I came up with this improvised one:
Back and Abs

  • 20 crunches
  • 20 dead lifts with no weights (essentially toe touches)
  • 20 lying leg lifts
  • 20 more dead lifts

Cardio

  • 50 jumping jacks

Legs

  • 20 lunges
  • 20 squats
  • 20 calf raises
  • 20 thigh adductions
  • 20 thigh abductions

Cardio

  • 50 jumping jacks

Biceps and Triceps

  • 20 curls while holding my backback (about 10lbs worth of computer and books inside).
  • 20 standing tricep extensions while holding the backpack
  • 20 dips between two chairs

Cardio

  • 50 jumping jacks

Chest and Shoulders

  • 20 pushups
  • 40 presses using the backback again as a weight
  • 20 weight pullovers using the backpack while lying on the bed.
  • 20 indian pushups

Cardio

  • 50 jumping jacks

If you want to learn more about these exercises, take a look at these previous posts from 60 in 3.
I did all of these with relatively few breaks in between. End result, I was out of breath, heart rate elevated and my muscles were tired. Exactly how I want to feel at the end of a good workout. The workout took about 45 minutes total and required absolutely no special equipment, unless you count a backpack as workout gear.

What’s The Point?

The point is that you shouldn’t use a minor setback like a hotel with no gym as an excuse not to workout. A workout basically means moving your body around and that you can do with or without a gym, with or without equipment and with or without a lot of time. Just stop looking at workouts as something you HAVE to do. When you do that, you see them as a chore, a thing you dislike but must do. That means you’ll start trying to find excuses.

Change your outlook and start thinking of workouts as something you choose to do. They’re something you want to do because you want to be healthy. You choose to do them because you want to spend a lot of healthy years with your kids. You choose to do them because you need a good break to clear your mind of work. You choose to do them because you to feel good about your body. Whatever it works for you, use it. You’ll find yourself improvising workouts rather than excuses to avoid them.

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