Hardmatch's blog

Last week I started a blog detailing my reasons for beginning a fitness regimen. How did I do in the week that followed?

I have never been a fitness buff. I hated gym class when I was in school and I’ve never taken up team sports or enrolled in regular fitness classes. I have started exercise routines before, only to see them fall away. Just getting me down to a gym, even one that is free and in my own building, was a major undertaking.

I have been to my building’s gym before but the only machines I’d ever used were the ones for cardio; elliptical, treadmill, stationary bike. The Nautilus machine may well have been designed by aliens for all I knew. I hoped someone would come down the first few days to use the Nautilus so that I could spy on them and see what they did. No such luck! Fortunately my partner has gone to the gym regularly over the years so he gave me some pointers, even though he was never much for actual weight training. Of course, I’ve heard from a few guys since then that aren’t all that enamoured with the Nautilus machine and recommend I focus more on free weights instead.

I am proud to say that I went to the gym each weekday last week. I did my usual cardio stuff but I also slowly increased the amount of weight training that I did. One of my extremely fit friends kindly sent me his training routine. I would love to say that I followed it religiously but the first week was a bit of a hybrid and I made a lot of stuff up on the fly. Maybe this coming week will see me follow it a bit more closely.

After posting my first blog, I received a number of encouraging messages. Thanks to those guys! I did, however, worry that I may have inadvertently offended some guys. If any guys with similar or larger builds read the blog and thought I was criticizing them for not looking more buff, I do apologize. I’m not terribly out of shape and I don’t think most guys would say I was fat. I’m my own worst critic and felt I needed to hit the gym to deal with my own insecurities about my body image. I also wanted to address shortcomings I noticed on my recent UK wrestling trip in regards to upper body strength and cardio. While I’m 56, I still have a desire to be competitive or wrestle hard. If I can’t beat guys, I want them to at least say I was in good shape and made them work up a sweat!

I want to remind people that I started this blog for purely selfish reasons. I figured that I would be more successful at staying the course if I made my intentions public.

Monday, January 15:
Weight: 176.5 lbs
Body Fat %: 31.5%

A year ago, about this time, I was anticipating a possible visit in the fall of 2017 for another of my what I often describe as "UK wrestling road trips". Having just finished the holiday season and having been rather lazy before that, I was as heavy as I'd ever been at 186 lbs. I told people that I was 3" too short for my weight. Nothing wrong with being 5'8", 186 lbs if you're muscular and toned. I wasn't! I never seem to choose easy opponents in the UK so I knew I was going to have to get to work on improving my fitness or else I would be totally in over my head and risk wasting my British opponents' time.

I have always made excuses about not having enough time or energy about hitting the gym. Even after I decided to work on getting fitter, the only real time I made for exercise this past year was to do pushups and planks in the comfort of the apartment. Granted, I was up to 225 pushups over the course of a day but I was still not making use of the excellent little gym in our apartment building. A friend and I decided to check in with each other online every Monday and compare how we were doing in trying to lose weight. I really did want to get down to 175 lbs. He had already lost 20+ lbs and was pretty much at his target weight already so it wasn't a very fair competition. He was probably being a nice guy and doing his best to keep me motivated. Well, of course, there's only so much weight you can lose by doing pushups, something my buddy kept reminding me of. "Steve, have you started doing cardio yet?" Of course I hadn't but I'd still moan about how my weight loss had plateaued.

While the weight hadn't poured off of my by the time of my trip to the UK, the clothes were fitting much better. Even though I'd only lost 5 lbs, it was clear that there were definite improvements that the scale couldn't measure. I liked what I saw in the mirror. I wasn't where I wanted my body to be but it was much improved over the start of the year and I certainly felt stronger than I had been in years, if not ever. BG East weren't going to knock on my door anytime soon but I would give these Brit boys hell.

As mentioned earlier, I don't tend to choose easy opponents when I travel to the UK and this trip was no different. My opponents were very fit, bigger and/or experienced. I think I was able to hold my own against most guys my weight. I'm not saying that I beat them but I was able to at least make most of them sweat. I did take on a few guys that were significantly heavier than me so I wasn't surprised when they totally overpowered me. However, there were a couple of guys that I wrestled that were approximately my weight that did totally overpower me. We're not talking about them being just a little stronger than me; I was completely outmuscled. No worries, some guys are just incredibly strong. One of the guys looked like he was chiseled out of stone so his overpowering me wasn't a big shock. Somewhere along the line, the pace of activity caught up with me though and I had a bruised/strained chest for a few days near the end of the trip.

I returned home after an incredible trip to the UK. I'd met some great new guys and reconnected with past friends. While I was happy with my performance, for the most part, I was determined that I needed to work hard to improve my upper body strength. One thing that I wasn't happy about was my appearance in the one match I videoed. What I saw in the mirror and what I was seeing on video seemed to be two different things. I really was carrying too much weight. I know they say that cameras can add weight; apparently there was more than camera focused on me. I am my own worst critic, as many of us are, so others may look at the same video and say that I looked fine. Still, it was clear that I still have a lot of work to do!

So, why is Hardmatch boring you with all of this? I retired the end of December. All of my excuses about not having the time to go to the gym are gone. We have a great little gym in our building and I have lots of free time to fill. I will be hitting the gym on a regular basis. My hope is to go every weekday. My posting a blog like this isn't so much to annoy and bore the rest of you as it is to force me to put my money where my mouth is and actually go to the gym.

I hope that, as time goes by, I will be able to report positive progress. Future blogs will be nowhere near as longwinded as this one is. Most will simply be to record weight and body fat % and, possibly, what I did during the week. I will weigh myself every Monday morning.

January 8, 2018: 5'8" (173 cm); 176.5 lbs (80kg); 31.9% body fat *

• I don't totally trust the body fat % readings on my scale. The readings can vary as much as 5% from one day to the next; I don’t think body fat % is quite that changeable.