Category Archives: Sports

‘No sports’ said Churchill… but I say YEEEEESSS!!!

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #5

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Another week has past and the project is still up and running. Just like me.

I actually had some serious digestion problems. This led me to a slow down of my training program. I mainly avoided the treadmill or in other words, I had to do several breaks to calm down. I can’t run with little aches and pains and I also don’t want to take sports to a point where it’s a sort of a suffering. I did a lot of spinning, used the elliptical and took a few rides on my mountain bike.

Last has also been a week of seduction. I was invited to a wedding and weddings are very well known for lots and lots of delicious, calorie rich food. I was aware of myself and the training program that I’m currently in and wasn’t eating like I would normally do under “usual circumstances”. To be honest, I’m that kind of person that eats like a sodding pig as soon as I can get fine and tasty things to eat.

My discipline has paid off well and the scale did not bump out and presented me a freaking high value. In fact, I’m still making progress and my weight is still going down. Dropping below the 100 kg mark will be difficult, but it’s possible.

Sports in general has become a routine over the last couple of weeks. It’s still nothing disturbing or something that bothers me terribly. I feel fine with this whole situation and I can’t even wait to actually start going to gym or grab my bike to simply power myself a little off. Like I already mentioned in one of my previous, it’s finally fun and no longer a strong, dogmatic project. Sports has become a part of my life and I really look forward and also work hard on it to keep it that way.

If you’re that kind of person that is interested in some facts and statistics about my whole sports activities, you can follow me on runtastic.com ( http://goo.gl/xY577 ).

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #4

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Another week has passed and I’m still into the so called “Straight Edge Project 3.0”

Basically, everything has turned out as a fine routine that doesn’t bother me much. To be honest, I do not currently feel like doing anything else than sports. I went to gym four times and I took two one hour rides last week with my bicycle with a distance of 23 km. According to my fitness app did it burn almost 1,700 kcal each. The cardio program over the week burned around 7,000 kcal and I made a distance of almost 90 km. Very exciting numbers that will hopefully get a decent meaning in the future.

Just for comparison, in the week of 25.06. to 01.07. I burned 4,087 kcal. In addition, I do not feel exhausted or anything similar. It was one of my problems the weeks before that I totally needed to rest for some days. But thanks to the diversity of my training schedule I’m able to keep my sports activities up for five to six days a week, without burning out.

This was also one of the main problems I had with my previous projects. It was always the same and it started to feel like Groundhog Day. These days I have all kinds of different sports activities to face during the week and that means a lot of gas. I absolutely enjoy sports and do not see it as a duty or something forced. It costs a lot of my spare time, but I currently do not actually have a problem with that. Week days are mainly dead days when it comes to social interaction.

One of the most important numbers people are interesting in, when talking about fitness programs is the loss of weight. In my case, I started back in May with something around 110 to 112 kg with a height of 188 cm. My body mass index was scratching the 31. Currently my weight is around 104 to 106 kg with a BMI of something around 29.5, which is still obese. Luckily, one does not recognize me as an obese person. Mother nature gifted me a fine figure, that still suffers from tons of unwanted fat packages, but in the end I don’t look like a typical burger-fast-food-victim.

My plan, or first milestone I want to reach, is to get below the 100 kg. Hopefully it will happen by the end of August. I don’t want to lose weight to fast, because I think, and know, that this is not healthy. I also plan to start a jog outside in free nature by the end of August. I’m not on a rush. And I don’t want to lose the fun for sports by being impatient.

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #3

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Another week, another sports report. In case you’ve missed it, Spain is the old and new European Champion in football. But that’s not what this post is actually about. The last week wasn’t a very successful one. I’ve managed to do what I wanted to, but it felt kinda hard and tough.

The weather is currently very warm and I’m that kind of person that heats up very quick. One of my main problems on the treadmill is the heat I produce. I sweat like a waterfall without actually getting any cooling. I’ve to do several breaks during a run on the treadmill. Not because I’m getting tired or something, I’m getting too warm. Like I said before, the weather is also a reason.

I’ve been in a great condition on Saturday, where I managed to stay almost three hours in the gym doing my strength program followed by endurance/cardio training. I spent only thirty minutes on the treadmill. I felt great and like I could run for hours, but I ran into another overheating problem. The rest of my gym session was spent on the elliptical. Always a good way to cool down a little bit while also burning calories.

Apart from that fact that everything felt a little bit like chewing gum, I’ve to say, that I’m getting better. I’m no longer that exhausted during the week as I was weeks before. Sports finally turns into a part of my daily living and it also doesn’t bother me, that there’s such a great loss of spare time, that I could use for other things as well. It does no longer feel like a duty, it’s more a hobby that I totally enjoy. I hope that this condition will last.

My weight decreased a tiny little bit, but not that much. Which is good actually. I don’t want to see the value on the scale to drop in an enormous speed. Which is, logically, quite unhealthy. I still stick to my nutrition plan, if one can call this a nutrition plan. Exceptions are set for the weekends. But it does not end in excessive gluttony. One pizza or something similar has to be enough and it actually does the job and calms my lust for anything else pretty well.

These are the key data for the last week of my straight ede 3.0 project. Stay tuned!

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #2

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Two weeks ago I gave you guys a short report about the current progress of how well or bad things actually are. First of all the good news, I’m still into sports and gym and I’ve managed to go at least three or four times per week, depending on the week’s schedule.

The second good news, my overall condition gets better and better. I’m getting more used to the cardio training and the training sessions are not as exhausting as they’ve been in the very first weeks back in May. My main focus is still on the the treadmill with sessions up to 65 minutes. I do not increase the speed, only the session time to have quite a good amount of fat burning. Increasing the speed will not happen before September or October.

Besides the treadmill my second machine of choice is the spinning machine with a moderate or high drag, depending on my condition. As a person who uses the bike for almost everything, I can easily handle higher difficulties. I also stick to a moderate speed that I usually drive out on the street. Difference here is, once again, the time and the continuity. Riding the bike for forty minutes constantly on the street and in the city as well is barely possible.

Apart from the whole endurance training comes the strength training in one training session per week. Until now it is not a training that I use to get giant muscles, it’s more to help the supporting muscles grow, like back, belly, legs, arms and shoulder. Focus here is the back and the belly. The most important thing to get good training results is to have a well trained centre. Well, that’s what I’ve heard from a fitness trainer years ago and I still stick with it.

My weight hasn’t actually decreased that much. The scale  bounces between 105,9kg, which was the lowest value after a training session, and 109,4kg, which was the highest value after the wedding feast last weekend. The current average is around 107,5kg. I wasn’t expecting and still am a drop of weight before the third month of this “project”.

Just a short reminder, this whole thing was meant to be something that could last for quite a long, long time in my daily schedule. The first two projects where set for a specific period and I then abandoned sports and got fat and unathletic again. I try to avoid this by finding a way to integrate sports and healthy nutrition in my daily life without feeling the lack of anything. For now, I can say, it’s running pretty smooth and good. Here and there are some things in my food plan that shouldn’t be there, but I’m aware of that and I try to avoid or replace them with something different.

As you can see, I’m making progress and everything looks very promising. Hopefully the weight will drop in about a month or so. We’ll see.

SE 3.0 – Interim Report – #1

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In mid May did I announce my new personal challenge or project or whatever you want to call it named Straight Edge 3.0

A few weeks have passed since then and I actually refused to post anything about this whole thing, simply because I wanted to ensure that it is actually rolling. And it does. I finally managed to get to the gym at least four times a week and follow my workout plan. It’s basically about doing fat burning activities like treadmill, spinning and elliptical.

 

Being a commuter makes this whole thing pretty damn exhausting and my spare is shrunken to an absolute minimum since doing sports during the week. But I’ve to face this challenge. I’ve put my strength and muscle training on Fridays and it costs quite an effort to actually get the workout plan done. But it’s getting better as time passes by. My stamina has improved since the beginning. The growth of muscles is currently quite low, but that’s logical regarding the fact, that strength training is currently a very small amount of my whole workout plan.

I guess, I’ll stick to cardio training as a majority of my training plan for at least another two month. It also depends on how I make progress when it comes to losing weight and developing a better stamina.

The strength training is pretty basic at the moment. It’s mostly exercises for my back, the legs and arms. I haven’t started doing sit-ups or crunches yet. This will follow up by the end of June/beginning of July.

In cardio training is my current main focus on the treadmill. Simply because it’s something that challenges me the most and on the other hand it burns the most fat. The elliptical is more a machine that I use to “cool down”. Spinning is something in between these two. In case that I’m quite satisfied with the progress I’ll add the rowing machine to my workout plan.

My nutrition has changed more to a healthier kind. I’ve also banned things like chocolate, candy and such from my menu. In addition did I cancel Coke and Pepsi as well. There’s one day per week where I eat more “taste oriented”. The menu for the rest of the week mainly consists of fruits, vegetables and food with a high amount of protein, like chicken or curd. Several meals also include very hot chili peppers to keep the fat machine burning. Actually, after cooking such things the kitchen feels like a chemical warfare and your eyes start to burn.

As you can see, Straight Edge 3.0 is going very well and I’m quite satisfied with the current results. I do not expect a massive weight decrease right now or an ultra high stamina in just three or four weeks. The main key to success in this project is patience. The previous Straight Edge challenged were more focused on quick results and I actually had no plan on how to continue for a longer period. I hope, I can keep this up for at least half a year now.

A penis out of sight

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The summer draws near. A lot of my trousers do no longer fit. Wide shirts currently feel like slim shirts. I can’t see my penis while having a piss. I’m out of breath when running around from point A to point B, no matter how far they are away from each other.

Basically, these are some of the problems, that I’ve to face at the moment and once again, it’s all my sodding fault and I’ve to get rid of these problems. The solution is quite easy to tell, but hard to turn into a reality. Sports. To be honest, it’s not that hard to turn this into a reality, the odd thing about it is to make the right decision between the good and evil conscience representatives sitting on my shoulder.

I’ve followed the advise of the good representative and took a sneak peak preview by wandering back into gym. Without a doubt, something has to happen and this is sports and a frigging healthier way of life. So I entered the treadmill and ran. So I entered the cross-trainer and crossed? Whatever, I went to gym for three days, just to get an impression, if I can handle it with my tight schedule. But, for the love of God, what else can I lose during a week, where almost all time of the day gets soaked up by sodding commuting?

 

A two hour attendance at the gym does not hurt and my social life and everything that stands in relation with it is ruined to death anyway. So here I am, the lonesome rider, doing workouts. The underdog running in the treadmill. The fatty bum-bum crossing the cross trainer. The first milestone I want to reach is to simply fit in my old sports outfits. I currently have this clothes size does not really match the body size problem.

The schedule that I have in mind will dictate that I’ve to go to the gym at least four times a week. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. That’s the plan until 27th of July. My current weight is about 110 kg and I plan to reach 95 kg, but not in July. This would be unhealthy and unrealistic. The end of August or the beginning of September sounds quite good and not too dramatically unhealthy. My goal in a distant future is to level off at something between 85 to 90 kg. The last value will probably be the one that may be the more realistic one. 85 kg would be some sort of too skinny for me, as a person that is 188 cm tall.

Depending on how well everything will make progress I may go for diet as well. I don’t need to ban cigarettes anymore, because after my very first straight edge period, I kept being a non-smoker and I’m so totally happy with that. I would be even more happy, when I’ll finally manage it to have sports as a common part of my daily schedule and not as something that has to happen just because for a particular reason. Fun is the keyword.

And of course one important reason would also be that I can see my penis again when I piss. That would be awesome.

Like I did in previous “projects”, I will report progress and will also post about certain events that I’ll find important or interesting. You’ll get to read the change of numbers regularly, but I’m not currently certain on what day this is going to happen. Anyhow, you’ll get something to feed your statistic charts or whatever you want to do with these numbers. But in the end, every good sports event comes with some nicely investigated statistics.

Now you know what my current plan is and what my first goals are. I’ll keep you informed and welcome to “Straight Edge 3.0”

The grey flap

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Always talking about changing gets quite odd and is simply not the bottom line I actually want to drop here. I’m saying this, because I just wanted to start this very post with words like “Something has to change” or “It’s time for a change”. But that’s basically wrong, after rethinking the choice of my words. A correct term would be something like “I’ve to continue following and influencing evolution”

So, what does that basically include. First of all, it will include a change, but for certain reasons I won’t and can’t mention it here. Details will follow in a couple of month, when everything is safe and secure to talk about here. Period.

On the other hand, I will start doing sports again, no matter what. My spare time shrunk to a minimum, which is still pissing me off, because most of the time that it has finally gotten that way is because of the incompetence of others. I’m a person that don’t like to fail because of the mistakes of others. The only fail I can accept, is when it’s based on my own faults. Messing up, just because of anybody else, is completely unacceptable.

But back to the actual point – sports. I gained an overweight that became badass dead serious. It’s like 25 to 30 kg too much and it’s getting more and more the more weeks do pass by. I’m not having a detailed and completely scheduled plan at the moment, but the basic rules are set. It’s the ban of sweets again. Nutrition has to change as a whole in my life again. Even though there’s a lot of seduction going on with commercials and ads in the supermarket popping your eyes like a needle. I simply have to learn to resist again. I pretty often think back to those days where I lived straight edge. And then I remember how lucky and happy I actually was.

It wasn’t only a thing because of the endorphins that were pumped through my body and brain in this sports period. It was also a thing that all the poisons that I once ingested were gone and my whole body fell back to its basics. This sounds pretty much like the words of an odd and creepy philosophy professor, but that’s what describes it the best. More than ever do I feel like I’ve to get back to this way of life again. I’m probably go to make certain rules again, but not that strict like I did back in the days.

The other thing that I’m currently try to improve on is my creative eye. I revisited my photo collection and reviewed all the pictures I’ve done on several journeys and it’s terrible. Apart from all the technical mistakes I made, it’s a creative disaster. Seriously, out of around 7,000 pictures I took, only a handful is actually worth using and editing. It has improved during the last couple of month, because I took a lot of effort by studying workflows of other photographers, their techniques and composing pictures itself. I underestimated how much wrong camera settings can do, to actually destroy your vision of a certain picture you have in mind.

I have tons and tons of examples in my collection to prove that particular fact and I will continue working on getting better and drift as far away as I possibly can from these terrible results. I’ve recently ordered some books to give me more theoretical understanding in the field of composing and simply seeing things creatively. One of the reasons I’m doing this, I’m tired of only working with computers and networks, they bore me to death.

These are the things for now, my plans on how to influence my own personal evolution and give certain things a flap and improve. Because improvement is what makes lives worth living.

The science of… just some updates

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As you might have already read, I tried to rent a vServer to setup some stuff which will be a lot gaming related. Like dedicated servers for some older games. In addition is a TeamSpeak server coming up. The current TeamSpeak server will simply be abandoned. It’s actually running on a server at my last company I worked for and I’ve no longer a possibility to maintain it correctly. I’ll also initiate to completely remove this instance.

Anyhow, the new server will probably sail under the n3gative.Gam!ng flag. There’ll be two domains coming up, one’s for the clan/gather related things only and the other domain will mainly publish news, reviews and opinions about video gaming in general. I’m still thinking about separating the content of this blog right here. I’ll perhaps move the game related content to the n3gative.Gam!ng site and leave this blog here for trivial “real life related” posts only.

There’s another site that is still in progress, mainly in a brainstorming period. It’s called “chickenday.net” and is based on some posts I did on Facebook. To make a long story short, I eat two halves of chicken every Wednesday and I posted a picture of this meal on Facebook. Some of my friends liked the idea or simply found it hilarious. I also had some of my friends posting chicken pics, too. Due to the some copyright issues I completely moved away all my content off Facebook and decided to do this thing on my own. Till now I just bought the domain, setup a tiny blog and that’s it. If I’m certain of the concept and the direction of the site, I’ll put some more effort into it and get a go live as soon as possible.

If you want to ask what happened to all my fitness and sports ambitions, don’t.

Outta shape, dude!

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After having celebrated the couch potatoe-esque way of life for quite a while I’m finally tired of it. Over and over again do I reach a point I feel like “Hey, now it’s getting seriously out of control.

I’m not announcing a big program, like I did in the past, here but right now I’m at a point where it is time to get a little bit more healthier and find a way back on regular track. This is also because I found that I’ve finally reached an age where the “DeLorean is far beyond the point of no return”

I’ll maybe explain this in a later post but not right now. Anyhow, my bag is finally packed for gym tomorrow and I also have to say that this time I feel a little bit afraid. I’ve gained massive, massive, massive overweight and I also feel a little ashamed about me BUT it’s no condition that cannot be changed. My daily schedule leaves enough room for fitness once again and one slightly set goal is go for a jog by the beginning of November that will last for about half an hour or more. Till now I’m only used to these machines in the gym but I feel more like getting out a little bit more.

Another urgency, it’s getting colder and colder and the point where I HAVE to wear long pants draws near. Actually, I won’t fit in one of those at my certain condition, or I simply die of frost this winter 🙂

I’ll keep you informed and wish me luck…

This thing called… what did you say?

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It’s been a while. After having almost a month of free time to waste on pure debauchery I’m finally back to the working class heroes with a regularly, fixed schedule. I feel much in my new company and I’m a thousand per cent certain that it was the right decision I’ve made. It’s a huge challenge, also a very interesting and intriguing challenge, but most importantly, no pack of Hyenas surrounding me bothering me with ideas and tasks of non-sense. Please understand that I’m not giving any further details on what I’m doing and so on, discretion is advised. Just feel informed with the fact that I like it where I’m at and I hopefully can be here for a while.

Once upon a time I had the will and lust to do some sports again but in the end I simply though “What the heck!

Well, I gained a massive amount of weight, especially on my free days, but I also have to admit that I’m not feeling very unwell. With this new job and the fact that I have to travel each day 120km I wanted to get a little bit more in comfort with ‘the new situation’ before starting this sporty thingy again. I also have to say, that I’m not in the mood to do any sports and I don’t want to force me to do anything I actually don’t want or like. Maybe my attitude on that is a completely different one tomorrow and I’m going to jog for like an hour.

Despite, I’d rather stick to gaming these days. I just started “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” and I’m also playing “Dead Island”. Both are great games in their genre BUT both are totally buggy or have several issues.

“Dead Island” is the game that has a lot of serious hardware related issues on my system. First of all, I use a 7.1 sound system on my gaming rig and I gain a lot of terrible, loud noises when I have the 7.1 speaker configuration turned on. I could fix by running in 5.1 mode only. The graphics are, let us say okay, but they stutter. This shouldn’t be an issue on my system due to the fact that the game runs at 180-200fps on maximum details at a resolution of 1920×1200. Hopefully they’ll fix this issue.

Another thing I don’t like, which is not hardware related, is the fact that you have a save point system and there’s no real indicator given when the game actually saves your progress. Terrible on a PC. Why no quick-save? Anyhow, the game itself looks promising and despite these issues I’ll continue playing and see what’s up next.

“Deus Ex: Human Revolution” is in my personal opinion the sequel the first “Deus Ex” deserved. It’s still far away from the class of it’s pre-predecessor, but it’s good and feels like “Deus Ex” and the developer does not go strictly mainstream as they were trying with “Deus Ex: Invisible War”, which was terrible game, if you ask me. I play “Deus Ex: Human Revolution” on highest difficulty level and I’m stuck at the first boss right now 😛 Anyhow, this game is definitely worth the play.