Thursday, September 30, 2010
Any Day Now...
Here's a recent ultrasound image of our little man (profile of his head looking to the right and hand in upper right corner):
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Video Camera
In anticipation of Champ's arrival and all of the documentation that we are going to want to have, we purchased a video camera! The camera arrived in the mail today. We ended up getting a pretty nice one because I'm hoping to use it for video taping Ultimate for instructional and promotional purposes as well. It's a Canon Vixia HFS200. Thank you to my parents who helped make this possible!
And, without further ado, here is the first video! I haven't decided if I'm more of a Scorsese or Coppola yet.
And, without further ado, here is the first video! I haven't decided if I'm more of a Scorsese or Coppola yet.
Urban Momma Photo Shoot (37 Weeks)
This whole idea was really Kyle's brain-child. He wanted to summarize our lives in Atlanta. The location is the Krog St. tunnel, a well-known landmark in our neighborhood due to it's tolerance of graffiti art and many concert postings. He also insisted that I wear my scrubs so as to capture my doctoring experience. Our friend Nick took the shots. It's certainly a different take on the usual soft black and white nude belly portraits!
Saturday, September 11, 2010
36 Weeks
Champ's Development:
- Length 17-19inches
- Weighs 4.2-5.7 lbs and becoming chubby
- Kidneys and liver fully developed, lungs still finalizing
- Baby may drop into pelvis, becoming "engaged"
My development:
- Have gained 30lbs and am now starting to really feel the extra fluid in my womb
- Feeling Champ roll and squirm around all the time
- Mild ankle swelling, especially after my flight from MA (I had cankles for a day!)
- No heartburn, but increased frequency of burping
- Felt my first couple Braxston-Hicks contractions: These are early contractions that are supposedly helping prep baby (and especially Mom) for birth. It felt like a bad menstrual cramp and I was compelled to get on all fours and do some deep breathing. They only lasted about 30-60 seconds.
- This is about the time that most babies are head first and starting to engage the pelvis, but alas, Champ is still defying gravity (a future astronaut perhaps?) and maintains his breech position. I have been seeing a chiropractor who specializes in prenatal and pediatric work. She's been using a method called the Webster Technique to open my pelvis and encourage the baby to turn. At home, I've been practicing inversions, including laying on my inverted massage table, to try to get his butt out of my pelvis.
At this point, I've started to let go of my wishful birth plan (that of a natural water birth in the hospital) and have started to get realistic about the possible options and outcomes. Mostly, I've started to focus less on my own birth experience and more on doing what's best and safest for Champ. At my midwife appointment this week, if Champ is still breech, she'll refer me to an OB. The OB will ultrasound me and define Champ's exact position. If it's favorable, he will do external cephalic version (ECV), a brief, but unpleasant maneuver to manipulate Champ's position.
If it works, great. I'll be able to proceed with the plan. If it doesn't, there's a few possibilities. If he's frank breech, meaning butt down and legs up, I can deliver naturally with my midwifes (only 2 practices in Atlanta are still doing this). If he's any other type of breech, I'll have to have a c-section. This would be a little disappointing given that I've been hoping for the au-natural route, but like I said, I just want to do what's safe at this point.
So, keep your fingers crossed for a spontaneous flip or a successful ECV for me!
- Length 17-19inches
- Weighs 4.2-5.7 lbs and becoming chubby
- Kidneys and liver fully developed, lungs still finalizing
- Baby may drop into pelvis, becoming "engaged"
My development:
- Have gained 30lbs and am now starting to really feel the extra fluid in my womb
- Feeling Champ roll and squirm around all the time
- Mild ankle swelling, especially after my flight from MA (I had cankles for a day!)
- No heartburn, but increased frequency of burping
- Felt my first couple Braxston-Hicks contractions: These are early contractions that are supposedly helping prep baby (and especially Mom) for birth. It felt like a bad menstrual cramp and I was compelled to get on all fours and do some deep breathing. They only lasted about 30-60 seconds.
- This is about the time that most babies are head first and starting to engage the pelvis, but alas, Champ is still defying gravity (a future astronaut perhaps?) and maintains his breech position. I have been seeing a chiropractor who specializes in prenatal and pediatric work. She's been using a method called the Webster Technique to open my pelvis and encourage the baby to turn. At home, I've been practicing inversions, including laying on my inverted massage table, to try to get his butt out of my pelvis.
At this point, I've started to let go of my wishful birth plan (that of a natural water birth in the hospital) and have started to get realistic about the possible options and outcomes. Mostly, I've started to focus less on my own birth experience and more on doing what's best and safest for Champ. At my midwife appointment this week, if Champ is still breech, she'll refer me to an OB. The OB will ultrasound me and define Champ's exact position. If it's favorable, he will do external cephalic version (ECV), a brief, but unpleasant maneuver to manipulate Champ's position.
If it works, great. I'll be able to proceed with the plan. If it doesn't, there's a few possibilities. If he's frank breech, meaning butt down and legs up, I can deliver naturally with my midwifes (only 2 practices in Atlanta are still doing this). If he's any other type of breech, I'll have to have a c-section. This would be a little disappointing given that I've been hoping for the au-natural route, but like I said, I just want to do what's safe at this point.
So, keep your fingers crossed for a spontaneous flip or a successful ECV for me!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The Naming of Things (part II)
Ok, this going to be a quick one. Yesterday Sara and I were out at Bucket pick-up (Bucket is an elite level co-ed frisbee team that we both played on last season but are not playing on this year). While we were warming up a few of the players were talking about baby names. One of the women, a teacher, told (an urban legend?) story about a girl named "l-a." When she was in class and the teacher called her name as "la" she responded, "it's pronounced "ladasha." I couldn't help but think of this as a clever and simple way to play with the English language to create new words and sounds.
So, I present to you my new proposal for Champ's middle name - C'. This would be pronounced "Capostrophe."
Ok, so before you think I'm crazy, please read on. At one point there was a rumor or report that distinctively black names resulted in worse life outcomes for a child. However, more recent studies indicate that controlled for familial and economic circumstances that has not been found to be the case. Here's an actual study and here's a popular article on the subject. Anyway, it appears that names are typically an indicator rather than a cause.
Even considering that a name might impact a child's life outcome, in this case, we're talking about a middle name. I don't know about you, but I hardly use my middle name and most people probably don't even know it. On most forms or applications you are usually only asked for your middle initial. If, on reading the name, people pronounced the name as "C" that would not be inaccurate.
Interesting and semi-related side note, President Harry Truman middle name was actually just "S." The "S" didn't stand for anything.
Ok, so hopefully I've allayed your concerns about the Champ's life outcomes if we were to give him the middle name C'.
So, why do it? First, C' is interesting and unique. I can pretty much guarantee that no one else has that name. Capostrophe is unique by itself but C' takes it to another truly fascinating level.
I'm a big fan of voiceless fricative sounds for words and names. These are sounds that are made by pressing air out through small openings. "F", "Sh," "S," "Th" are the primary voiceless fricative sounds in the English language (each are made by pressing the mouth together at different points to restrict air flow). C' has two voiceless fricatives in in it: "Cap-Os-tro-fee." This is just a fancy way of saying that I like the sound of C'.
The first half of the name "Capo" is a word meaning "a movable bar attached to the fingerboard of a fretted instrument to uniformly raise the pitch of all the strings." Sara and I are both guitar players (in fact one of the first things we bonded over) and own and use "capos."
Finally, the middle name C' would start with the same letter as the nickname we've been using for Champ in utero.
Ok, so Sara thinks C' is crazy. I want to hear from folks that we are close with: is C' ridiculously awesome for a middle name or just ridiculous?
So, I present to you my new proposal for Champ's middle name - C'. This would be pronounced "Capostrophe."
Ok, so before you think I'm crazy, please read on. At one point there was a rumor or report that distinctively black names resulted in worse life outcomes for a child. However, more recent studies indicate that controlled for familial and economic circumstances that has not been found to be the case. Here's an actual study and here's a popular article on the subject. Anyway, it appears that names are typically an indicator rather than a cause.
Even considering that a name might impact a child's life outcome, in this case, we're talking about a middle name. I don't know about you, but I hardly use my middle name and most people probably don't even know it. On most forms or applications you are usually only asked for your middle initial. If, on reading the name, people pronounced the name as "C" that would not be inaccurate.
Interesting and semi-related side note, President Harry Truman middle name was actually just "S." The "S" didn't stand for anything.
Ok, so hopefully I've allayed your concerns about the Champ's life outcomes if we were to give him the middle name C'.
So, why do it? First, C' is interesting and unique. I can pretty much guarantee that no one else has that name. Capostrophe is unique by itself but C' takes it to another truly fascinating level.
I'm a big fan of voiceless fricative sounds for words and names. These are sounds that are made by pressing air out through small openings. "F", "Sh," "S," "Th" are the primary voiceless fricative sounds in the English language (each are made by pressing the mouth together at different points to restrict air flow). C' has two voiceless fricatives in in it: "Cap-Os-tro-fee." This is just a fancy way of saying that I like the sound of C'.
The first half of the name "Capo" is a word meaning "a movable bar attached to the fingerboard of a fretted instrument to uniformly raise the pitch of all the strings." Sara and I are both guitar players (in fact one of the first things we bonded over) and own and use "capos."
Finally, the middle name C' would start with the same letter as the nickname we've been using for Champ in utero.
Ok, so Sara thinks C' is crazy. I want to hear from folks that we are close with: is C' ridiculously awesome for a middle name or just ridiculous?
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Dreams of a (soon-to-be) Father
Ok, I was going to include this in my last post but it got too long so it gets it's own separate post. Sara also mentioned the wacky dreams I've been having.
Several weeks ago, Sara and I purchased a nice dresser from Ikea for Champ's bedroom (like the one to the right but blue). As we were putting it together we listened to a podcast from This American Life. The theme of the show was "fear of sleep." Each bit featured stories about horrible things that happened at night to the story tellers. The first segment included Mike Birbiglia, a comedian who is frequently on the show, talking about his struggles with sleepwalking. It is hilarious and I highly recommend listening to it (it's about 15 minutes) before reading the rest of the rest of the story below.
A couple weeks after that show, I woke up to find these huge, dark black spiders with very bright colorful markings dangling from the ceiling right above me in bed. They looked like big black widows but their markings were of different colors. They were in a ball and there were two or three of them together.
Then the string of web they were on broke and they feel on to my stomach in the covers. I bolted up and jumped out of bed and, standing next to the bed, began rifling through the covers and sheets to locate the spiders. I couldn't see them so I turned on the bedside light. But the light was too bright and I struggled between dimming and brightening the light. I didn't want to wake Sara up but I needed it to be bright enough to find the spiders. Finally, I left it pretty dim and went back to digging through the covers.At this point, Sara, confused by my grabbing at the covers and the disco strobe light effect I had been making wakes up and asks what I'm doing. I tell her about the spiders and she informs me that there are no spiders in the bed and I should go back to sleep. This sounded like crazy talk but I needed a second to think about it so I went to the bathroom to relieve myself. Upon returning, I still think there may be spiders in the bed, but I'm tired and, if there are spiders, I'll find them when I get in the bed.
Sara's been working some odd shifts recently and, at times, has struggled with sleeping. A week after the incident above (yes, the spiders were in my dream) Sara couldn't sleep so went downstairs. Soon after, I got out of bed and charged to the landing above the stairs. When I woke-up, I found myself at the top of the landing and was very confused about why I was there or where I was planning to go. I didn't realize Sara was awake so I quietly walked back in the room and went back to sleep.
So, Sara thinks the sleep walking might be baby related. Honestly, I have no idea, but I hope it stops and doesn't escalate into me jumping out of windows or climbing on top of tall furniture in the middle of the night. I would hate to have to wrap myself in a straighjacket before I go to sleep. Or maybe we could just find a really tall crib for me.
P90X
In her previous post, Sara alluded to both my working out. So, as not to leave all of our blog followers hanging any longer, here's the follow-up.
I quit playing Ultimate seriously in August 2007. At that point I was in pretty good physical shape - I weighed around 167lb, and as we'd trained pretty seriously for the Peachtree Road Race that previous July, I had a pretty good base of endurance. I was practicing or playing Ultimate at least twice/week and doing at least weekly track workouts and felt good. I kept up training for a few weeks after that but then, without a specific goal to motivate me, I stopped. Every few months since then I would occasionally start "working out" (typically running 2-3 miles a few times a week) but that would last for a few weeks or a month at most and then peter out. It was particularly hard during the Spring when I was coaching and working. Between the two I was working from 7am-8pm or later and didn't have the time or energy for conditioning.
At some point I got it in my head that I would have abdominal definition (a six-pack) either when I turned 30 or when I had my first kid. Now, despite being semi-athletic, I had never had
much core strength and had never had anything close to what one would call a six-pack. But this idea had made it's way into my head sometime in my mid twenties. Both turning 30 and having a kid represent to me the "end of my youth." And having a six-pack represents "athletic and in-shape" to me. I think I believe that if I can't be "athletic and in-shape" before the "end of my youth" than it would be highly unlikely that I could achieve that state at a later point in life. To the right is Wolverine, a super-hero for hairy people everywhere and my inspiration.
30 came and went without much protest from me. I continued to occasionally make slight efforts at working out but never pushed past some very basic conditioning (but even running two miles when I hadn't done anything for a month or two was a huge challenge). But overtime I continued to put on weight pushing past 170 and 175 and nearing 180. I started to not like the way I looked in pictures. When having a photo taken, I would try to angle my face in a way to prevent the creeping double chin from making its way in.
Last summer, two of our good friends, Maggie Jackson and Jason Simpson, did P90X together. P90X
is a 6-7 day a week training program that combines many aspects of fitness (strength, balance, flexibility). It typically consists of resistance training on Mon, Wed, and Fri, plyometrics on Tue, Yoga on Thu, and Cardio on Saturday with optional stretching on Sunday. Workouts are between an hour and an hour and a half. It is broken up in to 3 four-week segments. Each 4-week segment has a slightly modified resistance routine. Every fourth week is a recovery week and has no resistance and increased flexibility and core strength work.
Both Jason and Maggie had pretty dramatic results in terms of fitness and looked great as they neared the end of the 12 week program. The physical results were obvious. Jason tried to sell Sara and I on the program and I went out and bought a doorway pull-up bar, but I wasn't yet motivated enough to commit to it.
When we found out that Sara was pregnant this spring, my goal of being fit by the time we had a kid suddenly had an end date. But it was the spring and the hardest time for me to commit to myself because of my other commitments (see the "In like a Lion, out like a Lion post"). In March, I played an Ultimate tourney with a Brown Reunion team and I was clearly in the worst shape of my life - I had a very noticeable spare tire and after a possession or two was gassed.
But when Paideia's spring break rolled around, I got moving, literally. I started running every morning and going in to work later. My goal at that point was just to show myself that I could fit fitness in when the Ultimate season ended in May but once the week ended I kept running three days a week - slowly increasing both my pace and distance.
Encouraged by my ability to carve out time for exercise and Sara, I started talking to Jason again about P90X. He burned me the DVDs and we decided that on June 7th we would start P90X. Because it would be hard to meet up, we agreed to gchat or video chat with each other each morning when we started. On Memorial Day weekend I was in Madison for the College Ultimate Championships and, watching the athletes run around, was even more motivated to get back in shape. But, in my mind, I still wasn't sure I would actually wake up and push through the work out that following Monday and keep it up.
When June 6th rolled around, I printed out all of the documents to keep track of my workouts and popped the first DVD in to see what I was getting myself in to. It made me nervous - I've never been big on lifting weights (as Harper Alexander would say "you want to lift weights? Those things are heavy.") But on June 7th I woke up and did the first workout - Chest and Back, one hour of push-ups and pull-ups (literally, that is pretty much the whole workout with variations on those two themes). That was followed by 16 minutes of "ab-ripper X." My performance wasn't pretty. I was a drenched in sweat and dizzy, while doing less than 50% of the reps that the people on the video were doing and far less weight. I felt like I had been run-over by a train. But as Tony Horton (the dude running the workouts on the video would say) "Just do your best and forget the rest."
A quick word on Tony - At first I thought I was going to be really annoyed by Tony. He's cliche, makes corny jokes, and clearly is attracted to Drea (one of the women doing the workouts in the video), constantly flirting with her. And you hear the same jokes again and again every time you watch the DVD. But let me say, I warmed up to him really quickly. I find myself snickering at all of the little silly things he says. "Up on your tippy-toes. Why do they call them tippy?" "This is a mixture of static stretching and ballistic stretching. Stablatic. I just made that word up." At one point in the Ab Ripper X DVD (which you will watch 30 times over the course of the program) he says "That's the croton!" after an intense portion of working out. I have no idea what the word "croton" means but I plan to start using it when coaching to mean something like "intensity."
So, I almost died on Day 1. But I came back for plyos on Day 2. Plyos was more my style but still an incredibly difficult workout (I still find it hard here in week 11 - particularly the rock-star hops). In the first week, I felt pretty good about the plyos and legs and back (which are much closer to the training I've done in the past for Ultimate) and struggled with the arms, chest, and shoulders portions of the workout. And I had always disliked Yoga - and while I still can't really do half-moon or twisting half moon, Yoga has become my favorite workout. My favorite Tony quote is "just put the DVD in." That really couldn't be more true for me. The biggest challenge is getting out of bed and starting the DVD. Once I get past that, I'm not going to quit half way in to a DVD.
I was out of town (in LA) for most of the second week of the program an so I just went on 30 minute runs every day and pushed the workout back. But I was fired up that I was still working out every day. Jason and I managed to connect most mornings for the first month, but we petered out after that. Still, knowing he was there in the beginning really helped push me to get out of bed and do the work in the beginning.
I know this is already long, but I should add that early in Sara's pregnancy, she challenged me to see if I could weigh less than her at some point before Champ was born. Sara started the pregnancy at 145 and I was at 178. The average weight gain is 25-35 lb. So, this was a completely reasonable challenge. While, I'm not measuring my success by my weight, I expected to get below 170lb and perhaps to 165. By the end of the first month, I'd managed to drop to 172 lb. but then leveled off. Sara meanwhile I had gotten up to 168 but leveled off. At that point, with about 3 months left in the pregnancy, I was pretty sure that if I kept up working out that Sara would pass me - but I was hoping that we would cross the 170lb. threshold at around the same time.
Somehow though, we went about four weeks without either one of us gaining or losing weight. I was seeing physical changes but was putting on muscle at about the same rate that I was dropping other weight. Then, at the beginning of the 10th week of P90X I threw my back out while doing plyometric (clap) push-ups on the chest, shoulders and triceps day. I could barely move for two days. After that, I tried to do some stretching and Yoga for a couple days but my back was still hurting too much to do anything more intense. So I took a week off (almost two total weeks off). During this time I found that I was less happy and less productive at work. But not working out meant that I was losing some of the muscle weight I had put on. At the end of those two weeks I actually weighed in at 168 lb! And Sara passed 170 and made it up to 171! (It's funny, when I tell people at work who don't know Sara about her weighing more than me they always say "you don't tell her that, do you?!" as if she would freak out about putting on weight during pregnancy. First, if you haven't seen her, Sara is incredibly beautiful while pregnant and second Sara is far less concerned about her weight than I am about mine (as you might be able to tell from this blog post)).
Last Tuesday I was able to resume the 10th week of the program and quickly put the muscle weight back on to get back over 170. Getting re-motivated to start again was challenging but it has definitely made me happier and more productive at work. And I was sore again like I hadn't been since early in the workouts.
I've got two weeks left in the program. After I finish week 12, I plan to do a week of recovery with mostly stretching and running. I'll then start again through Champ's birth and after that, who knows.
I don't have a six-pack yet, but I've learned a lot about myself in this progress. Most importantly that physical fitness is critical to my happiness - which I'd never really known before. Sara, who's being doing Yoga has been too busy this week to do her work-outs and that has clearly taken a toll on her as well. I think we have a very similar emotional need for exercise which is a really good motivator and bond for us.
I've also learned that I can commit to a serious work-out regimen and get through it. I'm pretty proud of that. I'd always thought that I was only motivated by being on teams where others were dependent on my fitness. But knowing that I'm can personally motivate myself has really changed my view of myself.
One thing I did not commit to was the P90X diet. Maggie had said that the diet made a huge difference and I'm pretty sure that the physical differences would have been even greater had I been more conscious of what I was putting in to my body.
Perhaps I can get that six-pack by the time Champ is born - but even if I don't I'm sure I'll get it before I turn 35 (or he turns 5).
Kyle
I quit playing Ultimate seriously in August 2007. At that point I was in pretty good physical shape - I weighed around 167lb, and as we'd trained pretty seriously for the Peachtree Road Race that previous July, I had a pretty good base of endurance. I was practicing or playing Ultimate at least twice/week and doing at least weekly track workouts and felt good. I kept up training for a few weeks after that but then, without a specific goal to motivate me, I stopped. Every few months since then I would occasionally start "working out" (typically running 2-3 miles a few times a week) but that would last for a few weeks or a month at most and then peter out. It was particularly hard during the Spring when I was coaching and working. Between the two I was working from 7am-8pm or later and didn't have the time or energy for conditioning.
At some point I got it in my head that I would have abdominal definition (a six-pack) either when I turned 30 or when I had my first kid. Now, despite being semi-athletic, I had never had
much core strength and had never had anything close to what one would call a six-pack. But this idea had made it's way into my head sometime in my mid twenties. Both turning 30 and having a kid represent to me the "end of my youth." And having a six-pack represents "athletic and in-shape" to me. I think I believe that if I can't be "athletic and in-shape" before the "end of my youth" than it would be highly unlikely that I could achieve that state at a later point in life. To the right is Wolverine, a super-hero for hairy people everywhere and my inspiration.30 came and went without much protest from me. I continued to occasionally make slight efforts at working out but never pushed past some very basic conditioning (but even running two miles when I hadn't done anything for a month or two was a huge challenge). But overtime I continued to put on weight pushing past 170 and 175 and nearing 180. I started to not like the way I looked in pictures. When having a photo taken, I would try to angle my face in a way to prevent the creeping double chin from making its way in.
Last summer, two of our good friends, Maggie Jackson and Jason Simpson, did P90X together. P90X
is a 6-7 day a week training program that combines many aspects of fitness (strength, balance, flexibility). It typically consists of resistance training on Mon, Wed, and Fri, plyometrics on Tue, Yoga on Thu, and Cardio on Saturday with optional stretching on Sunday. Workouts are between an hour and an hour and a half. It is broken up in to 3 four-week segments. Each 4-week segment has a slightly modified resistance routine. Every fourth week is a recovery week and has no resistance and increased flexibility and core strength work.Both Jason and Maggie had pretty dramatic results in terms of fitness and looked great as they neared the end of the 12 week program. The physical results were obvious. Jason tried to sell Sara and I on the program and I went out and bought a doorway pull-up bar, but I wasn't yet motivated enough to commit to it.
When we found out that Sara was pregnant this spring, my goal of being fit by the time we had a kid suddenly had an end date. But it was the spring and the hardest time for me to commit to myself because of my other commitments (see the "In like a Lion, out like a Lion post"). In March, I played an Ultimate tourney with a Brown Reunion team and I was clearly in the worst shape of my life - I had a very noticeable spare tire and after a possession or two was gassed.
But when Paideia's spring break rolled around, I got moving, literally. I started running every morning and going in to work later. My goal at that point was just to show myself that I could fit fitness in when the Ultimate season ended in May but once the week ended I kept running three days a week - slowly increasing both my pace and distance.
Encouraged by my ability to carve out time for exercise and Sara, I started talking to Jason again about P90X. He burned me the DVDs and we decided that on June 7th we would start P90X. Because it would be hard to meet up, we agreed to gchat or video chat with each other each morning when we started. On Memorial Day weekend I was in Madison for the College Ultimate Championships and, watching the athletes run around, was even more motivated to get back in shape. But, in my mind, I still wasn't sure I would actually wake up and push through the work out that following Monday and keep it up.
When June 6th rolled around, I printed out all of the documents to keep track of my workouts and popped the first DVD in to see what I was getting myself in to. It made me nervous - I've never been big on lifting weights (as Harper Alexander would say "you want to lift weights? Those things are heavy.") But on June 7th I woke up and did the first workout - Chest and Back, one hour of push-ups and pull-ups (literally, that is pretty much the whole workout with variations on those two themes). That was followed by 16 minutes of "ab-ripper X." My performance wasn't pretty. I was a drenched in sweat and dizzy, while doing less than 50% of the reps that the people on the video were doing and far less weight. I felt like I had been run-over by a train. But as Tony Horton (the dude running the workouts on the video would say) "Just do your best and forget the rest."
A quick word on Tony - At first I thought I was going to be really annoyed by Tony. He's cliche, makes corny jokes, and clearly is attracted to Drea (one of the women doing the workouts in the video), constantly flirting with her. And you hear the same jokes again and again every time you watch the DVD. But let me say, I warmed up to him really quickly. I find myself snickering at all of the little silly things he says. "Up on your tippy-toes. Why do they call them tippy?" "This is a mixture of static stretching and ballistic stretching. Stablatic. I just made that word up." At one point in the Ab Ripper X DVD (which you will watch 30 times over the course of the program) he says "That's the croton!" after an intense portion of working out. I have no idea what the word "croton" means but I plan to start using it when coaching to mean something like "intensity."So, I almost died on Day 1. But I came back for plyos on Day 2. Plyos was more my style but still an incredibly difficult workout (I still find it hard here in week 11 - particularly the rock-star hops). In the first week, I felt pretty good about the plyos and legs and back (which are much closer to the training I've done in the past for Ultimate) and struggled with the arms, chest, and shoulders portions of the workout. And I had always disliked Yoga - and while I still can't really do half-moon or twisting half moon, Yoga has become my favorite workout. My favorite Tony quote is "just put the DVD in." That really couldn't be more true for me. The biggest challenge is getting out of bed and starting the DVD. Once I get past that, I'm not going to quit half way in to a DVD.
I was out of town (in LA) for most of the second week of the program an so I just went on 30 minute runs every day and pushed the workout back. But I was fired up that I was still working out every day. Jason and I managed to connect most mornings for the first month, but we petered out after that. Still, knowing he was there in the beginning really helped push me to get out of bed and do the work in the beginning.
I know this is already long, but I should add that early in Sara's pregnancy, she challenged me to see if I could weigh less than her at some point before Champ was born. Sara started the pregnancy at 145 and I was at 178. The average weight gain is 25-35 lb. So, this was a completely reasonable challenge. While, I'm not measuring my success by my weight, I expected to get below 170lb and perhaps to 165. By the end of the first month, I'd managed to drop to 172 lb. but then leveled off. Sara meanwhile I had gotten up to 168 but leveled off. At that point, with about 3 months left in the pregnancy, I was pretty sure that if I kept up working out that Sara would pass me - but I was hoping that we would cross the 170lb. threshold at around the same time.
Somehow though, we went about four weeks without either one of us gaining or losing weight. I was seeing physical changes but was putting on muscle at about the same rate that I was dropping other weight. Then, at the beginning of the 10th week of P90X I threw my back out while doing plyometric (clap) push-ups on the chest, shoulders and triceps day. I could barely move for two days. After that, I tried to do some stretching and Yoga for a couple days but my back was still hurting too much to do anything more intense. So I took a week off (almost two total weeks off). During this time I found that I was less happy and less productive at work. But not working out meant that I was losing some of the muscle weight I had put on. At the end of those two weeks I actually weighed in at 168 lb! And Sara passed 170 and made it up to 171! (It's funny, when I tell people at work who don't know Sara about her weighing more than me they always say "you don't tell her that, do you?!" as if she would freak out about putting on weight during pregnancy. First, if you haven't seen her, Sara is incredibly beautiful while pregnant and second Sara is far less concerned about her weight than I am about mine (as you might be able to tell from this blog post)).
Last Tuesday I was able to resume the 10th week of the program and quickly put the muscle weight back on to get back over 170. Getting re-motivated to start again was challenging but it has definitely made me happier and more productive at work. And I was sore again like I hadn't been since early in the workouts.
I've got two weeks left in the program. After I finish week 12, I plan to do a week of recovery with mostly stretching and running. I'll then start again through Champ's birth and after that, who knows.
I don't have a six-pack yet, but I've learned a lot about myself in this progress. Most importantly that physical fitness is critical to my happiness - which I'd never really known before. Sara, who's being doing Yoga has been too busy this week to do her work-outs and that has clearly taken a toll on her as well. I think we have a very similar emotional need for exercise which is a really good motivator and bond for us.
I've also learned that I can commit to a serious work-out regimen and get through it. I'm pretty proud of that. I'd always thought that I was only motivated by being on teams where others were dependent on my fitness. But knowing that I'm can personally motivate myself has really changed my view of myself.
One thing I did not commit to was the P90X diet. Maggie had said that the diet made a huge difference and I'm pretty sure that the physical differences would have been even greater had I been more conscious of what I was putting in to my body.
Perhaps I can get that six-pack by the time Champ is born - but even if I don't I'm sure I'll get it before I turn 35 (or he turns 5).
Kyle
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