Pressure

I often hear song lyrics in my head as I move through life.

Stuck on a train as Checkoslovakia was separating and Georgian mafia were stalking the corridors and taking passports? Simon & Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound" came to mind in a loop.

Travelling through Poland, which seemed perpetually gloomy, surrounded by miners headed to work? Well, of course "You are My Sunshine" should come to light.

Today? Pressure by Billy Joel does not want to vacate my head.

Today is April 17th. One month from this evening, I fly to Boston for the Games for Health conference, where I'll be speaking on a panel. It'll be my first time at the conference, and I'm looking forward to meeting, and meeting up with, tons of people doing exciting things around games, health and fitness.

It'll also be my next big goal - I had hoped to be at least 20 pounds lighter than my original weight by the time I got to the conference. I'm about 15 pounds down now, so have another 5 pounds to go. While I'd like it to be more, I'd be happy with "just" the five.

Can I make it? Will I put on more musckle than the fat I take off? Will I crap out and go on a fig newton binge directly beforehand? Will I be able to exergame in my hotel room? Ah...the mind reels...

The Biggest Loser Challenge

When I began the Gamers for Health exergaming initiative, my driving force was to use The Biggest Loser (TBL) exergame. I had watched the show in awe, and would sometimes get quite emotional about the physical and emotional hurdles the contestants would conquer. When I was a jock, oh so many years (decades!) ago, I’d had many coaches like Gillian, but my most effective coach had been one whose quiet approach was quite similar to Bob. For those of you who have never watched the show, they are the two main trainers, and there are presently two more who seem to kick ass through kickboxing cross training.

 In the last couple of weeks, I’ve catalogued my nervousness and sense of loss as my months with EA Sports Active 2 (EASA2) came to a close. I really dug that video game. And it dragged me to the edge of my abilities to help me extend my limits. It was my uncomfortable comfort zone, and I loved it.

Last week, I began The Biggest Loser Challenge (TBLC) for Wii. Going into it, I made a couple of mistakes that impacted my workouts. First, I didn’t use my balance board – big mistake. Second, I programmed my profile to give me 40 minute workouts – also a mistake. Again, after EASA2, I was ready for a workout to meet or surpass my current fitness level, and that would pull me to new levels of sweat and pain. These two miscalculations cost me a week of weight loss, but gave me a week of new knowledge. If you’re used to running sprints, changing to a slow job is not gonna push you to further fitness levels.

Yesterday, in a sense of desperation before running screaming back to EASA2, I created a new profile and used the balance board to measure my weight. The simple addition of the balance board opened up a whole new level – a “secret level,” if you will - of the workouts. For some reason, doing pushups on the balance board had sweat dripping off me onto the board, whereas those same pushups on the floor only worked my muscles. The balance board did something to throw the regular pushup into hyper overdrive. It was a whole different animal.  Basically all of the exercises yesterday were like that.

Comparatively, last week I sweat a little bit, but got really concerned that I wasn’t getting a good enough burn. My weight also didn’t seem to be moving anywhere, and instead went up a couple pounds, which broke my one pound a week losing streak and had me a bit freaked out. I’ll discuss this more in another post this week. I was glum, disappointed and told those who asked that I really didn’t want to dismiss TBLC, so I needed to go all out on the workout this week to give it another chance.

Well, the addition of the balance board and the extra time in the workout did the trick. Last week, I’d programmed in 40 minute workouts, which took me about 48 minutes to complete. Yesterday, I programmed in a 50 minute program, which actually took me 1 hour and 9 minutes. It’s an understatement to say that I sweat and had shortness of breath. I SWEAT, was GASPING for breath at many points in the workout and my heart raced. It felt like I sweat out five pounds, which for me is a big compliment.

I look forward to seeing how the workout goes tomorrow, and whether I can complete as many sets with the precision of “a yoga master.” Hopefully there will be a lot of sweat involved. Buy it.

Full Disclosure: THQ gave me a copy of The Biggest Loser Challenge to try out and use.

Spring Springing

With temperatures reliably hitting the mid-sixties, and today even going up to the mid-eighties, one’s mind naturally turns to outside activities. Like our blooming daffodils, pictured above, I want to turn my face up to the sun.

But practicality prevails. Generally I can work out early in the morning, before shifting my attention to work. Right now, with early morning temperatures still in the 30s, my Wii is a much more realistic workout for me. Most other people around here seem to feel the same way, as we see runners jogging by in the weekend afternoons, but no one is on the road on foot as I work out in the workweek mornings.

Video game publishers seem to understand this will to go outside. Both EA Sports Active 2 and The Biggest Loser 2 set a good portion of their workouts outside. It’s as though nature is calling us to be healthy and simply stick with the program.  Unfortunately, the setting doesn’t make the workouts any easier.

In this season of renewal, with green things blossoming and baby animals frolicking, personal rebirth also comes into play. Lent, Passover and Easter all guide us renew ourselves spiritually. I’d argue that it’s also a good time to revitalize our contracts with ourselves to get fit and lose weight.