Wednesday, July 28, 2010

I should be studying but...

Battle with myself. On my mission I discovered that my body was in sore disrepair. Before my mission, I ate almost nothing and I didn't get out much. I played lots of World of Warcraft and programmed a lot for my major. That was my life. When bicycling again for the first time in years, I noticed what horrible disrepair my body was in. I bicycled pretty slow. I got better. In fact if you look at a picture of me at the MTC on facebook when I'm with my companion and then the group picture of me at the end of my first transfer in Groningen, you can see I lost a TON of weight (granted I gained like 10-15 pounds at the MTC because I was eating a lot and not burning it off..)

I promised myself I'd never let myself get in that kind of a situation again. So I've been exercising to keep my body in shape (many CS majors are in bad shape and there are some of us who used to be in top physical condition before we started the major (but I wasn't on of those people in that kind of shape when I started)). I try to do some aerobics every day and lift some weights at least twice a week. something I started noticing was the more you work a given set of muscles, the less fat there is around them. Unfortunately I hadn't found a good way to work my glutes (it's slang for gluteous maximus I hope I spelled that right...) until today! I found out that getting a small floaty board at the pool and doing laps by just kicking appears to work them (at least I THOUGHT my butt totally felt it). So yeah I did that for about 15 minutes at the pool today. It was sad because I was getting totally beat by the person in the lane next to mine. but I don't care. See I accepted the fact on my mission that my body was in horrible disrepair and I'm totally not ashamed of making an effort to fix it, even if other people at the gym/pool think I'm a weakling. And over time, I get better(at least that's the hope) so I'll have less of a reason to be embarassed. And actually it's been working. I'm still not top-notch, probably never will be, but even average is good enough for me in the state I used to be in.

And in other news, I actually managed to do a full lap of Freestyle at the pool! You have no idea how proud of myself I became.

With swimming I've discovered my biggest weakness is still my breathing (my normal kicks are weak too, my my frog kicks are okay). I feel like my body isn't used to not having a steady stream of air, so staying under the water towards the end of a lap is difficult, but I am getting better. If anyone who manages to read my blog on this distant corner of cyberspace knows how to train your body to do aerobic activity while holding your breath in regular intervals, please let me know. I saw a fully-trained swimmer do a whole lap and only breathe twice.
/jealous.

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