Anniversary

An anniversary quietly passed by, the one year anniversary of me starting the 300 work out. Much like World of Warcraft, I never would have expected to be doing the 300 work out for a full year.  First of all it was so damn hard, harder than any exercise routine I ever had tried.  I also figured it was so hard that hurting myself doing it was pretty much inevitable, which would lead to me bagging it.  Then there is just the burn out factor, doing the same thing for that period of time gets old. Yet, here I am still plugging away.

When I was doing the work out twice a week and wearing a watch to get my time down as far as possible I was borderline crazy about it.  Much to Jeremy’s dismay, I haven’t worn a watch since the Spartan Halloween 07 contest ended. After a year, the week to week improvements are minimal.  I have been doing the full 300 reps for well over 6 months at this point.  I do however continue to make small improvements.

Some exercises I break down into smaller sets with very short breaks in between.  For example I used to break my 50 dead lifts into a 1st set of 30, small break, 10, small break and then the final 10.  Now I do a first set of 35, quick break then 15.  With my push ups I used to pause in the up position briefly at 40 and 45 reps, now I go straight through to 50. The floor wipers at first took me up to 5 mini sets until I eeked out my 50th rep, now I do it in 3 sets with small breaks at 28 and 40 reps.  Likewise the final 25 pull ups could take me as many as 4 sets to get through if I was really beat, now I do it in two with a small break in between.

I expected to get some fitness results when I started the 300.  I didn’t expect the degree of results that I acheived.  When I started the routine I was in the mid 190’s on the scale.  Now I tip them at between 175 and 180 pounds.  When I cut back to doing the routine one time a week in November I expected to gain a few pounds and maybe lose some of that fitness level.  Surprisingly I didn’t lose a thing and have actually lost a few pounds since then at the same time leaning out even further.  It seems like I have my muscle mass at a point where it wants to keep my body weight where it is.  I still eat pretty clean but nowhere to the degree I was when I was preparing for the contest where some dinners consisted of little more than a can of tuna and a big glass of water.

I guess that is the biggest reason I continue to do it.  It works for me.  It has gotten me into the best shape of my adult life and keeps me there.  That and I still enjoy some of the weird looks I get at the gym as people stare back into my corner watching me do rep after rep after rep.