Fear as motivation. It works.
Recently I have become fairly conscious of my level of fitness. Not just because my stomach sticks a little further out than it used to. A few months ago my dad was complaining of getting a pain in his chest during exercise. One thing led to another and he was diagnosed with angina and had an operation which involved staying fully conscious while a surgeon stuck a tube in his thigh and inflated a small balloon so as to widen an artery. Signs are that he’s as recovered as can be, which is nice. He still has to take anti-coagulants that make him bruise easily, and he now tells stories about his heart attack recovery fitness group, where he meets people who have been dead for ten minutes. But anyway, this being a livejournal post, I must ask the obvious; how does this affect me?
Well, it affects both me and my sister, really. It’s pretty much a certainty that the angina is hereditary, what with both my dad’s parents having it as well. As I understand it, it’s about a 50% chance that we’ll get similar problems later in life. We’ll both have to get evaluated properly for risk factors at some point, which will be fun. I’ve always been resistant to weight gain, meaning I don’t particularly watch what I eat. So what will my cholesterol be like? I’ve taken a peek at my blood pressure with one of those home test machines, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I might as well have a go at doing some exercise, I think, because it’s been a year or two since I’ve done consistent, regular workouts.
The sister’s made it pretty easy by getting hold of Wii Fit, which I find alternately toadying and abusive. First it tells me my BMI’s 22.55, then that my Wii age is 29. Or 24. Or 20. Then it asks why I’ve gained a pound since last time. I don’t know! I didn’t have a shit before I started my workout, that might be a problem. On random workouts it will call me a muscle legend, and on others it will deride me as a couch potato. Still, the thing does actually work. After half an hour I am having trouble moving on the balance board because the sweat is making it slippery. And the high scores on the games mean I start competing with everyone who’s ever used the machine, which appeals to my ego. I am finding that my balance is improving, which appears to be the main measurement of fitness according to the game.
I also found that it’s embarrassingly flattering of my press-ups. I started with six, it said that was too easy for me and set ten. I did ten, and now there’s an option called press-up challenge. I haven’t tried that yet, because there’s more fun to be had with trying to help your Mii who’s been dressed as a penguin eat fish, or do ski-jumps until you’ve set a hopefully insurmountable record. Or had a go on hula hoops. Jesus, hula hoops. The six minute version nearly killed me. My point is that I seem to be pretty good at press-ups, which is when I took more notice of a link on http://www.chrisgrapes.co.uk leading me to the hundred push ups challenge site. That’s pretty interesting, I thought. I could do press-ups when my sister’s taken her board to Oxford or somewhere. So now I’m doing it.
The site sets an initial challenge to try and complete as many “good form” press-ups as I can do at the moment, to test my fitness level. I managed to squeeze out 26, which is respectable enough, I think. It hasn’t been so long since I was lugging books around as part of my job, so I wasn’t expecting anything less than ten. Unfortunately, this puts me in the most intensive category for the first week of the challenge, leading to the kitten-strength feeling I have after completing day 3 (and therefore, week 1. Go me!). Of course it didn’t help that I attempted day 2 the day after day 1 because I didn’t read properly the helpful hint that I should rest between days to allow my muscles to recover. A little typical of me when it comes to exercise, being impatient and trying to do everything as quickly as possible. Still, no real problems yet. Each workout ends with trying to do a maximum number of press-ups, with a minimum you have to get over. I managed 20 today, with the minimum set at 15. Alright, maybe I did 19, what with the last one being sort of borderline “good form”. But I’m feeling optimistic. I’m not as unfit as I feared, and going by this week’s effort I can do this challenge. And all it is taking is the potential threat of angina later in life.
Well, it affects both me and my sister, really. It’s pretty much a certainty that the angina is hereditary, what with both my dad’s parents having it as well. As I understand it, it’s about a 50% chance that we’ll get similar problems later in life. We’ll both have to get evaluated properly for risk factors at some point, which will be fun. I’ve always been resistant to weight gain, meaning I don’t particularly watch what I eat. So what will my cholesterol be like? I’ve taken a peek at my blood pressure with one of those home test machines, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I might as well have a go at doing some exercise, I think, because it’s been a year or two since I’ve done consistent, regular workouts.
The sister’s made it pretty easy by getting hold of Wii Fit, which I find alternately toadying and abusive. First it tells me my BMI’s 22.55, then that my Wii age is 29. Or 24. Or 20. Then it asks why I’ve gained a pound since last time. I don’t know! I didn’t have a shit before I started my workout, that might be a problem. On random workouts it will call me a muscle legend, and on others it will deride me as a couch potato. Still, the thing does actually work. After half an hour I am having trouble moving on the balance board because the sweat is making it slippery. And the high scores on the games mean I start competing with everyone who’s ever used the machine, which appeals to my ego. I am finding that my balance is improving, which appears to be the main measurement of fitness according to the game.
I also found that it’s embarrassingly flattering of my press-ups. I started with six, it said that was too easy for me and set ten. I did ten, and now there’s an option called press-up challenge. I haven’t tried that yet, because there’s more fun to be had with trying to help your Mii who’s been dressed as a penguin eat fish, or do ski-jumps until you’ve set a hopefully insurmountable record. Or had a go on hula hoops. Jesus, hula hoops. The six minute version nearly killed me. My point is that I seem to be pretty good at press-ups, which is when I took more notice of a link on http://www.chrisgrapes.co.uk leading me to the hundred push ups challenge site. That’s pretty interesting, I thought. I could do press-ups when my sister’s taken her board to Oxford or somewhere. So now I’m doing it.
The site sets an initial challenge to try and complete as many “good form” press-ups as I can do at the moment, to test my fitness level. I managed to squeeze out 26, which is respectable enough, I think. It hasn’t been so long since I was lugging books around as part of my job, so I wasn’t expecting anything less than ten. Unfortunately, this puts me in the most intensive category for the first week of the challenge, leading to the kitten-strength feeling I have after completing day 3 (and therefore, week 1. Go me!). Of course it didn’t help that I attempted day 2 the day after day 1 because I didn’t read properly the helpful hint that I should rest between days to allow my muscles to recover. A little typical of me when it comes to exercise, being impatient and trying to do everything as quickly as possible. Still, no real problems yet. Each workout ends with trying to do a maximum number of press-ups, with a minimum you have to get over. I managed 20 today, with the minimum set at 15. Alright, maybe I did 19, what with the last one being sort of borderline “good form”. But I’m feeling optimistic. I’m not as unfit as I feared, and going by this week’s effort I can do this challenge. And all it is taking is the potential threat of angina later in life.