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Progress is being made

It has now been nearly a month since I finally began getting active again. You may have seen my post about getting a gym membership. I’m proud to say that I haven’t slowed up at all. I’ve been going about 5 days a week. My routine is to go right at 7 pm as soon as I’m home from work in the evenings. I’m usually there until around 8 or 830. Then on the weekends I go with Hive account@flowerbaby whenever we have time.

^{Headphones, fanny pack, and a headband are all essentials for me. Crazy shorts/shirt/shoes are all optional… although I tend to have that for each gym session as well.}

I start all of my workouts with a nice 10-15 minute cardio warmup. I’m not talking about just doing some light speed walking either. Instead, I jump right into running. I typically aim for a speed of 5.5-7 mph. At first I was having to take multiple walking breaks before my warm up was complete. It’s to the point now that I am able to run constantly until I finish the entire warm-up. This is usually anywhere from 1.5-2.5 miles of running.

There are about 8 different types of cardio machines at the gym I go to. I swap between different machines everyday so I can keep my body guessing and achieve greater balance with my cardio regimen. I’ve never had an issue getting the type of machine that I want. There are more than one of each type of machine and all of them look out these big windows. Some of the rows of cardio machines leave me staring right out to the river. The sun usually begins to set in the middle of my warm up. It’s pretty awesome being able to sun gaze as I run.

^{I didn’t catch the sunset in this photo, but this view still beats all of the other views I’ve had at gyms in the past.}

I’m not sure if I just go at unpopular times, but this super nice facility is usually a ghost town. There has been multiple times that I was the only person inside of the gym while I was there. Usually there are under 10 people total, from what I’ve seen. I love having my own space and not having to wait for my turn to use all of the machines and equipment. It feels like I have my own private gym and I love it.

My Apple Watch has been even more useful, now that I’ve been hitting the gym. Having something to track my fitness levels and let me control my Spotify has been pretty great. I usually put my notifications on do not disturb so that I can easily stay focused during my exercises. Tracking my fitness levels all happens on its own. I have some pretty cool stats to go over for my past month.

My average heart rate will be the first thing we take a look at. As you can see, the highest BPM I’ve reached is 188. I’m pretty impressed with that statistic, but I’m aiming to hit 190 BPM soon. Already I’m reaching athletic levels of fitness. It’s nice to see that I am able to push myself still, like I regularly did when I was younger.

The next thing we will see is my daily average of total exercise minutes. This doesn’t necessarily mean how much time I’ve spent at the gym, rather how much time my watch detected that my heart rate and movement indicated that I was exercising. Occasionally my Watch observes that I’m taking a break in between sets. We also must remember that I take 1-2 days off from the gym each week. My averages are brought down slightly because of this. Still I’m hitting nearly an hour each day over the past 30 days.

Now let’s move on to a stat called active energy. This is the total amount of calories burned during my exercises. Of course calories are still burned in smaller amounts when doing regular things throughout the day. Active energy specifically targets calorie burning during elevated moments of fitness.

Just over 700 calories/day isn’t a bad stat to me. I’m not looking to drop a ton of weight. I’m more focused on toning up and building strength. It is nice to have the endurance for real-life situations if I ever am to need it.

The last major stat we can inspect is my average walking/running distance for each day. Currently, I’m sitting (or standing) at over 4 miles each day, which is pretty great if you ask me… a whole lot better than being lazy and not doing anything at all.

I try to start and finish my workouts with a minimum of one mile of cardio. Usually it’s closer to 2 miles at the start and 2 miles to end it. This is where I burn the most calories and get my heart rate to its peak. I’m consistently setting new standards for my cardio performance and find it to be one of the most rewarding parts of the gym.

Now let’s check out my most productive day over the past 30 days. On September 29th, I surpassed 1,500 calories in one day and over 2 hours of fitness. You may also notice I did more than 7 miles of walking/running. If I did this every single day I can only imagine how amazing I’d be feeling. I somehow managed to do this after working my job all day long too.

I like to compete with my brother’s workout scores. This day I certainly was on top, but he has definitely had a day where he did even better this peak performance of mine. He’s been consistently working out again for almost a year now. I hope to achieve that same goal of consistency by this time next year.

Now you may be asking yourself… why is Hive account@daltono working out so much all of a sudden? He doesn’t have to do this and he didn’t look too out of shape. He could use this extra time to play more video games or edit videos.

The thing is I felt out of shape, even if I didn’t appear to be. I know I wasn’t pushing myself to continue to grow into a better version of me each and every day. I feel far better physically and mentally when I hit the gym regularly. My body is extremely grateful that I’ve started pushing it again finally.

Feeling sore the days after a solid workout is an addicting feeling. It’s confirmation that I’m doing things that are helping me expand to higher levels. I am so happy to have found a solid rhythm for my fitness again. I look forward to further increasing my overall health and wellness.

I know I am going to continue to get stronger and feel better the more I do this. I will be sure to update again later once I’ve made even greater leaps in my overall fitness capabilities. Hopefully this will inspire someone else to start getting back in shape.