Swimming at Tufts University

Posted on May 31, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Me and swimming are not friends. Since a very young age I’ve been a terrible swimmer. When I was a little kid (7 or 8) they wouldn’t pass me to the next level in swim lessons because I couldn’t float on my back. I could take a full breath of air and sink right to the bottom. Even when I used the kickboards I would actually go backwards. So I very quickly gave up swimming in favor of other sports that focused on hand-eye coordination instead of buoyancy. Suffice it to say I didn’t spend a whole lot of time swimming as a kid, I blame it on the fact that most of the water I came into contact with was actually frozen, either in an ice hockey rink or a harsh Maine winter which seems to last most of the year.

Last summer I decided to face my fear of swimming by signing up for a sprint triathlon and giving myself 3 months to train. Then bike and run would be a piece of cake but the swimming was something I had to work really hard at. I find it very hard to relax in the water, especially while exercising; I tense up, start breathing really heavily and my heart rate jumps to 180 only after a few minutes. I got to the point in the pool where I could swim the 1/3 of a mile required for the race but I hadn’t factored in the element of other people and the ocean (yeah the ocean for my first tri wasn’t a good idea). I was getting kicked in the head, sucking down water, my heart jumping into my throat, and I’m really surprised I didn’t actually drown, I think without the wetsuit I would have. Even with my wetsuit, Sarah cut my time almost in half. I only caught up to her on the bike because her bike mostly fell apart. When I got done the race someone asked me how it went, I said, “It was great! Except for that swimming part, if I never do that again I’ll be happy.”

Swimming is something that I need to make a really conscious effort to get better at. I tend to be pretty good at a lot of sports and I pick things up really quickly but swimming is definitely my kryptonite and I need to face it. So I figured this month’s fitness experiment would be a great segue into this summer’s “learn to swim” adventure. I headed to the Tufts Pool after work to see if I was truly as bad as this time last year. Last year I could only swim two lengths of the 25m pool before needing to stop. Today I could do more than four which is an improvement but still pretty sad.

I don’t know much about swimming as an exercise but I did several 4-length swims (100m) followed by short breaks. This lasted for about 15 minutes. I measured my heart rate a few times and found that it landed between 140-150bpm each time. This was a big improvement from last year when I was doing half the distance with heart rates between 170-180bpm Then I decided that I would swim continuously for as long as I could, only I didn’t need to be doing freestyle the whole time, I just needed to be moving and get out of the habit of hanging onto the ends of the pool (i.e. do I stop because I’m tired or do I stop because I’m used to the safety net of the pool’s edge?). I did 2 lengths of freestyle followed by 1 length of backstroke or side stroke followed by another 2 lengths of freestyle and repeated it for 13 minutes. This allowed me to recover aerobically, knowing that after 2 lengths I’d be able to get my face out of the water and breath calmly was a huge help. Simply staying moving in the water for more than 10 minutes without drowning was a confidence booster for me. Baby steps for sure but I’m determined to become a good swimmer so I’m going to keep working at it.

Me and Swimming are not friends, although I'm determined to become a good swimmer, it will just take a lot of concentrated effort for me to be confident in the water.

Rollerblading on the Charles River Bike Path

Posted on May 31, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Hockey has been a big part of my life ever since I was a munchkin. I got my first pair of ice hockey skates shortly after I could walk and then spent the next 18 years of my life eating, sleeping, and breathing ice hockey. So naturally I’ve been conditioned to have a negative attitude toward people who play roller hockey. It’s even worse for people who rollerblade and aren’t even playing hockey. I had to swallow my pride my sophomore year of college when me and some of my buddies joined a local roller hockey league, I had to get a pair of blades. It took a while for me to warm up to it but it became a decent alternative because my school didn’t have club or intramural ice hockey, roller hockey was the next best thing. We spent two seasons beating up on the local adult league teams before I transferred schools and headed to Tufts. Since then my rollerblades have been in storage at my parents house.

I realized part-way through this month that my rollerblades still existed so I had my parents bring them down on their next trip to Boston so I could use them for a day of fitness. They managed to escape my 100 Item Challenge last November because they were already stowed away up in Maine. In the spirit of this month’s fitness experiment, I decided I would give rollerblading a try, just to see if it was a legitimate form of exercise. Every time I run or bike along the Charles River, I see people rollerblading. I die a little bit inside each time I see people use that heel-stopper to slow down, ugh, maybe you’d only understand if you were a hockey player, it drives me crazy. I had memorial day off from work and it was a beautiful day so I decided it would be a great idea to do some rollerblading.

Me on the Mass Ave bridge overlooking the Charles River. If I have a shred of dignity left it's that my rollerblades are made for roller hockey not inline skating (i.e. hockey boot not some weak plastic thing with a heel-stopper).

Believe it or not I actually had a decent workout. I rollerbladed for 10 miles and really tried to push myself pretty hard on the straightaways. I got my heart rate up, got my lungs going, and pumped my quads until they wouldn’t stop burning. I even passed several people riding their bicycles (wah wah wah, sad trombone for the bikers). I saw half a dozen other rollerbladers out cruising the Charles River bike path as well. I felt pretty weird now that I was one of them but the heart rate, tired legs, and sweat drenched clothing helped to redeem the value of this kind of workout for me. It was extremely low impact but still gave me a great workout. My min/max/average heart rate was 91/155/137.

I wouldn’t say that I’m going to put rollerblading immediately into my weekly workout routine. I still can’t get over the mentality that I’d rather be playing hockey instead. With that being said, I would definitely do some rollerblading if I were coming back from an injury. I typically bike when I’m sore, injured, or recovering because it’s low impact on my joints. However, when I had a hip flexor problem last year biking was out of the question because of the demands it places on those muscles. Rollerblading would have been a perfect workout to maintain my cardio and keep my quads in shape.

Trevor Smith’s Fitness in Austere Environments on Kalalau Beach in Kauai, Hawaii

Posted on May 30, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Trevor and I went to high school together and we met on the cross-country team my freshman year. He was a fit dude then and he’s surely a fit dude now, the difference is that more than a decade later he’s now helping Army Rangers stay fit while on deployment, EPIC. He calls his program “Fitness in Austere Environments” or more simply “Man Strength”. The premise is to stay fit in harsh environments where you don’t have access to a gym. Imagine you’re a Special Forces dude in peak physical form as you head off for a deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan. How can you continue to stay in great shape if you can’t bring a gym with you to the Afghan mountainside? His program helps Rangers and other people stay in shape by using their simple tools they can find in their surroundings and easily modifying them for exercise: lifting tires, throwing rocks, doing burpees, lifting sandbags, endless squats/lunges, and other types of exercises. I’d describe it as if Cross-Fit and the World’s Strongest Man competitions had a baby together, it’d be Trevor Smith’s Austere Athletics Program. To quote Trevor’s new website, “If you aren’t training to be as strong as a berserk viking, and fast as greased lightning, you are wasting your time.”

I thought it would be great to investigate some of his workout routines for my month-long fitness experiment. So I emailed him and he sent me some of his YouTube videos where he’s training in his back yard in Norway so I adapted them for my workout on Kalalau Beach in Kauai, Hawaii. Kalalau is one of the most remote beaches in the world. It’s only accessible by boat or an 11 mile hike over a series of cliffs. So with absolutely no access to a gym or formal workout tools I thought this would be a great scenario to do some gymless training.

Based of his YouTube video I grabbed a rock of sufficient weight and did the workout below which lasted about 25 minutes:

5 minute warmup of arm circles, pushups, jumping jacks, and a few other moves to get my heart rate up and my body sweating
Pushups x 25 – in his video he wears a backpack filled with sand, I simply did 25 pushups, if I hadn’t already carried 50lbs for two days I probably would have done the pushups with it on. This time, I decided to pass on the extra weight.
Rock Squats x 15

ROCK SQUATS! I need a larger rock next time. I definitely had a few naked hippies walk by and give me weird looks.

Lunges x 15 (each leg)

ROCK LUNGES! These were pretty tough to do because it was hard to keep the rock balanced. Trevor uses a sand bag which I think would work better, just sling it over your shoulders and go to town.

Bent-Over Rows x 15

ROCK ROWS! Doing some bent over rows with the rock, I was certainly working up a good sweat by this point. Our lovely campsite is featured in the background.

Twist Toss x 9

ROCK THROWING! This was easily my favorite exercise of the whole workout, deep down there's just something satisfying about throwing large objects around.

Burpees x 20 in ~60s
Abs – Russian Twist (with a smaller rock)
Abs – Put it on the Shelf (taken from P90X+ but done with a rock instead of weights).

Based off my high number of reps above, I certainly could have chosen a heavier rock, but not wanting to injure myself with a new workout before my 11 mile hike the next day, I decided to focus more on my form than my weight. Even though I could have done a heavier weight, my heart rate was still cruising with a min/max/average of 75/161/131. I was drenched in sweat and had a blast. I don’t quite yet feel like a berserk viking but I certainly felt the workout.

Note to self: when you’re done working out with your huge rock, make sure to put it somewhere safe instead of the middle of your campsite so people don’t trip on it in the middle of the night (sorry Sarah).

Here’s one of Trevor’s YouTube videos, I used most of his exercises except the sandbag ones:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7f5Prr08AT4

Power Yoga on Kalalau Beach in Kauai, Hawaii

Posted on May 30, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

I knew that yoga would have to be one of my exercises while I was on vacation in Kauai, living on Kalalau Beach. Kalalau is a very spiritual place for the people who have lived there over the centuries so I found it fitting to do my one yoga workout this month while in the valley. Also, after 15 miles of hiking over two days with a pack weight approaching 50 pounds I knew my body needed some recovery. Yoga definitely did the trick. I most often do yoga on Mondays or Tuesdays after a weekend of beating myself up hiking, climbing, or adventuring. It helps lengthen my body back out and helps me work my muscles in a super low-impact way to help them recover. I’ve definitely seen an improvement in my recovery time as well as other aspects of my life (core strength, flexibility, rock climbing, etc) thanks to Yoga.

I used to be a huge naysayer toward yoga because I had wrongly assumed it was just for people who wanted to be flexible and/or wear yoga pants (both of which I fully support but that’s besides the point). I remember the first time I did yoga three years ago during a PE class at Tufts. I figured I would walk into the class, stretch out a bit, hopefully meet a girl or two, and I was golden, basically foolproof. Boy was I wrong, I was totally humbled because power yoga absolutely kicked my ass. My mat was covered in my own sweat, my muscles were shaking uncontrollably, and I felt like I wanted to die. I was that guy in the back of the class cursing and falling over and getting exceedingly frustrated because everyone else was in the zone with these expressions of zen on their faces. After taking a few semester-long classes in college I’m now a firm believer in making yoga part of my weekly routine. I like the emphasis it places on balance, power, and flexibility (not just flexibility as I wrongly assumed).

On Kalalau Beach in Kauai I decided I would do a 45 minute yoga session. I can safely say that I’ve never had such an amazing backdrop for doing yoga. I wasn’t quite sure whether I should be facing the ocean or facing the valley:

Probably my most epic Warrior 1 ever. I wasn't quite sure what I should be looking at: ocean, waterfall, mountains, cliffs, jungle, beach, naked hippies, etc. I wish this picture could really do Kalalau Valley proper justice but it's simply too big and too amazing to capture with film. (photo courtesy of Sarah).

This picture was taken about two minutes before the wind blew away my inner-tube. The tube rolled up on its side and the wind blew it about 200 yards down the beach and threatened to blow it into the ocean to be gone forever. I ran down the beach as fast as I could and saved the inner-tube. As I returned to my yoga I got a standing ovation from a half dozen naked people who were watching my escapades. After running about 400 yards and now knowing that I had an audience, I had to calm myself down and finish out another 20 minutes of yoga.

My min/max/average heart rates were 70/108/153 and it was pretty clear that the 153 peak came from sprinting down the beach. It was pretty tough to do yoga on the sand, I’m not sure I recommend it. At first I tried to use my towel as my yoga mat but it was significantly too short and it kept moving around. I quickly ditched the towel and accepted the fact I’d just be covered in sand by the end of it. I spent a lot of time getting my hands and feet situated before, during, and after each pose. It definitely wasn’t my best yoga session of all time but it was certainly the best yoga experience I’ve ever had. After the session I promptly jumped into the ocean to wash off the sand and the sweat. Then to wash off the salt water I showered under the waterfall you can see in the picture above.