Back to not quite full speed

I've been quite lazy lately, at least that's the impression one would get if one happened to see this:

As you may have read, I'm trying to tackle a cold while breaking the vicious cycle of postponing workout to some remote day when my feet will have forgotten how to operate without the knowledge worker's prosthetic: the office chair. Wisely, as long as I'm dragging this cold along, I will not go at it cowabunga-style, but instead opt for some lighter excercises like burpee sets with decreasing reps, which should get my juices flowing (sorry for the mental image) and, ideally, look a little something like this:

Now, I will get back to jogging as soon as I lose the power to irrigate a medium-sized desert with my nose and right now I'm not only doing burpees, but this should give a general idea of the direction I'm headed.

Also, there are, of course, the various projects, which I'm either pursuing or not and piles of emails I need to burn, so if you're waiting for an answer to something: I'm sorry. Bear with me, I'll get there.

On a side-note: don't you find the camera angle of the following instructional video odd? I can't imagine somebody seriously thought that angle was a didactically sound choice. Pfft, amateurs.

Simple Google Docs Workout Log

Remember how you always craved for knowing how so not lazy I am. Here you go:

If this bar chart looks simple and nifty to you, it's because you are absolutely right.
This bar chart is generated from a Google spreadsheet, filled using a simple form and intended to track how far off my workout goal I am.

Essentially, it reflects my relative progress in my undertaking to perform 360 workouts in a 365 day period.

As I had mentioned, I have defined a workout as any endurance, strength or fight training of reasonable length, demanding reasonable amounts of effort, and thats exactly what I track. In order to do that, I have created a new Google spreadsheet and made a simple form, that lets you choose from the three workout options. The data collected consist only of a timestamp and a workout type, which is all I need to know.

Editing the form.The finished form.

Once I had the form, I went on creating a second sheet, which basically counts how many days have passed since the day I started working out, then counts the number of workouts submitted, and, finally, it uses that information to determine how my training differs from the golden 360 units in 365 days.

Nifty, but far from intricate, is the formula for the field Active:

=(A8*A5)/(B8*A2)

This formula divides the number of workouts performed by the number of days since the first workout times the inverse slope of my set goal. Easy as pie.

So much for the moderately geeky part - on to the convenient part. I sent the link to my form straight to my iPhone and added the form to my home screen, so I can access my form as soon as I'm done taking a shower after every workout. And since the form is so darn simple, it really takes no time at all to feed the spreadsheet.

At the bottom right, next to another form.

Now leave me alone. I gotta zero my laziness bar.

Update on Oct 1, 2009 by Juan Romero Abelleira

Cleaned up the stats spreadsheet to, hopefully, make it less confusing.

Moving out of LazyTown

Sportacus, a.k.a. Magnús Scheving

In an effort to stay sharp and sane, while I figure out why the hell I want stay healthy - I've got a few good hunches, but until decide to starve myself to death in order to provide for a huge diamond ring and a family, I'll act as if I hadn't figured it out just yet - I am going to make an effort to move little bit more.

"What are you going to do exactly, Juan?", I hear myself ask in an effort to tell you what my plans are. Well, I am going to perform 360 units of training in the next 365. Because I am illiterate in sports science, I have defined a unit of training any cardio, strength or martial arts training of reasonable length, demanding reasonable amounts of effort.

See, my problem isn't that I don't commit enough while working out, my problem is, that I let everything in life get between myself and whatever had a potential for making me sweat with one noteworthy exception, which I will NOT talk about in a gentlemanly fashion. I will get my eyes off of the computer more often and I will document it in a Google Spreadsheet.

I plan on starting today, but I don't trust myself enough to make any promises, so we'll see how it comes along.

Image: CC solveigzophoniasdottir

Piling on the Pasta

Note: This post already sounds way more starchy than it should. I don't want to get fat. I want to gain a bit of muscle.

I want to gain 10 kg in 30 days. 

Click to read more ...

Goals

This is my feeble attempt at making my goals public. I'm not particularly unhappy of where my life is headed right now, however, I want to give it a more strict direction, if what I just wrote makes any sense at all...

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