daniel bigham.ca

Exercise and mood
January 16, 2008

I was reminded the other day how much of an affect exercise can have on mood. I think it was a Tuesday or Wednesday night, and I had felt tired and unmotivated to do anything around the house for a couple of nights. (Maybe even bored) It was time to go for my next run, so I obediently got ready and headed out the door. Half an hour later, as I was getting home, my mood was 180 degress different... I was happy, energetic, my mind was busy with all the things I wanted to do, etc. It was just amazing how much of a "reset" my run was.

It makes me think that people who suffer with mood disorders should train for a half marathon... they might just find that exercise is the best medicine.

Hand go boom
December 22, 2007

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Injuries suck. On Dec 13th I was playing basketball with some friends when I caught my finger on a guy as I was running past him and my ring finger got bent back past 90 degrees until it made a significant "pop". What I ended up with is basically a sprained hand and a useless finger... it took a week before I was able to type with my left hand, but it's looking like it will be another couple of weeks before I'm able to use my hand for any kind of exercise.

So after many months of steady progress towards reaching my goal of 100 pushups, this will be a significant set back. I wonder how much progress I'll lose over these three weeks and how quickly I'll be able to get back into it.

Progress
October 30, 2007

Each week since March I've been dutifully following my schedule, working towards the goal of doing 100 pushups. And I've finally started running again, in the hopes of being able to run the marathon in Ottawa next May. So far so good. In general, I'm starting to spend a lot more time exercising. I have a weekly plan that consists of doing different various things each day of the week. I'm in the gym two days a week, which is broken down into three parts: Pushing (bench press and shoulder press), Pulling (lat row, pulldown bar, pull-ups, shrugs), and Legs (squats, leg press, leg extensions, leg curls, inner/outer thigh). I'm also doing several activities at home: Pushups 4 days a week, various chiropractic exercises each day, inner thigh stretching and strengthening (I'm slowly working towards doing the splits, like it will ever happen!), and some calf/ankle/foot rehab exercises (to be proactive about trying to prevent the running injuries I saw last season).

It's a fair bit, but I've scheduled things out to be very easy going and progressive. Gone are the days of 4 reps... instead, I'm starting with 10 reps and working my way up to 15 reps over a few weeks before increasing weight. It might not be as effective at building muscle, but that's ok, because my goals are to: 1) Not injur myself, 2) Increase weight/reps in a more realistic fashion that makes plateauing less likely, 3) Not kill myself at the gym so that I'm always tired / falling asleep. It will be interesting to see if I can keep this up for a year, and what the results will be.

UPDATE: Jan 2007: Yeah, shoot. I kept this up for maybe a month and then got lazy and went back to just doing the pushups and running. I need to get back to regular back, leg, and chiropractic exercise.

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