“The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

Summer fitness goals

Over the past month I really slacked off with lifting. I didn’t make it to the gym for a whole week do to car troubles, and I ate horribly as well. Ice cream, pizza, cereal, lots of carbs. I ended up looking like fatter version of Caillou.

Now that I’m able to drive again, I’ve been going hard. In the mornings I wake up and knock out some bodyweight exercises before going for a jog. In the afternoon I hit the gym. While I’d obviously like to build more muscle, my main goal right now is to develop my back.

While most guys go to the gym and develop some weird obsession with biceps and abs, I’ve always liked working on my legs. Squats are my favorite exercise and I’d make every day leg day if it were possible. Back exercises have always been my weakness. On one of my first trips to the gym I tried to deadlift and ended up cutting my leg open on the bar. Ever since then I’ve had a weird phobia about deadlifting and have never been able to give it my all. Additionally, my current gym is all about free weights and doesn’t have any of the machinery that most places would.

In order to work on my back I decided to add pull-ups to my routine. I sorted through my Navy SEAL FitDeck and looked over all of the different pull-up and chin-up exercises. A couple of them are now part of back day, while the rest are spread out across the week.

Having the least physically exerting job of all time, I also decided to start taking breaks throughout the day in order to get some exercise. My lunch break is now a two-mile walk, and bust out a few push-ups and sit-ups every few hours. While some Muscle & Fitness zealot will try to complain about this hurting my gains, it isn’t like I’d be getting a whole lot of exercise otherwise.

Lastly, I’m getting a pair of Ringside Apex Boxing Gloves from a client. Aside from using them in the gym, I plan on setting up a heavy bag in my basement and throwing some punches every morning when I wake up. It’s a good way to get the blood flowing and start the day.

One of the nice things about working for yourself is the fact that you don’t have to pretend to look busy when there’s nothing going on. If you finish up an assignment, you can slip off to the gym or go for a run. There’s no need to set in an office and give off the appearance that you are hard at work just so that no one will complain to HR.