How I'm spending my summer vacation...

This is a quick post to show off some homemade equipment I am using this summer. Below are some pics of my DIY-ish workout gear.

Can't take DIY cred for the punching bag and stand. However, if you look on the floor you will see my DIY medicine ball. It is made from an old basketball, filled with 10 lb. of sugar, and duck taped to hell. It currently resides in a soccer ball training thing (seriously I have had this net thing since I was like 10 and have no idea what it's purpose is anymore, what it is called, or where you might find one) to serve as a hammer.

This is my ground and pound dummy. It is several rolls of carpet covered in a ton of duck tape. It is really fun to toss around and beat on. Total cost was about $5 for the duck tape.

This is my uppercut bag. It is an old duffle bag from high school. My old marching band duffle bag to be specific. it contains a 50 lb. sand bag and it filled out with old T-shirts to round out the bag. Cost was about $1.99 for the sand and $3 for the hardware to hang it. 

This is my double end bag. It consists of a bounce ball I stole borrowed acquired from my children. I covered it in...wait for it... duck tape and secured a rope to hang it. The rope was the tricky part. It took several times for the rope to work. It is attached to the ceiling and a bucket full of concrete pieces via bungees. I had the ball, I had the bungees, and the bucket and concrete "came with the house." Seriously, the bucket is an old paint bucket left over from the renovation on this house before we moved in and the concrete pieces were just lying around my yard.

This is my most recent piece of equipment. I picked these up at a local tire shop around the corner from my house. They are awesome! I flip them, drag them, pull them, feed them, change them, etc. Through a VERY generous friend I also have a sledgehammer that I hit these awesome tires with.

So that is my workout equipment at home. Had I bought all of this brand new and "professional" it would have run me over $500. I am having a lot of fun with my new toys and will post the progress as usual. I am currently working on the final post on my "Is That A Fat Joke" series. Stay tooned...

\m/ IS NO TRY \m/

Is that a fat joke? (Part Deux)

Last time I gave a little back story, herein referred to as THEN. Now we will discuss the present and the future (most likely in part 3), herein referred to as NOW and LATER respectively...

As of this writing (May/June 2012) I have lost ~45 lbs since I really started pushing myself in January and ~60 lbs from my highest in 2007. We did a biggest loser contest at work. My official weight loss for the contest was 30 lbs or ~10.50%. I lost. The winner lost ~10.75%. POINT TWO FIVE PERCENT?!?! That is how much I lost by. Not even a full pound. Had I lost 3/4 of a pound more, I would have won. I was very upset. Not that I lost, that I lost by so little. A blowout I can handle. This was just frustrating. After a bit of a pity party, I decided to shake it off and move on. I am not doing this for a contest. I was doing this way before the contest started, I was just looking to make a buck from what I was already doing.

I began to get a bit bored with what I had been doing. I completed RUSHFIT level 1 and felt great but I wanted a new challenge. I cut WAY back on my workouts, just kept up with my eating and have not lost much more, but I am maintaining. If I am not going to lose at least I am not gaining. I started reading articles and doing some research on some ways to change things up. There is a blog that a friend on Facebook had directed me called Nerd Fitness. This is a wonderful blog from a nerd that decided to get his life together through simple means. Kind of like the poor man's Chris Hardwick (no offense, Steve. That is a compliment. I just finished Hardwick's book The Nerdist Way and there are very similar concepts). Here is some background on the creator Steve Kamb. Anyway, Steve has some amazing articles about how to "level up your life". He breaks down concepts that can be confusing due to the crazy cash-cow that is the fitness and diet industries. He uses RPGs, video games, and other such nerd/pop culture references to make the concepts relatable.

I like blogs more than newspapers or magazines* because it is easier to find an old blog post if you know what blog it was than to find an old article in print media. Its like the web holds the information for you until you need it. What is really cool is when the timing of the article hits right when you need it. The articles on Nerd Fitness were interesting and enjoyable, but they did not really do anything for me. I was looking for motivation and inspiration and all of a sudden it was like Steve knew what I needed to hear. In the span of a week or so Steve posted the following articles and it was EXACTLY what I needed to hear.

The first was Go Right. This is a wonderful piece about pushing forward and related your goals and progress to old school 8-bit video games. He posted a video that inspired the post that was amazing inspirational for me. The end is my favorite part:

"Stop worrying about the next level.  Don’t worry about that final jump.  Who cares if you’ve “died” a million times?  Try again.  Try differently.  Try smarter.
Hit continue.  
Go right."

That is such a simple way to look at things.

The second was This Time Its Different. This article is about actually proving that "this time will be different" and how to make it be different.

These are just two of the wonderful articles that Steve has posted lately. I highly recommend reading this blog and even joining the forums. I don't post in the forums as much as I should, but that will hopefully change. In the next part of this ever-growing series I am going to address the LATER part of where I am and some of the specific points I got from the aforementioned articles and how I plan to apply them.

\m/ IS NO TRY \m/

*I do not really read newspapers or magazines anymore though I do read a lot of articles posted on magazine sites, specifically Men's Health and Men's Fitness. Some are published in the print versions, some are not.