New Fitness Plan

For my new gym, I've taken a new path to fitness.

I plan to alternate cardio and strength training, with cardio taking the fore. Previously, I've been content to just strength train - mainly because I get so bored with cardio, and also because I've yet to find a form of cardio that doesn't cause me pain.

My current plan is to do cardio on Mon-Wed-Fri and strength on Tue-Thu, taking the weekends off.

Sundays are my new "Scale day" and I won't weigh myself during the week anymore.

Yesterday was my first cardio day, and I rode a regular upright exercise bike. The first thing I noticed was that it hurt my butt - like, a lot. I figured that this was because I'm not used to supporting all 260 pounds of me on a small portion of my inner ass cheeks. For the record, the discomfort never faded, I just got accustomed to it.

The next thing was that my feet started to hurt, which surprised me. The outer edge of both my feet started to ache, and I think this is because my form is bad. I have to ride somewhat bowlegged in order to get around my gut, which means that I'm putting uneven pressure on my feet, knees, ankles, and hips. Which lead to the 3rd thing I noticed, which happened around the 15-minute mark, my left hip started to ache like it needed to pop or something.

Overall, though, I did manage to ride for 25 minutes and hit my cardio range. I rode something like 4.5 miles, and the machine at one point said "Congrats! You just rode the equivalent of a 5K race" so, there's that. I broke a good sweat, though, so I felt like I accomplished my goal, and I pushed through the pain.

After cardio, I did some core strength work on my abs - my degenerative disc disease, ruptured and bulging discs can only be helped by making my core stronger. Years of being overweight (and an 8-year career pushing around hundreds of tons of cargo per year) have been stressful on my back, and my body shape causes me to carry all of my weight in my lumbar, which is bad. I'm trying to get real strength in my abs, while also strengthening the muscles that line my spine in order to carry that weight with muscle instead of bone and cartilage.

That's it for the time being. I'll post another update with my body measurements as soon as my gym manager sends them to me, in case anyone is curious.