The FXB Chronicles

Day 14, upper body- While the upper body workouts leave their mark with burning in my shoulders and arms that persists quite a bit longer than lower body days, I actually look forward to it. I know my upper body especially shoulder and biceps are weak so making them burn is good. About the worst portion of today was doing full tricep dips as our last set of exercises on that muscle group. After the first 32, I ended up failing on the last 16 and basically dropped to the floor. We've also been doing a sidebar plank challenge with a few of the FIT members. The final goal is to hit a 5 minute plank. We're up to 2:40 right now which is the longest I had worked up to in my normal core routine stuff. I know I can go longer, but 5 minutes seems pretty crazy. I guess we'll see. I've been on a major nutrition kick today playing around with my meals and foods even before I eat them to try and plan out a perfect balance. I think advanced calculus might be easier... Seriously,

Day 13, kickboxing and now we add the switch kick. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure the switch kick is what they were trying to teach us last class, but never told us 10 weekers it was a new move. It would certainly explain my frustration with it because even today when they actually tried to teach us, I was about as lost as it gets. I ended up sharing a bag with the instructor from Saturday's class and he did a good job of trying to help me avoid randomly flailing about as I am wont to do. However, even he didn't seem to be quite the match to my woefully inadequate ability to make my body move in certain ways. By the end of the class, I seemingly had the very most basic grasp of what the move was to be, but I was still hurting my foot again in class today. I ended up soft punching at the end of class because my arms were basically jello by this point. I'm also not entirely sure my newbishness wasn't frustrating my counterpart on the other side of the bag as h

Sunday Funday 2, really wasn't a cheat day for me. Considering I sprinkled a bit heavily last night on the heavy foods, I really wasn't going to make today a cheat day. I actually don't think I'm going to actively plan any cheat days through the 10 weeks. If I truly want something a bit more decadent, it's going to be a single meal or item and not a whole day of going off the reservation. Really, my true biggest limitation I've set for myself is 1-2 beers per week as my allowance. I'm a huge craft beer fan and have a pretty solid collection of various rare and interesting beers staring at me on a daily basis in the bar area. So, cutting back to a 12 oz beer or two a week pretty much takes drinking most of these out of the question. Que Sera Sera. I'll slowly work some beer back in once the challenge is over. In the meantime I'm really hoping to shed some solid percentage points of body fat while I build supportive muscle beyond just my cycling f

Day 12, ok so its no secret I like leg day probably the most of any. I'm not sure why everyone else likes to pretend leg day is so terrible, but its a good burn for me. I banded up a couple of colors now that I'm getting the hang of most of the exercises and can work towards actual muscle failure on some of the sets. We added iso's today where we hold the bands at various levels of tension for a static 8 count. Man, that brings on some new found burn. The instructor today was pretty funny making jokes about the burn and getting us through the session a bit easier overall. My abs definitely felt like they took a beating today. I went for a 30 minute run on the treadmill when I got home since it was raining out and it didn't look like there was going to be much opportunity to get out for anything else. Talk about a sweat storm since I forgot to turn on the fan before I started. You could literally wring the sweat out of my shirt when I got done. We had a friend's

Day 11, kickboxing. I was looking forward to kickboxing again. I like these days since it really lets me build myself into a lather. My form may not be the greatest, but I go until I have to stop or pass out for the most part. It typically peak into the low 180's late in the workout where we're doing longer combinations of kicks and punches. We added another kick into the combo's today before we got into the bags and I was as lost as could be. It felt like we were doing the kick on the wrong leg and it had me completely messed up and frustrated. Eventually we got onto the bags though and while I still couldn't get the proper kick in there that they were trying to tell us to do, I at least got to vent my frustrations on the bag. However my roundhouse kicks were seriously off today. I couldn't hit the bag in the right location where the shin meets the ankle and consequently kept kicking the bag with the top of my foot. That can only go on so long before it starts to

Day 10- back to my weakest link, upper body. Today we went with both reps and ISO work where we held static poses with the bands at various points for an 8 count. Man, talk about a whole new burn. I maxed myself out on pretty much every exercise to the point it was a difficult drive home. While I don't think anyone is ever really fond of the "burn" I can say I like the after effects. Luckily I'm just lean enough that I can see the various muscle pump already on some of the muscle groups we've been working so its an added motivation. Something that struck me this morning is back to the discussion my wife and I had about how the challenge becomes nearly all consuming. It honestly feels like my priorities on a daily basis are drink water, eat protein, go to class, and pee. And with the amount of water I've been trying to get (150 oz) I feel like peeing may even be priority #1 (insert dry humor here) most days. Work and family life have unfortunately taken a hit

Day 9, time to get my sweat on. Wow, the amount of sweat I can pour out in 45 minutes is fairly impressive. At least when I'm on the bike, the air or fan have evaporative effects on me so I'm not quite so drenched. I'm getting done here though and everything is soaked through. I guess they consider that level 10 effort. I've been sharing a bag the last two sessions with one of the long term FIT members and she's been complimentary of my effort and had to take to alternating punches with me in lieu of going at the same time since our punch strengths were too offset to balance out. We added the uppercut today to our punches as well as doing our first combo of punching and kicking. Man, I was right back into feeling like a fish out of water (except for the whole drowning in sweat thing). I couldn't keep my hands or punches figured out and would have to stop, regroup and go again a number of times to keep the combinations correct. I did an hour workout on the bi

Day 8- woohoo, back to something I can at least pretend to be good at. Well, at least until it comes to the standing hip flexion thingy. Lets see, hold a medicine ball in one hand, arm out, and pivot on your hip raising your foot behind you and use your glute/hamstring to lift yourself back to vertical. Oh shit, talk about a balance killer. My poor coach... She saw me struggling and suggested I try using the figure 8 instead of the medicine ball. Oops, that just made it worse now that I'm actively pulling up on my planted foot at the top making me even more unsteady. Ahh well, I just need to activate all those small balance muscles to help keep me on my feet. Just another step in the line of getting fitter overall. Prior to class we planked for 1:40 and I stayed after a bit to do a few side planks and lower back extensions to balance out the ab work we did. Shooting to hit 60 minutes on the bike trainer tonight. It'll be interesting to see how the legs feel. I currently imagi

Day 7, starting off week 2 with another round of kickboxing. Our coach was teaching class this morning and she kicked our butts once again. Thankfully no new punches or kicks today and we instead focused a bit more on speed work and form. I'm still finding myself lost about every minute or so forgetting what order I'm supposed to be doing stuff in. I did get a little better on my roundhouse today. My hip/waist rotation got a lot better and it felt like I connected with a few good kicks here and there, plus I was starting to get my leg to recoil without just dropping it to the floor. I shared a bag with a FIT member today and she was very complimentary of my efforts and abilities. She gave me some advice to maybe slow down a bit and reset between punches/kicks because I was outpacing a lot of the class. I'm thinking she probably also was concerned I might keel over from a heart attack considering I had my full sweat going and had to pause about every minute or two to kee

Sunday was (is) supposed to be our cheat day, fun day, whatever you want to call it, but essentially a break from diet and exercise to indulge our desires built up during the week and get them cleared out so we can have productive days the remaining 6 per week. I actually ended up cheating a bit Friday night with a 4 oz pour of beer that I'd been chilling from my stash and then had another 16 oz beer Saturday night. So, Sunday, I opted (and will most like continue) to at least stick pretty closely to the diet plan and I also threw in an hour trainer workout on the bike last night. I was hoping for a 2ish hour ride outside, but a full day of projects around the house trumped that idea. I can definitely tell I'm down about 5-10% off my peak power from earlier this year, but that's also to be expected given my uptick in running and adding FXB which has left a lot less riding time than I'm used to. All in all about the only real struggle from yesterday was trying to get my

Day 6, another upper body strength day. I liked today better than the first day's routine. Seems like these variations either weren't quite as taxing or at least I could do a better job of working through the sets even with some banding up. I added a 2:30ish plank and some side planks after the class to keep going with my core work. Overall I felt decent on this workout even with a pretty short sleep night prior. After the workout it was basically on the go for a lot of the day. I did put in a 6.5 mile run between dropping one daughter off at rehearsal and waiting for the other's soccer game to start. Pushed a pretty hard pace the whole time and was definitely tired and finished, but not overly sore when I was done. Oh ya, I also shot some home pics after week 1. I meant to do home pics last week to kick things off, but never got a shot. These are post workout. Its a start... I didn't really notice much of any change this week so probably not going to mat

Day 5, back to kickboxing. Yeesh, I think I might be getting worse instead of better in my coordination. We added hooks to our jabs and crosses today. When I got it right, they felt good though. Man, I didn't think I could sweat much more than previous days, but according to my coach, I left some "level 10" on the floor around me. Ya think?! Phew, literally soaked from head to toe when I was done. My roundhouse kicks really suck. My balance and kick coordination definitely are hindering me. My coach has helped me a couple times trying to get that right form and snap, but man, my kicks aren't anything like what she can snap the bag at. Strong legs do not equal strong kicks. The ability to carve corners on a bike don't equal the ability to stay upright pivoting on one leg. Learning just how limited my actual fitness is comparative to other dynamic movement needs. Mostly a one trick pony I guess. Today was the day everything started hurting. I woke up and was in

Day 4, lower body workout today which I was kind of hoping should be my strength. I got a nice compliment from my coach telling me my lunges were amazing. Heh, at least I have that going for me. At least I saved the nearly falling over until later in the class... I managed to work through most of the exercises pretty easily and can band up at least 1 or 2 in most cases next time. I couldn't really figure out the whole inner thigh exercise so I may need to get some form help on that. Even after my coach tried to show me, it was still a struggle. The only other questionable one was the lower ab exercise where we had a medicine ball between our knees. Something about that particular exercise seemed more prone to hurting than helping, but I'll keep giving it a shot. Made it through the workout in pretty decent shape without too much soreness or fatigue sitting in yet. Added a run tonight while waiting for my youngest in karate. May not have been the smartest thing I've ever

Day 3, time for another round of kickboxing. After the ridiculousness of basically forgetting any semblance of coordination on day 1, I was hoping to at least get a little better job done of keeping the order of my punches and kicks straight today. Ya, that didn't happen. I felt slightly less like a fish out of water, but sure enough, maybe a 1/3 of the way into the class I was back to trying to figure out which hand was which and why I couldn't seem to connect what I was doing with what the instructor was telling us. On the plus side, I can flail my body around well enough to drive my cardio up to a very high sweat level. Good thing they provide a mop and spray for after class. I have a feeling I'm going to be needing it 3 days a week. Another solid workout and thus far, I haven't been dragging too much butt in the mornings and seem to have found a decent groove. I added a bike ride in tonight to make sure I didn't lose all my cycling fitness. For as little a

Day 2 is strength training; upper body to be specific. I woke up pretty well this morning feeling pretty rested and ready, maybe even a little excited to hit day 2. Surprisingly, I didn't really notice my arms too much from the previous days workout. Time to play with rubberbands! The instructor has us all get the lowest resistance bands to start with so we can work on form to start without overtaxing ourselves. Whooo boy, the arm and shoulder burn began almost immediately. I struggled through most of the exercises and at least completed the majority, but pretty much decided that there wasn't going to be any real "banding up" going on with these for at least a class or two. Suffice it to say, by the end of class my upper body was pretty much a limp noodle and I was fairly well worked over. Time to get my swole on...

Day 1, I couldn't sleep much the night before as I was afraid of missing my alarm and being late to class. My wife had pre-warned me that with my level of fitness, she thought I might find the classes a bit less of a challenge. OK, sounds plausible... All right, music bumping, hands wrapped (I think we should probably have gone over wrapping on orientation day in lieu of a few minutes before class start), and its time to get moving. Warm-up, hey this isn't so bad, I'm a bit tired from my run and ride on side, but things are loosening up. All right, time to punch stuff! OK, wait, crap, the gym manager was right, I can't even keep my left and right straight. Oh well, fake it until I make it. Cross, cross, jab, jab, cross, jab, ok, I think I got this. OH, I have to move my hips and feet too?! Crap, now I'm lost again. Time to kick stuff! Step, chamber, snap, what? Was there a dos-i-do and a kickball change in there too? Am I back in line dance lessons? Oh man, I

0 week, that time in which we all get to find out where we stand on our stats, what type of basic fitness we possess, and hopefully get an idea of where we want to go. All in all, I wasn't too displeased with my basic body stats: 157.4 lbs and 17.6% body fat. Everything was basically middle of the road for being in "normal" range per the analysis. Since we had a few extra minutes while we were all waiting to do our before pictures, a few of us also knocked out our sit and reach tests. Given that flexibility and range of motion isn't exactly one of my strong suits, I felt ok starting with 19 1/4. While I know FXB isn't about weight loss and they say to toss the scales, my cycling most definitely has a weight component to it in that the more you weigh, the more you have to push up the hills. That's why you see bike racers that are super skinny and have no upper body mass. They don't need it and whatever extra weight they carry just slows them down. So, ide

So, it wasn't exactly like this thing was sneaking up on me. There were a full 5 weeks between the end of the summer session and the start of the fall session that I'd be attending. It wasn't like I didn't want to keep up my post race fitness and enter with guns ablazing, but honestly, I was tired. It was a ton of work to get to that point, maintain it, and focus all my training onto 6 days of effort for the entire year. Despite FXB looming on the horizon, I needed some down time, not to mention time to catch up on all the husbandly/fatherly duties that I'd eschewed in the name of training. It was beer and pizza season! OK, so maybe I didn't dive face first into a pie and drink a daily gallon of beer over the last 30 days, but I certainly indulged in my fair share and with a 40th birthday tossed in for good measure, it seemed like a good enough reason to kick back for a bit. I did manage to get back to doing some training rides though and begrudgingly got back

Farrel's extreme body shaping  aka FXB for short is a combination cardio (kickboxing), strength (resistance bands/body weight/etc), and nutritional planning/support system designed to get you in shape if you're not or in better shape if you are. I've heard the radio ads for years and have seen the gyms around, plus met a few people who've done the program. They start you off with a 10 week challenge to hopefully kick start your lifelong journey towards a healthier you. While I've heard the ads for years and even toyed occasionally with the idea of signing myself up, I always found reasons not to. It wasn't that I didn't think the program merited the cost or effort, or was over selling its results, but more so that I was either too busy at work, too busy training for mountain bike racing (more on that later), didn't have the spare money, etc. You see the pattern. Additionally, not that I consider myself any super fit athlete or don't have bad eating