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Day 14, ain't no thang but a chicken wing

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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,
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Day 13, another hitch in the giddyup

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
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Sunday Funday 2, meal prep and rest

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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
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Day 12- legs!

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
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Day 11, in which I hurt myself (slightly)

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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
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Day 10, upper body- do you even curl bro?!

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
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Day 9, we add a new punch

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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
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