Ben Benner’s Blog

(figured I would follow-up the Time Lord post with a similar sounding title)

So let me first start off by saying, I managed to get myself over to the soccer field for Camp Gladiator #7 about 10 minutes later than I had wanted. Honestly though, from the looks of it the folks in charge there I think must have started a little bit before 6:10, because everyone was already doing some serious exercises. That our I mistook the warm-ups for part of the serious workout.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I think it was on Wednesday, one of my coworkers, Eryn Chandler, was mentioning that she went to high school with a friend who’s cousin won the last American Gladiator contest, or something like that. Regardless, of the six-degrees of gladiator separation, I have signed up for Cam Gladiator (#7).

Eryn was talking about how she was thinking about signing up. I heard her asking Kevin if he would do it and he sounded interested at the time. The next day there was much chatter in the office about Camp Gladiator. There was chatter about referrals and how much money you can get for referring someone, I remember hearing Daniel mention that he was going. That is when right about the same time they asked me if I would do it. I had looked the site over the previous day and thought to myself that I didn’t think I was physically fit enough to get $160 worth of exercise (4 weeks of sessions, as many sessions as I want to attend).

Then came the Camp Gladiator Groupon, this is a new thing to me, but Groupon is this sort of weird group coupon system (Group + Coupon = Groupon). I like to think of it as Woot! + Local Business. There is one special a day and they eventually run out of Groupons. The Groupon lowered the price to $70. So that combined with the fact that Kevin said that Jeremy was thinking about doing it, I succumbed to the peer pressure of exercise.

I stated that I would do the camp if Jeremy would. However, Kevin managed to finish talking me into it, not that he was hard selling me on it, but at this point Eryn, Kevin, and Daniel were all signed up. So I figured, heck I will sign-up. I am not saying that Jeremy signed up because I did, but I did sign-up before he did.

The first session (for us) was last night, 6:10p - 7:10p, out at a soccer field near the intersection of Braker and Mopac.

It was chilly when we started and proceeded to get COLD. I will definitely need to wear a sweatshirt next time around.

We did sprints, push-ups, jumping jacks, ’sexy spiders’, ‘crab walks’, ‘crab shuffles’ (think that was the name), ’super-mans’, ‘bananas’, and some sort of weird V-shaped sit-up thing. It was very intense.

As previously posted, I am trying to get into better shape. I can honestly say that if I had not been doing a bit of the Wii Fit every night, then I would most likely have not been able to do as many of the exercises that everyone was doing at Camp Gladiator last night. I mean don’t get me wrong, I got winded very early-on and had to slow down my pace, but every time I felt that I was recovered, I ‘kicked the intensity back up’ as to try and get the most out of my $70.

I am not sure if I will do another Camp Gladiator or not. I think I will need to see how I am feeling by the end of these four weeks. One personal goal that I have for week three and week four, is to do three sessions a week. These first two weeks I think are going to really kick my ass.

I am going to try and alternate the Wii Fit with the Camp Gladiator nights. I have the Camp Gladiator session in my Google Calendar, thus allowing them show-up on my iPhone. Mondays and Wednesday nights. I think I am going to try and hit up a Friday session on weeks three and four.

Anyway, I need to finish my lunch and get back to the grind.

Laterz

bdbenner cam gladiator, daniel, eryn, exercise, friends, jeremy, kevin, wii fit bootcamp, camp gladiator, eryn wii fit, excercise, jeremy, kevin

It is a cliché to make resolutions at the beginning of the year, but hey why not.

It goes without saying that I could stand to lose a few pounds. I have been meaning to actually make an effort to exercise. While watching TV, Gina and I both had he same reaction to the commercial for the EA Active ‘game’ for the Nintendo Wii. We both thought it was a really good idea.

I have had gym memberships before and well have just never used them. I had thought about getting the Wii Fit before and the EA Active looked to be quite interesting. We got a $100 gift card to Land’s End from work for x-mas. There wasn’t anything at Land’s End that we wanted. However, we were able to use that card at Sears.

Sears had both the Wii Fit (board and ‘game’) and the EA Active. I opted for us to get the Wii Fit board vs the EA Active. We might get the EA active later, but the Wii Fit board used up all but $2.59 cents of the gift card.

I did about 25 minutes on the Wii Fit tonight. I found some of the Yoga exercises quite challenging and some of them were not challenging but felt really good. I did some of the strength training routines as well, again some challenging, some just felt good.

The Wii Fit software is pretty good, intuitive and encouraging. I have to agree with some of the online reviews that I have read, where folks disagree with the ‘Wii Age’ that they get assigned. The system gave me a Wii Age of 49, which feels horrible, given that I am 31. This felt really horrible, when Gina got a Wii Age of 31, her real age.

Given that I don’t exercise on a regular basis, I am certain that I will manage to lose some weight by doing some Wii Fit exercises regularly. I also want to work in some REAL exercise, being going outdoors and running/jogging. But I will say this, I did the ‘Run’ that is within the Wii Fit and it was quite a workout to run in place for what I believe was two minutes. It was intelligent enough to know if you were ‘running’ too fast and makes you trip and fall (it detects and interprets the motion of the Wiimote to gauge the speed of your run) .

Gina and I both setup our profiles and set our goals. Hers are a bit more aggressive than mine, but the software allows you to change your goals up every two weeks.

I am going to try and get in at least 25-30 minutes of Wii Fit in a day/night. I would like to try and get in a run/jog in twice a week and use the office gym at least once a week.

I have talked about stuff like this in the past, but never really tried to plan it out. I hope to be able to keep this resolution and reach my goals.

I would like to make some other resolutions as well.

1. Exercise Regularly
2. Keep Baking Bread Regularly (including using my own starters not just active yeast)
3. Salad For Lunch 3x Week (including weekends)
4. Blog Regularly (not daily, but several times a week)
5. Take a real vacation, i.e. not in Michigan or Tejas.
6. Make dinner more often.

I think I have cooled down sufficiently from my ‘workout’ and am definitely ready for bed.

Laterz

bdbenner Wii, exercise, video games ea active, exercise, nintendo, Wii