Ben Benner’s Blog

I mean not to get all morbid, but everyone dies sometime.

However, my use of that particular saying, “Not dead, yet!” in regards to what I shouted (or at least I meant for it to come out as a shout, might have sounded a bit more raspy and with a slight hint of wheezing.

(note: when I yelled out ‘Not dead, yet!’ I was half imagining myself on a cart of dead folks from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”)

I made it through my 2nd night of Gladiator Bootcamp. My poor aching body is wishing that I had taken a nice hot bath on Monday and Tuesday night, instead of only just having taken one tonight (Wednesday).

I am sore, I mean to some degree that doesn’t begin to describe the pains I have discovered in my muscles (and my right knee). In terms of my right knee, that one I know exactly what happened there, I tripped and fell last Friday.

I tripped over the gate that we have separating the living room and the kitchen. I don’t know exactly why I tripped, I remember my right shoe catching the top of the gate and me thinking ‘Crap, this is gonna hurt, A LOT.’

I think I was able to cushion the blow with my knee mostly, but I also landed on my right hand (and arm). The pain from that was pretty intense for a few minutes. But once I was able to get up from the floor to a seated position, I figured I wouldn’t need to call anyone for help. After another few minutes, I got myself up onto my feet and didn’t falter.

So, umm I “walked it off” and went about the rest of my day, thinking to myself, “I wonder how bad this is going to effect my performance on the first night of camp gladiator?”

Answer: Not at all really. My knee is sore, but by Monday night, it wasn’t bugging me enough to interfere with the exercises they had us doing.

However, the real question I should have been asking myself was “How would an intense 1 hour work-out effect my body, given that I spend the VAST majority of my time seated at a desk, typing on a keyboard?”

Answer: A LOT!

The pain I feel, is only when I move around, not while just sitting here, which I think is a good thing. Cuz, if I hurt as much as I do when I go up and down stairs, I might have to start drinking at the office.

Anyway, I think you get the point, I am EXTREMELY out-of-shape and have managed to overdue it, a little bit.

I did my best tonight at bootcamp and made my way through all the exercises they threw at us. I will openly admit that I did not complete all of the ‘mountain climber’ sets and that my push-ups look more like I am just holding myself up and moving about what I imagine is like 15cm, maybe 15mm, it’s the metric system and I went to public school in Michigan, you do the math, as I might be a little challenged.

(Just kidding, I actually think my public education was pretty good. It would have been better, had I attended classes more regularly, but that is a post for another time.)

In regards to the push-ups, to me the few centimeters (or millimeters) that I managed to move my body up and down via my chest muscles were like me going through a full-range of motion with what felt like an elephant on my back.

Given that my chest muscles twinge a little bit when I wash my hand vigorously at this point, I am going to say that I am definitely getting a work out, even if I am unable to complete a full push-up.

But this is only the first week. And I am already getting the crazy notion into my head that I might be able to go and do the 5:30am Friday bootcamp. Maybe, possibly, no promises.

I definitely think I will be doing three bootcamps next week, this week might be pushing myself a little bit too much.

In terms of tonight, it was a series of sprints (which due to the my performance on Monday night, I did my best to jog), followed by 50 of each of the following exercises: push-ups, alternating lunges (or ’scissor lunges’), bicycle sit-ups, squats (I did the rowing squats that I have been doing on Wii Fit, just felt more familiar to me), and finally ‘mountain climbers’ (which I cannot do properly, yet).

After doing 50 of each exercise, you had to do two laps around the field, returning to your exercise mat for a set of 24 of each of those same exercises that you just got done doing 50 of. Following your set of 5×25, you doing 1 lap around the field and then take a break.

I finished in 30 minutes and like 5 seconds (might have been 15 seconds, honestly at that point I was proud to be standing under my own power).

I give many props to Kevin, Daniel, Jeremy and Eryn, all of them finished before I did.

The instructor stated that we will be doing that same ‘assessment’ at the end of bootcamp. Provided that I can keep my legs from feeling like they are made of rusty metal, I think I will be able to shave several minutes off my overall time.

The one thing I will say about bootcamp day/night #2. I feel better than I did after night #1.

Don’t get me wrong, I still ache (all over, speaking of, time for more advil), but I honestly at the end of tonight felt my muscles loosening up. I really, really need to get to the field like 10 minutes earlier, and do some good stretches and walk around the field a few times, get limbered up.

At this exact moment, I feel almost normal. Of course soaking in a tub of hot water that has been laced with epsom salt for about 45 minutes does wonders for those aching muscles.

But I might also be feeling good, because apparently Chocolate Milk can aid in recovery after a hard work-out. I have Daniel to thank for this tip, I stated on Twitter that he might be lying to me. And he told me to Google it, to which I found he wasn’t making it up. Check out the search results for yourself.

Ok, the maintenance has been over for a bit and my blog post here is finished up, I need to go and get some sleep.

Laterz

PS. Thanks to everyone running and attending the Camp Gladiator. Everyone is very supportive and it makes pushing yourself to do exercises that I don’t necessarily want to do, easier, keep in mind I paid money for this, so the encouragement is very helpful.

bdbenner Uncategorized austin, bootcamp, bootcamp gladiator, daniel, eryn, exercise, gladiator, jeremy, kevin

(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