STARTING TO SWIM AGAIN....

 So today I went down to the pool and started swimming again.  200 yards of crawl stroke then huff and puff for a minute or so then try to "run" 100 yards (looks like slow motion running in a 4 foot deep pool) then huff and puff for another minute or so then swam 250 yards and huff and puff then run again and huff and puff for a while.

After that I tried swimming again and felt it in my lower back before I finished one length of the pool... pretty sure I was doing something wrong form-wise because I was getting tired, so I stopped.

I hadn't swam since 2020 so it went about as expected.  I've never been a competitive swimmer or even one that did it for exercise until the last several years.  I used to get gassed in 50 yards when I was young, then after watching the slow moving septegenarians and octogenarians at the pool swimming like "forever", I realized you only have to swim a bit slower to swim a lot longer. I swim real slow nowadays and I use a snorkel... not having to worry about getting a dry breath makes swimming much easier. 

I have usually lasted on my swimming for exercise kick a few weeks, then it goes away.  We'll see how long this stint lasts.

 Later,

     Steve

OLD GUY STOPS EXERCISING (ALWAYS AN EXCUSE), THEN STARTS UP AGAIN....

So a big part of why I'm starting this exercise kick is I've been away from exercise for a couple of months and I'm not feeling all that great.  I've exercised in fits and starts off and on over the last decade or so.  I usually stick with it for a couple months then take a break for some excuse or another.  

A couple years back my wife got me into walking/hiking with her once or twice a week and it was starting to come along, then 4th of July 2020 I tore my achilles tendon, not all the way through to where it was hanging and I needed surgery, but enough for needing an inflatable walking cast for a few days then physical therapy for 6 weeks, then limping and pain after even a walk through a grocery store for about 7 months.   March of 2021 I finally could walk through a grocery store or Costco without my foot swelling up the next day or two and I decided I'll try to exercise at least 10 minutes at a time a few times a week - lot a lofty goal, but I actually kept it up for an entire year.  I'd have to say that's the first time in my adult life that I've ever exercised for more than 2 or 3 months at a time.  I was starting to notice some actual changes in my body distribution.

Well, some time in April off this year I fell off the exercise wagon and stopped exercising.  At the end of May we were planning a trip to Bend Oregon for a couple weeks and I figured I'd do a lot of hiking and get back into it.  It rained for a couple days and I thought I'd head into town and check things out.  Well.... I was crossing a street and watching some traffic that was coming a block or so away and  didn't take account for the below grade storm drain in the road directly in front of me....  I rolled the ankle and ended ended up flat on my back but was able to hobble off the road without holding up traffic for too long.   I now had the opportune excuse to not exercise for a couple of months.  Here's me hooked up to a TENS unit.

A couple of months and a 15 pound or so weight gain later and I'm now able to walk without my ankle swelling up for the next day or so again.   Time to start exercising.

This time I'm I'm adding the blog to help keep it front of my mind and do a little bit to help keep myself accountable.

The exercise began Saturday.... Saturday my wife talked me into going out for a walk/hike.   She's was thinking a very mildly hilly spot would be appropriate, I was getting to where I was doing some decent hills prior to my voluntary layoff from exercise earlier this spring.  I thought we better go basically flat this first outing since the ankle to see how it held up.  We did a 2.6 mile walk and the  ankle held up fine, but the opposite knee was a bit sore and my right hip socket, above the ankle, was sore as heck.  The hip is still a bit sore today two days later.  Gotta be the extra 15 pounds and a couple months of bad walking form... oh well.

It's apparently easy to hurt yourself when you get old and heavy.  Today I went down and re-activated our membership at the local health club that has pools.  Time to start up some low impact activity. I've found that if I swim with bad enough form I can even hurt myself swimming,.. I learned to pay attention to that after tweaking my back swimming a few years back., so I'll be careful.  Hopefully I'll be back to walking/hiking again in the next few days.

CAN FOAM FLOOR TILES EXPAND?

Here's something I found interesting.  Yesterday my wife and I decided to double up on my padded flooring in the "gymnasium",  which had grown from 8'X8' (pictured in the last post) to  8'X10' a couple days back already.  Now the plan is to go to 10'X16' when it's set up, that way we can work around each other and have room to store equipment on the mats rather than on the concrete. Despite being pretty much a disorganized mess down there, that drives my wife way more nuts than it does me (I can be quite the slob), we've got plenty of room in the basement.

I was planning on laying down the new tiles and hooking them up to the old tiles today.  They wouldn't fit the older tiles.   First thought that pops in my head is "man, Harbor Freight has some quality control issues with this stuff", then I started noticing all of the old pieces fit each other, all of the new pieces fit each other, but the older pieces are slightly darker and slightly smaller than the new pieces.

It dawned on me that the new foam pieces have been sitting inside the house in the upper 70s and the stuff I laid down a few days back has been laying on a concrete floor that's closer to 60 degrees or so.  That's a scenario that's prime for expansion/contraction of some materials.  I looked it up and EVA foam is one of those things that can expand or contract depending on the temperature.  As far as the color difference goes, this stuff seems to off gas for a couple of days (there is a smell to it initially) after coming out of the package wrapping. That's my theory at least, could be wrong.....

  ...A day later.... the foam hasn't shrunk at all and after some internet sleuthing, it's sort of a quality control issue, but sort of not...   A lot of big companies often use multiple suppliers for their product.  As it turns out, I was looking at the packaging and finally realized that while everything looked the same at quick glance, even the item numbers were the same, the UPC codes were different.  Not just the last few numbers, but the first 9 numbers as well.  The first 6-9 numbers of a UPC code are assigned to manufacturers, so apparently Harbor Freight uses more than one manufacturer to provide their anti-fatigue mats.

I guess in an ideal world Harbor freight would demand that each of their providers would manufacture them identical product, but that's not always realistic. Oh well, time to return some stuff...  I ended up with 7 of the smaller mat packages and 3 of the larger mat packages.  In an ideal world I'd return the 3 larger sets and be able to link everything together, but the local store is out of the smaller mats.  Rather than making phone calls and driving to other cities to get a matching set, I decided to go the path of least resistance and return two sets of the smaller mats and go with a roughly 8'X10' foot section of the smaller mats and a roughly 8'X10' section of the larger mats.  Guess I could of returned all of the smaller ones and gone with the larger mats, but I've already had stuff stacked on them and caused a bit of damage (indentations and one small tear) to it and I just don't fell right about returning stuff I've already damaged/altered.  This stuff was so cheap I don't really care about the disparity in sizes of the two sections, it's adequate for my purposes.  If I had been spending substantially more, which is easy to do on gym flooring, I'd have probably started over from scratch and ordered something that would be perfect.

BUILDING A HOME GYM...

So I've decided to put together a small home gym.  I've had a gym membership for years, but it had one of those weaknesses I'm susceptible to - it's over 100 feet from my bedroom.

I've been a member of a local club for a number of years and a bit over a year ago I joined Planet Fitness with the idea it's inexpensive and we can use it in our travels - another story for later - and I was pretty good for a while, using both memberships. Eventually my wife and I dropped the original local membership, but I also joined my wife in another exercise  outlet - another story for later - Eventually exercise away from the home, hence just about all exercise, pretty much disappeared. 

We still have the Planet Fitness membership, which we use on occasion, but it's time to build a home gym so at least I can't use the distance excuse to justify my inaction...

It's in my basement, nothing fancy, but it's really nearby, so the lack of convenience excuse disappears.

I decided to clear out a space and put down some cheap foam matting to get a start... now after I'm thinking about accumulating some actual equipment, that square footage of foam flooring is expanding a bit.... more later....

APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING...

 The 360 photo posted at the top of the blog makes me look a little more slender than I might be, but the other option went the other direction....

   

The truth is somewhere in the middle... it wasn't a tough choice deciding on which photo to pin to the top of the blog for a while.

AND SO IT BEGINS....

I just now stepped on the weight scale.  I'm wearing shorts with a phone, wallet and keys in the pocket, so maybe it's a couple pounds heavy, but a lot of the BMI calculators say I'm supposed to be down close to 185-187 or so to be in "normal" range.  I'm not so certain I'll ever get to the 185 range again, but I can look and feel pretty decent at 215 and below.

BLOG POST #1- Hi everyone, welcome to my new blog...

Hi everyone, my name is Steve, and I've been battling weight issues off and on since my early 20's.  Over the years I've done some exercise or diet changes in fits and starts, then either dropped the ball and stopped or managed to hurt myself a little and used that as an excuse to stop FOR LONG PERIODS OF TIME.

Well, I'm 63 years old now and unfortunately I'm not getting any younger, in calendar years anyways, and I figure it's time to make an other attempt at a lifestyle improvement and try to get back into healthier exercise and eating habits and see if I can reverse the calendar to an extent, or at least slow it down a bit.

Hopefully doing a blog regularly will help keep my tail to the fire a little bit and I'll keep at it. Please follow along and see how it all works out...