Cardio King

That kind of sings doesn't it? I stole it from our friend Sharon Smith who is no doubt the fittest person in our gym and we call the cardio-queen. I've been off the weight lifting now for about 7 weeks, my shoulder is finally feeling like its going to heal and I'll be able to surf fish in a few weeks, it had me worried.  I should have seen a doctor but I got a little pig headed and frankly with all that's happened this year, I've seen enough doctors....You know how I feel, theres a bright side to everything and with my shoulder injury it was this, a ramped up cardio regime and some needed weight loss.

My normal routine would be 25 minutes of cardio everyday followed by a lifting routine alternating on different body parts. So since the injury I've doubled my cardio time and alternate between a fat burn and hard cardio rest / recover type of work out. For instance today was a fat burn day, 40 minutes on the elliptical trainer set at a resistance of 10 and then followed by 15 minutes of walking at a fairly steep incline and rapid pace. For this my heart rate stays right at 120 and my sweat is just moderate like in the picture. Then on the next day I'll do a hard cardio session ramping my heart rate up to 160 by pumping hard on the elliptical trainer set at 15 for two minutes and then I manually set the resistance down to 10 and slow my pedaling down to let my heart rate recover to 130 or so and then I repeat over and over until I've done 40 minutes. Then I  walk for 15 minutes on the treadmill.  These two routines I do every morning  and have for the last two months and just this last week I've taken to going back to the gym in the afternoon and walking for an hour while I read my book. In the last three weeks I've gone from 203 pounds to 195 and hope to hit 190 my Christmas. Some of the weight has to be the hard earned muscle from lifting but I feel like I've gone just about as far as I can with the 58 year old body building deal so now its time to be lean, healthy and agile. For some reason change is not something I've ever thought of as bad, we just move on.

Right before Thanksgiving MP and I were in the grog shop shopping for the other major food group when my friend Ben Jackinsky asked me if I needed some beer for the holidays. I told him no beer, to many calories and that I am training hard....he asked me what I was training for.....jeez Ben, I replied, just life.