All posts tagged challenge

FitChal #5: Max Pull-Ups + What Happened in April

by Jason on May 8, 2013 in General with 4 Comments

It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me on the Monthly Fitness Challenges. As you might remember, I’ve been setting these personal challenges for myself where I test myself on a particular activity, train for about month and then re-test myself. It’s a fun way to stay fit.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:

So what happened in April?

Well, my goal was to train for the flagpole. If you don’t know what a flagpole is, it’s where you grip an upright pole and pull yourself horizontal. It requires a lot of core strength + alternate bicep/tricep strength (depending on what side you push/pull on).

Here’s a picture of me doing one in a photoshoot for Outside Magazine:

photo (4) Continue reading →

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FitChal #2: Max Handstand Pushups (Final)

by Jason on March 5, 2013 in General with No comments

Can’t see the video? Click through the post.

So my Fitness Challenge for February was max handstand pushups. I did 19 in my initial test and throughout the month I’ve been doing handstand pushups at the end my regular workouts. Started with 3 sets of 10, ended the month with 3 sets of 15. My goal was 30.

Well, I ended up doing 25. Not quite what I was hopping for, but still a ~30% improvement. In retrospect, I could gone a little bit harder in training, and warmed up a little bit more the day of, before my attempt.

My March challenge is the mile. I remember sucking at the mile in high school, and when I started running back in 2010, my first mile was around 12 mins. I’ll post my video attempt of that soon…

I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.

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FitChal #2 Start: Max Handstand Pushups

by Jason on February 9, 2013 in General with No comments

(Can’t see the video in your email? Click through to the post)

I asked you guys in my max sit-ups finale whether I should go with burpees or handstand pushups next. When all the votes were tallied, I heard more for handstand pushups so that’s what I went with.

Calling my first round “pretrained” is a bit of a misnomer. I did lots of handstand pushups as a nationally competitive gymnast, and even did a few while on stage at the Palms in Las Vegas singing Brown Eyed Girl with my buddy Ryan Hupfer.

But regardless, the point of these challenges is to see how much I can improve over the next month. I did 19 ast my start, and my goal is 30. I’d love to have you train along. There are a couple handstand pushup tutorials on Youtube you can check out.

I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.

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Introducing The Monthly FitChal (Max Sit-Ups Pre-Training)

by Jason on January 15, 2013 in General with 7 Comments

I’ve found that I’m more motivated to work out when I have set goals for myself. Last year, I was on a big running kick and did my first half marathon, first triathlon and my big goal was to run the San Francisco Marathon.

This year, I am still running a couple times a week, but the SF cold has kept me from doing a lot of long runs on the weekends, especially without a big race to train for. I do plan to do more racing, but I’m not sure when. So I’ve decided to mix things up this year.

Here’s how my Monthly Fitness Challenges will work:

  1. At the start of each month, I’ll post a blog post of me doing a particular fitness challenge
  2. If you want to join in, you can post your own time/score in the comments
  3. During the month, I will train for the exercise and share what workouts I do for it
  4. At the end of the month, I’ll post again with my final results
  5. If you’re following along, you can share your results too!

This coincides nicely with my goal to try new stuff on the blog —  as I’ll be trying to shoot videos for every one of my challenges. I’m sure I’ll make lots of mistakes along the way, but I’ll try to fix them as they come up. Let me know if you have thoughts or suggestions!

Note: I know it’s already halfway through the month, so I apologize for taking a while to get this post up. Future posts should come up at the beginning of the month.

Without further ado, here’s my first one: Continue reading →

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230 Minutes of Meditation Down, 670 to Go

by Jason on April 8, 2012 in General with 5 Comments

step by step (meditation)

photo credit: AlicePopkorn

Last week I posted on my new challenge for the month of April: logging 900 minutes of meditation. I thought I’d share my progress so far and also highlight a few of the great pieces of advice I received from readers.

Progress

230/900 (7 days * 30 + 20 mins this morning)

Scheduling

Doing 20 minutes in the morning and 10 before bed has worked pretty well so far. I try to get out of bed immediately upon waking and sit. Correct meditation posture involves keeping your back straight, which is great for keeping you awake when you might be a little sleepy

The Simply Being App

I am definitely enjoying the Simply Being app. Even though I think the 10 and 20 minutes of “meditation reminders” is the same every time, the instructors tone, comments and timing are just what I need to stay on track with the meditation.

Getting a Partner

right after I posted about my challenge, my friend and fellow entrepreneur Scott Allison (Teamly) hit me up about partnering for accountability. It turned out he was trying get into meditation as well. We’ve been able to keep each other on track by texting each other once or twice a day to check in.

Challenges

Probably the biggest challenge I’ve run into is that sitting up straight for 20 minutes gets my back pretty tired. The last 5 minutes of my meditations are often a big of a struggle dealing with the back soreness. Additionally, I often get the seeds of (what I think are) really great ideas during my meditation and it’s tough to brush them away and stay in the moment – it’s something I’ll keep working on.

Reader Advice

In my initial 900 minutes of meditation post I asked readers to send in their best advice on building this habit and got some great responses. You can check out the post for all of them, but here are the highlights:

  • Tie the new habit to triggers: Swizec talked about tying his new habits (writing and working out) to things he already does every day like brushing his teeth and eating breakfast
  • Find a partner – Frank mentioned that he has successfully started a meditation habit and part of what made it work was doing it with his wife
  • Look beyond your current goals – Mountain Evan Chang suggested reading a book on meditation which might help me see meditation as something I could do throughout the day, rather than just logging in my time in the morning and evening.
I am writing a book called Winning Isn't Normal. Check it out.

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