Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Kinobody Bodyweight Program - Watching the Actual Program

As I've been using the program for a couple of weeks now, I have obviously watched all of the 'how to' videos that show the workouts you are supposed to do and how to make them progressively harder.

When I imagined what they would be like, my imagination borrowed images from the commercials of Greg doing one armed pull-ups with great lighting and perfect flow.  I assumed the gym used in the video would be well laid out, Greg's lines perfectly crafted, memorized and delivered, and the editing impeccable, making the production easy to follow and understand.

Well, you don't write a lead up paragraph like that unless what you experienced did not meet your expectations.  The videos seemed very low budget, like, maybe the tripod held the camcorder while he worked out with whatever was lying around in his home gym and the editing was done over a couple of hours and a few beers.

I am fairly certain it was done in his home gym, as the yard outside the windows did have a similar look to the yard of "The Mansion" that is in the commercials and the ceiling was not very high. The way he explained exercises and went from one to another reminded me of that time when you were twelve and you wend over to your buddy's house who had been working out for a month on the weight set his dad just bought.  The explanations were haphazard and when he went to do some of the exercises he seemed to be looking around for equipment that would "work", but that he didn't really intend on using for the particular exercise until that moment.  Probably the most disappointing part of all of this was when he went to do the "One-armed pull-up" that, in my opinion, seems to be the signature piece of the bodyweight program.  He says in the video that he just worked out the day before, so he probably wouldn't be able to do it.  And, true to his word, he pulled himself up some, but couldn't complete it.  Again, it's my twelve year old friend saying that he can do it, but that he's just really sore that day.

Now, before anyone gets the wrong impression, Greg can do a one-armed pull-pull up.  I've seen him do it in other videos.  My issue:  You're a professional here, man.  Take a day off of lifting, so you can perform everything you need to when it comes to making the video we'll actually be watching.  Don't just give us the "This is sort of what it looks like.  You get the idea." because we didn't pay for sort-of, we paid for the whole shebang.

Speaking of she-bang, there was another part of the production that made me cock my head and squint my eyes.  There were two specific times when he explained a part of an exercise where you would need to thrust your hips forward... just like you were thrusting into a girl.  I'm not making this up, I wouldn't make this up, he actually felt the need to put that in when explaining how to perform an exercise.  Now, maybe I'm being a prude, or overly sensitive, but I don't really want to mix sex into my workout.  I'm just working out, I don't need to think about a sexual act... just sayin'.

While the production was a little low budget, I must give it some positives though.  Each exercise and its progression is its own track.  Meaning that if I forget what comes after regular push-ups in the progression, I only have to watch three minutes of movie to find out, rather than trying to scroll through an hour and a half of film.  It's also nice that the program is digital and fully accessible to me for the rest of my life.

Overall, I'm disappointed in the production, but I think it's a good system.  I still feel sore and feel like I am gaining strength slowly, but surely, I just wish they would have spent a little more time making a polished set of videos... where sexual references weren't made.

As for my progression:  This last Saturday I weighed 188.2 pounds (85.36 kg), which is a total weight loss of 45.6 pounds (20.68 kg).  It was a pound lost at the end of a week where I did pretty well at staying within my calorie goals.  I'm doing well.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Kinobody Body Weight Program - Needed Equipment

I thought for a while about how to organize this blog.  I thought about all the things I have already learned in the first week and wondered how best to put them all into one post, so the information was easily and quickly found and digested.  Then, I realized that it wasn't really possible, and that I would need something to write every now and then.  So, I've decided to make the title of each post what someone would be looking for if they were debating if this was the right program for them, then I'll spend a few paragraphs on the title subject, and finish off with my progress.

When looking into the program, I noticed that I couldn't find a list of the equipment I would need.  Of course, there are plenty of pictures and videos of Greg doing handstand push-ups on the beach and one-handed push-ups with his feet up on park benches, but what if I didn't have a park near me?  What if I couldn't do a handstand push-up on the first day (let alone own a beach)?  Did I have the stuff I would need?  How much would that stuff cost?  Where would I find said stuff (Amazon, duh Paul)?  No matter what, I knew I would likely need 'stuff', no matter how many times Kinobody advertised that all I needed was my own body weight.

So, here it is:  the list of 'stuff' you're going to need.

Some way to do pull-ups.  I started using a door-frame pull-up bar before I started Kinobody.  I used this bad boy.  It works pretty well, though if you get it, you'll want to tear off part of the box to put on the part of the bar that rests just above your door-frame.  There is some padding, but even at only 210 pounds (or so) I dug some pretty good holes into my wall.  A few pieces of cardboard stops this.  The pull-up bar will only take you so far in the system though.  Eventually, you know, when you're awesome, you'll be doing muscle-ups.  This is a pull-up where you get up high enough that your arms take over and push you up until your arms are straight (think of how your body looks when you're hopping a fence, just before you put your foot on the top of it).  So, the door-frame pull-up bar will work up until you need to do muscle-ups, then you'll need something that will allow you to go arms length above the bar without hitting your head.

If you can't do three pull-ups/chin-ups (this is me folks, so don't be too embarrassed) you're going to need a bar at waist height for rows.  I'm currently using some handles that are more like chest height and then putting my feet on a chair.  At any rate, you're going to need to find something to fit this bill.

A floor you're okay with laying on and putting your hands on.  Greg uses a mat of some sort; I use the cement in my garage and wear an old shirt that I don't mind getting dirty.  So, whatever you need to do to get a floor that's lay-on-able.

You'll need a ball that can hold your weight, or some other thing that can hold one hand off the ground while the other is on the floor with your body in push-up position.  A basketball, or medicine ball, or soccer ball would all do, I think.

Right at the start you're going to need a chair or bench that will hold your weight and stay in the same place while you use it to brace on.  I was using a couple of lawn chairs, but found they move too easily, so I bought a flat bench that I'll probably review later when I've used it for a while.  In the beginning this will be used to put your hands on while you lower your butt toward the floor, and to put your feet up on for incline push-ups when you start doing them.  If you're like me, you'll also be using this for putting your feet on to make a bar at waist height.

And that's it.  If you have all of these things you should be good to go.  If not, you'll either be buying stuff, or thinking of ways to use what you have instead of these things.

As for me, I weighed in at 189.2 pounds (85.8196763 kilos) on Saturday (Saturday is generally my weigh in day.  I weigh myself every day, but only keep track on the lowest days, and that is usually Saturday).  I hit my calorie goals every day the week leading up to Saturday, and hoped to lose a little more, but so it goes.  The workout routine has made me extremely sore.  I assume this means good things, but read that being sore isn't necessarily the only indicator that what you're doing is working.  At any rate, I felt pretty good on my walk Saturday morning, even if a little sore.  Just need to keep grinding.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Why I'm Starting to Blog Again

I decided to blog again, because I saw a hole in the internet's vast sea of information (which was surprising considering how many cat pictures, and fail movies are already out there).  Back in the end of April I weighed 233.8 pounds (according to the "slightly above average priced at Wal-Mart" bathroom scale that sits outside my shower), so that's 106.0499 kg for all of my non-English system using friends... that number honestly means nothing to me.  I was thirty then (oh, the good ol' days) and stood at a towering 5'11", again that's 180.34 cm, and again, that number means very little to me.  At the time, I looked at myself and said, "Self, you're not as in-shape as I wish you were.  We might want to do something about that."  Which was the very dramatic start to me trying Myfitnesspal.com again (I lost fifty pounds while using it about five years ago).  I decided it would be a lifestyle change for me.  The first time I used it I played it like a video game where I weighed food, only did cardio, and did my level best to hit that 1200 calorie a day mark (if you get below that mark myfitnesspal won't project your weight loss in five weeks because at 1199 calories you are simply starving yourself and that might backfire... they have a whole warning paragraph about it).  After getting below my goal of 200 pounds (you do the math on where I started) I realized only eating 1200 calories a day was unsustainable, and really not very much fun, so I decided I had 'beat' the game of weight loss and could move on to other games.  Not surprisingly, I did not keep the weight off.  And so I found myself at thirty almost weighing as much as I had back when I tried the first time.

I went along my merry weigh (pun, get it?) until I got to about August, or September.  I was down to 219 pounds (99.33672 kg), but didn't really look different.  I reflected on the first time I lost weight and had noticed the same thing back then:  I lost weight, but didn't feel like I looked any different.  And, let's be honest, none of us are really doing any of this for our health, it's all about vanity, and my weight loss was not stroking my ego, so I decided to do something I hadn't ever done in my life (that's me being completely honest) I decided to watch what I ate AND exercise at the same time.

At first I mostly just walked in the mornings, but I began looking online for workout programs.  Because of some ingenious advertisement placing and the fact that Greg O'Gallagher (the creater) looks like he just got off the set of Baywatch, I started looking into Kinobody.  I took that quiz (if you've looked into Kinobody, you know which one I'm talking about) like, ten times and always got the Warrior Program as my 'best fit', but I was skeptical, I mean, how in the world could they know the best program for me after six questions (before anyone leaves a comment, I know it was a marketing ploy)?  But, Greg did say a few things I liked.  He said you would need a caloric deficit to lose any weight (love me some honesty), but he also said it was meant to be a lifestyle change, so no cutting out whole types of food, or anything like that (which fit right into my lifestyle change mindset).  He promised results, but not overnight results (again, a little honesty is nice).  And he said to look online for things he put out for free to see if he was full of it, or not.

So, I took him up on his offer.  I looked online and tried a few things he talked about.  One thing Greg is big on is intermittent fasting.  This is where you skip breakfast, eat a small lunch, and then eat a big dinner, with fruit as snacks for in between meals if you need them.  He's also big on drinking coffee before lunch to suppress appetite (as some of you know, I'm LDS, so I wasn't able to follow this piece of his program).  I also looked deeper into the programs he offered and I saw there was a bodyweight program.  This was huge for me, as I really don't have time to make it to the gym, nor the money for a weight set.  On top of that, I hurt my back a while ago and have re-injured it a couple of times trying to lift since the initial injury, so I'm a little wary of weights.  He talked about a few things I didn't know what meant, but I did understand pull-ups, push-ups, leg lifts, squats, and trying to work on big muscles first and only lifting three times a week.  So, I put together my own hodge-podge regimen and took off, with calisthenics on M, W, and F, and a walk or jog on T, Th, and S, with Sunday off for the Sabbath.

I've been pretty good at keeping up with this for the last three months and weighed in a couple of days ago at 189.8 pounds on that same high-quality scale.  The quick employment of my desktop calculator says that means I've lost 44 pounds (19.95806 kg) overall and 29.2 pounds (13.2449 kg) since starting to exercise.  Honestly, the best part about exercising is that I can see more tone, which feeds that ego and makes me want to keep trying.  Also, if you look at my Myfitnesspal tracker for weight, you can see slow and sort-of steady weight loss before trying out some of Greg's ideas, and then a quick and steady drop off after.

So, I put him to the test and his advice really did help, or at least it seemed to.  True to my word, I paid my money and am starting the Kinobody Bodyweight program.  Which really brings me to why I'm blogging again.  As I looked over the internet I found a few people who reviewed the program, but all of them seemed like workout website guys... you know, ones that might be paid by Kinobody to 'try' their program, who started the program with six-pack abs and then made sure to eat a lot less for a few days so their abs would pop in their 'after' picture?  What I didn't find was a review from a normal guy who started out in less than stellar shape and showed his results after trying the program for several months.  So I thought, hey, I'm a normal guy, well, normal-ish, I'm in less than stellar shape, I'm trying out the program, why not give people like me what they want?  And if no one wants this, at least maybe this will keep me on the program so I can at least, for myself, see if it works.  On top of reviewing Kinobody, I think I'll also do a few reviews on products.  Right now, I'm thinking protein, as that took some research, and I've found some good ones.

Anyway, if you're like, "This sounds awesome!"  go ahead and leave me a comment about how awesome it sounds for some encouragement.  If not, then, you know, be cool about it.  At any rate, I'm kind of excited to track progress and see how much this actually works.