The Off Season Update

Sometimes I feel like I'm just talking to myself on this thing, and then out of nowhere, someone will tell me they've been looking for updates for weeks and could I please post again. I didn't post because there wasn't a whole lot happening on the fitness front for the past several weeks, so here is my downtime in bullet points, and then on to new business.

• 2009 was the year of sickness and injury for me, and it wasn't going to give up on killing me without a last stand; Christmas was 2 1/2 weeks of misery.

• I got to see some family (which was nice), but since I was sick the whole time, it was from my couch/death bed. They were very understanding and kept me supplied with tea, painkillers and kleenex. Thanks family!

• According to those who were present, I made my most glorious Christmas Dinner of all time. I think it really was my official best, but I don't know for sure because I have this disease that makes me utterly disinterested in food once I've made it, so I just had 3 or 4 bites of everything and then watched everyone else load up on seconds and thirds. I thought I'd rally and put a big dent in the leftovers over the next few days, but...sickness.

• Now that I am training consistently and have been focusing on some big goals for well over a year, I can say that I'm not really a fan of the holiday season. The three major holidays involved take up the whole of my off season, and the trouble I get in to can be summed up in three sentences-

1) "Of course I'll come. I wouldn't miss your party for the world."

2) "Egg Nog White Russians sound delicious."

3) "Where are you going with that cheese plate?"

Repeat 2-4 times a week from Mid November until early January and then drag your tired ass to the scale and see how that went. My amazing trainer, Manny gave me a weigh in/body fat analysis on my first trip back to the gym, and we were kind of shocked at the results. I have gained about 6 pounds during my last 6 months of downtime, which is expected and I'm ok with that, but a large portion of my former lean muscle mass is now body fat. I won't say the numbers, but we were both pretty taken aback. I thought it would have settled into my hips, but most of the muscle loss/fat gain was on my upper arms and less so on my thighs. Manny thinks that most of this happened over the past two months (see above), and that we can get back on track fairly quickly, so I've been off the booze for two weeks and have reeled my diet back into reasonable shape. My next weigh in is on Monday, and I'm curious to see where I'm at.

So there. Now the training season is back upon us, and I'm ready to go! I'm back in the pool, I'm back in the gym, I'm finally back on a full training week, and I've started the Push Up Challenge. I will have more to report very soon.