Workout

Another successful morning and this time I've re-integrated my ab routine into my program. I paused the routine when I injured an intercostal muscle under my right lat. Since then, I attempted to organically perform ab exercises randomly in the day, but in the final analysis, it wasn't consistent enough for my satisfaction. Thus, it's back on Wednesday. But unlike before, I don't think I'll have them on Mondays and Fridays at this time. I'd like to further development the regimen ESPECIALLY when I'm under 200lbs and purchase a Power Tower. Can you imagine the ab possibilities?!

Intellect Development

I'm so very stoked: I now have access to the riches of a huge reserve of academic journals and databases. Now the challenging aspect is for me to organize what I would like to study. I'm not one to read for the sheer joy of reading—it's why I have very few fiction pieces under my belt. The last time I remember reading any was around my first born's birth and that was 9 years ago. I was 8 books into The Wheel of Time series. But even way back in college, my preference was for non-fiction....and in this pursuit of knowledge, I've always lamented that I could not retain every bit I read. I guess that on some level, I had hoped that which was seemingly forgotten would inform me on a subconscious level. An aspect of published papers that I like is that they are typically meaty material in a condensed form. I don't have to spend days with the material like I would with a book—books typically have a lot of fluff in their construction to reach a mass market audience...ok, days would be an exaggeration of real-world hours. Way back in Flagastaff 2004, it took all day for me to read DIet For a New America at 423 pages, but rarely do we knock out books in one sitting.

Soul Development

I've made a couple more changes to this site. I integrated the Daily Feed, which is RSS sources of Christian leaders that give me great insight, and I've added a reading list. The audio feeds are from a Reformed perspective and my life is greater when I have a steady diet of it. The reading list encourages me to continue to read through my personal library whether on the shelf or primary through Logos.

Over a year ago, I began a payment plan that ends this November for Logos Reformed Gold library with an armload of other handpicked books. Instead of buying it outright, I thought I'd budget money each month that I would have otherwise would have spent and forgotten about it. It's not a bad strategy, and unlike Spotify/Netflix subscriptions, I'll have something to show for it at the end. It's an incredible resource and far superior than all the Puritan books in the public domain that I can put on a Kindle for the resources are integrated and linked to each other. When I'm reading a book and it cites an early Christian author, I just have to hit the link and it pulls up that book (assuming its in my collection).

Back in 2001, I thought it was pretty awesome that I owned a parallel bible with 4 versions in it. Today, I've got many more, though I chiefly hang out in the ESV...an ESV with a Reformation Study Bible module when I want it. And the commentaries! When I'm in a particular passage—well, it's incredible the access I have to resources. And I don't have to sit in front of a PC to read my books, but I can do so on my iPad.

I wanted to increase the intensity of my mornings and I did just that. It's funny how The Fatigue Wall fades away in the context of resistance training. Again, I did cardio in the 4-5AM time slot and then went into resistance for the next—I dunno, 45 minutes, I guess, and finished with more cardio. It was a chest day—pretty simple on paper. Presses and Flies: incline to flat to decline, 4×12. Nevertheless, it was intense and I reached muscle failure on 7th rep on the 4th set with flat press and the 11th rep on the 4th set of the decline press. It was a quality session. I'll put another hour of cardio in later today.

I'm unsure as to how to approach tomorrow morning. I may adopt (to some extent) what I did during The First Expedition, for here in The Second Expedition, I was just using it for an upper body rest with cardio replacement. While it'll still largely focus on just that, I may just slide a 20-minute ab session into the mix.

I'm feeling great, though my muscles feel taxed as I type on this—right where I want them. I look back over my life and think of how many 4AM's I've wasted. I can't imagine where I would be if I had started this regimen in the summer of '96. What I'm doing now is more than just minutes tallied on repetition or picking up heavy things. It changes my mood and breaks down barriers. It is reasonable to doubt that my Fall of 2000 would of ever happened—even just my grades and not everything else, that F in the Finance class in the Summer and the 2 F's, 2 D's, and a B that Fall, would never have happened. Sure, I redeemed myself the following Spring, but as much as we can learn from our failures, I would have been happy to have skipped that series of lessons.

However, all of that is part of my narrative. Sure, we wish we could go back and optimize things...I wish I never sold my Netflix stock—heck if we're going back, let me pick up some Apple stock in the '90s when it was trading for $0.58 compared to its $191 today. If I had put just $1000 in it in 1997 (what expenses did I have back then?) that would be $329,000 today! But, by the same token, I lost about $3000 in Facebook options a few years back...I didn't know the future back then anymore than I do today...but if I could "go back and do it all over again..."

After a brief foray away from Spotify, I realized how silly it was, especially with respect to my workouts. What am I supposed to do—hum to myself? "Once, there was this girl who..."

I began this morning a little out of rhythm. After A little delay out of the gate, I setup and began watching the next Resident Evil from 2012. So....I had to hit rewind and flip through the 2010 installment's previews.

That said, from 4-5AM was cardio and I completed my Back program. After moving my resistance regimen to the lunch hour, I'm returning them to the morning to increase intensity and to check them off my list for the day. Then with what time remains, I'm back on the cardio. Of course, this approach digs into my cinema time, but I can pick up the rest of the movie in my lunch, now cardio, workout.

I'm glad I reintegrated my resistance regimen because I've read a lot of abstracts on published papers on the benefits of having both cardio and resistance. I haven't had the time (and in many cases the money) to read the papers themselves. One of these days, I really ought to regain my subscription to JSTOR; it's about double the price of a single-use Spotify account at $19.50/m or $179/yr. A little steep, but it's hard to ignore the value of developing one's mind further, and it was a resource I once regularly used. In fact, I remember a grad class where I had to read and review 4-6 articles a week. I try to read scholarly works regularly to keep my wits sharp. For now, there's NCBI.