It’s funny to see that when searching for software it always seems that what is written about it is always so much different then when you start actually using it. At first I started my weblog with the help of the famous Blogger, but as I worked with it I found out quickly enough that I missed a lot of things, the most important one having the ability to make categories. So what was first my second place winner in the list of best blogging software is now the one that I’m using. WordPress seems very good for the needs I have. So we will see. It even managed to import directly my old blogger posts! I installed the software locally on one of the servers of our Shark IT department, so that I’m sure it will always be available.
When I was 18 years old, just before starting with serious weightlifting, my weight was 80 kilos. When I turned 19 it had gone up to 90 kilos. The year after that I added another 10 kilos and reached the 100 kilos. At my 21st birthday I touched the scale at 110 kilos. And again the year after that at 22 I reached 120 kilos. Somewhere halfway at 23 I reached my heaviest weight ever with 128 kilos. Normally you would think that would be one big pile of fat carrying with me all the time. But this weight was all the result of a very strict diet and powerlifting/bodybuilding scheme. Unfortunatly I was not below the magic 10% fat line but I was at an healty 15% so that meant that of the 128 kilos I ‘only’ carried around 19 kilos of fat, which gave me a fat free bodymass of 109 kilos which is a lot. But hey! I come from a big family. And before someone comments on this: No I was not using some kind of m&m’s or other strange pills! Just hard work, dedication, a lot of sweat, pain and puke!
So, here I am, 6 years later. Things have changed. Sportive time was more invested in organisational things and coaching then using it for myself. Research, writing, testing, producing costs a lot of energy. It has been interesting, but it’s time to use it on myself again. So what are the numbers? At the moment I weigh 125 kilos. Well great, you would say. Not so, because things have changed dramatically. It’s not the kilos that count it’s the fat free mass that counts. Fat percentage is around 25%, way too much for a guy like me. Max number for this should be at 15%. So what should be done?
First of all, at the moment I’m carrying around a big pile of fat with a weight of 31 kilos! Imaging that! 31 kilos! Not so difficult to motivate myself to get rid of a lot of those kilos! That means that my current fat free mass (FFM) is 94 kilo. Which is still great but I’ve lost 15 kilos of muscle mass! Which is quite a lot if you consider. Fortunate for me, that’s not a big deal, I’m not a bodybuilder. So if I want to go back to 15% I have to reduce the 31 kilos to 18 kilos. Which means that I will go to a more healthy and easy (94+18=) 112 kilos. Well that sounds pretty good. While dieting I will sure lose some more muscle mass, so I will put it to a round number: 110 kilos as a first goal. That sounds about right.
So how will I reach this? I will get in detail later but to be very short: cardiovasculair work, weightworkouts, stretching, diet (not in the normal sense of its word; athlete diet!)
It’s good to set goals!
Part of my 1200 day program to the ultimate goal is finding out what exactly is important for me. As I’ve done a lot of self exploration in the last year some things are pretty clear to me.
I know for a fact that:
- I love sports! Practicing that is, not watching! Think weights, water, freediving, cardio, athletics, cycling, running, etc, etc
- I love technology! This is very broad, but think of internet, software, gadgets, computer hardware, electronis in general.
- I’m very interested in humans in general, social stuff, physical stuff, everything that has to do with that.
- Family is the most important thing in the world! Especially my wife and two kids. I plan to have at least 1,5-2 hours each day during dinner time with them and one day in the weekend.
- Traveling is very important to me! I want to see the world, not only the land, but especially underwater!
So how can I combine all these things? Currently I’m earning my money as an IT specialist (microsoft, networking, solutions). I work 4 days a week for a good company to pay the bills, the rest of the days I work freelance (manage, design) for my own company. So one part of my company is looking into one of my interests: IT. The other part of my company is into sports; coaching people that is! So that is humans and sports together. Hmmm seems that I’m doing a pretty good job already 
The problem is that 80% of time I’m doing IT and only 20% of the time the other stuff. So I want this to change… And at the end of my 1200 day program I will be my own boss. But I think you already guessed that after reading my other post. So how am I going to do this? I got some pretty good ideas, I’ll write them down later.
Okay, something has to change about the lack of energy. The picture attached clearly shows my current state. Like I mentioned, my workplace sucks and I still don’t go out for a quick walk too much, maybe it has to do with the snow that was falling today… It’s spring for gods sake! Weather in the Netherlands… Anyway, at work in the afternoon still feeling very energy depleted. And at night feeling awake. Hopefully the physical training I started yesterday will change some of this energy problem. 2 days in a row I did some serious training. Yesterday legs (ouch!) and today delts. Feels good again to do some serious business in the gym. As always everybody leaves me alone, because when I’m training, I’m training… My training sessions with the weights are only around 30-35 minutes of very VERY intense workout, almost puking in the end. But hey, that’s what I love about the weights. New factor in all of this is that I jog to the place. It’s around 10 minutes easy jogging to go there instead of 5 minutes by bike. So that doesn’t matter and it’s better for warmingup and cooling down. Only factor I have to include with this in a week or two is the stretching program.
In a month or so I also change my food/fluid intake, and start again with some supplementation like multi vitamins and minerals. But that’s something for later.
Wow, what a good weekend! Like a told you in the post about freediving we had a very special training on friday evening. Well, not wanting to reveal to much, we had an excellent evening! Soon, I will unleash the team.
Saterday was a very productive day for me. I’ve got a nice office at my place but it’s a big big mess, and because I’m very fast distracted I needed to clean it up and throw things away I don’t use anymore. I think I threw away half of all the stuff in my office! So that’s a good start. Next is ordening the place and making it an productive environment. Put some motivational quotes and posters on the wall, getting a fridge over there so that I don’t have to walk every time through the house to get a cold drink or something else, etc. Anyway, the project isn’t finished yet, but when I’m done, I’m sure I will post some pictures of it.
Sunday was very relaxing, during day time spending time with my son, daughter and wife. Family time is important for me. As I’m very busy with (too?) many projects I find the time that I spend with my family very valiable, and as soon as I have time, I want to spend it with them outdoors, just going places.
The evening we went to Heemstede, somewhere near Amsterdam, for a freediving competition. I would coach my 2 athletes and be a last minute judge also over there. Unfortunatly one of them, Notis, had a too busy week and was feeling weak, but at least he showed up to support Sanne. It’s funny to see how most freedivers need so many time and warming ups to perform well. One of the basic rules I use is that a freediver can perform anytime within a small range from his peak with minimum warmup time. And so was the case for Sanne as well. 30 seconds before his start he stepped in the water with his bi-fins and swam an excellent and especially important, easy 109 meters. Very clear, more to come! The big performance that evening came from Peter Wurschy with a 146 meter distance with his monofin, which is a new dutch national record. It’s good to see where Peter comes from, after I first introduced Peter to freediving during a course I gave beginning 2004 untill now, where we can see he belongs to the best freedivers in the world.
Okay, it’s time for a healthy mind in a healthy body. Today starts physical training! I’m finally going to use my own system again. 12 years ago I started using weights as an additional training method for my martial arts and athletics training. Not knowing much about it I read many books and magazines and talked to a lot of ‘experts’ in the field of weighttraining. Instead of really profiting from the weight training and doing any good for my athletic abilities, I was more on a bodybuilding/powerlifting schedule for training. I used this system for almost 10 years and fortunate enough the most part that I was doing was powerlifting, so that at least the muscle I created was functional enough.
But, and it’s a big but, the strength and muscle I got was only for certain typical powerlifting movements and not really an allround strength that I could use in any sport or activity. So that had to change. In the last 12 years I searched and searched and developed my own ideas about weight training for athletes and tested these the last years succesfully on other people. It’s a bit orthodox, and it’s not for the people who only want to look good, it’s only for people who want to gain real athletic strength. The strength that for example Roman Sebrle (see picture) has, current world record holder in decathlon, one of the most versatile sports in the world, where every part comes together.
As I write this I’m at 80% of writing a good ebook about my system, so maybe in the near future, if enough demand, I will release it to the public.
Anyway, I will be a real guine pig on this one, and I will post my real results over here. Tonight I start with phase 1 of the program. Soon more on this.
One of my main interests is Freediving. No, not diving from cliffs in the sea or jumping out of planes wihtout a parachute but diving underwater while holding your breath. Believe it or not, but there are people who are capable of holding their breath for more then 10 minutes! And no, I’m not talking about that guinness record of 14 minutes and 12 seconds, because the guy used pure oxygen for 25 minutes before doing that record. I’m talking about lying in the sea with only a pair of long fins and a mask, grasping one big mouthfull of air and finning down in to the deep. I’ll surely write a lot more in the coming time about this great sport. For the mean time you can look at the picture here so you get an idea what’s it about.
Anyway, tonight is a big night, because besides practicing the sport myself I’m also coaching some freedivers in this sport to get the best results out of themselves and tonight is personal record night and if succesfull I’ll be very excited! Details are still secret but when succesfull we will make a big bang soon enough.
I read some articles about the big apple boss Steve Jobs, with his 1 dollar a year salary. Very inspirational guy with a bunch of nice quotes to get you going. Especially the following gets me moving:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
The complete transcript about his talk can be read here. It’s a good read and very interesting to see where he came from and where he stands now.
I totally had it with my current workplace. There’s no ventilation or airconditioning and I don’t have a view outside. So basically in wintertime I never have sunlight, and I must say that this had a very negative effect on me in the last months. Now that temperature is rising it gets even worse with very dry hot air. At around 2:00 pm every day at work I get a terrible headache that doesn’t go away anymore for the rest of the day. Thank god that management agreed to do something about it, so we will get some airconditioning next week! Whoo hoo! I’m just so glad that I only work 4 days a week at that place instead of the normal 5. Maybe I should move my office to the house of Tiger Woods, as in the attached photo.
Tip for self: Take 3 walks a day outside the building for refreshing body and mind. This shouldn’t be any problem because I see some people going for a smoke for maybe 5-6 times a day for 15 minutes.
It appears that I had to be in Libya today. There was a total sun eclipse for 4 min and 7 seconds just at 12 this afternoon to watch in the desert over there. Here in the Netherlands there was a 1/3 eclipse to watch, but of course there where to many clouds to see it. We’re in the Netherlands here, known for its good weather and dryness al year round, NOT! I must say it’s a pretty fascinating thing to see. Last time I saw a total sun eclipse was in 1999 and although it was just for a short moment it was strange to see how nature went to ‘sleep’. I can understand that in history of mankind, before anything was known about space, this phenomenon could bring a lot of chaos. Anyway, today was already the 4th sun eclipse this century. I you want to see the next one yourself you have to be at the north pole on august 1st 2008!
