The new year is well underway and I’m a bit lax in posting to the blog. However, my training goals for this year are a bit on the ambitious side. I’m determined to shed some of the body fat that’s been clinging on for dear life these past couple of months. Of course the holidays didn’t help matters as usual. So it’s time to come up with an effectivie strategy.
I know my biggest shortcoming in this regard is my diet. I talk a good game, but putting things into practice — well I guess I come up a little short. My plan on the diet and nutrition front is to reread Tom Venuto’s “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle” and take notes this time. At over 300 pages, it’s going to be quite the undertaking, but I know I missed a lot my first time through. It’s really no different from when I was in college and had to reread chapters from text books at twice before I was confident that I understood the topic.
My cardio training on the elliptical is actually in pretty good order and doesn’t seem to need much tweaking. I am thinking about adding another cardio session during the week and also increasing the duration. I do plan to keep the intensity at my higher calculated target heart rate.
In addition to getting leaner, I also want to increase my stamina for the upcoming tennis season. Of course my season consists of only about a dozen “matches” if that. Still, I want to go harder without getting too winded. This brings me to perhaps the biggest motivator for getting into better shape: I will be hitting the big “5-0″ mark soon and I don’t want to go down without a fight. Yes, these days, 50 is really not that old, but the pyschological stigma remains. I think I’m going to use this milestone as the stimulus for promoting ways to keep fit for “senior citizens”. But that’s a topic for another day.