Blog Post #3

Hello everyone! How goes it?

As you have hopefully gathered from the title, this is the third weekly update of this project.  We are about half way done.  I had another very successful week of Insanity and am pleased to report that progress has been made.  I have continued to follow this schedule:

I completed all of the workouts on the second week and am going to do the second fit test tonight (3/2).  I can truly say I am excited to see all the progress that I have made in my fitness.

I can most definitely tell that my level of fitness, endurance, and strength has increased since the first workout.  On the first day, I couldn't even finish the warm up without stopping to take a quick break.  Now, I can easily finish the warm up and get nearly the entire workout in without taking a break to rest.  Exercises that were once impossible are now very attainable for me.  There is no doubt in my mind that my fit test scores are going to increase dramatically and I am very, very excited to see the results.  Another area where there is certain improvement is in my flexibility.  You see, after the warm up, there is about 6 minutes of stretching that Shaun T. leads us through.  There is also a 4 minute stretching session at the very end of the video.  When I first started Insanity, I would do the stretches but not be able to go down very far.  Now, I can stretch A LOT farther and I guarantee I am more flexible.  One particular stretch comes to mind for me.  There is something called a deep lunge that is part of the stretching routine in Insanity.  I had never heard of it before Insanity and it looks like this:
 

When I did this for the first time, I came nowhere close to being able to get into that deep of a lunge.  Instead, I just did a standard lunge.  However, through two weeks of intense stretching, I can now get into a deep lunge on both sides!  This seems to stick with me more than any other stretch because the deep lunge is a stretch that you either can do or you can't do.  Therefore, it is much easier to track than say a butterfly stretch.  My progress in stretching and flexibility is very apparent and will hopefully help in my overall fitness and especially my running.

Now I am going to be completely honest with you guys and as transparent as I can be.  The spring track season is starting today, and I am going to be doing a track workout every day after school from now until the end of the season.  Obviously, this could be an interference with my Insanity schedule.  However, I made a pledge to complete this workout program and I will honor it.  My plan moving forward is fairly simple.  I will continue to do the Insanity workout once I get home from track, but I will change up the schedule a little bit.  In Insanity, the off-day is on Sunday.  I shall change that off-day to Monday, because Monday usually consists of the hardest track workout of the week.  My adjusted schedule would have an Insanity workout on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then a track workout on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  I will also add that I do not think that the trouble with a double workout would be my body's health (track workouts are not too hard on my body- I think I can handle a track workout then Insanity workout in one day), but rather the trouble would be time.  If I do not get home until 5:00-5:30ish, then have to do possibly an hour long workout, I could be stressed for time to do homework and get to sleep at a reasonable hour.  I will try my hardest to do an Insanity workout every day after track, but unfortunately I cannot guarantee that time will permit this.  I will however promise to be truthful to all of you and report if I end up skipping one workout.

Another little side note with all of this track stuff is that during track, we often do something called "Ford's Core".  My coach, Mr. Ford, has us do strength and core exercises after practices on occasional days.  These exercises are similar in some ways to the things I am doing in Insanity, so I will sit out Ford's Core.  I will talk to Mr. Ford and I am sure he will be understanding of the predicament I am in and allow this behavior.  Hopefully, track will not interfere too much with my Insanity workouts and I can continue to progress my overall fitness.  And by the way, if you have better suggestions to how I could deal with the issue of track + Insanity, feel free to leave it in the comments.  I would gladly take your ideas.

On a completely different note, this week I decided to study up on how muscles actually become more flexible.  I was very interested to learn about this because of my epiphany about deep lunges (see beginning of blog post).  What I discovered about flexibility was much different than what I was lead to believe growing up.

For* some odd reason, we have this idea that flexibility is something you are born with.  It is either something you have or you do not have, but this assumption is false (Read).  Another misconception is that flexibility applies throughout your entire body, while in reality, a loose upper body does not mean you have a loose lower body (MIT).  That is, flexibility is one joint or area does not correlate with flexibility in another joint or area.  Flexibility is in fact like any other exercise.  It takes long hours of work to truly see an improvement.  Simply stretching for 2 minutes at the end of a workout 3 days each week will not help your flexibility significantly (Read).

Overstretching is also a big concern when trying to maximize flexibility.  When you stretch in order to increase flexibility, often times you get this tightness.  I'm sure you get it; I surely do.  This is your body's "emergency brake" (Thomas).  This happens because your muscle senses a lengenthing that the nervous system deems could be harmful (Read).  Your body is trying to protect itself from any harm that could come from stretching it too far.  A stretch that is too far can create an "inflammatory response" that can be very harmful (Tancock).  An analogy that Thomas used that I think is very effective is one of a car on the edge of a cliff.  When you stretch too far, it is pushing this car off the cliff.  Your nervous system, the thing causing the tightness, is the car's emergency brake.  Under no circumstances would the person driving the car release the emergency brake and the nervous system works the same way.  Finally, overstretching a muscle can be harmful because there is a "tradeoff between flexibility and stability" (MIT).  Once you become too flexible, you lose a lot of stability that is just as important.

One thing that is very influential in flexibility are these biological units called sarcomeres.  They are the "basic contractile units of our muscles" (Thomas).  These are the things that generate force and make our muscles move.  When you are in one position for a long time, for instance sitting, the sarcomeres change so that it makes said position much easier to attain.  After sitting in a chair for a long time, the sarcomeres make it so that sitting is the new normal, and therefore make it harder to be flexible in the hamstrings (hamstrings are contracted while sitting).

Well that raps up this blog post.  I had a fantastic week of Insanity and hope to continue this great trend.  I will be posting again in the near future to update my fit test scores. 

Stay with me.

-Evan Kuo

*All information I use is from one of these sources: http://web.mit.edu/tkd/stretch/stretching_3.html (we will title this MIT), http://www.besthealthmag.ca/best-you/stretching/what-really-happens-when-you-stretch-your-muscles#QPQetf0siVEaf6vk.97 (we will title this Tancock), http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/flexibility-is-like-any-other-discipline-it-takes-discipline (we will title this Read), or http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/stretching-doesnt-work-the-way-you-think-it-does (we will title this Thomas)