Ryan Shell, Author at RyanShell.com

“Get Fit” Hit a Slump Last Week. This week’s Workout Schedule.

This post is part of my ongoing “Get Fit” series, an effort to lose a little weight/tone up, and save money by reducing the number of meals I eat out.

Last week was probably my least successful week in terms of eating since starting my “Get Fit” series. I didn’t go out and eat Wendy’s every day, or have a huge relapse, but I did eat a hamburger and fries on a couple of occasions.

I could give you a handful of reasons for the relapse if I wanted too, but I won’t. There is fundamentally one reason my week was not as successful as past weeks in terms of food consumption.

Altered my Routine

In past weeks I’ve made a routine of going to the grocery store over the weekend and buying the essentials that would help me eat lunch at work and dinner at home throughout the week. I skipped that routine last week and I kept saying, “I’ll go to the store tonight,” but it simply didn’t happen.

I’m not typically a fan of getting stuck in a routine, but this is one time that I feel it’s important. It’s not rocket science. If you don’t have food readily available at home our chances for eating out skyrocket.

Back on Track

Thankfully I made it to the grocery story on Saturday and am once again having a turkey sandwich, 100 calorie pack of Doritos and bottled water for lunch.

My coworkers have enjoyed laughing at the size of the Doritos, but they seem to give me the fix I need. I put a chip on top of the sandwich so you could see how small they are.

Workouts

If you’re following this series you probably know that I’ve started inline speed skating again. The sport has changed a great deal since my younger competition days, which has required me to upgrade my equipment.

In skating, the boot (boot, frame, wheels) is a wildly important aspect and can be a huge pain, literally, if you don’t have the right fit. I’m still in the phase of getting the right setup, but hopefully that is coming to a close. The previous boot I tried caused a great deal of discomfort and was preventing me from skating as much as I’d like too. Thankfully I have another solution on the way.

Ideally I’d like to be skating three to four days a week inside, and one or two outside, but that’s not been the case so far. I’ve been doing one to two thus far… but that’s about to change.

If all goes well this will be my workout schedule for this week:

Monday – Cycle class, weight train (chest, back and core)
Tuesday – Indoor skating practice
Wednesday – Cycle Class, weight train (arms, core and easy legs)
Thursday – Indoor skating practice
Friday – Indoor skating practice
Saturday – Hope to skate outside
Sunday – Full body weight training workout (nothing hardcore), Indoor skating practice

That’s a pretty intense schedule for me at the moment, and I’ll definitely be worn out. You’ll notice that I’m only doing leg weight training one day this week. Doing so allows me ample recovery time in between skating practices (again, this is simply what works for me). Keep in mind that getting in “skating shape” is what I’m going for right now.

As always, thanks for reading this series and I hope it helps you in one way or another.

Text Message Away Message. Do You see Value?

By Ryan Shell

In late December as I was planning to go to Mexico I learned that talking on the phone and sending text messages wasn’t exactly inexpensive today.

As I mulled over the best way to handle the potential costs involved I wrote a quick post about how great it would be for cell carriers to create text message away messages.

Here’s a short bit from that post,

“Imagine how great t would be if I could turn on an away message, which would also prompt the system to basically hold my text messages until I turn the away message off.”

I’m back to my day-to-day routine at this point, but still see a value in the away message concept.

Any chance you know someone that will send you a text, and a subsequent text if you don’t respond for some reason? If not, are there times that you receive a text, but for whatever reason can’t respond? A text message away message would be perfect for both scenarios.

If you are new to this blog you may have missed my post from early November titled, “An afternoon at the movies.” It basically highlighted how I managed to get kicked out of the movies. Give it a read, you’ll laugh at me.

This particular theatre was playing Sherlock Holmes at a time that fit into my schedule yesterday so I opted to give in and pay them another visit. During the movie I received several text messages, but refused to take my phone out of my coat pocket. I simply didn’t want to be the tool that got kicked out of the movies twice!

Text message away messages would be perfect for instances like this. I/you could simply say, “In a movie. Will text you back when I’m out.”

What do you think, is this something that you would find useful?

Noticed this New Facebook Feature?

By Ryan Shell

If you receive email alerts when someone comments on your Facebook profile, or responds to a comment you’ve left, you may have noticed a new feature?

Facebook now gives you the chance to respond to comments straight from email. All you have to do is hit reply, type your comment and hit send.

I’m not sure if they are doing a beta test or not, but if you don’t see the feature just yet, you should in the near future.

We Should “Dribble the Ball” more Often

By Ryan Shell

[This post has nothing to do with the typical content of this site. Just a little something I wanted to share.]

I was at the YMCA last night and had a 20 minute break in between the cycle class I’d just completed and an ab class I wanted to attend. During the break I did some pushups and other random exercises in the indoor track area that’s above the basketball courts.

While taking a minute to rest I walked over to the railing and looked down at the courts below; there were a bunch of kids, probably 5 -7 years old scattered throughout. The first thing that caught my attention was a group of eight boys that were learning how to dribble a basketball.

What a site.

They were having an absolute blast; all the while the coach was trying his best to keep the humorous chaos under control. It seemed pretty easy to do at times because the kids were content with standing still and simply dribbling a ball. The chaos seemed to occur when one of the kids messed up, because then all the others messed up and basketballs became instantly scattered around.

Before long I realized I’d been standing there for a good 10 minutes, and the thing is, I smiled (with frequent laughter) almost the entire time. In some way it made me happy to see the kids having fun while doing something as simple as learning to dribble a ball.

The innocence and simplicity of what was taking place was a vast contrast with how complicated life seems to be at times.

We tend to look all over the place for happiness, but I think it’s important to step back and figure out what your “dribbling the ball” moment is… and do it more often.