Day 114, Immense Satisfaction

The thing about The Peak Condition Project is that when you're up you're up. I felt strong as an ox today, and just as endurant. Taught 4 yoga classes, did my box splits, and after all that went to the gym with Chen to do hanging sit-ups using that gym's parallel bars.

I call them hanging sit-ups, I don't know what else to call them. Basically you hang from a bar and lift your feet over your head. Or you turn your body to the side and lift the knees up to your face like a side crunch. Or you can do reverse hanging sit-ups with your feet locked in the bar and crunching up your entire upper body. (I showed this in my Day 65 post using Drunken Master... by the way the gym said we had to stop doing those because it looks like you're going to break your neck and I guess it freaked them out too much)

Today the challenge was not only to lift the legs, but then perform a full kick with the legs straight out. This is so freakin hard to explain, I wish I had had my camera.

Anyway, imagine this guy but not jumping, just hanging from two parallel bars, but doing the same motion. Using his core to execute the action rather than a leg assisted jump:

So me and Chen were trading back and forth doing these air kicks 5 feet off the ground. A few guys in the gym were looking at us, and after we finished our sets they were like, "what the hell is that?" And I told them they're kung fu sit-ups. So of course they want to try them out.

These guys were pretty fit, they looked in shape to me at least. So guy one gets up there and he gets one air-kick out, and.... he's totally spent. His friend is laughing at him so he tells his friend to show him how it's done. The friend can't even do one.

As you know this whole project I've been looking up to Bruce Lee, which is incredible motivation because he was such a great guy and in such peak condition, but it's also a bummer because I will never ever be anywhere near him truly.

But today for the first time I looked down the ladder at some people a few rungs below my condition, and realized how far I've come. The thing about the PCP is it's a pretty solitary pursuit, outside of the blogs. You wake up, stick to your diet, and do your exercises. There's nobody watching you, nobody egging you on. It's you and your resistance bands, working quietly away for all those weeks.

But all those crunches and V-sits were apparent tonight when we were busting out those hanging sit-ups. Perhaps it's because the air-kick is such an exuberant exercise, but I felt huge gratification from having that level of control over my body. And then when the other guys couldn't even do two I felt another jolt of immense satisfaction.

I want to make clear it wasn't like, "Man, you two guys are weak, and I'm a total badass" If they worked hard they'd be doing those moves in no time, and if I stopped working out I wouldn't be able to do them after just a few weeks.

It was just another happy and unexpected milestone on this path.

Day 112, The BMI Is Whack

A few weeks ago I played Wii Fit for the the first time. The first thing you do in the game is set up your character, by providing your height and letting the board weigh you. Then it will spit out your BMI.

(Note: This isn't my screen, it's just a screencap I got off the internet. You can tell because that rough polygon lego character looks nothing like me!)

Now, what is the BMI? You probably know it stands for Body Mass Index. Ooh that sounds so scientific, it must be good right? Your Body Mass Index is the following equation.


That equation gives you a number somewhere between 13 and 60. This number puts you in a field that's classified as "underweight," "healthy weight," "overweight" or "obese."

So where exactly did this BMI system come from? Surely some fitness and health experts got together and figured it all out right? Wrong-O! The BMI was invented by a Belgian mathematician named Adolphe Quetelet in the mid 1800's as part of his plan to take all kinds of social phenomena and quantify them into numbers so that he could break us pesky, unpredictable humans into easily processed equations. Actually he was just trying to measure Belgians. From the 19th century.

So, I found out my BMI... and guess what? I'm on the borderline of being "overweight." Yep. Me. The guy wearing shorts from the boy's department. So the damn game is like scolding me and telling me I need to watch it or I could slip into the red zone. It really pissed me off. The BMI also has no way of figuring out your cardiovascular health, so a marathon runner will get the same score as a couch potato if their weights and heights happen to be equal.

Why did this happen? Because the stupid BMI can't tell the difference between weight from muscle and weight from fat. So for someone like me, with minimal body fat and a lot of muscle, it thinks I must be on the heavy side. This glitch basically bars me from playing Wii Fit, because the exercise plan they give me is designed for the fat guy I'm impersonating.

So, don't pay any attention to the BMI. Or any numerical evaluation or your health. Instead, go back to the simple things that we don't need a calculator for. For example:

How do your trousers fit?

How do you look in the mirror?

Can you touch your toes?

Do you get winded going up stairs?

Can you do the things you want to do without feeling crappy?

These are much better questions that "what's your height divided by your weight?" Give me a break. It should stand for the Body Mass Inanity.

Day 100, My New T-shirt

Damn, day 100. People are pretty silly. After all, there's a difference of exactly "1" between 99 and 100, the same exact difference between, say, "72" and "73". But when we see that extra digit pop on there we get a little excited don't we?

100 days. I can hardly remember starting this crazy project now. People ask me how I got the idea and I can't clearly remember anymore, I've been doing it so long that it's just something I do, like those soldiers who don't even know why they fight anymore, except not so grim and with eggs.

Anyway, day 100 is just an arbitrary number, but I'll take any excuse I can to celebrate. So this time we're marking the milestone with a new T-shirt. Check this out!



Cool huh? The front is just white. Anybody have any ideas for what could go on the front of it?

Here's a detail of it. Clicky the piccy to make it get biggy.


And a big thank you to everyone who reads and comments. You support me more than you could ever know. If I was just alone trying to do this I wouldn't have made it to day 10 much less day 100.

Ah, hell, one more!

Day 90, Finished! Kind of...

Well, I never thought I'd see day 90. But here it is. And I can honestly say that I've reached Peak Condition.

Cardio is awesome. I can run as much as I want without getting winded, take the stairs three at a time at the station, and do multiple sets of pretty much any exercise you put in front of me, and double jump the rope until the cows come home.


Physique is right there for you to see. If you haven't looked at Day one or two for a while check out what a difference 90 days can make.


Coordination is fantastic. I can do all kinds of jumprope tricks, block punches and kicks more quickly, execute asana better than ever, and spin the 'chuks with precision.



Balance is great. My center of gravity changed a little bit when I lost all that weight, which threw off my balance for a few weeks, but I've got it recalibrated now. With my body in this condition I can keep my skeletal structure in any position I choose, including this one.


Flexibility is superior, my back and hamstrings are open like never before. My tendons are also working more independently from their attaching muscles (don't worry if that didn't make sense to you, it's only stretch otaku like me who care about that kind of stuff) I'm still spending a lot of time on the groin but I should be at that hanging side split before the PCP ends July 23. More info on my secret technique coming later this week) I achieved front splits only a month into the project but am not totally satisfied with them.



I talked to Chen a lot this week, and we've both decided that this is kind of a stopping point. It's almost sad to say it, but I'm pretty much finished with the training aspect of the PCP. By the way, here's what a usual meeting of the minds looks like:


Of course I'll maintain this condition until the full term of the project, but I don't want to get any stronger and I can't lose any more fat safely.

So, this is pretty much it. Not much next to Bruce Lee but pretty good for Patrick Reynolds!

And it was all done without a single dumbell, gym machine, protein powder, or any other gimmick people try so hard to sell us. Just a jumprope, a resistance band, two chairs, my own bodyweight, and a bunch of eggs.

So, where do we go from here? I'm going to spend the last month of my Project learning and teaching everyone how to make the principles of the PCP work in a regular life, without measuring your grams or keeping a rigid workout routine. In short, I'm going to figure out how to make The Peak Condition Project sustainable.

I'll still do the daily blog until July 23, but I think I'll switch to weekly pictures, since not much will be changing on me from here on out.

Thanks to everyone for your love and support. If this project has taught me anything it's that we are not stuck in our ruts, routines, and roles. I can only hope that one day I will be able to help you change your own life for the better.

So, see you in tomorrow's blog! Phase 3 begins!

Day 89, More Shorts

Yesterday I wanted to buy some new shorts, because I was tired of my old ones falling off me. But I was having a lot of trouble. Somewhere along the way we've lost the "short" in shorts. Everything I was finding looked like this:


I think these baggy shorts styles look pretty stupid, especially if like me you don't have long legs. You can end up looking like Frodo Baggins in his hobbity half-pants:


But finally I found some pairs that actually fit me, didn't flare out like parachutes, and left enough room for high kicks. It was a relief to feel them sit snugly on my hips without a hint of sliding down. Here they are!



And where did I find these great shorts? Well, I happen to have the tag here in my pocket...

Here's my secret...

Ha ha, the kids section strikes again. What can I say? They're the only ones that fit. Plus kids stuff is cheap, and they actually have a straight cut for kids' little stick legs. If you're thinking I'm barely squeezing into these or that I too have become a stick figure, here's a look at the waistband.

The Peak Condition Project works.

Tomorrow big news coming! Thanks to everyone for reading and sorry for posting so many pictures of myself lately. I'm really not a narcissist, I just can't believe how much my body could change and I just want to show everyone that it actually happened!

Day 85, 12 Weeks

Yesterday was the 84th day, and it wasn't until today that I realized that 84 divided by 7 is 12, i.e. 12 weeks. (I suck at math)

And you know what that means. Bruce Lee photo time! Did you know that Bruce Lee could do two finger push-ups? If you've never seen them check this out. You can see the push-ups at about 1:20 but the whole video is great.



I can't do two finger push-ups, although I've been working up to them for a few years. I started on fists, then 5 fingers, and now I'm down to three (well, 6, I have to use both hands) I can crank out about 25 pushups from this base. So without further ado, here's the 12 week photo.


Thanks everyone for your support. Almost there!