Percy's Peaks New Hampshire, USA

We embarked on a trek with the goal of reaching the summit of North Percy peak last week, but due to the rain that had fallen making the steep trail slippery we decided to call it a day early.

Percy's Peaks are a twin mountain formation with a north and a south peak with North Percy topping out at 3430 feet. It was a sunny day and we had a great hike up to about 2200 feet where the trail got steeper. It was a good place to stop and have lunch.

Large bolder left by retreating glacier.

View of the valley at approx 2200'.

View looking up the mountain from 2200'.

Push Up Routine

Push-Ups. Yes the most basic of body weight exercises can be the most boring right after sit-ups. I know I should do more of them and most routines can be too difficult for some of us just getting back to this exercise.

One of my personal goals is to be able to pass the Army Fitness Test I had to pass when I was enlisted. That meant being able to do 40 push-ups in under 2 minutes. The Army administers the test differently today giving points to how many reps you do based on your age. You must score 60 points in order to get a pass for the push-up portion of the test.

To get myself back to that "Combat Ready" level, I've tried a new way of doing push-ups.

Its really simple. I started at 8 push-ups, then rest for 8 seconds, then I do 7 push-ups and rest 7 seconds, repeat in descending order until you get to 1. Do the math. 36 push-ups in about 3 min. Based on the current Army fitness test standards for my age group I scored a 70.

Now I was really struggling at the end and you should start where you feel comfortable doing the exercise with the right posture. Continue doing them until you can get through them all, then start at a higher number.

After doing this routine every other day for awhile I should get to 42 push-ups pretty quickly, and that's the passing score of 60 for a 17 to 21 year old. Hooah!

Before and After Workout Eating

In the past year since my Wife and I began learning how to live our healthy lifestyle, we learned volumes about nutrition and how our bodies utilize the different compounds.

Now that we are working out regularly and I am hitting the weights more often we wanted to make sure that we were fueling our bodies to be able to work out. Yes, the goal is to burn calories that are stored as fat, but you need more to go on to get the fire going to get the fat burning.

So I did some checking and many people have the same opinion on eating prior and after a workout.

Fitter Brain, Fitter Body