Stafford Fitness

When we started planning for our workout program, we made a list of 8 or 9 gyms around Missoula and planned to bike around to all of them and figure out which would be best. We started with the closest gym to the house, Stafford Fitness. After checking out the facilities and meeting with Matt Stafford and the other trainers, we didn't bother going to any of the other gyms on our list. We had each spent time a good amount of time in gyms in the past, but a lot of the equipment used at Stafford - like slosh-tubes, power plates, slacklines, and TRX straps - was brand new to us. We decided to give it a shot.

Over the last 3 months, the folks at Stafford have been designing most of our workouts and providing guidance and general advice on all aspects of our program, including weight lifting, cardio, diet, and injury recovery/prevention. Between our time at Stafford and our workouts outside the gym, we have been making some progress.

Now that we have more to write about, we hope to start posting more often with some specifics of the workout and diet (we can only get bye on embarrassing photos and a sweet Mario-Bros-inspired header for so long). In the meantime you can check out the Stafford Website or the Stafford Blog, which showcases some of their programs and workouts (and is much better than our blog, by the way).

1 Month In

We have been bad about keeping up with the blog so far, but we plan on making several posts in the next few days on the details of the workout and some of the hikes we have gone on. Here are the new pictures after one month. As you can see, Daniel has become even leaner, with his muscles more defined. Michael, not to be outdone, has undergone his own transformation by growing a somewhat lean goatee and buying new shorts.
Daniel: Weight: 168 lbs. (Down 5 lbs.)

Current Schedule and Diet

Monday - Friday

06:00 - 06:30 Wake up, eat breakfast

06:30 - 07:00 Meditation

07:00 - 08:30 Workout 1

08:30 - 09:00 Shower

09:00 - 12:00 Work/School

12:00 - 12:30 Lunch

12:30 - 16:00 Work/School

16:00 - 17:30 Workout 2

17:30 - 19:00 Shower/Relax/Prepare Dinner

19:00 - 19:30 Dinner

19:30 - 22:00 Free Time

Saturday

08:00 - 08:30 Wake up, eat breakfast

08:30 - 09:00 Meditation

09:00 - 10:30 Workout 1

10:30 - 13:00 Study/Free Time

13:00 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 - 16:00 Study/Free Time

16:00 - 17:30 Workout 2

17:30 - 19:00 Shower/Relax/Prepare Dinner

19:00 - 19:30 Dinner

19:30 - 24:00 Free Time

Sunday

Sunday is free, but we will work on the next week's plan, shop for groceries, prepare meals for the week, and be in bed around 22:00.

Diet

We have added our diet, in detail, to a Google Doc spreadsheet and made it public. It will be updated continuously. If you care, click here to see the details of the diet, including the caloric breakdown of everything we consume.

Details of the workout and our very unusual gym coming soon...

Starting Pictures

Well, there's not much to say here... We start the workout today, and these are our starting pics. As you can see, our body compositions are nearly identical. Michael is the one in the grey shorts, if you can't tell us apart.
Daniel: Height: 5' 10.5" Weight: 173 lbs.

The Plan

A. Exercise We will complete two workouts a day, Monday through Saturday, lasting at least an hour each. Most often, we will lift weights in the morning and do cardio, sports, hiking, stretching, or balance work in the evenings. A day of hiking, snowboarding, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, etc. will satisfy the two-workouts-a-day requirement. B. Diet Strict caloric limits will be imposed. We will start with a goal of 1800 calories per day, and try to consume roughly 85 percent of our body weight in lbs in grams of protein. We will stay within 150 calories of this target per day. This target can be adjusted, within reason, as long as notification is given at least 1 day ahead of time. This does not mean that it is ok to adjust limits so that we may eat a whole pizza or something and then change it back. But if we realize at some point that 1800 calories is either too much or too little to meet our goals, we need to be able to make changes. To the greatest extent possible, meals will be organized, planned, and prepared each Sunday for the following week. We are limited to 3 alcoholic drinks per week. This should be brought within daily caloric limits as much as possible. We are allowed one “free” meal per week. This should be brought within daily caloric limits as much as possible. C. Work and Study Each day will be strictly scheduled. 9 am to 4 pm, Monday through Friday will be reserved for work and study. There will be no TV, videogames, or online video streaming until after dinner on weekdays. Weekends are free, except for the two workouts on Saturday. D. Other We will strive to spend 30 minutes a day doing meditation. As soon as we can afford it, we will start taking some form of dancing lessons. We are both tired of having no skills on the dance floor and of being outshined by D-bags at weddings or dance-parties. E. Duration The Plan will last for 5-8 months, depending on work and school issues that might keep one or both of us away from Missoula for extended periods of time. F. Failure and Enforcement There will be two major enforcement mechanisms. First, we will be posting monthly shirtless photos to show our progress. We will look so embarrassingly out of shape in our first photos (well, at least one of us will), that we will be forced to work hard and post better photos in the months ahead, unless we want to hear about it from friends and family for the rest of our lives. Second, we will each write out $300 checks to our most hated organizations, and give these checks to a third-party “enforcer.” Daniel’s check is made out to Massey Energy, a company that utilizes mountaintop removal, which permanently destroys ecosystems. Daniel is an environmental scientist (and a bit of a tree-hugger). Michael has two $150 checks: one made out to the Glenn Beck Show, and the other made out to teapartypatriots.org. If we fail to follow the plan, the third-party will mail off our checks to their respective organizations.
We will be allowed 3 alcohol skip days, 3 food skip days, and 3 variable skip days, which could be used toward food or alcohol. In addition, we will have 6 work/study skip days to allow for ski or hiking trips. We will make a detailed spreadsheet of our diet available to the third-party every Sunday, which details our consumption, broken down by calories. If we fail to provide this caloric breakdown, or if we skip a workout or blow a meal or work day beyond what is allowed by the set number of ‘skip days,’ then we have failed and the checks will be mailed.	Vern "Hat" Hatley: Enforcer
Of course, to do this, we need a third party ‘enforcer.’ To act in this capacity, we have recruited the meanest, most unforgiving SOB we can think of: our father, Vern Hatley.

The Idea

One evening last October in Missoula, Montana, after several beers and no small amount of Jameson, two brothers lamented their laziness, deplored their disorganization, and grieved over their guts. Daniel, a first year graduate student at the University of Montana, worried about his continued procrastination, which he had hoped to outgrow before grad school. Michael was particularly concerned about the steady decline in his physical fitness level, despite near-weekly attempts to reinvent himself over the previous half-decade.

Their lives would improve tremendously if only they could maintain a modicum of self-discipline, they conjectured. “Why, if I was capable of obeying self-imposed deadlines, I would probably have six-pack abs by now,” declared Michael, lighting another cigarette. “Me too!” Daniel exclaimed while cracking a beer, “And if I could stick to a schedule I would probably not have to pull an all-nighter to finish that paper I have due tomorrow!” Wasn’t there some way to give self-imposed deadlines some real teeth?

Shortly before sunrise, it was decided. Michael, who was in between schools and living and working in Washington DC as a web designer, would move to Missoula. The brothers would employ a number of negative-incentives to force themselves to comply with The Plan. The Plan would be hard core, involving strictly regimented work, study, exercise, and diet, and maybe even meditation and dancing lessons (that’s right, dancing lessons).

The purpose of this blog is to help keep the Hatley Brothers honest and accountable. By documenting every step of our attempt at self-transformation and making it public, we hope to force ourselves to follow through with our commitments. In addition to the selfish objective of keeping us in line, we hope that this blog will prove mildly entertaining for friends and family, and informative to workout or diet enthusiasts.