Alright, I've given myself a few days since the layoff, and I've decided this is only going to give me more time to work out, eat right and get in the best shape of my life!
Friday we got into Starting Strength as usual. I started with squats at 190. This felt like a good amount of weight, but my form wasn't very good. I was going low, but not as low as I have been. After 3 sets of 5 I decided I needed to repeat this one.
After that was shoulder press at 140. I finished this one the Monday before, so I figured I'd be good. It's been a few days and I don't remember the final numbers, but I think I got close but did not finish. About this....I've been thinking about my shoulder press since Friday a lot, and I think I'm finally going to take the plunge and drop the weight. This is the only exercise where I haven't done this yet. I've been looking at my form, and I bounce at the beginning of each rep to use the momentum to finish the rep. I watched some form videos and this isn't the right way at all. I've decided that next time I do shoulder press (Wednesday) I'm going to drop a lot of weight (not sure how much yet) and focus on only using my arms to move the bar. Not upper body movement outside of that at all. I'll let you know how it goes.
After shoulder press I cranked out some pullups (not as many as normal, but good form on them) and finished with 3x5 on curls at 80 lbs. Those went well, but I think I'm going to repeat 80 one more time this week before moving up.
I had to call a friend that night so I skipped the ab workout. That was Friday's workout.
Sunday was an awesome exercise day. Around noon I decided to get into the gym and do yoga. I got through the first 40 minutes of Yoga MC2. This is such a difficult, awesome yoga workout. My legs were dying by the end, and at the 40 minute mark I called it quits. However, I have an awesome guided meditation program on my phone and decided to meditate for 15 minutes too. Overall it was awesome.
After that I took a few hours break, and a buddy of mine came over to chill. We talked and decided we wanted to run, so I officially started C25K over again. Day 1 went well, we did the whole thing, and I felt much stronger than I did the first time I started this program.
Yesterday (Monday) we got into Starting Strength again. I did 190 on squats again, and felt much better about the depth on this. I'm going to repeat it one more time, focusing on going lower, and should be up to 195 on Friday.
Bench was at 170, and I finally conquered this weight with great form. I widened my grip by about an inch and cranked them out. By widening the grip I noticed more impact on my chest, which felt great, and it even feels sore (the good sore) right now as I write this. I'm going to repeat this on Friday to make sure I own it, and I'll be up to 175 next week!
Chinups were last. I did 1x9 and 2x7. Not my best numbers, but I've noticed my form is getting much better on these. I used to bring my chin above the bar, but now I'm going about 4 inches higher than that. So I'm sad about the number but happy with the form.
We finished with abs, each of us doing 100 situps. It was hard, and not the best ab workout overall, but it felt good and I was proud of my 100 situps. My abs hurt today!
So that's where I'm at. A few more notes....
Tonight I'll be doing Day 2 of C25K, so wish me luck on that. I'm also going to get a cardio workout in after that, and I'm getting back into cardio on Tuesdays/Thursdays.
Regarding nutrition, I've upped the juices to 2 a day (sometimes 1 on weekends). I'm going to Whole Foods for lunch now where they have awesome juices, and then the morning ones. I'm not noticing a ton of weight loss, but 4 weeks ago I bought a shirt that I literally could not button, and last week I wore that shirt no problem. So there's definitely some weightloss happening.
I've been doing a lot of reading about muscle tone, and I've decided I need to get some sort of explosiveness/endurance workout in using weights, and probably some isolation exercises to compliment my strength training. I have a few options for these. First off, GSP Rushfit has an awesome endurance workout that uses weights, and I might try that either tonight or Thursday. I also might bring back the two P90X weight routines per week, and focus on high reps at low weight. I don't know if this will be too much on top of SS though, but if I have the time (which I will soon) it seems like something good to include. My muscles are getting bigger but not necessarily defined, so this could help. The third option is Body Pump offered at my gym. Again, I'm going to have some free time coming up soon, and a body pump class would work every muscle in the body independently and very fast, which is exactly what I need.
I also want to get more martial arts training in, which will probably take care of my cardio portion. I haven't figured out what that'll be yet, but I want it in there and have enough home DVD's that I could get some serious stuff going.
So that's where I'm at. My legs hurt right now so I'm thinking the explosive training will wait til Thursday, which probably means Rushfit Fighting workout tonight. Or possibly Bas Rutten.
As for 100 pushups, I'll bring those back in a week or two. I just never got to it over the weekend.
That's all I've got. Bring it!
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