Lots and lots of updates

Wow, it's been a few days since I last checked in, and I have a lot of updates. So, let's get going.

First, I wrapped up Week 3 very well. Thursday was Hammer Build Up, which overall is a pretty good workout. I don't like that everything is timed, not for reps, but there isn't a body part that goes untouched. That's awesome, and Sagi totally knows how to lead a brutal workout.

Friday was a weird day. Took the day off work to help my brother in law move. The morning got away from me and I didn't get my workout in. That's ok. Moving got me a little cardio and about 90% of my step goal. In the afternoon I got home, had some time available before dinner with the rest of the in laws, so I hit play on Friday Fight Rd. 1, and I had an awesome run on this DVD! Now, the first half I was flying, so the second half I was dying, but overall I still did great. Of course my wife chose the second half to come see me working out, when I was dead tired, so what I accomplished didn't look nearly as impressive as I'd have liked. Whenever she enters the room I want to blow her mind with my new found Insanity skills, and this workout just wasn't having it.

Before I go further, let's talk weight. I last clocked in at 190.8 on Wednesday, with a goal of 190.0 on Friday. On Thursday, I clocked in at 190.6, so good, on my way. Sadly, I clocked in on Friday at 191.0 again, and actually had the same weigh in on Saturday. So ya, no bueno, goal officially missed. Still working hard for it, but damn, I am seriously stuck in these low 190s.

So, let's talk some of the major updates, because they are major (at least in my fitness world they are). This is going to be long, so grab some popcorn or something.

K, first, I've been trying to learn as much as possible about diet/fitness, with emphasis on bodybuilding. That's where my interests lie. Everything I know and have read in the past, it's all about body splits. Chest day, Back day, Chest/Tri Day, etc. Then I'm seeing things like Push/Pull days, or Upper/Lower days. Two problems with all of this:

1) My schedule is weird. A lot of these require about an hour to an hour and a half per day in the gym, and I just don't have that time. I can devote more time on weekends, but weekdays its 30 minutes, period. This pretty much leaves me to choose which body parts get ignored during the week.

2) I'm committed to using the DVDs. I like workout DVDs a lot. They keep me motivated, they keep me on pace, and they're really the best fitness solution I personally have found. And unfortunately, none of the DVDs I own (and I own several) fit into the molds above.

Noting especially on No. 2, my favorite DVD set is Body Beast. If I want to lift weights, and come summer time and my next program I REALLY want to lift weights, Body Beast is the program I want to use. Sagi is super motivating, the pace is absolutely perfect, and the structure of the exercises is so awesome. Drop Sets, Force Sets, Progressive Sets, Giant Sets, Super Sets....no other program comes close, and I have definitely seen improvement in my body every time I've used his program.

So, we'll get back to all that info in a moment, because it's relevant. One of the areas of expertise I stumbled upon is the importance of full body workouts for bodybuilding. "But that's not a body split" I thought. But for kicks I looked into it more. A few hundred articles and several podcasts and YouTube videos later, I learned some interesting things. Of note, it doesn't take that much to get a muscle to grow. Yes, you've gotta kill that muscle, but you can do this in only a few sets, not a 30 minute workout per muscle. Then, you also need actual recovery days. Not "my chest is going to recover today so I'm going to work on my back" days. Apparently this is a fairly new, as in the last 40 years, mentality. Overall, it used to be kill the whole body, then take a day off. You had to recover. Then steroids came about, and a lot of them helped people recover faster. Hence, they could absolutely demolish just chest one day, not worry about anything else, and be fine the next day. Thus, splits were born. Now, people aren't on steroids (at least I'm not, and I have no intention of doing them) but body splits are still around.

This mentality got me to develop my current program, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. I lift full body, three days per week. And overall, I do love it. But, and there is a but, I don't actually like about half of the actual DVDs I'm doing. An example: did you see the beginning of this thing? I mentioned on Thursday I hit whole body, but every exercise was for time. No, no, just no. Not interested in time, I'm interested in reps. Progressive sets, drop sets, etc. That's what I want.

So I've been looking into solutions to this for my next program, and ultimately I've stumbled on a pretty crazy solution: stack DVDs. I'm going to lift heavy Saturdays and Mondays, the two days I can devote about 2 hours, and the plan has been to knock out 3 DVDs each of those days, at least one of which is going to be a Body Beast DVD. Of course, Body Beast has no full bodies (that's not true, but the two that are out there I just don't dig as much as the rest of the program), so I'm planning one Body Beast DVD, then fill in the rest of the body with P90X3 and Hammer & Chisel.

Planning for this has been exhausting, and I've never found a roadmap I like. Sigh. Plus those are going to be seriously long days, and I seriously am concerned the P90X3 stuff isn't going to hit the itch the way I want it to. And I'm worried about killing certain muscle groups by doing WAY too much on those days then trying to struggle through a P90X3 workout just to hit the rest. Plus, I've taken abs completely out (there just isn't time) and I'm trying to fit them into the HIIT days. Even though abs are a muscle and should be treated like the other muscles.

This is where the big change stuff is coming in, so if you've been skimming, this is the section you're looking for. So, Sagi is my favorite trainer and I want to use his workouts, but he has no actual DVD that fits my goals. Pondering on this, it finally hit me....

Make my own DVDs!

Yup, it's crazy, but it also made sense. I thought about writing out the workouts I wanted, but I've tried that, I won't follow it. I need to follow a video of my workout to keep the pace.

So, I spent a chunk of time on Saturday getting started. I cataloged every exercise in the Body Beast DVDs that I liked, writing out the segment's length, which muscles it hits, whether it's a drop set/progressive set/super set/etc., which DVD it's on, etc.

Then, I went and mapped out a few full body workouts. I copy/pasted my data into Excel so I could always know if I hit each muscle enough times (usually 3x per workout was my goal) and stay under a total workout time of an hour and a half.

Side note to discuss Saturday

Saturday was the actual official final move for the brother in law. I didn't get a real workout in, but I did move a shit ton of boxes up a shit ton of stairs, so I'm good. Sad note, I ate three slices of pizza. I cheated on my diet, but I also say carbs should help me reset my fat loss, so we'll see if that happens. Anyways.....

Back to my crazy rant about making my own DVDs

Sunday I was home with the baby while the wife helped her brother unpack, and the baby fell asleep. Well, I had some time to kill and hadn't had my workout yet, so I started to play around with video editing. I found I could actually build my workouts fairly easy in PowerPoint (of all programs) and set up one of the four total body workouts I'd written out. I was supposed to do Max Hammer Strength and Incinerator (see, the multi DVD mentality is already present), but I figured if this works, it'll hit all those muscles more efficiently anyways. And, if this is my future program, I should probably have everything tested.

So I set the whole thing up, and I hit play....


....and proceeded to have one of the most amazing lifting workouts of my life! Every body part got hit about three times, usually with a drop set or progressive set (I'm saving giant sets for later), and honestly the flow was just fine. It was all Sagi, and always two guys in the back, always on the same set, and the fact that they were from different DVDs never even seemed weird. It all just flowed nicely. I topped it off with Ab Ripper X to hit the abs, and boom, 90 minutes (88 actually) later and I felt awesome!

This is, without a doubt, how I'm building my summer program!

So, this is where the major changes really take a hold

I have to build out the rest of my workouts and test them all. Since I'm loving my schedule but not my current DVDs (not all of them anyways) I'm from here on out planning to build/test my next program lifting DVDs rather than doing the workouts I have programmed. This is just for the next five weeks, and only for the lifting days. The Max:30 days will stay the same.

Lots and lots of more info to come on this over the next month, but ya, I'm very excited. Total body 3x per week plus HIIT the other days, yup, I feel good!

Ok, so back to the workout stuff. This morning was Cardio Challenge. Woke up a little groggy and had some work stuff clog up my head, but I finally hit play at a super late 6:30am this morning. My workout was actually pretty great. Not my best, but I pushed and pushed and was soaked. I'll give it an A.

Now the bad news. I stepped on the scale. I haven't seen the weight since 191.0 on Saturday, and even though I've done some good workouts and overall kept it healthy, those pizza slices on Saturday are still haunting me. And unfortunately, I clocked in at 193.0.

Yup, super not happy about that. So, same goal as last week, 190.0 by Friday. I really really want to see those 180s. On the plus side, I'm wearing pants today that didn't fit even a month ago when I finished Max:30 for the second time, so even if the scale isn't moving, something's happening to me bodywise. Progress, right?

Ok, this rant has gone on long enough. Gotta build a short (30-40 min.) total body workout for tomorrow. It's already mapped out, just needs to be programmed into PowerPoint tonight so I can test it tomorrow. More info to come, so stay tuned!

Bring it!