Yin and yang… working the opposite muscles

I work a particular part of my body at once. But to ensure balance in strength development, I always start with the “opposite group” prior to the true workout. As the biceps is opposed to the triceps, pecs to upper back, abs to lower back, I make sure that I train both accordingly.

So when I’m doing upper back training, I’ll always do pecs-set too. So one set of 20 pushups to warm my body up for a full upper back workout.  One set of 30 crunches, before I do my 3×12 deadlifts and 3×12, etc. And later in the week, it’ll be vice versa.

This means that I’ll train a bodypart extensively only once a week, albleit with a small “maintenance” set..

This is my usual schedule

Sunday: main course: upper back, casualty: pecs.

Monday:   biceps, casualty: triceps. Abs-lower back

Wednesday:  pecs, minor: upper back. Shoulders-obliques

Thursday: lower back-abs

Friday:  legs, calves

Saturday: rest.

Sunday: one superset of squats, pushups, pullups and crunches

Some positive news, fitting clothes

I noticed I’ve mainly logged my set backs and obstacles until now. I should write the positive things too.

I’ve thrown away two pants since I’ve started with this training. It was one pair of 44″-dockers pleated jeans, which used to be the only one I could wear for a whole day of office work without getting uncomfortable. Another one is a 42″ pleated pants. This one I dared to wear because it has 2 buttons. So even if one pop outs, I still have another one (Luckily I never had to use this plan).

Before I started this weightloss plan, I wanted to buy another 44″ pair. Because the old ones were getting worn out. Lucky for me, (or embarrassing enough), the girl at the dockers’ store said (with a surprised snug) that she’d had to order those sizes… I did not take this offer, and am glad I don’t need to.

Both became too big and would fall off when I walk. They’ve served me well, but I’ve ripped the 42″ one in two. To remind me that I can never go back. The 44″, I’ve hidden it, so I can see how far I’ve gone, once I’ve reached my goal.

I’ve re-ordered my closet too. There are a dozens of (never worn) jeans and pants in sizes ranging from 42″ (several models) to 36″. I’ve bought them during sales with the idea of “I’ll be able to fit into them when I’ve lost weight”. Never happened.

Now, they’ll actually be a good indicator for my progress. I’m now able to fit into 2 42″-normal fit dockers jeans (which are starting to get a tad too big already )

The same for my shirts. I have one very tight shirt I could not button down. Now I can button down 4 buttons. 3 left before it’s completely buttoned.

Pushups, way heavier than bench press.

I’ve been doing butterflies and presses with dumbells of 15kg on the right and 18kg on the left (I’m a rightie, so I need to harrass my left side more for balance). One arm at a time to strengthen my core in the process.

Although butterflies and presses with dumbells actually develops more balance and control, I just found out that this is much lighter than doing actual push ups. Today, it was my resting day, but I wanted to do one set of compound exercises to “make it a day”. So I did 1 set of squats, good mornings, crunches and… pushups.  However, I actually had a lot of trouble doing the 12 reps of push ups.

My scale told me why. When I’m doing pushups, I’m actually pushing a weight of 86kg. That’s more than 40kg per side, and therefor at least 2 times the weight I’ve been using.

Because of this, I’m going to integrate that session of compound excercises into my lifestyle. Each morning I’ll just do the single set of squats, good mornings, crunches and push ups.  Starting with 12 now and increasing with 2 every week.

Tabata training 2

I’ve done another session of tabata training, even though I’m not sure if it’s true tabata. I’m less dead than yesterday, so I probably couldn’t bring out 120% of power during the 20 seconds of all-out cardio. And I was only able to do 16-18 seconds instead of the full 20.

Nevertheless, it was a very intense interval training.
After resting for awhile, I was able to do another 8 minutes of normal cardio, with 10-10 interval training in between. I hope that’s enough to get rid of today’s feasting….

Lost 2kg in one day, or gained 4kg?

I’m fed up with my old scale. I weigh myself 5 times and gets 5 different results. According to it, I’ve lost 3-5kg in a day… absolutely impossible of course. Even with the tabata protocol I did last night.

I’ve went out and bought a very expensive tefal bodysignal scale today.

What a pleasure to use. It’s much more accurate (as in, I now know how much my boxershort weigh) and the weight it tells is stable too, even after 10 tries.

But according to it, I’m 137.5kg now (at night). Of course, I’ve put on a bit of weight, because today I’ve ate quite a feast due to festivities. According to my schedule (with my old scale) I should be 136kg at the end of this week, and I believe I can still do that.

Tabata training, aka die or improve

This was what I was training for last month, to be able to do high intensity interval training (hiit-training).

I “chose” one of the hiit-variants, tabata-training. The good thing, you only needs 4 minutes a day to get better results than 60 minutes of cardio. The bad, it’ll probably kill you in 2 minutes.

The training is like this: you go all out for 20 seconds. Then rest, completely rest for 10 seconds. Then you do 20 seconds of full power again. Until you’ve done 8 sets, totalling 4 minutes. And after a week or so, not only will your cardio-performance will improve (giving you larger lung capacity) as well as your anaerobic performance (good for catching the bus)

Nice theory, but in practice, after one month of training and able to do 60 minutes of cardio and 20 minutes of weight training, I only manage to do 3 real sets of “all out”. The rest of the 5 sets, I could only cheat out by lowering the intensity or doing 10-15 all out.

Let’s see how I’ll improve this month.

new month, new stage

start of a new month, so i’m going into another training stage: cardioloaded. I’ve been doing 45 minutes to 1 hour cardio sessions on the elliptical. Using this little trick, I’m able to keep it up. After an hour the soles of my feet usually starts to hurt, so I have to stop though…

First month over. Time to measure the result

OK. The first month of the year is over. As said, I’ll log my result at the end of each month. So here it is..

Of course, I’ve been keeping an eye on the scale quite frequently. Just out of curiosity. But it’s the monthly results that it’s important.

Here are the numbers

Sick

Got the flue for a week, and only recovering now… haven’t done any workout for a week…

Still managed to keep on the healthy eating though.

Maybe a restday in between workouts would be good

Started working yesterday and found that after work, it’s really hard to find energy to workout.

I still managed to do a 9-minutes eleptical training, but it wasn’t really a good workout IMO. I was slow and didn’t have enough energy.

Today, I went home one hour earlier, so I can have enough time to rest. And even though it was hard to start my workout, I still did it. Weights and cardio.

I think it might be a good idea to schedule in restdays when it’s a workweek. I noticed that last sunday, I was able to workout harder and better because I rested on saturday.

I’ll make this my schedule and see if it goes well:

1.   Monday: rest
2. Tuesday:  cardio + weighttraining
3. Wednesday:  slow cardio. Just walk on the crosstrainer while watching tv at very low rate
4. Thursday: cardio + weights
5. Friday: brisk cardio
6. Saturday: rest
7. Sunday: cardio + weights.