Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Here's a couple weeks worth of posts:

I keep forgetting to update this thing. I log everything at JP Fitness so here's a couple weeks worth of posts. This is just copied/pasted, so no editing or spelling correction, plus it starts in reverse order:

10/8
Final week of Break-Ins

Break-In A:

Superset:
Front squats 65x15; 95x12 (my wrists hurt, i was holding the bar like a clean, but it hurt, i'll have to find a different grip)
static lunges: 25s x 15; 10x 15 (went down because i knew i wouldn't get close to 15 on the second set)

Superset:
one-arm 2pt. db rows: 40x15x2
pushups: 30; 25

Cable crunches: 150x25; 150x20

all numbers went up. not as tired, so that's good. definitely too much food this weekend, 5 cheat meals instead of 4. it's hard watching the patriots and red sox at 99 without eating gold fever wings (what can i say, i rationalize the protein). must be better this week. i'll try some intervals or bodyweight circuits (i found one of ballantyne's) tomorrow or wednesday. definitely elliptical intervals next saturday, too. this week will be good because i have much less to do now that my graduate portfolio is done. i'm just job-searching and playing madden the rest of my days. anyway, felt good today.

10/12
final Break-In B:

Superset:
-Deadlifts: 205x15; 245x12
-step-ups: 35x12x2

Superset:
-Close-grip lat pulldowns: 130x11; 130x9
-Single arm standing dumbbell press (neutral grip): 40x15x2

everything goes up again. i guess i get next week off from lifting, but i'll do intervals and some abs on my regular days


i can't wait till i'm done with these 15-rep sets. i haven't looked at the Fat Loss I workouts so I don't know what the rep ranges are on that. some of these i could probably get more reps but the burn sucks. doing step-ups is the worst because they take forever with each leg at that rep range. heavy sets were always my favorite in the old days.

10/14
Abs and intervals today.

Tri-sets of planks/side planks: 3x30s

Supersets of reverse crunches and med. ball throws on bench 2x6 of each

5-min treadmill walk
10-min 30s/60s elliptical intervals
5-min treadmill walk cool down

tired.

eating Protein Pumpkin Pudding recipe from Mike Roussell, getting ready for the Pats to destroy the Cowboys today. It's good, I guess. I've never so much as eaten pumpkin pie but this is okay.

10/15

5m treadmill warm-up
10m 60/30 elliptical intervals
5m treadmill cool-down

Fat Loss starts next week, figure I might as well get a head start.


10/18
off-week workout 2:

abs superset:
reverse crunches 2x10; med. ball throws from decline bench 2x8

planks/side planks 30s x 2

-5-minute treadmill warmup
-10-minute stationary bike intervals (i hate the bike, the ellipticals were full)
-5-minute treadmill cooldown

i've had better interval workouts. but i was 213 this morning, down 4 pounds since i started NROL last month. i expect that to accelerate during the next several weeks of Fat Loss I. My diet has improved, especially in the last few days. I'm cutting out more carbs after reading about Adam's Diet and a little of the TNT Diet book and even in the last couple days i've noticed a difference. I think I've got a good pre-and-post workout nutrition thing set up with whey and gatorade, so we'll see how that goes. Going to have cheat meal #1 tonight.

10/22

Today began Fat Loss II. Since I'm on the 2-day-a-week plan, I guess I skip Fat Loss I. I don't know how it went, it didn't feel great. I felt that it wasn't as hard as the Break-In workouts, though I rested a little bit longer than 60 seconds. I felt I had a lot of trouble with some of the lifts, especially the push press and the supine hamstring curls. I definitely need to practice those more. The push press wasn't bad but with the little toe raise at the end my timing was off. My hamstrings did feel worked after doing the sets of curls on the ball, but I felt like I was moving nothing. I'm not going to do the Russian Twists on the ball yet, those were too awkward. I did them on the lower back extension chair. I sit in it backwards with a 25 and do the movement. That move on the ball will also take some practice. The cable machines are as far away as possible from the squat rack, so I substituted wide grip bent-over barbell rows. Here are the numbers:

Superset:
-front squat: 95x15; 95x12; 105x10
-wide grip bb rows: 95x15 (easy); 115x15 (easy); 120x15 (pretty much easy)

Superset:
-supine hamstring curls: bwx15x2; bwx25 (felt like i was moving nothing, yet they felt swelled up after the sets, so who knows. i think the ball was too big.)
-push press: 65x15 (easy); 85x12x2 (again, not great form. will take some practice)

Superset:
-dynamic lunge: 25x12x2; bw to failure
-russian twist: bwx15; 25x10; 25x9

Since the workout itself wasn't great, I followed it up with intervals on the elliptical for 10 minutes. I have jelly legs. Of course, I get home, check my blogs and I see a Ballantyne article about how ellipticals suck. Yea, well, whatever. I'm using it for now.

Friday is Workout B. It will take a couple weeks to get used to these lifts, but I'm still sweating and pretty tired so all in all an adequate workout.

Diet has been very good. Only 3 cheat meals last week (though they were AWESOME, my fiance made fillet mignon with blue cheese sauce and apple pie) I like the gatorade/whey pre and post workout shakes. Pretty much my only sugary carbs for the day.

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that's it for the past couple of weeks.

I weighed 214 this morning 10/23. So, down 3 pounds since I started this program, 16 since the start of summer. I think it's more than 3 pounds of fat, though, because I'm taking creatine and lifting, so there's going to be some water retention and muscle gain which would account for the scale numbers not moving where I'd like them to be. I'd like to be 212 by the time I get home Friday. I feel that my clothes are fitting better (my 36W jeans are really loose, haven't tried the ol' 34s yet) and I think my face looks thinner. Going low-carb this past week has been kind of hard, I start dragging around mid-afternoon, but I'm not that tempted. I read that it takes time for your body to really burn fat for energy instead of carbs, so this is expected. I feel very dedicated to this program right now and I think it's only going to get better as I keep reducing the startchy carbs. Thank god for coffee and green tea. I immediately feel my blood sugar spike after I have a PWO shake with gatorade/whey, but I get that's the idea. Something about nutrient timing or something, I don't know I'm not a fucking biochemist...Do "biochemists" exist or did I just invent that profession? It doesn't sound right. Anyway, I'll update this again Friday.

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