Thursday, January 28, 2010

New Record!

205lbs on the bench.

Whoooooooooooooooooooo!

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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Push Day!

Alright, so:

One problem that I used to encounter around resistance training was that my gym visits weren't consistent enough to maintain a decent split around body parts. I would rotate between chest and back days, almost totally neglecting my arms and legs on a regular basis.

Thanks to Jay, I'm onto a much simpler program that fits into my otherwise busy fitness schedule. "Push" day is as follows:

Bench Press ---> work up to a single max set of 5 reps*
Dips ---> 3 sets x 8-10 reps
Shoulder Press ---> "
Tricep Pushdown ---> "
Single Leg Squat ---> "
Pistol Squat ---> "
Back Extensions ---> 3 sets, each to exhaustion
Supermans ---> 3 sets, each to exhaustion

(Today, just to be sassy, I threw in some weighted calf raises. Why not?)

And just in case any of my 3 blog readers were wondering, my Bench Press 5-rep max is 195lbs on a Smith Machine. Now you know.

[180.4]

Friday, January 15, 2010

Maybe This Year Will Be Better Than The Last...

In related news, I am showing my age by dropping a fairly huge Counting Crows reference in the title.

I did have a particularly long and awful December, which accounts for my going off the grid for a bit. My fitness plans got derailed, and I wasn't able to work out as much as I would have liked.

Thankfully, however, a well-timed stomach flu coincided with Holiday Overeating Season, so I managed to only gain 4 pounds. And since I've been lifting more at the gym (going into 8 weeks of a 'muscle development phase', Jay says) I'm not overly concerned about a tiny backslide at this point.

Gym is PACKED with the New Years Resolution crowd right now. I hope they'll thin out by mid-February ("thin out" has a double-meaning here, I suppose).

Last week was very successful in terms of my training goals. It went a little something like this:

Monday - Jitsu
Tuesday - Gym with Jay
Wednesday - Judo
Thursday - Gym ("Push" day)
Friday - Jitsu
Saturday - Rest day
Sunday - Gym ("Pull" day)

This was ideal, and I'd like to keep it up. Here's hopin'.
(Subsequent posts will detail the push/pull split, but suffice it to say that I'm happy with the concept so far.)

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