While I'm ashamed to admit it, I've been neglecting my body for the past few months. I have lots of excuses I can make: the Spring quarter was so busy, my girlfriend took up so much time, yadda yadda yadda, but really there's no excuse to neglect the body. Training the body does so much more than just make a person stronger, healthier, and more attractive. It makes one think clearer, it makes one feel better, and it makes every aspect of life more effective. Me in particular, I have even less excuse to put off hitting the gym, because I happen to love a good exercise session. Sometimes, especially after a weightlifting session, I'll literally get a surge of euphoria as my body is flooded with endorphins. It's like I'm walking on a cloud.
Because I was neglecting the gym, my body was starting to soften. Even if not for myself, I owe it to my girlfriend to turn myself back into the lean mean loving machine I was a few months ago. Therefore, today I kicked off day 1 of a 30 Day Workout challenge. The challenge is to go thirty whole days, working out every day. I did this once before, and I wrote a summary in the article, 30 Day Workout-A-Day Challenge Complete! This time, I'm going to go much further, and publish a day-by-day log of the entire experience. I had great success with this model when I did my "French In Thirty Days" challenge (even though I didn't learn as much French as I was hoping).
My basic get fit routine will go as follows, assuming that everything goes according to plan. Each entry on the calendar, I'll alternate between running and weightlifting. On the weightlifting days, I'll alternate between upper body and lower body. Today I did upper body fitness, which consisted mostly of benchpress. On both upper and lower body days, I'll also do crunches and side legs.
A big difference between this challenge and the previous run is that this time, I have a girlfriend, and she'll be accompanying me frequently, if not every day. That makes things a lot more interesting logistically since I'm planning for two people instead of just one. Good, I'll be training leadership skills as well as pumping iron ;)
Here at Ohio State University, the gyms are very impressive, but they cost $80 per quarter. Normally that's a mandatory fee in your tuition, whether you use the facility or not, but this Summer I'm not taking any classes. That means today I went and paid the fee to gain access. This is kind of a good thing. By investing money, I'm psychologically setting myself up so I won't let myself neglect the project. Even if the fee were $800, it would be worth it just for that extra monetary motivation.
Unlike the last time I did this gymnasium bootcamp, this time I'll be writing about it day by day, which further reinforces my resolve and forces me to stay true to the goal. It's one thing to slack off when noone's watching, it's a whole other thing entirely to slack off when the entire internet is watching. And as an added bonus, I'll post daily pictures so readers can see how my physique evolves.
Yet another change I'm going to be implementing is, I'm going to put more attention into proper stretching, warming up, and cooling down. During the previous adventure, I virtually ignored these, but I want to be more careful this time.
As for today, here's what I did...
Bench Press: 100 Lbs, 10 reps, 5 sets.
Dumbbell Bench: 35 Lbs per hand, 10 reps, 1 set.
Cybex Eagle Chest Press: 50 Lbs weight, 15 reps, 3 sets.
Biceps Curl Machine: 25 Lbs, 15 reps; 40 Lbs, 5 reps.
Crunches (while holding plates): 30 Lbs, 30 reps, 3 sets.
Side Legs: 25 per leg, alternating sides.
Of course, these weights are pretty laughable. I'm not a big huge dude. The awesome thing about pumping iron is that it doesn't matter how strong you are, you still get all the benefits. As long as you're progressively raising the weight and pushing your limit, you'll get the sweet endorphin rush, the increased concentration, the improved physique, the extra energy, and a thousand other benefits.
Since this challenge is kicking off on Father's Day, I'll officially dedicate it to my father. When I went through a very brief bodybuilding phase as a little kid, he helped me build some homemade exercise equipment out of milk cartons!
NEXT: Day 2
FURTHER READING
Boot Camp
Bench Press To Exhaustion
Running On The Treadmill
Because I was neglecting the gym, my body was starting to soften. Even if not for myself, I owe it to my girlfriend to turn myself back into the lean mean loving machine I was a few months ago. Therefore, today I kicked off day 1 of a 30 Day Workout challenge. The challenge is to go thirty whole days, working out every day. I did this once before, and I wrote a summary in the article, 30 Day Workout-A-Day Challenge Complete! This time, I'm going to go much further, and publish a day-by-day log of the entire experience. I had great success with this model when I did my "French In Thirty Days" challenge (even though I didn't learn as much French as I was hoping).
My basic get fit routine will go as follows, assuming that everything goes according to plan. Each entry on the calendar, I'll alternate between running and weightlifting. On the weightlifting days, I'll alternate between upper body and lower body. Today I did upper body fitness, which consisted mostly of benchpress. On both upper and lower body days, I'll also do crunches and side legs.
A big difference between this challenge and the previous run is that this time, I have a girlfriend, and she'll be accompanying me frequently, if not every day. That makes things a lot more interesting logistically since I'm planning for two people instead of just one. Good, I'll be training leadership skills as well as pumping iron ;)
Here at Ohio State University, the gyms are very impressive, but they cost $80 per quarter. Normally that's a mandatory fee in your tuition, whether you use the facility or not, but this Summer I'm not taking any classes. That means today I went and paid the fee to gain access. This is kind of a good thing. By investing money, I'm psychologically setting myself up so I won't let myself neglect the project. Even if the fee were $800, it would be worth it just for that extra monetary motivation.
Unlike the last time I did this gymnasium bootcamp, this time I'll be writing about it day by day, which further reinforces my resolve and forces me to stay true to the goal. It's one thing to slack off when noone's watching, it's a whole other thing entirely to slack off when the entire internet is watching. And as an added bonus, I'll post daily pictures so readers can see how my physique evolves.
Yet another change I'm going to be implementing is, I'm going to put more attention into proper stretching, warming up, and cooling down. During the previous adventure, I virtually ignored these, but I want to be more careful this time.
As for today, here's what I did...
Bench Press: 100 Lbs, 10 reps, 5 sets.
Dumbbell Bench: 35 Lbs per hand, 10 reps, 1 set.
Cybex Eagle Chest Press: 50 Lbs weight, 15 reps, 3 sets.
Biceps Curl Machine: 25 Lbs, 15 reps; 40 Lbs, 5 reps.
Crunches (while holding plates): 30 Lbs, 30 reps, 3 sets.
Side Legs: 25 per leg, alternating sides.
Of course, these weights are pretty laughable. I'm not a big huge dude. The awesome thing about pumping iron is that it doesn't matter how strong you are, you still get all the benefits. As long as you're progressively raising the weight and pushing your limit, you'll get the sweet endorphin rush, the increased concentration, the improved physique, the extra energy, and a thousand other benefits.
Since this challenge is kicking off on Father's Day, I'll officially dedicate it to my father. When I went through a very brief bodybuilding phase as a little kid, he helped me build some homemade exercise equipment out of milk cartons!
NEXT: Day 2
FURTHER READING
Boot Camp
Bench Press To Exhaustion
Running On The Treadmill
Posts
2 comments:
Sounds like its gonna be fun, also been working out now for a few months 3 weight sessions a week mostly trying to gain weight and muscle (so not much cardio) as I've always been skinny and found it hard to gain weight but have already gained almost a stone of muscle not fat.
It was actually your original article that was one of the things that gave me that push to try out weight lifting and keeping fit/healthy in general and now I love it, feel like I have much more energy and in general a better whole body well being.
Look forward to seeing your updates.
The part at the end about your dad building you homemade gym equipment out of milk cartons made me chuckle!
DarkMatter81
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