I just finished a late night light jog around the neighborhood, to finish the fourteenth day of the thirty day workout challenge I'm currently on. Almost halfway done... or should I make it sixty? ;)
You might wonder why the sudden change from routine today-- Glowing Face Man working out outside the gym?? Of course that's because the OSU gyms are closed for the 4th of July. Here in Columbus, for some reason, fireworks are held on the 3rd, but the gyms are closed on the 4th. Go figure. Not that I'm complaining, the timing is good for me: I can run anywhere where there's oxygen and gravity, whereas it's much harder to make your own bars and plates ;)
Here's what I did over the past three days...
Thursday:
Began by doing some not-light stretching exercises led by Glowing Face Girl.
Then I jumped on the treadmill and ran for 53 minutes (59 counting cooldown).
Total distance: 5.5 miles.
Speed: Started at 3.5mph and gradually sped up to 6.9mph at the end.
Friday:
July third was an upper body day, with a focus on benchpress.
Bench: I'd like to say "115 lbs, 10 reps, 4 sets", but it's not that simple: last set I only managed nine reps. On the ninth rep I felt that I was at my limit; if you're doing bench without a spotter, you should err on the side of caution. Only once have I accidentally tried a rep beyond my limit without a spotter. Unable to get the bar back to the hooks that hold it above my head, I had to grunt for help; embarrassing enough that I no longer try a rep if there's any doubt about making it (unless someone's spotting me).
Next I did "2" pullups. The quotation marks there are because it was one "good" pullup and one "mehhhh" pullup, where my chin reached the bar but I couldn't get it clearly over the bar. I think most people would count that as a pullup, but I inherited strict standards from the guy who got me doing these at all.
Next came dumbbell bench: 40 lbs, 15 reps followed by 40 lbs, 13 reps.
Crunches (with plates): 35 lbs, 32 reps, 3 sets.
Side legs: 26 per leg.
Saturday (4th of July):
With the gym closed, I just did a light jog around the neighborhood, including a bunch of laps at a local elementary school's basketball courts. I only ran about 25 minutes. Without a T-mill, there was no way to measure distance or speed. This can almost be thought of as a "rest day", but I still wanted to do some exercise so as not to break the chain.
Back and Rear Delts
Bryan pointed out in the comments that my routine doesn't have anything that hits the upper back or rear delts. Laregly this is because I'm not all that intense about my lifts, the purpose being to get lots of benefits from what are (relatively speaking) really some very light weights. I have to confess though that this illustrates an area I've always neglected, which is, getting to know more about the body, and about how to plan a really solid workout. The routine I've been recording during the past two weeks was decided in a pretty arbitrary way. In short, I'm not an expert.
There's no major danger in not being an expert, as long as I keep the weights light, but there's no reason not to study and learn more-- in fact, I should've been making that a cornerstone of the challenge. I will do that starting tomorrow, looking up info on the easiest ways to hit the back and rear deltoids.
Diet For The Win
Working out is all about treating one's body with love and respect. It doesn't make sense to love and care for the body at the gym and then eat a terrible diet. As for me, my focus is on spreading my meals out more and eating less at any particular meal. The food I eat is generally pretty healthy, especially when my girlfriend cooks Japanese for me :) But the healthiest food on earth can be a bad diet, if you're gorging on it just one or two meals a day. So I've been working on getting more snacks and eating less at mealtimes. My girlfriend is very helpful here :)
I'm also cutting back on beer, since it really fills me up. The policy I set is: drink beer at parties, not at dinner. Notice I'm only talking about beer, not alcohol in general. There's no such thing as a "winebelly" or a "liquorbelly". Tonight I had some delicious umeshu, Japanese plum wine. I highly recommend it, but good luck finding a bottle outside Japan. What's this? A self-development blogger who isn't writing knee-jerk beat-them-over-the-head screeds against alcohol?? Nope, you're not hallucinating! I even wrote a whole article titled, "If You've Never Drunk Alcohol, Try It".
NEXT: Days 15-17
You might wonder why the sudden change from routine today-- Glowing Face Man working out outside the gym?? Of course that's because the OSU gyms are closed for the 4th of July. Here in Columbus, for some reason, fireworks are held on the 3rd, but the gyms are closed on the 4th. Go figure. Not that I'm complaining, the timing is good for me: I can run anywhere where there's oxygen and gravity, whereas it's much harder to make your own bars and plates ;)
Here's what I did over the past three days...
Thursday:
Began by doing some not-light stretching exercises led by Glowing Face Girl.
Then I jumped on the treadmill and ran for 53 minutes (59 counting cooldown).
Total distance: 5.5 miles.
Speed: Started at 3.5mph and gradually sped up to 6.9mph at the end.
Friday:
July third was an upper body day, with a focus on benchpress.
Bench: I'd like to say "115 lbs, 10 reps, 4 sets", but it's not that simple: last set I only managed nine reps. On the ninth rep I felt that I was at my limit; if you're doing bench without a spotter, you should err on the side of caution. Only once have I accidentally tried a rep beyond my limit without a spotter. Unable to get the bar back to the hooks that hold it above my head, I had to grunt for help; embarrassing enough that I no longer try a rep if there's any doubt about making it (unless someone's spotting me).
Next I did "2" pullups. The quotation marks there are because it was one "good" pullup and one "mehhhh" pullup, where my chin reached the bar but I couldn't get it clearly over the bar. I think most people would count that as a pullup, but I inherited strict standards from the guy who got me doing these at all.
Next came dumbbell bench: 40 lbs, 15 reps followed by 40 lbs, 13 reps.
Crunches (with plates): 35 lbs, 32 reps, 3 sets.
Side legs: 26 per leg.
Saturday (4th of July):
With the gym closed, I just did a light jog around the neighborhood, including a bunch of laps at a local elementary school's basketball courts. I only ran about 25 minutes. Without a T-mill, there was no way to measure distance or speed. This can almost be thought of as a "rest day", but I still wanted to do some exercise so as not to break the chain.
Back and Rear Delts
Bryan pointed out in the comments that my routine doesn't have anything that hits the upper back or rear delts. Laregly this is because I'm not all that intense about my lifts, the purpose being to get lots of benefits from what are (relatively speaking) really some very light weights. I have to confess though that this illustrates an area I've always neglected, which is, getting to know more about the body, and about how to plan a really solid workout. The routine I've been recording during the past two weeks was decided in a pretty arbitrary way. In short, I'm not an expert.There's no major danger in not being an expert, as long as I keep the weights light, but there's no reason not to study and learn more-- in fact, I should've been making that a cornerstone of the challenge. I will do that starting tomorrow, looking up info on the easiest ways to hit the back and rear deltoids.
Diet For The Win
Working out is all about treating one's body with love and respect. It doesn't make sense to love and care for the body at the gym and then eat a terrible diet. As for me, my focus is on spreading my meals out more and eating less at any particular meal. The food I eat is generally pretty healthy, especially when my girlfriend cooks Japanese for me :) But the healthiest food on earth can be a bad diet, if you're gorging on it just one or two meals a day. So I've been working on getting more snacks and eating less at mealtimes. My girlfriend is very helpful here :)
I'm also cutting back on beer, since it really fills me up. The policy I set is: drink beer at parties, not at dinner. Notice I'm only talking about beer, not alcohol in general. There's no such thing as a "winebelly" or a "liquorbelly". Tonight I had some delicious umeshu, Japanese plum wine. I highly recommend it, but good luck finding a bottle outside Japan. What's this? A self-development blogger who isn't writing knee-jerk beat-them-over-the-head screeds against alcohol?? Nope, you're not hallucinating! I even wrote a whole article titled, "If You've Never Drunk Alcohol, Try It".
NEXT: Days 15-17
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2 comments:
Umeshu is amazingly tasty. You can actually find it in the really small mom/pop marketplaces.
What's really good is when you have a fresh orange with it.
Try the military/overhead press it covers a nice wide range of muscles on and around the shoulders although be careful to not jump in weight too fast as its the military press that injured my shoulder (the anterior deltoid part) most likely down to inadequate warm up as I love doing the military press.
Pull ups do hit some of the upper back with them being a compound exercise as long as your doing the pull ups that target your lats (not chin ups) you get your lats, arms and parts of your upper back.
Also bent over rows are great for upper back work.
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