I have three new least favourite exercises.
1. Rowing.
2. Cycling.
3. Calf raises.
Yesterday I completed 20 minutes of HIIT cycling, then 20 minutes of skipping and finally 20 minutes of HIIT rowing. The rowing and cycling nearly killed me. How people do this for hours on end I've no idea. Then I did my boxing class, which was good, taking me upto a good 90 minutes of cardio.
Today I did 3 sets of 20:
1 set 14kg DB bench press, 2 sets with 12kg DBs
incline bench press 10kg DBs
rope pushdowns (instead of tricep pushdowns - my shoulders hurt too much to do that effectively) with 40.8kg
1 set 6kg concentration curls with right arm, got to 15 reps on my left and failed. So dropped down to 4kg and did the rest with that, on a count of 4 on the lift, which was time consuming
23kg lat pulldown, on a count of 4 on the way down
2 sets of 10kg upright rows, then my wrists stopped playing along so I switched to shoulder presses with the 10kg, I did two sets of 10. I don't think shoulder presses work the same muscles as upright rows but at least I did something
30/30/30 bicycle crunches
20/20/20 decline sit ups, on a count of 4 on the way up
I didn't do the hanging leg raises because of my loose shoulders so I did leg lifts on my back instead, 20/20/20
I did a weigh in today, and believe me when I say I am not happy. I've been working my backside off for a month now, only to find I have actually put a pound on so I'm 11 stone, 1 lb. I know what you'll be thinking. It's muscle, right? Wrong. I did a fat percentage check, and that's gone up from my first weigh in as well. It was 22.something %, but now it's 23%, 16.2kg of fat. So, all of my good feeling and positivity must have just been pure placebo, because there has been absolutely no improvement in my stats. As I said, I am not happy. All the fitness experts say that a good physique comes from 40% what you do in the gym and 60% what you do in the kitchen. I'm starting to understand this much more now. I'm not being naive; I'm not suggesting that after only 4 weeks of training hard I should have a rippling six pack and veins popping out of my biceps. But I have actually been training relatively hard for nearly 2 years now, and I am nowhere near the physique that I really want. I try and watch what I eat, and I have recently made some modifications but it seems I'm going to have to get really specific. I asked a few of the personal trainers in Klick, Steve and Terry, who suggested I replace 180 calories worth of 'fatty' food for 180 calories worth of carbs, preferably one to two hours before training. Apparently my body will metabolize those carbs and burn them without eating away at my muscle, thus resulting in a loss of body fat percentage - in theory. So maybe I'll give that a go, although it is difficult to work all this around a full time job and only being able to train once a day.
Now I must end this entry, I have a date with Ed Norton circa American History X. Yes, he has a swastika on his chest. But my, what a fine chest that is.
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