2012-07-16

Week 5: A Little Help From My Friends

Last week did not exactly go according to plan. While I had every intention to perform a week of body-building exercises, life caught up with me a little bit, and it came to pass that I did not quite have the time.

The problem here was not that I didn't work out at all - I did. The problem was that my workouts have gradually reconfigured themselves to being once a day, rather than twice a day. The reasons for this are relatively organic. I joined a gym, which means I reacquired access to a wide array of high-quality strength training devices. This is good. The gym, however, is conveniently located next to my office, which means I am very inclined to hit the gym immediately after work.

These combined facts have provided me great incentive to do my strength training in the afternoons. This would suggest that I wake up early for cardio, but as we have seen recently, that doesn't ever quite pan out for me. The solution that developed was thus: both strength and cardio training in the afternoon and a half-hour extra sleep in the morning.

Having said all that, I successfully completed my cardio training from last week, and replaced the rigorous and comprehensive strength training with a sort of hybrid of last week's arms exercises and my "matrix" workout.

This afternoon, I have an appointment for a fitness assessment. I am going to postpone developing this week's workout plan until I have a better idea of what the assessor will say. But, still, I shouldn't leave you hanging. Here is my anticipated week 5 of training:

Monday:
  • Strength assessment (max all muscle groups?)
  • Cardio assessment (work out to VO2-max?)
Tues, Thurs:
  • No strength training (rest)
  • Long and easy cardio: 45min run
Wed, Fri:
  • Arm weight circuit (triceps, biceps, back, shoulders)
  • Ab circuit (4x50 mixed crunches)
  • 30-40 minute cardio: fartlek, if possible.
Saturday, Sunday:
  • No strength training (rest)
  • No cardio (rest)
As you can see, it's a bit of an easier week. I feel that I need one more week to suss-out how my body is feeling and to figure out the right balance of strength-versus-cardio. Once it's over, I will have a better idea of how to structure my long-term plan.

The specifics of that plan will unfortunately have to wait for one more week. I want to figure out the feasibility of training for the kinds of things I'd like to accomplish in the near future. How exactly I go about that will depend on all the things I plan to figure out this week. More on that, I suppose, next week.

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