Training Log - Up to Sept 3 2009

There was no way I was going to keep my fat levels with the food on offer at home. No way. I ate rice at every meal (small portions, but more than none) to please my mother, big difference from very minimal carbs in Kuantan. Since I no longer needed to buy food, I was eating more of my proteinaceous foods; I no longer needed protein supps, but I probably ate more than I needed. And I was in a supposed to be complete deload week, or at least that's what I planned after my max effort week during exams. And worst of all, my TLS membership has ended a long time ago, so there's no decent gym to do some barbell complexes or other light training sessions. My decision to bring home only one of my two 10 kg dumbbells didn't help.

No way.

So I completely changed my focus this week into a GPP week to focus on work capacity. Every single day if possible, at least until Sunday. No gym? No problem. The local municipal has provided a pretty good gym, which comes equipped with a chinup/pullup bar:

I have the other equipment with me: my own body, and I bought a set of exercise bands for RM100 on Tue night, with the highest resistance. Resistant enough that it could pull my younger brother to slide a bit on the floor while doing band pull-throughs. I also brought home my jump rope by accident, along with a pair of running shoes. The band was certainly money well spent:

So here's what I did...

Monday:

Did a small bodyweight circuit before breaking fast. 3 rounds, 1 min rest (I think) in between circuits.

2 chinups

10 pushups

10 bodyweight squats

5 reverse lunges, alternating each side

Not tiring, but it did lead to some biceps tendon pain in my left arm.

Tuesday:

I tried out an interesting circuit with the bands. 90 sec rest in between circuits. Started with 6 reps each circuit, reducing by one in subsequent sets. 90 seconds was too long, no huffing/puffing. All are with bands. No need for the "gym", so this was done at home.

Deadlifts

Rom. deadlifts

Reverse curls

Front squats

Shoulder presses

Back squats

Good mornings

Wednesday:

Killer day, especially for my upper body. 1 min rest in between circuits. 10 reps each exercise. 5 circuits

Bodyweight squats with overhead reach

Hand walkouts on knees

Single leg deadlifts

Pushups

Jumping jacks

Reverse lunges with overhead reach

Pike pushups

Mountain climbers

Shoulder width grip pullups (did 2, followed by a 10 second hang)

Let's just say that I'm still sore while typing this. The overhead reaching gave no rest to my shoulders. Or maybe I'm just a pussy. Since I was still experiencing biceps tendon pain in my left arm, I decided to swap chinups for pullups. It is a rest week, so do as much good without doing any harm. But I liked this particular circuit, other than the fact that the walking back, although needed to be that way, is boring.

Thursday:

Fellow Wesnoth forum member Thrawn suggested running via Facebook. So my initial plan was to do a circuit of sprints, followed by a walk back, then 100 skips with the jump rope, rest a minute, then repeat for 10 rounds. I'm not sure how far I ran, but I think it's probably between 50-100m (very vague, yes). Since I don't do any running in my training program (I prefer dumbbell circuits or other non-running stuff), I guess it's a good time to just practice running.

I certainly got my heart rate running up to at least 140-150 bpm when I timed it after skipping, so it got the job done. But I started feeling some hamstring ache in my right leg after the 5th round, so I stopped at 5 circuits. The ache is already gone, but I'm not taking any risk in a resting week. I'll try to go for the 10 rounds on Saturday if I don't feel any hamstring aches during the rounds. Anyways, since I have weak hip flexors (from always stretching but never training them), my sprinting form sucks; my knees never come near hip level.

Others:

Since buying the bands, I decided to do a lot of deloading/prehabing exercises with the bands. Here are the stuff I've been doing very regularly (i.e. every day) all with bands unless stated otherwise:

Good mornings - Too easy.

Pull-throughs - Gave more resistance than the GM's, and certainly made my butt fatigue when going for reps. An easy exercise to work my posterior chain, without loading my spine, a very good thing as I was starting to feel some nagging aches in my back. Anyways, no back aches at all since max effort week.

Leg presses - Too easy.

Pull aparts - Did these from overhead, as well as in front of chest position. Worked my shoulder muscles well, especially my lower traps. They're pretty sore at the moment

Sitting, standing rows - Another thing contributing to lower trap soreness.

Face pulls - An another thing making my lower traps sore. The bands are too strong for me to do them with elbows 90 degrees bent, so I pulled them closer to my face. So there's probably not too much rotator cuff work, but adequate traps + posterior delt work

Shoulder presses with shrugs - A bit difficult to stabilize due to the unique nature of bands versus barbells/dumbbells.

Leg curls - Too easy, partly because increasing the resistance by sitting back means pulling my butt off my bed. I was using the bedroom door to hook the band.

Bicep curls - Hell yeah. I don't do any specific biceps work except for my chinups. So this is the first time I did specific biceps work in months, pretty justified by the tendon soreness. The curls, even though not done at a high intensity, would help to bring blood to the area, hence the absence of pain now even though it was still significant yesterday night. Too bad there are no girls to look at the pumping of my arms.

Scapular pushups, normal feet level and with elevated feet - Done without the band. My triceps are still sore from the bodyweight circuits, so it's them that are fatiguing significantly first. No other resistance needed.

Weird stuff - Overhead shrugging the air while showering, shrugs while holding on to the steering wheel, rowing (scapular motion only while holding on to the steering wheel. No reason not to do them.

Foam rolling - Did a lot of that.

I'm thinking of repeating the bodyweight circuit I used on Wednesday tomorrow, but if anyone else has an idea on what to do, I'm willing to consider it.