Day 519: Pullups are hard (but I’m not quitting)

Day 519

Today was a “pull” day. I had an early morning session where I did snatch pulls, good mornings, horizontal pullups, wide pullups, and corkscrews.  I was able to challenge myself on all the exercises, but was not able to get 4 sets of 10 reps for the wide pullups, especially as the (wide) pullups came toward the end of the session and they came right after another pullup variation.  I’ll have to look up and act on some resources that will help me get this number up.

Day 517: Start of the Holiday Season

Day 517

Here in the Philippines, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so we start our holiday season (of eating) a little bit later than in the US.  For me it began last Friday with our office Christmas lunch, which was immediately followed by a 6-hour long videoke session and then coffee to wind down, finishing just as the early morning light was coming on.  That meant that I made sure to catch up on sleep over the weekend.

The sleep enabled me to get up early today to do push training.  Exercises included barbell hang cleans, drop lunges, incline dumbbell presses, supported overhead dumbbell presses, and planks.

Eat right, train hard, and expect success!

Day 512: Stress busting

Day 512

I originally planned to go to the gym this morning, but though I was able to wake up with my alarm clock, I decided to sleep in and go in the evening instead.  Work has been very stressful for the past three weeks, and it has been starting to have some effect on the speed of my recovery (and my training schedule as well).

After a long day at work, I was about to give up training this evening, but my coworker offered to give me a ride to the gym, enabling me to get there in time and get enough done before the gym closed.  I did mostly push exercises today; there were hang jump shrugs (4X5),  and then 4X10 each of split squats, reverse-grip barbell presses, and barbell push jerks.  I walked out the gym door just a couple of minutes before they closed the doors.  The tiring day at work seemed but a distant memory after my training session!

Day 510: Pulling Back

Day 510

Today was the “pulling” day of my push/pull split.  However, instead of just doing the “pull” part of my previous training session, I did the next set of exercises together with the “power” move at the beginning of the workout.   That means today I did barbell snatch pulls, single-leg back extensions, single-arm cable rows, side-to-side pullups, and plank walkups.  I attempted to do 4 sets of 10 for all the exercises except for the first, which was 4X5.  However, the side-to-side pullups were tough and I was only able to do 10/8/9/7.

Eat right, train hard, and expect success!

Day 508: Switch to push/pull training

Day 508

I’m posting this a day late as last night I had problems with my Internet connection at home.

I did my training in the afternoon, after accompanying my mother to the shops to get some new curtains for our living room in time for the Christmas holidays.  It took us quite a while to find something that looked right for the room without blowing the budget.  Until then I hadn’t realized that a few simply-stitched pieces of cloth can cost so much!

By the time we finished, it was already a bit late.  To save time, I changed my training plan from whole-body to all knee dominant / push exercises, postponing the pull hip dominant / pull exercises to the next session, which I plan to do tomorrow.  Instead of the three sets of ten per exercise, I did four sets of ten in the pull exercises.  My exercise list included barbell hang cleans, front squats, bench presses, push presses, and seated Russian twists.  I tried my best to get to 10 reps with each set of bench presses, but the third and fourth sets were really really tough for me to do without a spotter, so I had to settle for eight.

Eat right, train hard, and expect success!

Day 506: Still aching on a morning training session (one day delayed)

Day 506

My late afternoon/evening training session three days ago seems to have been more strenuous than initially thought.  Even tonight, three days after that session, my hamstrings are still aching, and putting pressure on my legs and buttocks (such as when foam-rolling) still causes me some pain.  Perhaps it was the spate of new exercises I did then that challenged my body in ways it hasn’t experienced before.

I originally planned to do my second session for the week yesterday morning, but my body just didn’t want to wake up that cold early morning and so I decided to postpone by a day.  This morning then before work, I cycled the gym, but not before foam-rolling my (still aching) muscles.  The training session went pretty well, but as it was another full-body one, took a little bit of time to complete.  Thank God for flexible working hours!

Eat right, train hard, and expect success!

Day 503: Lots of new exercises

Day 503

Today was an official holiday in the Philippines, so I had time off work.  I was able to catch up on my sleep over the weekend, as I had a late late Friday night with my coworkers.  After enjoying the weekend with my family, I went to train in the afternoon.  I tried another full-body training session, cutting the sets down to 3 sets instead of 4 as I had done before.  There were a few new exercises in the plan, which included snatch pulls (new), split squats, single-leg back extensions(new), reverse grip bench press (new, bit painful because of my bad left wrist), barbell push jerks (new), side-to-side pullups (new), woodchops, and finally plank walkups (new).  All in all an interesting workout!