HealthyFitGuy.com

Well, today’s workout was fairly uneventful.  My triceps feel like jello, but that’s about it.  Nothing else much to say about it.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 32 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Tricep Curls - 20lbs/side - To Failure

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Veggie Sandwich on Whole Wheat Bread - Cucumbers, Sprouts, Lettuce, Tomato
Small Greek Salad

Dinner:
Large Greek Salad
Spinach Pie

Snacks:
Banana
Half a Cantaloupe
Grapefruit

Today’s workout was really good. I ran 2.01 miles on the treadmill in about 32 minutes or so. I normally only do 30 minutes of cardio, but I was on the treadmill and I was thinking about something and I lost track of time and just kept going past the 30 minute mark. I’m not going to complain. It’s getting really easy to run on the treadmill now, which makes it more enjoyable.

For strength training I’m following my new workout plan I started yesterday. Today it was time to work on the biceps. Holy smokes. By the time I was done, I felt like I ran a marathon with my biceps.

Here’s what I did. I lowered the weight down to 20 lbs and used my Bowflex to do bicep curls. I did slow and steady curls going up and down really slowly, which really gets them burning. At a certain point they really started to burn with pain. That’s the whole point of this type of workout, to really focus on the single muscle you’re working out and to go past the pain to bring the muscle to near-failure. That’s what stimulates it’s growth. This is done with a light weight, not a super heavy weight. You just keep going up and down as normal, except really really slowly.

Once the burn was really unbearable, I kept going for a little bit longer and then it kind of just faded into the background. It’s like the pain started to go away, but I couldn’t lift the weight anymore at that slow speed. So I stopped for about 30 seconds and just wiggled my arms to let the blood circulate through the muscles. I waited another 30 seconds to let the muscles just rest a bit and then went and did probably about 20-30 really rapid bicep curls feeling the burn getting really intense. When I didn’t feel like I could do any more, I pushed myself to do 10 more.

At the end, it really felt like my biceps ran a marathon. Here’s the weird thing. After a few minutes they felt energized. Very strange. I bet tomorrow they’re going to be as sore as my pecs are today.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 32 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Bicep Curls - 20lbs/side - To Failure

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:

Salad - Greens, carrots, avacado, grape tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, a bit of dressing.

Dinner:
Salad - Greens, carrots, avacado, grape tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, a bit of dressing.
Bowl of Organic Tomato Soup

Snacks:
2 Bananas
Organic Apple
Half a Cantaloupe

Today I did something a bit different for my workout routine.

Firstly, I pushed myself a bit harder on the treadmill and ran 2.01 miles in the 30minutes on there, instead of the usual 1.75 miles I normally run.

Secondly, I wanted to change up my strength training up a bit. Instead of doing bench press, bicep curls and triceps curls on the same day, I decided to try a slightly different muscle building technique I learned the last time I was working out. Basically it involves doing one muscle group, in this case being my pecs. What you do is you basically push that one group of muscles to failure instead of just doing three sets of a certain number of reps.

You pick a weight that’s a bit easier to lift than your normal weight for doing your sets, and what you do is you go up and down with the weight really slowly, concentrating on that one muscle group you’re working out. You basically take like 3-8 seconds to lift the weight and then 3-8 seconds to lower the weight without pausing at either top or bottom of the lift. You’re basically just moving the weight up and down really slowly without relieving the muscle of strain at the top and bottom by locking your elbows.

What this does is that it pushes your muscles to fatigue really quickly and you keep going until you basically can’t lift anymore at all. Once you get to the point where the muscle is pretty much unable to lift any more, you kind of hit a stopping point where you’re TRYING to lift the weight and your hands are shaking but it won’t budge anymore. At this point you lower the weight slowly and then you’re done. DON’T DO THIS WITH FREE WEIGHTS without a spotter. I’m using a bowflex so if I can’t lift any weight anymore I can just lower it without getting injured.

Once you do one muscle group like this, it will burn like crazy and you’ll feel it the next day. You then give that muscle group a whole week, YES 7 DAYS, to recover. So tomorrow I’ll be working on a different muscle group. I’ll pick 7 exercises and try this out for a while.

So here are my stats:

Cardio: Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 2.01 Miles Ran
Strength Training: Bench Press - 110lbs - To Failure

Breakfast:
Pacific Brand Organic Tomato Soup

Lunch:
Veggie Sticks - Cucumbers, Carrots, Celery, Cherry Tomatoes, with a bit of dip
Baked Vegetarian Spring Rolls

Dinner:
Seafood Salad - Wild Salmon, Grilled Praws, Shrimp, Greens, Crispy Noodles, Avacado, Sprouts, Papaya

Snacks:
Organic Grapefruit

Today was a pretty good day for my workout. I had a lot more steam on the treadmill so kicked it up a notch. Did a bit of burst running. Instead of my usual 1.75miles ran in 30 minutes I ran 1.87miles. Not a huge difference, but I felt that my lungs have been adjusting to the running much better now and I’m hitting a longer wind when I do my run.

I also bumped up my strength training weights just a bit.

Bench Press: 110lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Bicep Curls: 25lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets
Tricep Reverse Curls: 25lbs x 8 reps x 3 Sets

For food today I had the following:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Big Salad - Lettuce, mixed greens, radishes, red cabbage, cherry tomatoes, avocado, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, flax seed and some sprinkled on dehydrated cranberries.

Snacks:
One Organic Apple
Half a Melon

Dinner:

For dinner we had some wraps. Inside the wrap was fried up green peppers, onions, garlic, portobello mushroom and zucchini.

This morning I was sneezing like crazy on my way to work. I am pretty sure that flu is in me. However, I am fighting that sucker. I felt some more stomach cramps after lunch today for the majority of the afternoon but then they subsided. I don’t feel too bad right now. I had a pretty good workout.

I reduced my weight for the shoulder exercises as I felt last time I wasn’t doing them to proper form due to picking a weight that’s a bit too big. I reduced my seated lat row and real deltoid row to 80lbs (from 100lbs) and my dumbbell shoulder press to 25lbs (from 40lbs). I felt a lot better with those weights.

Here’s what the workout looked like:

Cardio:
Treadmill Run for 30 minutes -1.77 miles - 271 calories burned.

Strength Training:

Seated Lat Rows:
Set #1 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 80 lbs x 8 reps

Rear Deltoid Rows:
Set #1 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 80 lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 80 lbs x 8 reps

Dumbbell Shoulder Presses:
Set #1 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps
Set #2 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps
Set #3 - 25 lbs/side x 8 reps

Big Rubber Ball Sit-ups: 25 reps

As for diet, here’s what I had:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Stir-fry leftover from yesterday. However, I only ate about half of what I brought with me as my stomach wasn’t feeling well.

Snacks:
One Organic Grapefruit

Dinner:

Pita Wrap with saute’d green peppers, onions, zucchini and refried beans. It was an experiment I did, wasn’t very good.
Big Salad - Lettuce, carrots, red cabbage, radishes, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, pine nuts, dried cranberries, and a tiny bit of dressing.

Wow, this evening around 10pm or so I started to get some really bad stomach cramps and a stomach ache.  It wasn’t from the food I ate though.  I think it’s the flu.  My wife had the flu exactly one week ago and it started with the exact same symptoms on the first day.  I thought I dodged it when I didn’t get it, but now it’s looking like maybe I didn’t.

It probably doesn’t help that everyone at work, and I mean everyone has it as well.  Everyone’s at different stages of the flu, but pretty much every person has it except me, until now.  It just started off with these annoying cramps that I still have right now.

At around 11:15pm I thought about skipping my workout for tonight, due to the cramping and nausea.  The only thing that feels good is sitting still.  I actually fell asleep on the couch and woke up just after midnight.  The cramps were still there, and I wondered what I should do.  I’ve been doing so well, working out every single day, I didn’t want to give up that easily.

I decided to try going on the treadmill and see what happens.  I kept the pace slow and light and even though I wanted to give up about 423 times especially when a bout of stomach cramps came around, I managed to get through the 30 minutes at a slightly slower pace than normal, finishing at around 1.45 miles or so.

I then did a lighter version of my upper body workout as well.

Here’s what it looked like:

Bench Press:

Set #1: 100lbs x 8 reps
Set #2: 100lbs x 8 reps
Set #3: 100lbs x 12 reps

Bicep Curls:
Set #1: 40lbs x 10 reps
Set #2: 20lbs x 8 reps
Set #3: 20lbs x 12 reps

Tricep Reverse Curls:
Set #1: 20lbs x 8 reps

 That’s all the strength I could muster up.

For food today I had the following:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Big Salad - Lettuce, mixed greens, baby spinach, green onions, red pepper, radishes, cherry tomatoes, avacado, cucumber, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, flax seed and some sprinkled on dehydrated cranberries.

Snacks:
One Organic Apple
One Organic Grapefruit

Dinner:

For dinner my wife made me this awesome vegetable stirfry made with cauliflower, broccoli, green peppers, red peppers, zukhini, onion, garlic, ginger, bragg liquid amino’s, black bean sauce, oyster sauce, with a bit of brown rice. Here’s a picture:

It was really good.  Mmmm…

Today was a pretty good day for diet again. First thing I noticed this morning was that I lost 0.8lbs since yesterday. It shows once again what I saw last time when I started working out - that you have to exercise AND eat healthy to lose weight. I’m still very much experimenting with what I can make within the guidelines of the healthy food I want to eat, and I haven’t had time to go and get all the groceries I need. However, I still managed to eat really healthy today. This is what I ate:

Breakfast:
Nothing

Lunch:
Bowl of Pacific Brand Organic Tomato Soup

Dinner:
Big Salad - Lettuce, mixed greens, baby spinach, green onions, red pepper, radishes, cherry tomatoes, avacado, cucumber, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, flax seed and some sprinkled on dehydrated cranberries.

Snacks:
Organic Apple
Banana
Raw Almonds

Today’s workout consisted of the following:

Cardio:

Treadmill - 30 Minutes - 1.75 Miles Ran

Strength Training:

Squats:
Set #1 - 260lbs x 8 reps
Set #2 - 260lbs x 8 reps
Set #3 - 260lbs x 8 reps

Seated Calf Raises:
Set # 1 - 260 lbs x 8 reps
Set # 2 - 260 lbs x 8 reps
Set # 3 - 260 lbs x 8 reps

Today while running up the stairs I misjudged a step and had to kind of hop to regain my balance and I did something to my knee and kind of tweaked it just a bit. It seemed fine after a few minutes, but later on at night before I was going to get on the treadmill it started to feel kinda iffy. When I put weight on it I could feel it hurt in a weird way.

For a moment I thought about skipping my run on the treadmill today, but then I quickly squashed that thought out of existence. I made a commitment to myself and I’m going to stick with it. I did want to be smart about it though, as there is no point getting an injury just four days into my exercise plan.

So I got changed into my workout clothes and I really stretched out my knees and just warmed them up with some stretches we’ve done in my martial arts training. Within a few minutes my knee was feeling much better. I decided to take it easy anyways and just start the treadmill slow and gradually increase the pace after my workout. Halfway through the run though I felt that there was no problem and my knee was fine.

Crap, I forgot to stretch it out after my workout so I’m going to do that right now.

Ok, done. Definitely feels better.

The rest of my workout went fine.

Bench Press:

First Set: 100lbs x 8 reps
Second Set: 100lbs x 8 reps
Third Set: 100lbs x 12 reps

Bicep Curls:
First Set: 40lbs x 10 reps
Second Set: 40lbs x 8 reps
Third Set: 40lbs x 12 reps

Tricep Reverse Curls:
First Set: 20lbs x 8 reps
Second Set: 20lbs x 8 reps
Third Set: 20lbs x 12 reps

My bench press felt really good on the last set of 12. I could really feel the burn. 100lbs is not a big weight for me, but I’m just getting back into weight lifting so I want to take it easy to start. I’m in no rush.