Mid Life Fitness

Workout Album: Disturbed – The Sickness

If like much of the Western world you’ve given in to temptation and over eaten, then rejoice! Mass building requires calories and in this world of obesity we constantly under attack by a media driven guilt trip over what we eat.

Now I don’t mean that you should eat just anything that comes to hand, but there is need to see the forest and not just the trees, something which is impossible if we just listen to a small and vocal minority whose aims are not the same as ours.

In the next couple of days keep your eyes on this blog or my newsletter because Vince Del Monte is releasing a co-authored report which might just open your eyes a little.

I don’t agree with everything that Vince says, and neither should you. Come to that you shouldn’t agree with everything I or anyone else says either! Come on, you are old enough now to realise that you need to tailor advice to what works for you.

But back on track, as I work out today, hitting a new Personal Record, at least for this cycle of training, I’m glad for the boost in calories which are in the process of adding muscle. Yes there is going to be some fat as well which I’ll need to deal with, but the Summer and Autumn of stripping back the fat has altered the balance in my favour. More of that in the report, but for now I need to get back to the presses and pull ups – I’m writing this in the rest pauses as I’m still taking it easy because I haven’t cleared the last of the cold from my system yet – the price of a crap immune system, but one which is sooo much better than it used to be!

Train hard.

Sometimes I wonder why I’ve not learnt by now. I know the rules and yet still I push the limits. Running the kettlebell swings on Saturday, I had a twinge in my back as I used the right arm. I ignored it at first, but it got progressively worse.

So I stopped of course and did some more stretching. Did I then leave it alone? Heck no! I mean we aren’t going to drop out of a session we’ve been looking forward to, a session marked down in our planning with targets to hit now are we?

Well of course not. Which is why I’ve now got a small tear which is going to need to heal before I can start to push again. So instead of missing just one session, now I’m weeks behind.

So, you’d think I’d learn wouldn’t you? Maybe just maybe, next time I get that sort of pain I’ll know to stop. There is a difference between the sort of pain caused by working hard and the pain from injury. It’s worth getting the difference into your head so that you can take appropriate action.

Thursday is the day in this routine where I contrast the low volume, high weight of the Monday workout with a high volume, lighter weight. It’s based very loosely on the EDT system, and it’s real point is to attack the muscles in a different way so that even though I’m using some of the same exercises as Monday, it causes a very different stress pattern.

The routine is based on choosing a weight you can do ten reps of. Then see how many reps you can do in fifteen minutes, and next time, beat that number. It is a very simple concept and one which works very well. The one thing that you will likely find is that first time you put it into practice, especially if you’ve been working on low volume sets is that you’ll end up with a weight which is too light and after a few weeks you’ll be doing a high total number of reps.

You will also need to find the strategy which works best for you. Do you try to do it in sets of ten? Sets of five, three? Perhaps you’ll start out with fives but by the end of the time window you’ll be down to doing one rep at at time. It doesn’t matter, all that matters is the end number, and different routines work best for different people.

Because you are looking at fifteen minute sessions, you have to limit what you do, and really it’s going to be only two or three exercises. I’m doing three but it really pushes the workouts longer than I’m used to – actually pushing over the hour which for me is a long time, I don’t have that much time!

Exercises: Squat, bench press and rows. I alternate between overhead and bench presses each week, mainly because of the time issue.

Yesterday was the low volume, max weight session, so today was the interval/ max VO2 session. Fifty sets of 8 reps of kettlebell swings at 15 second intervals, so thats 25 minutes workout time. When I get to seventy sets then I’ll switch to the next exercise. I’m increasing five sets at a time and I’m comfortable with that. There is a temptation to do more which I’m sitting on heavily because there is a lot of strain placed on the core with these exercises and I’ve had some twinges in the lower back in previous sessions.

When I started I didn’t think I’d able to even get half way, but towards the end I was still going strong so the last five sets were done at sprint pace, accelerating the kettlebell back down. This did give me more rest time, I will admit but it’s something I’m going to need to do when I get to doing snatches at this pace, which is my goal.

I worked out in the evening for a change instead of my usual early morning routine.

Squats 2 x 5
Bench Press 2 x 5
Deadlift 2 x 5
Dips 3 x F

Total workout time, 35 mins excluding warmup