Sorting myself out!

Desire to Aspire wrote: »

How long did you spend on the treadmill and at what pace?

6 minutes, twice. Once as part of the warm-up and then again at the end. First minute walking, second minute 7mph, third minute 7.5mph, last 3 minutes at 8.5mph. Last week I stuck to five minutes at a max speed of 8mph.

What I really want to do is a few tabata sessions of sprints, but I don't have a stop-watch to time the intervals.

Only got an hour in the weights room this morning. Could easily have done another 30 minutes but my sister needed a lift home! >_< I walked for an hour yesterday though, and I felt the effects more than I expected to.

Regular warm-up. Bike, cross-trainer, rowing machine, tread-mill, roughly 20 minutes of action between the four.

Went straight into dead-lifting. 3 sets of 5 at 30 kg.

Stretched my back and did a minute of bridging, followed by a minute of the plank.

Combined the power-clean and the military press and found it pretty interesting. Started with 2 x 5 x 25kg, up to 2 x 5 x 27.5 and finished with one set of 5 x 30kg. I think I'll work in this one again.

Did 15 reverse-curls (at this stage I should admit I stole half my work-out ideas today from one of Transform's videos in the Fitness Forum :pac: ) to work the core a bit more before I had to leave. Happy out.

After coming down with flu last weekend I conceded that my original fitness plan wasn't going to work as intended within an 8 week limit. I'm going to start again today and push myself hard for the next 4 weeks. The plan is to get back into the 100 push-ups, 200 squats and 200 sit-ups programmes again. I'll jump back in at Workout 1 for Week 3 for each of them. That gives me targets today as follows:

Push-ups: 14, 18, 14, 14, minimum 20 - maximum effort. 60 seconds between sets.
Squats: 19, 24, 19, 19, minimum 27 - maximum effort. 60 seconds between sets.
Sit-ups: 21, 27, 21, 21, minimum 30 - maximum effort. 60 seconds between sets.

I'll be playing an hour of indoor soccer this evening as well.

Warm-up: 5 minute run, 50 star-jumps, dynamic stretches.
Push-ups: 14, 18, 14, 14, minimum 20 - maximum effort. 60 seconds between sets.
Squats: 19, 24, 19, 19, minimum 27 - maximum effort. 60 seconds between sets.
Core: 60 seconds front, left and right. As many Russian twists with 10kg weights as possible. 15-20 curls.
Cool-down: 20 minutes cycling, stretches.

Meant to get to the gym today. Will go on Wednesday instead, and do this plan for today.

Insect Overlord wrote: »

Weight as of today, Wednesday 25th of May 2011: 13 st 5 lbs/187 lbs/~85 kg.

Weight as of today, Sunday 11th of December 2011: 12 st 11 lbs/179 lbs/81.2 kg

4 pounds to go. Chances of doing that coming up to Christmas? Who cares?! I'm doing pretty well already!

Just did my first proper run since the St.Stephen's Day 10 miler.

7.7km in 38:16. Just worked it out at fractionally less than 04:58 per km.

I'd put on a few pounds over the last 6 weeks, so keeping that kind of pace is enough to make me a very happy boy tonight!

I'll do a core body-weight exercise session tomorrow.

Played an hour of astro-turf soccer this evening.

Few minutes of a mini game of passing and moving in a small section of the pitch, then a few minutes of 2-v-3 defending/attacking one set of goals.

Played 7-v-7 for the last half hour, mostly in goals but with a few sprints every so often when the other lads were getting tired.

Looks like I'm at a better level of aerobic fitness than most of the group, but I'll need to start doing some HIIT sprinting if I want to get my speed up. Happy enough though.

Insect Overlord wrote: »

I'm aiming for a sub 50 minute 10 k tomorrow afternoon. Will report back here when I've finished that.

Did the run on Monday. 10.2 km, 53:30. Slower than I would have liked, but with more hills than I'm used to. Good fun.

Today?
16.2 km, 1:33:00. Not a great time, but even an 8 km spin on the bike afterwards didn't empty the tank. I think I'm actually getting fit!

I'll run this 10 mile route twice a week for the next fortnight, maybe 5 times altogether, and try to bring that time down closer to 80 minutes. I should have done well under 90 minutes today. Time to start pushing myself.

One of the lads asked me last week if I was still doing my body-weight exercises. I had to admit that I've been a bit lazy the last 6 months. I've been doing lots of running in the spring, but no core or upper body work.

Last October I was approaching three minutes for the plank after making rapid improvements on that over the month of September. I could do about 40 press-ups in one go as well after spending the summer working with a free app on my phone.

I set myself a target of a 4 minute plank and 75 press-ups for this summer, but I'd made no effort to work on those until today. I'm hoping to finish the routine with the app in about 7 weeks time.

Managed 63 seconds on the plank anyway. Not too bad. I would have been extremely upset if I'd failed to do a full minute!

The press-ups were a different story. The sets were divided up into 9, 9, 10, 9 and 9, with 90 second breaks between sets. The first three sets were grand. I struggled with the fourth. Most of the last set I had to do on my knees. I'll probably do the same sets again on Wednesday, hopefully with less difficulty, but it was still a bit of a disappointment to miss so many of them this evening.

On the bright side, it's a first step towards a summer beach body!