In this months exercise I tried a reduced workloads, going from four days per week at the gym to three days per week and tried to fit in one cardio session (fun cardio) a week where I could.
I split my three days into a leg day, upper body day and a back day and have one of the big lifts in each day so really simplified my plan and reduced the number of exercises I was doing.
For my Leg day I mostly had squats and leg press with a little bit of abductor work.
For my Upper Body day I did quite a mixture including; bench press, pull ups, lat pull down, tricep/bicep work and clean and press and worked with supersets for everything with the exception of the bench press.
For my Back Day I mostly focused on deadlifts, with a few dumb bell rows and back extensions.
1st – Rest
2nd – Leg Day @ Gym
3rd – Rest
4th – Upper Body @ Gym
5th -Rest
6th – Long Mountain Bike Ride at Woodhill Forest.
7th – Leg Day @ Gym
8th -Rest
9th – Upper Body @ Gym
10th – Rest
11th – Back Day @ Gym
12th – Rest
13th – Rest
14th – 2 Full games of Indoor Netball (First real games since about 5 months ago when I rolled my ankle)
15th – Rest
16th – Leg Day @ Gym
17th – Rest
18th – Upper Body @ Gym
19th – Rest
20th – Back @ Gym
21st – Leg Day @ Gym
22nd – Rest
23rd – Upper Body @ Gym
24th – Rest
25th – Back @ Gym
26th – Rest
27th – Rest
28th – Game of Indoor Netball, Legs @ Gym
29th – Rest
30th – Upper Body @ Gym
31st – Rest (Travel to Wanganui!)
I enjoyed the drop to three days per week as it mean’t the body got a lot of rest which I think was necessary given the heavy lifts I was doing. For August I think I’ll continue with the three day week at the gym and try to keep to one cardio session per week as well.
The whole month of July I managed to lift heavy pretty much every session which tells me my body was getting enough rest in between workouts and training of each body part.
Did you do any exercise outdoors this month?
It’s so interesting to see your workouts. Yup most of my exercise was outdoors – running!! I’ve done a few NTC workouts at home and also Cross Fit 1-2 x’s per week. Personal training question for you – I’ve got a super weak upper body. Even though I’m doing some strength exercises through cross fit, I don’t really feel like I’m getting stronger. For example – press ups – I suck! Can barley do 10 proper ones. Any tips. I probably need to commit to doing some more upper body training at home… I find cross fit hard because I do the scaled version. I use a 10kg plate but if I increase it to 15kg I can hardly do any reps and feel like I’m resting rather than working like everyone else… Sorry this ended up a huge long question instead of a comment haha!!
To answer your question the answer is pretty much just practice and repetition! I would be lucky to get 10 full push ups out at the moment as I haven’t been doing them in ages, when I was doing them I managed to just get 20 out after a long time of practising and having a really crappy day at work (it makes me angry and push harder!). As for the weights at cross fit – you have two choices, keep using the 10kg and do high reps or go to the 15kg and do low reps but each session try to increase by just one rep until next thing you know you’ll be doing the same as everyone else! I personally alternate when I’m trying to increase my strength, one week I’ll do light weight with high reps (10-20 depending on the exercise) then the next week I’ll go heavy and do whatever I can then the next week go back to light and the week after go back to heavy and try and get at least 1 more rep than the time before. Building strength can be a slow process but sometimes you will have huge strength gains within a few weeks and just get stronger and stronger and then have a while of not progressing much. Hope that helped! 🙂