Al–1961’s BodyBlog

Ahhhhhh, my favorite letter in the alphabet.  I caught me some last night.  Shuteye, what a blessed event.  I’m still a little under the weather this morning, but with some sacktime under my belt, I still feel like a million bucks!     

My turn to describe a character at my gym.  I’ll call him Au Naturale Man.  After showering, ANM puts on his trousers WITHOUT putting on underwear.  Jeans, khakis, dress pants, whatever.  YECK!  He usually comes in a little later, so thankfully I don’t have to witness this too often.  But he was there this morning.  I sure hope he washes his trousers after each wearing………

WORKOUT THIS MORNING  —-  LATS:  (High reps, 15-20 per set, 60 sec’s rest)

–  Close grip cable lat pulls, dumbbell bentover rows, close grip cable lat pulldowns & barbell bentover rows.  (4 sets each)

–  Alternated dumbbell bentover rows & close grip cable lat pulldowns.  (3 sets each, 30 sec’s rest) 

CARDIO:  25 min’s of sprint intervals on the elliptical.  Heartrate 155-165. 

ABS:  4 quick sets of situps. 

Since I’m still under the weather & working lots of overtime in the evenings this week, I throttled back to 85-90% on the workout. 

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!     

It sucks when insomnia strikes for more than a night or two.  I got virtually no sleep last night, after last week’s difficulty getting sleep.  Thankfully the weekend gave me a reprieve.  The whole family was sick at the end of last week & over the weekend.  I’m the least hit, so still getting to the gym……..COMMITMENT + DETERMINATION + CONSISTENCY.   

WORKOUT THIS MORNING  —-  ARMS  (still high reps:  15-20 reps per set to failure, 45-60 sec’s rest)

BICEPS:  Straight bar curls (6 sets) & dumbbell curls.  (4 sets)

TRICEPS:  Reverse cable tricep extensions (6 sets) & straight bar tricep extensions.  (4 sets)

BICEPS & TRICEPS:  Straight bar curls followed by close grip bench press.  Alternate twice more.  (15-30 sec’s rest) 

CARDIO:  30 min’s on the stairmaster.  Heartrate 145-155. 

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!      

I got in a workout this afternoon.  I try to NEVER miss a M-F morning workout since I don’t count on getting to the gym over the weekend.  Today I got in to work shoulders, back & cardio.  Still on high reps, which are killer burns.     

WORKOUT THIS AFTERNOON  —-  DELTS & LATS  (15-20 reps to failure, 30-45 sec’s rest): 

DELTS:  Military press, lateral dumbbell raises, Arnold overhead dumbbell press & front dumbbell raises.  (5 lets on military, 4 sets each on the others)

LATS:  Lat close grip cable pulls & bentover barbell rows (4 sets each).  Lat wide grip cable pulldowns & bentover dumbbell rows (3 sets each). 

CARDIO:  26 min’s of sprint intervals on the elliptical.  Heartrate 155-165. 

Finished with 3 sets of front dumbbell raises & 2 sets of bentover dumbbell rows (again, 15-20 reps to failure, 30 sec’s rest). 

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!     

Back to the high rep regimen.  I’m thinking I may limit it to another week, as a change-up, rather than going 30 days, or more, with it.  I’m not looking to lose any size.  We’ll see.  Haven’t slept well every night this week, so the workout was a bit of a grind, but still a good one.  Definitely ready for the weekend. 

WORKOUT THIS MORNING  —-  CHEST  (15-20 reps per set to failure):   

CHEST:  Bench press, decline flyes, decline bench press & flat bench flyes (4 sets each, 60 sec’s rest). 

CARDIO:  26 min’s of HIIT sprints on the elliptical.  Heartrate 165-175.  Way out of breath & feeling of nausea.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m pushing too hard, or going too long, on sprint intervals at this heartrate since I’m approaching 50.  I’ve read in other places the heartrate should be ~140-150.  Any advice?  Bueller?  Bueller?   

CHEST:  Incline flyes (4 sets), 30-45 sec’s rest. 

CHEST & ABS:  Pushups, then crunches with 10 lb wt.  Repeat 3 times, no rest.  Whew! 

Have a great weekend & a groovacious day today.      

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!     

Calories!  That’s what I burned.  Instead of lifting with high reps for muscle burns this morning, I took a trip to Cardio City, with a detour through Sweat Town.  I indulged in some sweets last night with another movie night, this time with my daughters, while my wife had a ladies night out with some friends.  We watched Nanny McPhee.  It’s a good thing I’m a gym rat.  With 3 ladies at home, I don’t get to watch too many guy movies.  If I’m gonna shed tears, it needs to be The Dirty Dozen and the like.  Like when Jim Brown makes that sprint at the end of the movie.  Now we’re talking……..     

WORKOUT THIS MORNING:  Cardio! 

-  30 min’s of varying sprint intervals on the elliptical.  Heartrate 165-170. 

-  4 sets of crunches with 25 lb wt.

-  30 min’s of varying sprint intervals on the stationary bike.  Heartrate 150-160. 

-  4 sets of situps with 10 lb wt. 

Today is the 4th day in a row I was wide sometime between 3:30-4:30am.  Glad to have endorphins carrying me through the morning.  It’ll be java this afternoon…..

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!     

Sounds like a sequel to a Vincent Price movie.  Oh the horrors of DOMS!       The high rep burn continues.  It REALLY takes focus to keep good form on the last reps of sets of 15-25 reps to failure.  Youza.  Arms are quite sore from yesterday, especially biceps. 

WORKOUT THIS MORNING  —-  LATS  (15-25 reps per set to failure, 45-60 sec’s rest) 

-  Bentover rows with barbell (2 sets) & cable lat pulls (2 sets).               Repeat twice. 

-  Cable lat pulldowns (2 sets) & bentover rows with dumbbells (2 sets).  Repeat once.

CARDIO:  32 min’s on the stairmaster.  Heartrate 150-155. 

Diet was clean yesterday.  I did have some low glycemic corn chips & multigrain crackers after dinner for movie night with my wife, but no sweets.  We watched the latest Bond flick, Quantum of Solace.  Lots of good action & stunts.

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!     

Man, the high rep cycle is kicking my butt.  It takes a whole different level of concentration to go to failure each set while trying to crank out 15-20 reps.  And talk about exhaustion, and huffing & puffing.  DOMS set in last night, instead of waiting til this morning, from yesterday’s chest & delt workout.  Plus, the heads on my delts are sore…….I usually find delts to be extremely difficult to make sore.  Not this time.  I’m liking this…….we workout junkies are kinda sick aren’t we…….lovin’ the pain.     

WORKOUT THIS MORNING  —-  ARMS  (15-20 reps per set to failure, 45-60 sec’s rest): 

BICEPS:  Curl bar curls (2 sets), dumbell curls (2 sets).  Repeat twice. 

TRICEPS:  Curl bar tricep extensions (2 sets), close grip bench press (2 sets).  Repeat twice. 

BICEPS & TRICEPS:  Straight bar curls & straight bar tricep extensions.  Repeat. 

CARDIO:  22 min’s sprint intervals on the stationary bike.  Heartrate 150-160. 

ABS:  5 quick sets of situps, 2 sets of knees to the chest. 

PS:  Diet was clean yesterday.  Day 1. 

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!     

Back to high intensity with this morning’s workout, after almost a week of light workouts for rest & recovery.  For at least the next 30 days, the routine will be high reps, lighter weights & a mix of HIIT & steady-state cardio.  The main focus will be on diet, however.  After a bad month on diet, especially the past couple of weeks, diet will take precedence over workouts.  (PS:  For Kermane:  This old white boy was dancing last night to some boogie music with my daughters & even got videotaped.  They will be mocking me later…..but I’ll get them back when they’re teens……)     

WORKOUT THIS MORNING  —-  CHEST & DELTS (15-25 reps per set, 30-60 sec’s rest)

CHEST:  Bench press (2 sets), flyes (2 sets), repeat.  Then decline bench press (2 sets), decline flyes (2 sets), repeat. 

DELTS:  Military press (2 sets), lateral dumbbell raises (2 sets), repeat.  Arnold overhead dumbbell press (2 sets), front dumbbell raises (2 sets), repeat. 

CHEST & DELT:  Incline press (2 sets), incline flyes (1 set).  Dumbbell overhead press (2 sets), lateral dumbbell raises (1 set). 

CARDIO:  26 min’s of varying sprint intervals on the elliptical.  Heartrate 160-170. 

ABS:  4 sets of crunches with 10 lb wt. 

High reps  ———>  BURN!  Those reps are killer.     

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!      

MOTO:  Master Of The Obvious.  Here’s an excellent article from World Magazine: 

Expert nonsense

Endless nutrition fads ignore the obvious   (Andrée Seu)

The year is 2173. Milo Monroe (Woody Allen) is being slow-thawed on a table surrounded by doctors. “Has he asked for anything special?” “Yes, this morning for breakfast. He requested something called wheat germ, organic honey, and Tiger’s milk.” (Laughter). “Oh yes, those were the charmed substances that some years ago were felt to contain life-preserving properties.” “You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or creamed pies or hot fudge?” “Those were thought to be unhealthy, precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.” “Incredible.” (Sleeper)

Babies born the year I was, 1951, have the distinction of having entered the world at the lowest ebb of breastfeeding on record. My mother said the nurses made the rounds of the maternity ward handing out pills to dry up their milk.

It was the beginning of the cult of the food experts. I think of a cult as the kind of devotion to an idea or leader that has the capacity to blind its adherents to the obvious. There is little in life more obvious than the connectivity between a baby’s mouth and a woman’s lactating breast. Faced with that gargantuan medical goof, we have the choice now of two conclusions: “Boy, were people stupid in the old days!” Or, “I wonder what nonsense the experts have foisted on us in our own days.”

The subtitle of Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food is “eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” He is a little embarrassed about this simple prescription (as you would have been in 1951 telling a maternity ward of new moms to use their breasts): “That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.”

I’m grateful that Pollan slugs it out for another 200 pages, because I would not have learned how food got politicized, professionalized, industrialized, governmentalized, and otherwise “expert-ized” to the point that you have to define food. Pollan: “When corn oil and chips and sugary breakfast cereals can all boast being good for your heart, health claims have become hopelessly corrupt. The American Heart Association currently bestows (for a fee) its heart-healthy seal of approval on Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, and Trix cereals, Yoo-hoo lite chocolate drink, and Healthy Choice’s Premium Caramel Swirl Ice Cream Sandwich.”

The problem is that things your grandmother pushed—like apples and broccoli—don’t make money for the food industry or nutritional science or those journalists who tout new products. “Who wants to hear, yet again, that you should ‘eat more fruits and vegetables’? And so like a large gray cloud, a great Conspiracy of Scientific Complexity has gathered around the simplest question of nutrition—much to the advantage of everyone involved.” Processed food can be endlessly engineered to keep in sync with the endless new fads of nutritionism. (Today fat is bad, tomorrow carbs.)

But even apples and broccoli are not what they seem. The same decades that hospital doctors were plugging laboratory formula over mother’s milk, industry was selling farmers on chemical fertilizers that “completely overlooked the importance of biological activity in the soil”—those teeming microbes and other as yet undiscovered X-ingredients God put into dirt, that our reductionistic science considered unimportant. In 2009 “you have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940 apple.”

Just to make it a perfect storm, the government “food pyramid,” hijacked by special interests (a saga in itself), became a fourth accomplice to bad dietary advice. All of which would be a mildly entertaining subject, good for a 700-word throw, except that it has everything to do with the present health crisis, and therefore with the health insurance crisis. Tinkering with health insurance reform while chomping on Big Macs has the déjà vu feel of white-clad nurses in ’50s baby wards, and doctors surrounding a thawing Milo Monroe.

Woody Allen spoke better than he knew.

No hard hitting agenda for this morning’s workout, since finishing 75 days of heavy cycle yesterday.  I literally didn’t decide what I was going to do until after I got to the gym. 

1)  DIET:  A big focus for the next month.  My diet is generally very good, except for munching after dinner.  I happen to be one of the unfortunates……an emotional eater.  Due to stress, being tired, being down, etc.  A lifelong bad habit.  Lately, it’s been more prevalent.  No excuses, just an objective observation.  Stressed & tired over work…..I’ve been working weekends & evenings, sometimes til 9-9:30pm, etc.  I’ve been through the layoff & out of work deal several times in the past.  And with several friends already layed off, this is all in the back of my mind.  Also stressed over tight finances (wife is a SAHM, and reduced income from a career change after above mentioned layoffs…..).  So, I plan to work on better ways to deal with stress. 

2)  PRIORITIES:  Workouts are a great start to my day.  I almost always feel great when I leave the gym, even if I have a subpar workout.  However, I don’t want to get too wrapped up with it all.  I plan to invest more of my energy & focus in family, faith, friendships, work, etc.  And reduce the time spent on BS.com.  I doubt I’ll look back from the age of 80-85 and see that getting a ripped hardbody as the highlight of my life.  But I would look back with regret if I achieved that at the expense of the above mentioned.   

OK, enough seriousness for now!       

WORKOUT THIS MORNING:  No lifting today & didn’t go all-out.  But sore from blasting my chest & tri’s yesterday.         

CARDIO:  50 min’s on the stationary bike, at varying levels.   A few sprints thrown in just to make sure I was awake.   15 min’s on the stairmaster, at varying levels. 

ABS:  4 sets of crunches with 25 lb wt.  4 sets of crunches with 10 lb wt. 

Just getting to the gym IS a successful workout!!