Decosta’s BodyBlog

Well yesterday was a good day.

Breakfast - Salmon and Eggs
Snack - Chicken and nuts
Lunch - Soup and bread and a piece of chicken
Snack - Chicken and nuts
Dinner - Salmon and Brocolli

As for my workouts, it was good and intense. It was legs and back day

So for my legs, I did

Legs - Squats (60kg),  Lunges (20kg), Leg Extension (27kg), Calf Extension (27kg)
Back - Deadlift (110kg), Bent Over Rows (40kg), T-bar row (45kg).

That made me all achey and good and it was a good workout, felt good, although I did feel a bit dizzy, queazy and sore. All good, all good.

Then I did a routine called Deck of cards. The suits represent an exercise.

Spades - Crunches
Diamonds - Pullup
Clubs - Russian Stepup with 15kg dumbells in each hand
Hearts - Pushups

Article explaining it below. In short, it makes you sweat and ache and you might want to cry depending on what exercises you’ve chosen (you can sub any exercises you want).

The "deck of cards" routine can be adapted to almost any level of fitness, can be completed in 30 minutes or less, and, best of all, will increase your muscular endurance, and cardiovascular fitness in a relatively short amount of time. The only equipment needed is an ordinary deck of playing cards.

The most basic "deck of cards" workout consists of assigning black cards to push-ups and red cards to squats. Start by shuffling the deck and drawing a card. If, for example, you draw a black seven, do 7 push-ups. Similarly, drawing a red nine would mean doing 9 squats. All face cards are assigned a value of 10 and aces a value of 11. A well-conditioned athlete should be able to complete the deck in 20-30 minutes if little or no rest is taken between exercises. However, unless you’ve been doing bodyweight exercises regularly, you will probably not be able to get through the entire deck at first. That’s okay. Start
out with the 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, and 6’s (or as few or as many as you need to) and add an additional card every week or two until you are doing the entire deck. Since this is cardio, it’s more important to keep the amount of rest between exercises to a minimum than to increase the number of repetitions.

Different variations of the basic workout can be constructed. For example, you can substitute sit-ups or leg raises for squats, or instead of two exercises, you can use four exercises–one each for diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades. An example of such a workout would be squat thrusts, push-ups, squats, and sit-ups.

So yesterday was an eventful day, went for a 2 mile jog which took about 24 minutes, as I went with some friends. When I went back to my desk, I realised that I didn’t have my car keys.

Therefore I spent another hour a bit roaming the streets where i jogged just to check that I hadn’t dropped my car keys (although I didn’t think I took it, but had to make sure).

So by this point, I had jogged/walked a total of 4 miles.

Finally found my keys, where was it- In my colleagues pants. Apparently I had put them in his pants when I went to put the keys back.

As for the rest of the exercise, I went to the gym and worked Chest and Triceps.

Used the freebar which was alot harder than expected.

Did a pyramid type set where we started at 60kg, and worked up to 90kg (but that was assisted). Was a good hard session. Then did some incline bench and decline bench using the smith machine.

With the exercise section, I might have to add them by myself as the ones that are in the library are a bit limiting.

Also did bench dips and tricep.

I also did some Capoeira movements ranging from cartwheels, kicks, leg sweeps and quina de rins. Felt good to do some movements, helps keep me loose and limber.

Woke up today sore but good, I like this feeling.

Nothing much today, went to work and did a bit of a jog up and down the stairs to keep me moving.

Came home at lunch as I had to take my wife to the hospital for a maternity appointment with the anestatelogist. Everything turned out well.

Tomorrow’s plan includes some more jogging and leg day which will be squats/lunges and abs/calves.

I haven’t been up to much. It’s August bank holiday here, so it would be nice to go to the notting hill carnival but that’s all the way in London, so I’m just going to laze around here.

Saturday - Went bike shopping and I’m looking to get a Specialised Globe Comp, looks pretty smart. The wife is looking for something similiar but she’s having trouble with getting the right frame for the right price.  Went to the cinema and saw Hellboy 2 - The Golden Army. Not a bad film.  On the food front, didn’t do much in terms of healthy eating. Popcorn + Minstrels. Followed by a Zinger Burger @ Kfc with some chicken strips.

Sunday (aka today) - Nothing stellar, had peanut butter + cheese toast sandwich and some porridge. The hill I mentioned in an earlier vlog. Went round it twice with my 5 y.o nephew (who did quite well and only stopped twice). Taught him the hands on head and breathing exercise to get his breath back. Ended up with a sprint at the end. As of now, he’s still running around.

Lying on his deathbed in Kirkless Priory, Robin turns to his faithful giant friend and whispers the, new memorable words: "Bury me where my arrow falls".

Recent reconstruction indicates that the likely maximum distance an arrow would fly from a longbow of that era is 227 yards. Strange, that the plot, now described as Robin’s grave - is over 600 yards from the Priory.

No matter….

Robin with his last ounce of strength raises the bow, notches the arrow and lets it fly straight and true.

So what did Robin know?

Here’s his secret:

1. So what are your targets?

2. How far away are they?

3. With the far away ones - are you aiming high enough?

4. What does that mean in a practical sense?

E.g - If you need to reach a target of 100, aim for 150 and get 66.6% of a target than aim at 100 and fall short!.

Nothing much happening in the last couple of days, just working on testing software and writing test scripts and then doing what needs to be done at home. In terms of exercise, did HIIT on friday on the bike, preceded by a biceps session. It was a good workout, I defintely respond better with minimal rest. My body has really changed in the last 2/3 weeks.

While I’m at home, i tend to grease the groove with dips, pushups and pullups.

Here’s another dodgy vid

The second one is me practising my capoeira but I have the gracefullness of a bliming hippo.

At the moment, shopping for bikes.

Well I did a lunchtime session where I concentrated on shoulders.

Dumbell Military Raises for sets of 6,6,10,10,12,12 @ 10kg

In between the sets, I was doing crunches.

I managed to finish this when someone commented on why I did that, he then said that that you won’t grow the muscle like that and that you need to concentrate on one exercise until it burns. If it isn’t burning, then it isn’t working. Does anyone agree with that.

He then showed me the exercises he did which was to do a mix of side laterals, front raises, alternative front raises and then more military pressing without stopping. It did burn, whether it worked for me, have to see.

Then we got talking about diet,etc. He then said that if I wanted to lose weight then I shouldn’t eat after 18:00. Not to sure I agree, but hey, each to their own. Again, thoughts would be welcome.

Diet for Tuesday

7:00 - 2 bolied eggs, museli, protein shake

8:30 - Yerba Mate Tea

10:30 - Chicken (100g)

13:00 - Gym for an hour

14:30 - Chicken + vegatables (broccoli + green beans)

15:00 -  Satsuma and Yerba Mate Tea
18:00 - Chicken and more veg.

Just before bed, a sports vitamin that contains all the minerals.

Well after reading a couple of blogs (might have been DeborahAnn’s again). I decided to save time and superset my exercises. I wanted to do a quick workout and fit in 20 mins cardio. With the supersetting, it was literally 1 set of chest followed by 1 set of triceps, then back to 1 set of chest. Literally the only rest was moving from one station to another and/or changing weights.
It was Chest and tricep day

Bench Press
2×6 @ 70kg, 1×10 @ 60kg, 1×10 @ 50kg, 1×10 @ 40kg

superset with

Bench Dips(Bodyweight)

Reps of 6,6,6,10,12,12

followed by

Incline Bench Press

3×6 @ 30kg, 2×10 @ 30kg, 1×6 @ 30kg

supersetted with

Close grip bench

3×6 @ 20kg, 1×10 @ 20kg, 2×10 @ 20kg

followed by

Pec Deck

4×12 @ 27kg

supersetted by

Tricep extensions

3×6 @ 13.5kg

Then after all that was a 20 minute bike ride where I tried to use HIIT principles. By the end of the workout (which I did in 1 hr), I was sweating like mad. Tried to do some pushups but my arms couldn’t support me :p

Well to make the cardio more interesting, I just did a two mile journey that I normally do by car, but instead I used the power of the legs. I pretty much jogged to the pet store (they do stuff for horses, dogs, cats,etc) and that was about a mile and a bit. Brought a 15kg dog bag and then sandbag carried it up the hill back to my house. I thought to make it more interesting, I would run from lampost to lampost and then walk abit. So it was a bit like interval training up a giant hill.

I carried the bag across my shoulders (like I was going to squat it), and on a couple of interval jogs, I military pressed it until I reached the next goal. I got wierd looks but I thought Sod it, I’m the one getting fit.
Total distance - 2.08 miles (I used an excellent site called walkjogrun).You should use it, you can plan a route as it uses google maps.

I have a couple of questions for the parents out there that bodybuild and get fit.

Kids and food Choices (I did put diets, but to be fair, kids shouldn’t be dieting).

Now, I’m not a father yet (trying) but I like to think that when I am, I’ll educate my kids into making the right choices when it comes to food.

I was watching one of DeborahAnn’s videos and she mentioned that her cupboards have some sort of junk food for the kids, but she doesn’t eat it herself (I understand, because I live with in-laws, and that’s the situation, 2/3rds of the cupboard is thier’s and filled with junk food, the rest is mine and the wife’s).

Now what I would like to know is how far do you go with kids and their food choices. Do you make them eat chicken and brocolli because you know that the chips they have is no good for them, or do you let them eat what they want as long as their moving?

I mean when I was younger, I had the sugary stuff but McD’s/pizza hut/chips were not an everyday occasion. Actually maybe the chips were the weekly friday meal, but there was no way it was big macs everyday?

Take my nephew, he’s just turned 5 and he’s already gone to the dentist and found out that he’s got a hole in his tooth. His diet isn’t that stellar either, chips, dino nuggets, diet lemonade,etc. I mean it’s only now that he’s kinda interested in what he eats as he wants to be like his Uncle D, and grow up to be nice and strong. He wanted me to bench press him yesterday and then he wanted to bench press me (I basically did pushups while offering him some tiny resistance). He’s always telling me now that he has eatten all of his carrots,etc. A good thing is that he’s so active that he’s a skinny runt. I like to think we point out the good points rather than saying No, you can’t have this or that.

Anyway back to what I was saying, because the wife and I don’t have fizzy drinks, crisps, or even that much bread, what’s going to happen when he do have a kid, do we comprimise and allow some treats? I understand that kids tastebuds are more sensitive, so while I can have chicken, porridge,etc till the cows come home, they require more variety.

I don’t know, i just hope that I’ll raise my kids good and educate (not preach) the importance of being healthy. I mean the wife and I are predisposed to being fat, so we’ve been there so we know what it’s like.

I just think that bar a medical problem, there really shouldn’t be obese kids up to a certain age (esp say up to the age of 9/10) as I think that the parents tend to control what there kids eat (This is just my opinion at this stage, I’ll come back when I have a 9/10 and update the viewpoint ).

Comments would be welcome (if you can get through the tangents within the post).