Disappointment
To say the least, I’m disappointed with myself. Despite feeling better, being able to go longer in cardio and more reps and seeing part of a four pack, I looked at my one month progress pictures and my weight and this isn’t what I was expecting. I wanted to cut some weight back, and didn’t check my weight for one month to avoid discouraging yo-yo effect with daily weight changes. I gained a pound. While I can probably chalk this up to muscle gain, I had hoped to see some fat cutback, at least noticable.
I’ve been working out 5-6 days a week from anywhere from 45mins to 1hr30min. Each starts off with 10-20mins rowing to warmup at the highest resistance for 35-36strokes per min. Then singular muscle group focus alternating with situps. Then, if I have time at the end, 15-20mins cooldown biking. Needless to say, this is a lot more cardio than I was doing, and despite cutting back on regular cokes and chips for occasional snacking, I would have expected to see at least some change. This leads me to some conclusions, 1. gotta cut starches to jumpstart (was having mash potatoes or some pasta 3-4 days a week). 2. No diet soda (had cut back from regular to diet and 5-6/week to 3). 3. Lots more water (32-48oz is obviously underdoing it, especially if cutting back other liquid intake). 4. Increase workout intensity.
My intensity has been lacking. Most of the time, I was settling on 3 sets of 10 reps with breaks in between of 3 or 4 different exercies (I’ve also, in the last month, supplimented 2 protein shakes a day to help with muscle gain). Its safe to say, I think, that my muscles have grown accustomed to the workout and need some shocking to get past this plateau. I’ll be trying a little longer on the cardio warm up, same time on cool down as before, and go with 5 to 6 different exercies with 4-5 sets or tapered down weights (meaning that I start off with say 35lb dumbbells and go to exhaustion, then immediately move to 30lb to exhaustion and so down till I get through 4-5 weight changes in one set). I plan on doing this for two weeks, then switch to a lighter load to recover for two weeks using pyramid lifting (going up in weight and then back down) and then back to my regular sets, but this time 10-12 reps for 4 sets at the maximum weight I can lift for that many reps. Hopefully, by mid March, I can come back to this blog and say its been an outstanding improvement.
