52 Weeks of Fitness: Week 21 Recap

For the year of 2012, I have made a yearlong commitment to better fitness and health that will change my life forever. The way I see it, I've been "talking the talk" for way too long - it's about time I start walking. The plan is to use workouts from The New Rules of Lifting, gradually start eating better, and try out plenty of fun healthy activities along the way. Here's how I fared this week:

Lifting:

This was originally supposed to be a rest week, but I worked out on Friday just for the heck of it. I made it an upper body workout of pullup, dip, cable row, fly, bent-over row, and resistance band curls.

Nutrition:

Nutrition was decent, with only one tiny little binge on calories. Protein intake is severely lacking, though.

That's all for Week 21, just 31 more to go!

52 Weeks of Fitness: Weels 17-20 Recap

For the year of 2012, I have made a yearlong commitment to better fitness and health that will change my life forever. The way I see it, I've been "talking the talk" for way too long - it's about time I start walking. The plan is to use workouts from The New Rules of Lifting, gradually start eating better, and try out plenty of fun healthy activities along the way. Since I need to play catch-up to recap the end of the school year and get a fresh start on summer, I decided to bundle 4 weeks of recap posts into one. Here's how I've fared since my last check-in:

Lifting:

In Weeks 17-20, I closed out the last 4 weeks of the New Rules' "Hypertrophy B" Phase. The Hypertrophy point is where muscle-building takes center stage, so it's time to pack it on. Gym attendance was, unfortunately, pretty spotty due to end-of-the-year commitments.

- Week 17:

Monday I tried to re-start on the 4th week of Hypertrophy B, and did a mid-point workout of 5 x 6 lifts with longer rest periods. Some decent progress here, not much to report.

Wednesday was a solid endurance-based lower body workout. Good effort and good results.

- Week 18:

Friday was, honestly, one of the roughest workouts of my life. I think I just went into it extremely dehydrated, and soon got pale and light-headed. I stuck with the workout, but unfortunately was unable to push it too hard.

- Week 19 was exams week. I took it off from the gym for some much-needed studying, which REALLY paid off academically.

- Week 20 was the first week of summer!

Monday was a decent workout, for being so de-trained. 5 x 6 lifts with 115 in the Yates row, which is pretty good for me.

Friday was a fun pull-based workout. I was feeling good, and really pushed myself on a lot of lifts.

Nutrition:

- Week 17 had two tiny binges, nothing too harmful.

- Week 18 I only had one big binge - again, not too bad.

- Week 19 (finals week) was rough. Definitely ate my heart out with 3 big binges and one small one.

- Week 20 was all under budget as I tried to reign myself back in.


So where to from here? Well, I need to get my nutrition back in check, and stay consistent in the gym. And now that I really have a lot more free time, I'd like to look into really working on my barefoot running form in my Five Fingers.

Only 32 more weeks to go!

Great video, and quick update

Rory Sutherland is the VP of Ogilvy UK, and is quite a hotshot in the advertising/branding world. A lot of his expertise comes from an innate understanding of human psychology - quite simply, Rory understands what makes people tick. In the video above, he shares some entertaining and thought-provoking insights into psychology, perspective and happiness.

Also, I've just recently managed to surface for some air after finals week. I'll gloat about grades here within the next few days. And yes, I KNOW I'm running behind on the 52fit posts - I'll get on it.

52 Weeks of Fitness: Week 16 recap

For the year of 2012, I have made a yearlong commitment to better fitness and health that will change my life forever. The way I see it, I've been "talking the talk" for way too long - it's about time I start walking. The plan is to use workouts from The New Rules of Lifting, gradually start eating better, and try out plenty of fun healthy activities along the way. Here's how I fared this week:

Lifting:

This was supposed Week Four of Eight in the New Rules' "Hypertrophy II" Phase. The Hypertrophy point is where muscle-building takes center stage, so I'm getting YOKED. 

So why no lifting? Well honestly, I didn't really have the time to get to the gym this week. I had multiple projects coming due at the same time, and work requirements piling up left and right. I made it through alive and with good school/work performance, but I binged my way through it. This is a pretty bad precedent to be setting for my life, and I would like to see what I can do to mitigate situations like this in the future.

Nutrition:

I ate really poorly this week in terms of clean eating, but I only binged once - so hooray on that front!

That's all for Week 16, only 36 more to go!

52 Weeks of Fitness: Week 15 Recap

For the year of 2012, I have made a yearlong commitment to better fitness and health that will change my life forever. The way I see it, I've been "talking the talk" for way too long - it's about time I start walking. The plan is to use workouts from The New Rules of Lifting, gradually start eating better, and try out plenty of fun healthy activities along the way. Here's how I fared this week:

Lifting:

This was Week Four of Eight in the New Rules' "Hypertrophy II" Phase. The Hypertrophy point is where muscle-building takes center stage, so I'm getting YOKED. 

Monday was a mixed strength/hypertrophy workout for upper body push movements. I worked out with my friend Alex today, and walked her through my workout. It was a blast getting to teach these movements to another person, and a great workout for the both of us

Wednesday was a pure hypertrophy for the lower body. My grip strength actually kept up this time!

Friday's workout was put off and skipped due to company coming into town. Or at least that's how I'm rationalizing it!

Nutrition:

Nutrition cleaned up a bit, and not a single binge. A pat on the back for me, indeed.

Other Stuff:
I ended up working out with Alex on Monday and Wednesday, and had a GREAT time. I loved teaching her some things, and it's always nice to have company on these workouts. I'm going to try to work out with her more often in the future, to feed my need to teach others and to spur me on to better workouts.

That's all for Week 15, only 37 more to go!