Days 17-21 - End of Week 3

Another crazy week…

Hey there F2F readers! It’s been a very busy few days for me, incorporating lots of things, especially work! Now, in the interest of my own health, and to keep some organisation with my blog posts, I needed to spend some time doing some catch up workouts.

Wednesday & Thursday

I took a rest day on Wednesday to rest after a particularly gruelling tuesday Yoga, then returned with a vengeance on Thursday morning to do a 60 minute back training session. Friday morning, exam day, I stuck to last week's routine - up early to study and ready myself for the exam and train later. The exam was headache worthy and lasted almost 4 hours! I then travelled to Melbourne to meet my lovely wifey to celebrate her birthday weekend. We had planned to use the city Fitness Firsts to continue our training - the hotel we had booked allowed some guest passes for me and Winnie could go to any with her Platinum FF Membership. We did end up getting a lot of gym time, plus the use of two different gyms and a whole variety of equipment. 

Friday – The Birthday Workout

Yes, you can and should do a workout on your birthday! It will raise your endorphins and as a bonus, you can go out and feel less guilty about it! It had been decided before Friday, we were both prepared for at least an hour of gym. I arrived to the city to meet Winnie, and after some light lunch, we got ready for a good Back, Shoulders and Abdominals workout. I was very impressed by the new standard Fitness First are setting. The re-brand to Red is awesome, but the gyms were really modern. Friday's workout was conducted at the FF on the corner of Lonsdale and Russell and was a smaller gym, with everything you needed to to a fairly functional workout; cable machines, the main resistance machines, ample free weights (lots really) and a good selection of kettle bells and weigh disks for doing some 'cross-fit' style training. I was impressed also with the birthday girl's training, she pushes hard and stays focussed. Hopefully she will have some new tricks up her sleeve after training with me! The back equipment was excellent, different row machines, for tweaking different muscles in your back, a variety of pulldowns to work strength and keep a variety of work. The gym was really spacious for a smaller city gym, lots of space to do abdominals too (in a dedicated area). Whilst doing shoulders we were able to throw in some use of the cable machines, free weights an kettle bells. I even got a a chance to use a couple weight disks to enhance my shoulder routine. Awesome.

Saturday - The "I will get this workout in" session.

So, after a long day of shopping, and gradually feeling more and more tired from doing so, Winnie and I were determined to get a workout in. We went up to the top deck of our hotel to use their 'lap pool'; which was so small I could have just tumble turned at each end and kept going until I either got dizzy or passed out from shallow water blackout! Needless to say we decided to go and get stuck into our workout. We returned to the same Fitness First as Friday evening, to find that the gym was closing (at 1700h? Really?) and were redirected to the Melbourne Central club that was closing in 60 minutes…..OR we could walk all the way down to Flinders and Elizabeth to train there (until 2300h if we wanted)…Well, we decided to power on and head to Flinders Street! I actually commented at how the universe was testing us! Well, we got to the gym, figured out it was built on 2 levels, with various stuff for training on each level.

We started with arms, specifically Biceps, then worked Triceps prior to finishing with Chest and Abdominals. We utilised a cable machine and a variety of hand grips / bars to accomplish most exercises, then moved to free weights and barbells to conclude arms. We repeated with cables then free weights for chest. After about 90 minutes we headed to the open space on the first level, to do abdominals. I thought it would be a good time to utilise more cross-fit gear to help finish us off - kettle bells, weighted tubes with handles on, medicine balls. We grabbed some mats and worked through lots oblique and lower abdominal strengthening exercises. I was really enjoying training and then stretching with my wife. I look forward to the next time.

Sunday…. Raw Me Up, Baby!

Today, is normally my rest day, so we decided to chill and go to a movie to reward ourselves for training over the weekend. The Lego Movie was so much fun "everything is awesome"…. After making our farewells I headed to Crib Point (via Frankston) and Winnie to the Sydney (via Melbourne)….I later found she had been delayed and our 'early' night became a late night…. Oh well. A weekend well spent. 

Where's Winnie!

I utilised my free evening to make some raw and tasty hummus (and chopped my carrot sticks to munch it with), then my second batch of Raw and tasty Chia Pudding - which I know will be just as tasty as last week, topped with blueberries and strawberries I'm onto a winner!

My final exercise in raw food that CAN be prepared with just a bullet blender and some creativity was to make some yummy protein balls. I used almond meal, desiccated coconut, natural peanut spread, ground roasted almonds, vanilla sun warrior rice protein, and coconut water to bind it. yummy. I made about 16 and ate two 'testers' which were good for a brain storm! Next time I might grind up some Cacao nibs and add to the balls to give some choco-flavours! Still it was cool to make some more healthy snacks to keep me going...

Protein Balls

Inspiration for Monday

So, I was thinking of how to inspire myself into the next week, to be strong on the build up of easter and not eat badly. Stage 1 was the raw food preparations, Stage 2 is to just get on with it - JFDI as we mentioned last week! Stage 3 is just to provoke thought….