Day 52 - Gym-Happy

I saw this today and it really made sense, plus it's what I've been doing all week....

Happiness

Today, I've been really quite chirpy. A happy soul. I've been smiling and enjoying the sunshine, I've trained really hard and I'm going to go out in Mornington tonight, for a birthday celebration....Major thing here, thanks to Mish Bridges, is that 8 weeks into my regime, I'm not going to feel guilty about going out. I'm going to control what I eat (a glutard's lot) and drink, but I'm not gonna stress...this way of being makes me very happy.

I've started seeing changes, mostly in functional strength, some size changes in my body and there's a twinkling of minor definition coming in mu physique. All major contributors to my happy state. I feel good, therefore I am good.

Another quite interesting thing is going on for me, I've only just realised that people actually read this blog. So, thanks for your feedback - I love it. Like I said, 52 days ago, this blog is to hold myself accountable, and to document the transformation that I'm intending to occur. So far, so good. Like I said yesterday, it's not easy but I'm not a quitter....

As my training is becoming more functional, and more aggressive in its nature, I'm becoming very keen to see how far I can push my body. It's all about limits; understand them to surpass them. I'm improving so much at the moment because I work to this, and I also know were the 'line' is, when to stop myself, apply controls to prevent injury....well, so far, so good.

Training Arms

Today is arms day! I had a massive session. At the start of this week I applied a little of my research into functional training, and endurance training. I also found that there are heaps of training videos and tutorials online to help further develop this knowledge. To that end, I've totally changed up my arm workout to suit. Still working on sets of higher reps, and more sets to accompany each exercise; I decided to focus my attention (whilst working mostly compound exercises) toward developing forearms, biceps and triceps. I decided that I'd give my favourite session a little workout, to boost it and shock it.

I started with forearms. Using the barbel cage I conducted farmer walks - not only are they goof for core, but also in the development of strong forearm and grip strength. I worked hard, walking around the gym floor with this thing. I ended up with 90kg (plus the bar weight - I think 10kg extra) on the frame, so good feel it very early on. I ended up doing about 8 sets, which was really good fun!

 

Start position for cage bar farmer walks... 

After I continued with forearms - and possibly the hardest exercise I've encountered: Palms Down Barbell Wrist Curls, over the edge of a bench. I ambitiously started with a 15kg bar, but ended up realising very quickly that I had to drop to 10kg to get used to the exercise, then after 3 sets of 8 reps I bumped up to 12.5kg for another 3 sets. Very hard, my forearms were getting the workout they've never had! I completed a similar set doing the Palms Up version of the exercise, which are way easier - so I returned to 15kg bar and completed 5 sets relatively comfortably. My last exercise was a set of standing olymipc plate squeezes. This is really a grip and forearm burnout - so, naturally 3 sets of 10 reps sealed that up nicely!

With my forearms still throbbing I moved into biceps. I grabbed a couple of 10kg dumbbells to allow me to do standing Zuttman curls. 5 sets later I could feel this was going to be an AWESOME arm burn! I moved to the E-Z Bar to do Spider curls - you lean against the angled part of the biceps bench, so that your arms drop down fully to work the flu range of the muscle. Hard. I managed to get, after 5 sets, to 30kg plus bar (approx 5kg extra) on the 4th and 5th set, which was a good place to be!

Next, I continued by working through 5 sets of inclined (leaning on incline bench belly down) bicep curls, using the 17.5kg bar. I finished biceps off with some good and heavy barbell bicep drags, using 30kg as a maximum was pretty good!

My E-Z Spider Curl Set Up

Now, Forearms really singing, Biceps swollen I moved into Triceps. Starting with the E-Z Bar to run through 5 sets of skull crushers, followed by cable work to really push them. This included Overhead Tricep Extenders, Reverse Grip Tricep Push downs, and Triceps push downs. ON the push downs I actually stacked the cable machine (45kg) for 8 reps! Boo-Ya!

For my final tricep workout I took the rope connection and moved to the seated row cable machine. I hooked in the cable. I then took a lying position, with my head near to the pulley end. IUsing my whole body, I pulled the rope overhead, then inline (but parallel) to my body, twisting out the tricep at the end. This worked my lats, core abdominal region and triceps....awesome!

Abdominals

Yesterday I was saying I need to improve my ab workout. Well, I did today...like, I really pushed hard. Since I was entering the third hour of my workout, and still going strong, I decided to start with suspended/hanging knee up crunches - I did 8 sets of these, each with 8 reps. Next came a new exercise, Landmine 180s. These are using the barbell and the hinge piece that it slots onto to create a big pivot arm. I started with a warmup of the exercise, no weight, for 10 reps. I then added a 15kg disc and did 2 more sets of 8 reps. This was NOT an easy abdominal exercise, I could feel it working everything on my body all at once! I ended up with 20kg on the bar (plus the bar which is 20kg) so, a good long start to abs!

Me, doing landmine drills..these are awesome hard work!

After the Landmines, I went over to the cables to do Pallof Press Core stabilisers, with weight. These burn your arms, lower back and middle abs. I did three sets on each side, ending up with 30kg load. After I did 3 sets of 8 Cable Lifts, with only 15kg load. These are like enhanced wood choppers. I found the Spell Caster dumbbell twists to be really uncomfortable, but 3 sets of 8 reps, with 6kg dumbbells really tested me!

Whilst doing abs Mr Q had entered the gym, and asked me to 'spot' him whilst doing bench, then assist him on pec deck so he could do a burnout. Good Job Q! You're looking much stronger these days too. In between helping Q, I pushed through 4 sets of Full Rectractors. These are especially hard because your upper body and feet are not in contact with the ground (except before and after each set). I did sets of 10 and by this time by body was cooked, like a chicken! I decided it was time to start to relax!