Category: Gymnastics / Bootcamp

Since the gym is dead, I now refer to the gymnastics club as the gym. This is the bootcamp, the workouts with the kids (which are also mostly crossfit inspired) and other gym related activities

Round 4 Day 37 – Gym Back and Biceps

All I had was a chin up bar and a pair of 35lb dumbbells but I still managed to wear myself out. 30 min of pullups double biceps pullups concentration curls.

No frills, just pullups outside in the dark and dumbbells in the basement. Still, it’s better than spending $70 a month for a gym membership.

Keeping up with the plan, the next workouts are:

39 Pure Cardio
40 GYM Shoulders Traps and Ab Ripper X
41 WOD with Pullups
42 OFF
43 P90X Chest & Triceps, Ab Ripper X
44 Pure Cardio
45 P90X Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
46 WOD with Pullups
47 GYM Shoulders Traps and Ab Ripper X
48 Max Interval Plyo

Then rest week #2

Round 4 Day 35 – Chest and Tri, no rest. FitDay and the Protein Issue.

How much is enough?

So my weight this morning was a low 266.8. That makes 15.2 lbs lost on the Paleo diet and thanks to FitDay I know why. I am having a hard time keeping up with the amount of calories I need to keep my fat ass fat. Yesterday I was short almost 1500 calories but still over the 2000 calorie minimum that I feel is necessary. I seriously can’t stuff any more fruit and veg down my throat in a day. I am going to have to start increasing my protein which led me to calculate my protein needs…

I used to calculate my protein requirements when I was into the heavy weightlifting since to a “bodybuilder” protein is like air, without it you will wither and die. According to THIS I need 360g of protein a day, even using just my lean mass by subtracting my fat% I am still rated at 300g a day. Fit day claims that my 106g of protein that I ate yesterday was already 190% of my requirement meaning they estimate my protein requirement at a minuscule 56g! So why the discrepancy? Well, the obvious thing is my frame size and musculature, but even healthcalculators.org taking into account a LARGE frame says I need 115g. Interesting… Fitday is obviously not geared towards the athletes among us. Using the lean mass approach, the people at criticalbench claim you require 1.14g per lb of lean mass, which for me would equate to 228g of protein. That is sounding better. However I am disturbed, nay, astonished at the vast difference in calculations here. It does show however what I have believed for a long time, you can’t rely on a single source of information to get your requirements. Being exposed to the bodybuilding world for so long made me very aware of my protein requirements but what about all those people out there who are working out, using programs like Fit Day to calculate their requirements and leaving themselves woefully short on protein? You could say that someone who is serious about their workouts wouldn’t rely on FitDay and I hope they wouldn’t but I would be naive to think that is the case. Apparently the RDA for protein is .75g per lb of lean mass. Even using that calculation, I should be at 150g, not the 56 that FitDay claimed. So what is the issue with FitDay and their protein? It seems as if there is nobody out there who has noticed this problem. People are using FitDay to track their nutrients but nobody seems to have noticed how low the protein intake is. maybe it’s just me, but the extra calories I am missing will be in the form of protein from here. My goal is set to around 200g of protein a day given that I am pretty active and need to maintain my muscle mass. I didn’t go through years of torture building muscle so I could let it go to waste. The other side of the equation is what your body is doing to create or use the amino acids required to build protein. I mean protein doesn’t have to come from protein, as long as your body has the right amino acids it will make the protein. Is it possible then that ingesting low amounts of protein would be fine as long as you are getting enough amino acids (specifically essential amino acids) to build muscle. There is a ton of information out there about protein but seemingly little about how the body actually uses amino acids (and from where) to build the muscle tissue. Before this turns into a protein rant, I think I need to do some more reading. If my protein level is to remain low, thereby allowing me to keep my fat levels low also then where else do I need to get the amino acids from to provide the appropriate level of building blocks for the muscle. I am not even talking about ADDING more muscle, just having enough to repair the damage done by the workouts I am doing. It appears that although the meat protein contains all 8 essential amino acids (Isoleucine, Leucine, Lysine, Methionine, Phenylalanine, Threonine, Tryptophan, Valine) in spades, you can in fact get all 8 from other foods (something which the vegetarians out there will no doubt think is common knowledge).

This does not answer my question though. How much food and which food do you need to provide the essential amino acids that you would get from meat protein? If you are eating enough vegetable based amino acids does that then reduce the amount of “protein” that you need in a day. I would say yes that is exactly the case, but if so, by how much? This is getting complicated…

Yesterday I did a chest and tricep workout, just flat bench for chest and for triceps a mixture of narrow grip bench and free dips. It wasn’t a crazy hard workout, 35 min long but I did get to complete failure on the dips. I am only going up to bodyweight for bench (275) and mostly will stay around 255 for my working max. Mostly because I can’t be bothered changing the plates all the time since I have a limited selection but also because I don’t want to stress my shoulders since they are getting a heavy workload as it is.

FitDay is still bothering me… What else could be out of whack?

Round 4 Day 33 – Shoulders and Traps (Gym)

I can’t really find a good sequence of shoulder stuff in P90X so I am going to stick with regular gym and Crossfit stuff. I made up a short workout for yesterday and may have given myself tennis elbow in the process.

4 Rounds for Time:

Alternating Shoulder Press (35lb DB)
Upright Rows (95lb barbell)
Clean and Press (35lb DB)
Shrugs (95lb barbell)

It didn’t last long and I should probably have added some flys on the end of the workout to round out the shoulders but by the time I was done I was pretty tired. I was pushed for time since my wife and baby were waiting for me to finish so although it was short I had to make sure it was tough. The hardest part was the clean and press with the dumbbells. Controlling dumbbells through a clean motion is difficult at the best of times but add tired aching forearms to the mix and you have a potential disaster. Today I feel like I have tennis elbow in my left arm from not warming up properly. We went straight out for a walk after to Starbucks with the baby so at least I got the warm down right!
Anyway, that was yesterday, today is Pure Cardio.

I have also started to use FitDay.com to track my stuff. All my workouts and eating etc will be available here:

http://fitday.com/fitness/PublicJournals.html?Owner=Perfik

It’s OK, nobody is here… hehe.

Round 4 Day 17-18. Plyo Plus Shoulders and Arms

No, I did not do P90X Plyo, this was Plyometric Cardio from Insanity. Although I did toy with the idea of going back to Plyo once this round we will see. I made a quick and easy shoulders and arms workout that was OK for shoulders but not that great for triceps. I am not worried about my biceps at this point but my triceps need a bigger workout than this. I think I may have to go away from the circuit training approach for this day so I can military press for my shoulders and then covert back to flat bench so I can narrow bench for my triceps.

Here is what I did yesterday.

95lb Military Press x10
35 lb In and Out Biceps x 10
Body weight free dips x 10
95lb Military Press x10
35 lb In and Out Biceps x 10
Body weight free dips x 10

135lb Military Press x 10
35lb Single arm Bicep Curls x 10
20 Military pushups
135lb Military Press x 10
35lb Single arm Bicep Curls x 10
20 Military pushups

185lb Military Press x 8
35lb Double Bicep plus Upright Row x15
Chair Dips (feet up) x15
185lb Military Press x 8
35lb Double Bicep plus Upright Row x15
Chair Dips (feet up) x15

35lb Side Shoulder Raise x 10
Band Tricep Push Downs (all 3 bands) x 10
35lb Side Shoulder Raise x 10
Band Tricep Push Downs (all 3 bands) x 10

It seems like a lot of sets and maybe it’s due to the fact that you are effectively trying to cover off 4 bodyparts in one day, bi’s tri’s, shoulders and traps. 22 sets is a ton compared to a couple of days ago when I did what I thought was 8 sets however if you split the pull ups out it was 16 sets. I still feel like I did more and yet not enough. I am thinking of splitting out and doing chest/tri, back/bi and shoulders on a separate day like I used to but that won’t be until round 5 most likely. I say round 5, but I am getting so far away from the Round 1 of P90X it seems almost ludicrous.

Round 4 Day 16 – Gym Chest and Back

I resolved to make this a tough but fairly quick workout but mainly to make it repeatable. It turned out quite well, although I can’t remember how long it took and I think with time I may need to tack on some extra sets especially if I can find some heavier dumbbells to do some rowing. The fact is that with this workout my back is solely done with pull ups and although I am not completely happy with that I have no way of getting rows into my workout at the moment and with the light dumbbells that I have it’s pointless to do lawnmowers. So here is my Gym Chest and Back workout.

Bench and Pull ups

135×20 + 10 wide front
135×20 + 10 wide front
185×10 + 10 reverse grip
185×10 + 10 reverse grip
225×10 + 10 close grip
225×10 + 10 close grip
275×5 + 7 tuck pull ups
185×10 + 7 L sit pull ups

As you can see, there are only 8 sets here and typically I like to aim for 12 -15. next time around I will time the workout and see if I can add another 2 sets at the lower weights. As my strength comes back I may be able to add more 275 sets but I don’t think I will be going higher than that. I benched 375 before, I don’t think I need to have a 400lb bench in my list of achievements.

P90X / Insanity / CrossFit / Weights – Round 4 Tentative Schedule

I am going to try to work in some Crossfit type WOD workouts in with my Beachbody stuff. Not only that, I have incorporated Gym days as well as P90X days to give me the best of both worlds. Since I have a bench for chest and shoulders I may as well get it used, not only that, it will help me to maintain my strength as well as the flexibility and bodyweight work from the DVDs. I find that having done this for a while that I miss the heavy weights of bench and shoulder press. I miss the massive pump that I get from doing free weights and since I have the ability to work it in, I am going to schedule it as part of Round 4. Having said that, here is the tentative schedule for the next 90 days. You will notice that I have opted to do a 4 on 1 off rotation. I find that doing these workouts is extremely hard on the body and you really do need to schedule more than one day a week off if you are mixing up the workouts together. I find that if I don’t I will get to around 8 or 10 days and suddenly be unable to do the workout and end up taking 2 days off or more. That is not productive in any way so I will try to get the rest I need while still maintaining the work rate. I hace also scheduled a “rest week” to give me a break from the monotony. This is subject to change, obviously, but for now, I think this looks like a fun way to get me to Christmas.

ROUND 4 – P90X / Insanity / WOD /Freeweight  Mix

(Modified after day 28 – Too Much Chest In Phase 2)

1P90X Chest & Back, Ab Ripper
2Plyometric Cardio Circuit
3P90X Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
4WOD with Pullups
5OFF
6GYM Chest & Back, Ab Ripper X
8GYM Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
9WOD with Pullups
10OFF
11P90X Chest & Back, Ab Ripper
12Pure Cardio
13P90X Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
14WOD with Pullups
15OFF
16GYM Chest & Back, Ab Ripper X
17Plyometric Cardio Circuit
18GYM Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
19WOD with Pullups
20OFF
21P90X Chest & Back, Ab Ripper
22Cardio Power and Resistance
23P90X Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
24WOD with Pullups
25OFF
26Core Cardio and Balance
27Core Synergistics
28Core Cardio and Balance
29P90X Chest & Triceps, Ab Ripper X
30Max Interval Plyo
31P90X Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
32WOD with Pullups
33GYM Shoulders Traps and Ab Ripper X
34Pure Cardio
35OFF
36GYM  Chest and Triceps
37WOD with Pullups
38GYM Back & Biceps
39Pure Cardio
40GYM Shoulders Traps and Ab Ripper X
41WOD with Pullups
42OFF
43P90X Chest & Triceps, Ab Ripper X
44Pure Cardio
45P90X Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
46WOD with Pullups
47GYM Shoulders Traps and Ab Ripper X
48Max Interval Plyo
49OFF
50FOY Yoga
51Core Cardio and Balance
52Core Synergistics
53FOY Yoga
54OFF
55WOD with Pullups
56Chest & Back, Ab Ripper X
57Max Cardio
58Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
59OFF
60WOD with Pullups
61Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
62Max Interval Plyo
63Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper X
64OFF
65WOD with Pullups
66Chest & Back, Ab Ripper X
67Max Interval Circuit
68Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
69OFF
70WOD with Pullups
71Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
72Max Cardio
73Chest, Shoulders & Triceps, Ab Ripper X
74OFF
75WOD with Pullups
76Chest & Back, Ab Ripper X
77Max Interval Circuit
78Shoulders & Arms, Ab Ripper X
79OFF
80P90X Fit Test & Insanity Fit Test
81Max Rep Pullups 10 min max
825K Timed Run
83Max Rep Bench 10 min max
84FINISH!!

What’s Next? Round 4 Spitballing

September 7 2010

So I am starting to think about Round 4 and what it will entail. Since I am a big fan of Fitbomb I have taken a shine to the Crossfit methodology and even though I wouldn’t be able to do some of the movements due to my back surgery I still think that I could hit 2 out of 7. That is all I would need to get me started on something like this:

Day 1: P90X Workout
Day 2: Crossfit WOW (workout of the week choice)
Day 3: Insanity Workout
Day 4: P90X Workout
Day 5: Crossfit WOW
Day 6:  Insanity Workout
Day 7: Rest

There will have to be some kind of adjustment to the bodyparts I would work, part of me thinks that I can skip the leg workouts from P90 if I am doing both Insanity and CF. I would need to work Chest, Back, Shoulders and Arms over the 2 day split realizing that the WOW would probably then have to work something different if possible. I would still try to break it down into a 90 day session which given occasional days off (Thanksgiving weekends, parents visiting etc.) should run me well into the Christmas season. I still have almost 2 weeks of Round 3 to go and it is my mission to get this Fitness Melange organized in time to start right at the end of Round 3.

What is the philosophy behind round 4? Well, I think the ability to incorporate some running is the main focus. Also, being able to avoid burning out on Tony and Shaun is critical. The more I work out with them, the more I want to get out and see how fit I am doing other things after all, what is the point in getting fit if you aren’t going to test yourself once you get there? I think that a large part of doing a WOW will be to show off the shape I am in from doing P90X and Insanity. Plus there is something visceral about working out outside, lifting things that aren’t dumbbells or barbells and getting to grip with yourself without the aid of a TV personality.

Round 3 – Post rest week, day 66

Well the time is fast approaching for coaching to begin and the challenges of working out while spending 2 nights a week at the gym. Not only that, but now I have the baby to contend with who I am beginning to suspect doesn’t have my fitness as one of her main priorities in her life. Each year I have a problem getting the workouts done when it comes to coaching season, not because it is particularly hard to do but because it becomes a great excuse not to do it. This year, I can’t afford to be that way. It is less than 20 days until coaching which (much like last year) won’t quite allow me to finish the program before I start. What I really need to do is to start thinking about my next quarter and what to do with my workouts that will allow me the time, flexibility and challenge to keep my fitness up.

I substituted a bench workout for my chest, shoulders and triceps workout on Monday. It is a significantly different workout than doing pushups and I found that I really missed that full pump that I can only really get from heavy benching. Fortunately due to the type of bench I have I can also do a pretty good shoulder press workout too since doing flies doesn’t really cut it for building or maintaining your shoulder mass. I did find however that I was not sore after, which speaks to the conditioning of the muscle, regardless of the diminished strength. It was great to get back to basics, and I think come the coaching season I will be incorporating a couple of bench workouts into my program. They are short and intense and remind me of why I have been going to the gym for all these years.

Insanity however, is still kicking my ass. I am doing the max workouts now which I find better since I am unable to match the intensity that is required to get the most out of the shorter workouts. I think as time goes along I should also consider getting outside while the weather starts to cool down and do some short distance runs, maybe 1 -3 km at a quick pace to get my running back. I find that jogging hurts my calves and feet but running doesn’t. Weird huh?

Round 2, Days 39-43. Niagara Vacation

So I have been away and trying to fit something into my schedule. For the first time in a long time I worked out at a gym in the hotel only to be ashamed at my lack of brutish strength. I realize that this will bother me forever now that I have shifted my focus but I just can’t help myself. I did take my Insanity DVDs with me also however the room was prohibitively small and they had really nice treadmills in the workout room so I opted instead for some tried and true relatively fastish walking…

I did however manage to get Pure Cardio, Legs and Back, Chest, Shoulders and Triceps done while I was out of town. I also did quite a lot of walking around the area however with a very pregnant wife by my side, walking isn’t what it used to be! So back to today with what is supposed to be max interval plyo. I have to admit that the hardest part of this Round 2 is keeping track of where I am and what day I am on. Not only is it difficult to maintain my focus on the P90X portion but it is equally hard with two forced rest days a week to keep motivated. I have found much to my disappointment that I have been largely unable to do 5 days a week with the 2 coaching days off. I have found that extra rest day creeping in regardless of what I plan.

Here is what I have scheduled on my list for the next 5 workouts. That should, in theory, take me to Monday. I guess we will see.

The message here I guess is that if you are going to plan your workouts without a structured 7 day routine, make sure you have your 90 days written down and take it one day at a time.

Max Interval Plyo
Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X
Max Cardio
Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X
Max Interval Circuit

Max Interval Plyo

Back & Biceps, Ab Ripper X

Max Cardio

Legs & Back, Ab Ripper X

Max Interval Circuit

I have also just noticed that I was supposed to start the Max workouts last week and failed to do so. I will therefore introduce myself to Max tonight. I just hope he is nicer to me that Shaun T.

Round 2, Day 36 – Chest, Shoulders and Triceps and Home Bench

invisible-bench-press

I am really happy with this workout now that I have substituted some of the weaker exercises with more bench work. When I bench I feel like I am really working. I have a hard time getting out of the gym rat mindset that unless you are throwing massive amounts of weights around then you really aren’t working. At least this way I get to stress my body, feed my desire to push 45lb plates around and still get a great varied workout.

The bench has been my partner for so many years. From being frustrated at my inability to push 2 plates right through to my bloodvessel busting 395lb singles we have come a long way together. My new partner is the chin up bar. Around a year ago I decided that my lifelong inability to do chin ups was finally going to be a thing of the past. I remember vividly not being able to do more than one chin up, and for a person who (yes I admit) thinks of themselves as pretty strong it was a real disappointment. After all, what kind of person can shoulder press and bench press well over their bodyweight and yet can’t do chin ups. It was an embarrassing secret. I committed to doing more pulldowns and to doing jump releases which are basically jumping up to full chin up and lowering yourself slowly. After much work I found that I was up to around 10 or so, something which I have to admit I always thought would be impossible. My introduction to P90X came shortly after that and since then my chin ups are where they probably should be, although not at Tony’s level, I can certainly hang with the other guys in the videos.

Maybe this is a hangover from the goal setting spiel from yesterday I am not sure. Either way, I find the bench to be a warm reminder of my many many years in the gym and the pull up bar as my hope for the future. I am missing the gym less and less but every so often it’s nice to reminisce with some heavy straight and close grip bench.