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 2 Rest Week 1 Ends – Quit the gym, build your own.

chinupgarage

I am not claiming to be the best handyman, you won’t see me on the next season of Handyman Superstar Challenge but I was impressed with myself at getting the chin up bar installed in the garage. It is nailed to the rafters and is high enough so that a) my feet can’t touch the ground and b) it is above the garage door when it opens. This also keeps my ego in check and will prevent me from doing workouts in the garage with the door open. Not that I would dream of doing that now… but who knows about the summer. I am also going to build some crossfit boxes that you use to jump up onto in order to increase leg power and in addition, I am thinking of building some dumbell holders that I can then install in the basement to get the dumbells off the floor.

I also quit the gym this weekend. I have put the membership on hold indefinitely so that I can spend the next few months on my DVD based fitness and taking full advantage of the gym I faithfully built in the basement. It will also save us $70 a month which will, I assume, go towards a cloth diaper service and not towards a new exhaust or HID headlights for the Jeep or Tony Horton’s 1 on 1 fitness.

The buildup was pretty simple, I suspended 2×4’s from the ceiling joists using 4 large nails each. I will eventually put a lag bolt through each one but for now they are OK. I had bought a hollow metal bar, 48″ long and drilled a similar sized hole through each 2×4 as you can see. I simply threaded the bar through the holes and as you can see, the last support is a little off in alignment. That was due to the fact that when I drilled the holes, at least one of them was at a slight angle. I am not sure how you would combat this without the use of a drill press but it doesn’t seem to have affected it in any way.

The bar was around $25, the wood I had laying around as spare pieces as I did with the nails. I will have to buy the lag bolts / carriage bolts.

I am around 260lbs right now and the bar I set up in the basement (which I will discuss at a later time) has a very slight bow to it now after some vigorous use. However, that one is across a 36″ door frame. I don’t expect this one will bend at all given the 3 support points.

My plan is not to hang from between the 2x4s since I would bang my head on the central support, but rather to use one hand on the outside of one end support and the other between the two far supports to give my head room to clear the bar.

G-Days – The Montly Updates Schedule

I have decided that since I am not on the Official P90X any more that I will just update when I have changed my routines to Phase 2 and Phase 3 of my G90X. So far, things are going badly, we spent a week in Vegas doing absolutely nothing except eating everything I wasn’t supposed to and not exercising at all. Sure we walked a bit but that is not exercise no matter what anyone tells you.

So I will be back for Phase 2 and Phase 3 to outline my plan and I will report at the end how my G90X compared to Tony’s P90X.

So long for now.

G-Day 7 and 8 – Rest and Chest

I have missed a few days posting here but the reason is that I had to skip a couple of days for rest purposes and due to the fact we were just too busy. However, I managed to squeeze in Chest and Back at the gym, my second time around with that particular routine.

Chest and back went according to plan, the only adjustment I made was to do single arm pulls for my rear delts instead of doing the rear delt machine. This movement replaces the bent over back flys which to be honest are both difficult and potentially dangerous to do sitting down. A standing pull with your arm parallel to the ground with a cable at shoulder height gives you an excellent isolation of the rear delt without the pressure on your back that sitting provides. I find that doing pull ups at the gym is radically different than at home. The equipment is built for it, the extra space around me seems to provide me with extra strength and the fact that there are huge mirrors right opposite the pull up station is a huge bonus. I also have found that doing bench instead of push ups is also radically different. I am on program to get my bench up to 225 for the push up portions of the program which would make me happy. However, you need to be aware that the bench will never replace the push up as an exercise because of the isolation of the chest. I would recommend that you leave at least one push up movement maybe with a BOSU ball in your repertoire.

G-Day 5 – Legs and Back

So here is my interpretation. It is basically the same as doing the DVD in fact, I have only substituted a couple of moves. I cannot nail down the best way to work in the incline leg press so it may never make it in to the workout.

I posted this before the workout, so here it is again with the numbers included. This was a long (48min without warm up) and difficult workout. Surprisingly one of the hardest things was the Chair Pose on the BOSU ball. I was sweating bullets after that one and shaking like a leaf while attempting it.

Legs and Back
COUNT

GOAL

 Exercise
24 24 Balance Lunges
30 30 Calf-Raise Squats
13 FULL Reverse Grip Chin-Ups
REST
15 15 Super Skaters
4x15s 60s Wall Squats
7 FULL Wide Front Pull-Ups
REST
20 20 Step Back Lunges
20 24 Alternating Side Lunges
12 FULL Closed Grip Overhand Pull-Ups
REST
6×10 60s Single-Leg Wall Squats
8 12 Deadlift Squats – SINGLE LEG SQUATS
9 FULL Switch Grip Pull-Ups
REST
25@50 24 Hamstring Curls Machine
14 24 Stiff Leg Deadlifts – No Weight on bar
9 FULL Reverse Grip Chin-Ups (again)
REST
2x30s 60s Chair Salutations or Squat hold on BOSU
20 12 Toe-Roll Iso Lunges
9 FULL Wide Front Pull-Ups (again)
REST
5 20 Free Squat 4 count down 4 hold 4 up
47 20×3 Calf Raises
7 FULL Closed Grip Overhand Pull-Ups (again)
REST
20 20 80/20 Siebers-Speed Squats
10 FULL Hammer Grip Pull-Ups

G-Day 4 – 5K Run for Charity

Share the outdoors with your kids. They will thank you for it (even if they are 40 before they do...)

Share the outdoors with your kids. They will thank you for it (even if they are 40 before they do…)

 

Rather than spend my time alone in the basement, I took the opportunity to go on the 30th Annual Howl On The Hill 5k run with my wife and some kids from her Fit Kids class. I am sad to say there wasn’t much running to be done but spending time with kids and in the cool autumn air was a great experience. It brought back many memories of being a kid out hiking with my Dad in the Yorkshire Moors complaining about how far it was to the next Youth Hostel. In those days we did 15 miles a day at age 12, these kids were complaining about a 5k walk on suburban streets. Can’t blame them, of course, they are products of their environment and I think all kids are, to some degree, wired to whinge a lot of the time. However, they will grow up with their own pleasant memories and as I get older I realize just how lucky I was as a child not to live in a big city and to have parents who cared about and loved my sister and me enough to truck us out to the countryside and make us carry our own backpacks from Youth Hostel to Youth Hostel where we had to help in the cooking, cleaning and general upkeep of the hostel once we got there. Life wasn’t hard by any means and looking back on it I really really loved those weekends away and although I seem to have lost my point along the way here, those memories of my childhood exercising with my Dad are some of the best that I have. Maybe as a surrogate point here we should agree that although fitness and weight loss are incredibly personal things, they are also things that you can share with your kids and maybe give them some memories like I have of times out in the open country with their parents just having fun.

Tony is a great motivator and an awesome specimen but spending time with him instead of your kids is not the idea. The point is to do what you can with him to make sure you are able to do the other fun stuff with them.

Balance, I am a fan…

G-Day 3 – Shoulders and Arms

Here is the plan for today, shoulders and arms G90X styleeee!

Shoulders and Arms
First Circuit:
Alternating Shoulder Presses
Straight Bar Bicep Curls
Tricep Cable Pushdowns
Second Circuit:
Deep Swimmer’s Presses
Full Supination Concentration Curls
Feet Up Bench Dips
Third Circuit:
Upright Rows – Straight Bar
Static Arm Curls  – Straight Bar
Overhead Dumbell Tricep Extension
Fourth Circuit:
Standing Front and Side Shoulder Fly
Seated Concentration Curls
Tricep Extension and Close Grip Bench Finish
Bonus Circuit:
Hero Flys (Shoulder Fly to Y Position)
Straight Bar Curls with French Curl Finish
Free Dips on Dip Station

I will fill in the weights and other details including the obligatory whining about how sore my arms are going to be later…

I Ran (G-Day 2 – Plyo Substitute)

Knee pain? Hip pain? Low back pain while running? Check your ITB.

Knee pain? Hip pain? Low back pain while running? Check your ITB.

As I was preparing to go down to the basement to do Plyo with Tony, the ever modest, humble Tony, I recalled something he says during the Plyo workout. “You should see me play hoops after doing this for a couple of months… Unbelievable”. Well, I wondered just what he could have meant by unbelievable and if there was an equivalent level of disbelief that I could test for myself. So I decided that I would go for a jog. Now, those who know me are familiar with my stature and know at first sight that although my body is designed for many things, running is not one of them. The last time I ran with any regularity was after I graduated University and was still playing club rugby for the Oakville Crusaders. That was many many years ago and also many many pounds ago. When I was playing last I weighed about 210lbs. I currently weigh in at about 255lbs, mostly due to a big push during the late ’90s when I gained about 40lbs of muscle over the course of about 2 years while trying to make a living as a personal trainer. Anyway, the point being that running is in my far distant past. I have tried over the last few years since my back surgery to run so that I could drop some weight but my runs were more of a walk with some really fast walking mixed in. I would call it jogging but that would probably be an insult to joggers everywhere. I developed shin splints, my tight hip/ITB tore at my knee joints and the whole experience was awful.

Needless to say, my expectations were low and as the rain lightly fell on my face I started out into the darkness to see if my 3 month affair with Tony had been worth it. With my iPod on and thoughts of Tony berating his minions I forged ahead, expecting the usual sad performance. However, I am happy to report that I completed approximately 2.25 miles only stopping at the 3 major intersections to stretch my ITB. Other than that, I RAN THE WHOLE WAY!!!! Unbelievable doesn’t even cover my feeling after I was done and even though the elusive “runner’s high” was nowhere to be found, I was definitely impressed with myself and can say without any uncertainty that P90X was the ONLY reason I was able to do what I did. I know it may not seem like much, but one man’s 2.25 mile jog is another man’s 350lb bench press.

So colour me tickled, I was very happy with myself. That was, of course, until I tried to get out of bed the next day.

Tony, I hate him, but I love him…

G-Day 2 – Come back Tony, all is forgiven

Day 1 of G90X was great. No, wait, it sucked. Well, at the time it was great, now, 2 days later and I am facing Plyo while unable to walk properly I can tell you it was awful. I thought for sure I wouldn’t get sore, after all I had been doing pushups and pullups, what would a little weights be after that?

Well, as you can see below I didn’t use heavy weights, in fact I should have used the pink Olympic bar my bench was so light. In any case, I subbed what I could and did chin ups on the chest fly machine… An enormous double stack of weights with rowing machines and lat machines attached. The cool thing is that it faces the mirror wall and unlike my basement all the mirrors line up properly so you don’t look like a Salvador Dali painting as you are sweating your nuts off.

It was odd being back in the gym especially since I was there NOT doing my gym workout. Instead I had a list to get through. That list is here:

Day 1 Chest and Back
Date

19-Oct

Set 1

Set 2
Flat bench 25 @ 135 20 @ 135
Wide Front Pull Ups

11

10
Narrow Grip Bench 25 @ 135 10 @ 135
Reverse Grip Chin Ups

12

9
Wide Fly Press 20 @ 25 15 @ 25
Closed Grip Overhand Pull Ups

7

6
Incline Bench (OR INCLINE DB PRESS) 20 @ 40 12 @ 40
Heavy Pants or Seated Cable Row 15 @ 150 12 @ 150
Diamond Push Ups / CABLE FLYS 20 @ 50 20 @ 50
Lawnmower 20 @ 30 20 @ 30
Dive Bomber Push Ups

6

6
Back Flys with machine 10 @ 110 10 @ 110
2 days later and I am in critical condition I am so sore.

Day 89, 90 and 1! P90X is dead, long live G90X!

The Return of the Gym Rat

The Return Of The Gym Rat…

It’s time for a rebirth. Time to reinvest in myself and to take what Tony taught me back into the gym.

Today is going to be Day 1 of G90X. My gym infused version of P90X. Since I have a gym membership and my psyche still requires that public exposure as mild motivation I will be taking my P90X workout to the gym. I haven’t worked out the whole program yet, I have a 5 day rotation with which to work and I am going to be doing the Cardio, Kenpo, Plyo and Yoga components of P90X mixed into the newly revamped gym workout.

All I know right now is that if I take Chest and Back to the gym I will have 3 or 4 days to figure out Shoulders and Arms. If I don’t go until I figure it out, I will stay home and watch TV eating bonbons…

So here goes, this is the plan which will probably change once I have a chance to go through it once or twice. I’ll be keeping an excel spreadsheet to record my reps and weights which I will scan later.

6 Day Rotation with rest as required (but with 2 days off a week, rest should not be an issue.
Day 1 – Chest and Back
Day 2 – Plyo with Tony
Day 3 – Shoulders and Arms
Day 4 – Yoga
Day 5 – Legs and Back
Day 6 – Kenpo or Cardio or Core Syn

I am not sure I will be incorporating a rest week or not. I will see how I feel after the first 3 weeks.

•Flat bench with 2/3 body weight (up to full body weight, no more)

•Wide Front Pull Ups

•Narrow Grip Bench with 2/3 body weight (up to full body weight, no more)

•Reverse Grip Chin Ups

•Wide Fly Press (start at 40’s)

•Closed Grip Overhand Pull Ups

•Incline Bench with 50% bodyweight up to full bodyweight (OR INCLINE DUMBELL PRESS)

•Heavy Pants or Seated Cable Row

•Diamond Push Ups / CABLE FLYS

•Lawnmower

•Dive Bomber Push Ups

•Back Flys with machine

Day 87 – Heart Monitors and Stretching

Extreme Relaxing... Bring It (to me on the couch)

Extreme Relaxing… Bring It (to me on the couch)

I was reminded today while watching the Biggest Loser on TV the importance of a good heart rate monitor. Even if you are not particularly concerned with your heart rate per se you should have one that tells you how many calories you have burned in any given workout. This will give you a ballpark idea as to the rate at which you are working. Personally I usually burn between 500-700 calories during an hour long P90X workout. This was overshadowed yesterday by my pathetic count of 200 calories burned during stretch X. It’s not that I am dissing Stretch X, not at all, in fact I actually enjoy the stretching when I do it. The sad thing is that it is usually a choice between Stretch X and Couch X and regardless of the outward appearance that I am a fit healthy and active individual, the couch and I still enjoy a strong and intimate relationship when Tony isn’t looking.

So I opted out of doing Cardio X as a substitute and a dash of adventure and instead went about stretching every muscle known to man. I really enjoyed Stretch X, it’s kid of like a kinder, gentler Yoga X without the leg pain and the Yoga Belly 7. It is a real mind calming workout, and if you choose not to do it on your days off during the phases, make sure you don’t skip it during rest week because I am sure that it is often overlooked like a red-headed stepchild (or the middle child if you are one and just have to throw your $.02 in). It left me at peace, relaxed and feeling much better than I did after a pan full of beans and turkey sausage that I had for dinner.

I have coaching Thursday night and since it is Thanksgiving in Canada this weekend ahead of the big freeze I should be able to squeeze out the last 3 workouts from Friday to Monday. Especially since this is an International Break weekend for Football in England so I know Liverpool won’t be playing and the next Formula 1 Grand Prix isn’t until next weekend so the TV will sit idle on Saturday morning.