Sunday, 21 October 2007

Day 22: Compound Weight Training

Back to training today, shame about last night but I guess you can;t win them all!!

So it was mostly compound weights today in the gym and it took the shape of the following, the usual 5 minute warm up on the treadmill and then:

10 x Shoulder press
10 x lat pull down
10 x low row
10 x bench press

Calf raises in between to keep the pulse rate up. I also did mixed in 10 chin ups and around 3 sets of wide grip biceps on the ez curl bar. Felt really great afterwards. Struggled with the bench press as I do not normally do these, I did have a spotter most of the time just incase but the weights were not that heavy that I would do myself any damage had I not been able to lift it!!

I must admit I was pretty knackered after it all as each of the above were working several sets of muscles rather than just isolating a particular one.

Right not much else today, just chilling with my family and enjoying the fabulous weather again ;-))

Until tomorrow....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's all really interesting - the advice about less cardio and more weight; I'll be really interested to hear what comes out of all that. I am back into the running now - not long runs, but I am feeling a bit lighter on my feet (not quite like the old days, but better). I have been doing upper body weights and today I noticed that I am not getting stronger, instead it just hurts more. Simon told me that I am doing the same routine each day and that I will never get the benefit unless I break it down more, doing each exercise twice a week instead of 6 x a week with the same. What's your experience?

Keep up the good work!

Jack

Andrew said...

Hi Jack,

Well we will see how it goes over the next 2 weeks and I will post the results.

Simon is correct I am afraid you do need to give your body (muscles) time to recover and mend and as you are new to weights I would have at least 2 full days between training a body part. So vary your exercises, check out the resources section for a selection of great exercises that you can select on per muscle group.

You also need to enusre that you are managing to get enough protein into your diet, especially important for you being a vegan. You really need to research the typs of foods that can provide you with this and ensure that you eat a good mixture of these as they will mostly be incomplete proteins, i.e. they do not contain all of the essential amino acids.

Your body needs this protein to continnually renew your muscles and to rebuild them after you workout. Your muscles are continually being replaced by new muscle tissue hence the importance.

Hope this helps,

Take care

Andrew