Day 30: It could have gone 2 ways today....

So I decided that due to my great results yesterday and the fact that I felt unwell I would reward myself with a few days rest and relaxation, few nice meals and fully recover, after all I lost over 2% BF so I can east a few cheat meals???

Well before you all post how arrogant I have been above, this is the first way that I could have started my blog today and one of the outlooks I could have taken on this whole process.

Hopefully all of you that regularly read this will find the first paragraph hard to swallow as it is indeed not the outlook I take on this whole process and indeed life. I had a 5.30 am start to drive 90 minutes to the office today and felt good after a nights sleep, after 8 hours or so I had another 90 minutes home, kids tea, eldest to football, wife picked him up, meanwhile I had the youngest in bed asleep so then it was time for the workout.

So in short, I could have taken the easy route, I had a good set of results, I was under the weather, but it is all about perseverance and continual improvement, daily accountability to quote Adam.

Now if had I been really ill that would have been a different story. As has been stated in several other blogs you do need to be able to respond to when your body does indeed need rest and if you are fighting an infection that is manifesting some bad symptoms you need to let your immune system deal with it, rather than burning all your energy at the gym otherwise it will just take much longer to recover.

Feeling Better

So as I am sure you have gathered I am feeling much better today. Don't know what happened yesterday but it knocked me for six but with no lingering after effects!!

Apologies if anyone was expecting BF stats part 2 but I was halfway through my weights when I realised duh! As I said yesterday it's not a time I would recommend to do a BF test during or after weights as it does seem to effect the reading quite dramatically.

So I think I may wait now until Sunday, as Friday is cardio and Saturday is rest.

Supersets Lower Body

If you are are not sure what supersets are then please refer back to my Day 25 post.

So today I thought was going to be quite straight forward and not too hard.....wrong!! As you may have noticed in my blog I do not really do many weights on the lower body. My way of thinking is I work this part of my body doing all the running, cross trainer etc etc. I was recommended to train my legs hard so I am trying it out. I did some testers last week but this was the real thing, 4 exercises that was it!!!

10 x barbell squats
10 x dumbbell lunges

1 minute rest after the 2 exercises then repeat 3 more times, a total of 4, then...

10 x barbell deadlift
10 x dumbbell step ups

1 minute rest after the 2 exercises then repeat 3 more times, a total of 4

Well before I was even halfway I was really feeling it and was initially worried about my HIT incline run tomorrow. Now having completed it I will just be happy if I can walk down the stairs in the morning unaided. To say I am sore is an understatement, I am having flashbacks to Adams video yesterday. But this is indeed what it is like when you engage new muscles in an activity they are not used to. It shows that it worked!!

On another note, I was squatting 70kg today which I thought was quite light but there were 3 other guys training on the free weights tonight and we were all talking. These guys lift much heavier than me on the upper body but do almost no cardio. They made a comment about the last time they did squats and not being able to work and then they were all having a go in my rest periods. I was amazed to see that they struggled, one of them was all over the place just in doing 10 reps and I did 4 set of 10 with the lunges in between. So they were spending all their time in the gym working back, chest and arms and literally nothing on there legs. I was really surprised!!!

So another hard workout today which felt good and I will see how I am in the morning, I am still going for the incline run no matter how much it hurts, even if I just have to crawl real fast on the treadmill.

Well it's getting late now and I need some sleep so I am gonna visit all you blogs and then fall unconscious somewhere, hopefully it will be my bed!! Keep shredding guys, day 5 has finished so we are now a third of the way there.

Until tomorrow....