Day 34~35

Saturday:

I got into the gym at 9 am, and got straight into my own chest workout, which comprises:

1. Dips, 6 reps – 3 sets, body weight
2. Smith flat bench, 12 reps – 5 sets, 20/30/40/20/20kg
3. Incline DB press, 8 reps – 4 sets, 15 kg
4. Flat DB flies, 8 reps – 4 sets, 7 kg

Then to make up for my crap week of nutrition I spent 30 minutes on the treadmill, 9kph. Breakfast was after I got back from the gym and I threw down a WPI shake and followed it with oats and honey.

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Sunday:

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I really got stuck into it today! I headed back to the gym at 9am, after first fuelling up with some porridge oats and a protein shake (about an hour before).

I got in, had a quick warm-up, then got in to Friday’s Athlean session that I had missed due to PT and work commitments. What a workout! I was pretty shattered by the end and really enjoyed the whole set. I’m starting to get my head into the proper place for rep tempo and fatigue, which I think has really contributed to this past weeks workouts.

At the end of the resistance session I headed to the cardio room, and decided to get back on the rower, after having just read Tom Venuteo’s section in BFFM on cardio he suggests that this is one of the most beneficial cardio machines for fat loss due to its whole body involvement. When I used to row before Athlean I would have to push myself to get 2k’s in under 10 minutes, and rarely went over this. At the same level of resistance I was able to do 4.5k’s in 20 minutes and was not really breaking much of a sweat. Definitely an improvement and testament to what a regular workout regime like Athlean will do for you!

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My diet over the whole weekend has been very good. The only slight deviance was Nando’s tonight (Sunday) but I did not stuff myself like I used to and only ate a little. Weigh in tomorrow so fingers crossed 🙂

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Day 33 – Friday

Friday:

This morning was another PT session in the gym. It was a mixed session of lunges with med balls healed over head for legs, 2 lat pull down variations for back and then weighted squats and weighted calf raises. We were going to finish up with some core drills but ran out of time as I had to be off to pick up my colleagues from the hotel quick smart!

I didn’t get in the athlean-x for the day and plan to make it up over the weekend.

Diet over the day was again very poor, I didn’t even manage to get breakfast in so my first feed for the day was a large chicken salad from a local cafe at 10.30am, then my next meal was at about 3.30pm. I then ended up with wagamama’s takeaway in the evening, but thankfully they do awesome edemame beans and I had a very chilli-hot noodle soup dish that was real yum 🙂

Day 32 – Thursday

Thursday:

Thursday and Friday were going to be hard. I had colleagues in from interstate and was in meetings all of both days. On Thursday I managed to get into the gym early and get in a good 30 minutes of solid-state cardio, I’ve switched over to at least 30 mins (9kph) on the treadmill instead of 20 mins (including warm up) on the cross trainer. I’ve done this because my weight drop has slowed right down (also partly caused by bad diet this week) but I will up the cardio anyway.

Diet through the day was not great, no mid-morning meal, subway for lunch, no mid arvo snack, then a meal out at a Tibetan restaurant.

Day 31 – Wednesday

Day 31 Wednesday:

Despite only having 6 hours sleep I was able to get myself up this morning and into the gym. Today’s session was ab work and was a nice session after a day off. I really felt my abs working and really slowed each set to maximize the time-under-tension.

I’m getting to the end of Tom Venuto’s book Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle and have been really enjoying it. The end is now starting to bring all the concepts (I’m proud to say I was mostly aware of, but not practicing) together into a nicely workable format and I will be making some minor changes and tweaks to my diet over the next couple of weeks. My aim will be to complete the last 4-6 weeks of the Athlean-X program with near perfect nutrition!

That’s all for now folks 🙂

Day 30 – Tuesday

As expected Tuesday was not a brilliant day either for nutrition or exercise.

I was up at 4am to catch the first flight to Adelaide for work. I got in a decent breakfast of Oats with a little honey then headed off to the airport. I picked up a couple of “Go Natural” fruit and nut bars and a small pack of unsalted Nobbie’s nuts as snack through the day. All Australian states are pretty weird with customs and importing things, even over their own boarders so I was unable to take any food with me. The training I was there for was conducted at the West Adelaide Football Club, so lunch was down in their bar. I opted for a steak with no sauce and veg, and only ate half of the chips.  I had my snacks though the day, spaced mid morning and mid afternoon and was back at the airport by 4.30. As this was the last session for the team of these training sessions we had a couple of beers at the airport, then I was left on my own as my flight didn’t leave for another 3 1/2 hours. I didn’t drink any more, but ended up having a small order of calamari and chips and salad, again only eating half. I then needed some exercise so walked the length of the airport 4 times at a moderate pace carrying my heavy backpack as resistance. Then on the plane dinner was served, grilled chicken and cous-cous with veg to my surprise and I polished the lot off but stuck with water.

After all of that, I was only over my calorie target by 150cals and was still under my TDEE 779.

I have some questions though on caloric needs: all of the formulas for calculating maintenance cals work on a multiplication of your exercise per day. All seem to indicate 3-5hrs/wk moderate exercise or 5-6hrs/wk strenuous exercise. I’m not too sure which side of the fence  The caloric needs between the two are a little different (253 cals between my target on each).

My initial calculations were based on the higher 5-6hrs because I was doing a Saturday session as well, but I have now seen a drop off in weight loss and I am not at my goal. My diet has changed, but I think for the next 4 weeks I will aim my target calories at the lower 3-5hrs/wk multiplier.

For anyone else who is counting calories, what would you class the Athlean-X program as?

Day 29 – Monday

Well, that’s the first day of week 5 done. I have been looking forward to it after the relatively slow pace of week 4 (except for the Challenges). All but one of the exercises was new, which was a real nice start, as well as the rest between sets shortening from 60 seconds to 30-45 seconds. The sets also seemed to compound together well and throughout my heart rate was up and I was sweating. It felt good, if today is anything to go by then I’m looking forward to the rest of the week. Unfortunately due to an interstate venture tomorrow I will not be able to get in the workout, I leave at about 6:00am and won’t get home till about 9:30pm, so not too sure what I’m going to do about that just yet, I might double up on Wednesday, we’ll see.

I have written a summary of the first 4 weeks here: Weeks 1~4 Wrap Up if anybody’s interested and has missed it.