Been super busy this week until 12:00 today and hardly had any chance for more than a 30-60 minute walk each day so made up for it with this. Just planned a route longer than I’d ever done before and went for it, broke the 50km milestone too. I’m also having a takeout pizza tonight from a fancy Italian so I wanted to earn it. In terms of fuelling I had about 150g each of chicken and pasta before then about 50 cals worth of my intra workout drink during the ride and just started to run out of energy towards the end but would have been fine for a few more miles I think.
Going to do another probably 20ish mile ride on Sunday and got all three runs to do this week still so will probably do one tomorrow AM and PM and the third on Sunday. If I can get a quick lifting session in too that’d be ideal because it’s probably been over two weeks since the last one but honestly I’ve just lost all desire to lift at home. I’m chomping at the bit to get to the gym but just can’t muster up the same passion at home.
Another good week diet wise: start of week was lower cal and exercise then Friday-Sunday was the opposite which averaged out well. Not a huge change in average weight because it didn’t move much at the start of the week then jumped a lot towards the end but that’s fine.
Still keeping calories in where they are as there’s no reason to change. I’m less busy this week than for the last couple of months so calories out will probably increase as a result of having more time for walks and bike rides. The weather is meant to be nice too which helps.
Overall I’m very happy with the diet the last couple of weeks since I stepped things up. Hopefully I can keep the momentum these next few weeks to be in a good place once gyms open.
Targets for this week:
Calories: 1714
Protein: 180g
Carbs: 149g
Fats: 44g
Calories burnt: 3000
Forgot to log this yesterday. The wind was crazy and I spent half of the ride heading into it hardly moving anywhere. That paired with still being achy from Friday, a run Saturday evening and a run a couple hours before the ride made this one of my toughest rides yet.
Diet and weight loss has been a bit of a mess this week so I’m not even going to bother with daily averages since they don’t give a good representation. On Monday my diet was good and I weighed 78.7kg. Tuesday I had a bbq where I didn’t track what I ate but it was mostly meat and little else for the rest of the day. Wednesday and Thursday were good and on Thursday I weighed 78.5kg. Friday I had a huge takeout meal which I couldn’t track and then Saturday I ate about 1000 calories to try and limit the damage. Sunday morning was another take out for dinner but with very little else for the rest of the day and I weighed 78.85kg. So overall, I basically didn’t lose any weight all week.
To compound the rubbish diet I broke my bike on Monday and it won’t be fixed until at least this coming Tuesday so cardio was down. I walked at least an hour a day and did two runs but that can’t compare with the calories I’d burn on a big bike ride.
Aside from the negativity it’s been a nice week. I’ve got my plan sorted for when the gyms reopen and I’m excited.
FINALLY got my bike sorted and pushed this one hard. This was by far my fastest ride ever, especially considering the distance. I’m doing a 40 mile ride with my cycle club this Sunday which will be a 7 mile distance PR and at a decent pace too. Probably should have taken this easier to save myself but couldn’t resist once I was on the road.
In general, I’ve not been active around here recently but still loosing weight. Very excited for the gym to open on Monday and once they do I’ll be more active again, logging all my workouts. Will do a post about my plan a bit later but in short it’s going to be full body 3x a week, high intensity and 2x bike rides a week.
First ride with my local cycling club. I enjoyed it a lot and found it a lot easier than I expected so big success there. I’ll make this a weekly thing now whenever the weather is suitable.
Last week was very good in terms of weight loss which isn’t surprising given how low my calories were on the days I tracked them. I wanted to really give the fat loss a push for the final week before the gyms opened and now my plan is to slow it down a bit and aim for around 0.5kg loss a week. The days I didn’t track were pretty well timed and still not too high calorie. Monday I had a yoghurt and coffee for breakfast, a pork pie and coffee at lunch and nandos for dinner however I also spent about four hours walking in a hilly area. Saturday I ate very little until the evening when I had a pizza from a local Italian. I specifically had it on Saturday night to fuel me for the big bike ride on Sunday morning. Finally, Sunday I had my dinner cooked for me so didn’t attempt to track it but all my other meals were on plan and including the bike ride I apparently burnt about 4800 calories so I think it was ok.
Looking at this week, finally gyms are open and finally I will be lifting again after over a month off. I’ll do a post explaining my training plan straight after this one but want to keep them separate. As I mentioned, I am going to slow down the weight loss a bit for the remaining weeks of the T-ransformation and maybe I’ll even be able to build some muscle while losing fat. I’ve a small part of me hoping that because of the lack of stimulus and having probably lost some muscle, I’ll be able to put it on really easy for the first few weeks but it might be delusion. Anyway, calories are going up about 150 per day and I’ll assess at the end of the week. There will most likely be another cheat meal on Saturday evening again too.
Targets for this week:
Calories: 1888
Protein: 180g
Carbs: 175g
Fats: 52g
Calories burnt: 3200
3x full body lifting sessions per week - high intensity and low volume.
2x cycle rides per week - one interval session and one longer ride (approx. 3hrs)
3x runs/jogs per week for first five weeks following Couch to 5K, 1x approx 30 min run per week for final two weeks
Lifting Sessions
I have been reading and watching a lot of TrainedbyJP stuff recently and it matches how I like to lift and my goals so that’s how I’m going to lift. I’m probably not doing him justice but he’s a believer in training to failure and lower volume. For beginners he recommends a full body split which splits into upper lower, push pull legs etc as you get more advanced. I think he took a lot from DC training so you can get an idea of it from that. Is it optimal? I don’t know but I don’t think it matters and don’t care as long as I enjoy it.
My plan is to rotate between four different full body sessions Mon-Wed-Fri which are essentially a heavy lower, light upper 1 and 2 and vice versa. However, because I am cycling and running a lot I am really pulling back on the leg stuff for now as you will see. That might get me flamed but again I don’t care because it fits my goals. I’ll focus more on legs once I am gaining weight. The aim is to work up to a top set for each exercise and progress either with more reps or weight which is what I was doing before anyway. Obviously I haven’t tested this plan yet but the plan for each day so far can be seen below:
Cycling Plan
Thursday’s ride will be a ride about 1hr long doing intervals of different lengths. Sunday will be a club ride with my local club as I did this week. They’re usually about 3hrs and sort of medium intensity but that might decrease as I get fitter and they get easier.
Running Plan
I am following the Couch to 5K plan with my girlfriend and we are starting week 5 today with there being nine weeks. I am a bit better at running than her so these are pretty easy and low intensity for me. I found previous weeks even felt easier as they went along despite the runs getting longer, I think because of the cycling and weight loss. We will be doing these Mon-Wed-Sat but that could change based on how busy my girlfriend is. Once we have finished the plan I will do one roughly 30 minute run a week, probably on a Wednesday, just to maintain my ability.
Diet/Weight
I have harped on about this plenty but the plan for this time is to at most be at maintenance but more likely I’ll be aiming for about 0.5kg weight loss a week. Aim is to have most of my carbs around my workouts.
I’ve run a similar (ish) idea for the lifting before cycling between full body sessions with each muscle group/pattern being Heavy/Medium/Light. It was probably my most effective training block of recent memory.
That’s good to read. Main idea between the heavy and light sessions here is to get strong across a range of rep ranges.
Biggest downside I see to this sort of training is the lengths of the sessions because of how many exercises there is and because they’re all different body parts they’ll each need warming up somewhat. Most of the full sessions (consider in basically skipping half by only doing one leg exercise) apparently take upwards of 1.5hrs.
Unfortunately with full body comes time constraint… But there’s only one set. Appart from squats and probably RDL you could diminish the warm-up times and save lots of time. For instance, after chest press, the shoulder and tricep exercises would only necessitate 1-2 feeder sets. You could also warm-up for instance the bicep and leg isolation at the same time
On the warm-up front: I usually warmed up pretty quickly for the heavy stuff up front, and might have supersetted some really basic warm ups for the “next exercise”, but probably not. Never been one for excessive warm ups. If I was going from Heavy Squats to Medium Bench for example, I might have supersetted a few push ups with my last squat sets, but probably not.
My sessions could drag, so I just had “options” set up for each movement pattern, that meant I could do more or less without losing the intent of the workout. Usually the “Heavy” work would be “must do”, Light work would be “as long as I do something to get a bit of a pump in relevant muscles, I’m good”. So “Light Press” could be anything from a few sets of lateral raises to a full blown John Meadows delt blast lasting for 30mins.
@aldebaran@dagill2 yeah I warm up similar to how you’ve both described other than the supersets. Luckily for how strong/weak I am it really doesn’t take me long. The number of exercises is the bigger factor in the long sessions I guess.
12/04/21 Full Body 1
Squat: 2x70
Incline dumbbell bench: 16x14s
Cable Y raise superset with cable lateral raise: 12/5x5, 10/4x5
Close grip bench: 13, 7x30
Hammer low to high row: 12x30
Hammer pull-down: 15x40
Hammer curl: 17x7.5s
Decline crunch: 10xBW
First, I’m only logging the work sets because it’s easier. So that I can function for the rest of the week without wincing every time I move, I took this pretty easy. Once I had to start grinding a bit for the next rep I stopped. This combined with how weak I am and the high rep ranges led to some very light weights. It was hard to not push more and honestly kind of embarrassing to do like two sets on a machine and walk away having hardly broken a sweat however I’m glad to be back and excited for the next session when I can push harder. This was a necessary evil in my eyes.
I think I’m already going to change my plan and for now I’m going to ditch the heavy/light upper/lower. Instead I’ll just do a session 1 and 2 and use a range of something like 6-12 reps. The reason being that right now I’m too weak for high rep sets in some of these exercises and being more specific should mean I’ll get stronger at that specific thing faster. I’ll go back and edit my training plan post to reflect the changes a bit later today.
You did 2 reps on the squats? That was too heavy then ahah
Yeah warm-ups aren’t that relevant
It’s harder to do less… You did good. You shouldn’t feel weak. You did what YOU had to do. I’m trying to follow your exemple as well and keeping good form, not killing myself every time… it’s hard but I’ll get there. Because in the end we’ll progress more than if we fry our body and CNS and use bad form
Yeah 70kg was tougher than I expected and I didn’t want to grind at all. I did a lot of warm ups with squats though because it’s been about four months since I last did them and my legs were already sore from a bike ride yesterday which meant I still did an alright amount for today at least.
I definitely intend to go to failure soon, I just don’t think it would have been wise for me to do so on my first session back having not lifted at all for over a month.
Definitely made the right decision yesterday taking it easy. I hardly felt like I’d done a workout afterwards but today I’m sore everywhere. I hate to think how bad it’d be if I pushed harder.
