A mosquito dance... well it's a joke that's probably only known to a few entomologists that know how mosquitoes fly when they smell blood. I've done a research on them and when they get really excited they fly in a circle that looks a bit like an 8.
In this exercise you hold up 2 light dumbbells and walk around with it. Preferably in a pattern like an 8, so that your shoulders have to work harder to stabilize the dumbbells overhead. In a farmer's walk you take a very heavy weight in your hands and walk around with that one. So it resembles both.
Saxon side bend = a OH side bend. Instead of leaning to the side with a db hanging down you now do it with a db overhead. 2 hands hold 1 dumbbell and then you sway sideways (for the obliques it is).
The graph.
See the purple line? That's maintenance as a 30d average. The amt of calories I could eat without gaining /losing fat.
See the blue line? That's intake as a 30d average.
If the blue line is above the purple line, I was gaining weight/fat.
If the blue line is below the purple line, I was losing fat.
Now, see the green line? That's my 2 yr work. I'm constantly trying to improve upon my ability to actually predict in advance what's my maintenance is going to be.
Actually the graph should also have the zigzag line in the graph below (that shows my LBM/fat mass fluctuations plus volume), as maintenance is very dependent on:
- activity level, in this case volume of lifting and amt of cardio
- food intake!!!
It's almost maddening... I eat less, mtn goes down.. and if maintenance goes up, I eat more. That's the hard part about wanting to lose fat.
The last few months though and that's really exciting I've finally hit upon a diet method that's not too difficult for me and whew.. at the start I even had the paradoxical situation that my maintenance went up while my intake went down.
Oh, and the 2nd graph. At the left Y-axis you see %s up to 100%. The purple and blue line represents fat mass as a % of the fat mass I had in Sep 2001 when I had my very first body fat measurement done (with a tanita scale). It was 33% at the time. The yellow and light blue line is my lean body mass relative to what I had in sept 2001.
The crazy zigzag purple line is the 30d average of the volume I've lifted in kilograms.
That's displayed on the right Y-axis.
That volume line would have been very insightful on the first graph as maintenance & food intake indeed matches lifting volume very well... with some exceptions.
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