Go with the flow!

[Espi]

one of his "newest" thoughts is that you do the interval until your heart rate reaches 85-95% of APMHR (age predicted max heart rate) then recover until your heart rate drops below 140.

Then I've been doing it right automatically. Except that the APMHR sux monkeyballs. My maxHR is only 170bpm , also because my minHR is around 32bpm. I used to start gasping for breath at 150bpm but a few months ago when I still did HIIT (apparently i was doing HIIT after all) it was 160bpm.

That's 160/170 = 94% . If I'd take the Karvonen method that's approx. (160-30)/(170-30) = 93%. Not too shabby . I should be able to work up to 1 minute at around 150-160 bpm: 86-93%. As a matter of fact, I remember one particular bike ride where the adrenalin rush lasted over 12 hours at which I had a consistent HR of over 155bpm all the freaking time!

[Espi]

Thursday April 26
TRAINING Go with the Flow # 7 week 3
all weights in kilograms

DYNAMIC STRETCHING /BW exercises
1 walking lunge (5 reps each leg)
2 spiderman crawl (5 reps each side)
3 ham stretch : Frankenstein (10 reps each leg)
4 Swiss leg curl (14 reps)
5 sissy squat (10 reps)

WAVE LOADING

A1 front squat
WU: 25x10
Wave 1 – 2
30x10 –31x10
32,5x9 – 33,5x9
35x8 – 36x8

I’ve found a way to make front squats work better. Now the gym has been rearranged, it’s possible to use the fixed-weight barbells! As these barbells are narrower in diameter I could also use the teeny weight 0.5 kg disks that are in use for Body Pump classes. I feel almost like an idiot to work with only 1kg increments but hey, it works. Progress = progress.
Best of all, I don’t need to clean the weight anymore at higher weights when I take the trouble to get all of the other barbells out of that side of the rack. This I only did with the 36 kg at the end, as I was able to clean 35 kg just fine. Just chickened out of it at 36 kg because I was so exhausted from doing waveloading supersets.


B1 Romanian DL
WU: 55x8
Wave 1 – 2
65x8 - 67,5x8
70x8 –72,5x7
75x6 – 77,5x5

Too tired at the end to make it a proper series of 8-7-6. The 72,5x7 was a new PR for theoretical 1RM. 77,5 kg was highest weight sofar I’ve done with RDLs. Just never pushed myself too much here.


A2 step ups
(2x5) x 10
Too exhausted from the squats and DLs to do more weight or reps.

B2 pull through
21,3 x 9
Bad I know.. but what can a tired girl do?

REHAB STUFF
Mensendieck
Did them at home.

ODD EXERCISES
Did a half-hearted attempt at this one from

Excercises You've Never Tried Before #4


Single-leg Leg Press (with stops)

This one makes our legs throb just writing about it! Situate yourself in a standard leg press machine. Using only one leg, explode the weight up but avoid full lockout on extension. Here's where the "fun" begins. Lower the weight slowly. As you do, make three stops along the way and hold the sled steady for about three seconds each stop. That's one rep. Don't get carried away with load the first time you try it. Start light and shoot for eight to ten reps per leg.


BW+19kg x 2 (normally I could do about 12-20 reps with that weight, but not now.

Yes, I know.. pitiful. I’ll be doing it again when I’m not feeling so wiped out and in another gym with a better leg press (plate loaded instead of knee-destroying ‘hack’style leg press machine)

Opinion: can’t say it yet before I do it with less shaky legs.

General
I guess a combination of excess heat (it’s 27°C today, totally hot for a spring day at Edmonton-latitude) and sticking to the diet better than in the last few weeks, led to a combination of feeling more fatigued than normal. Strength doesn’t diminish so much (got some PRs) but ability to do a normal-high volue WO does drop considerably. Was dragging my ass to get the supersetted waveloads done. Next time I think of such a daft routine someone stop me!!! At least I’m not as nuts anymore to try supersetting front squats and split squats/squat lunges.

Training statistics
Volume: 12674kg
# of sets:23 (incl WUs)- # of reps 181 - avg reps/set : 7,9 - kg/rep 70,0 kg

[Espi]

Saturday April 28
TRAINING Go with the Flow # 7 week 3
all weights in kilograms

DYNAMIC STRETCHING /BW exercises
1 normal push ups (9 reps till failure)
2 Russian twist on ball w 2.5 kg disk (10 each side)
3 lateral lunge with opposite hand reach & touch (10 each side)
4 ‘windmill’ (10 each side)


WAVE LOADING
A1 Yates row underhand grip
WU: 52,5 x 8
Wave 1 – 2
62,5x4 – 65x 4
67,5x3 – 70x 3
72,5x2 – 75x1 PR!
Too much cheating here. Will def go back to Pendlay rows when I am going to do bb bent over rows again. Still : 75kg isn’t anything to sniff at, despite the cheating.

B1 db press
WU: (2x16)x8
Wave 1 – 2
36x8 – 36x8
40x6 – 42x 4 (mistake, 4 was easy)
44x4 – 46x2

Here there was a big discrepancy with the heavy rowing. 5th work set was a mistake when I already stopped at 4 reps, thinking that this was all I needed to do And then the final set was another disappointment: hadn’t waited long enough after the max effort on rows. At least less than 2 minutes, perhaps even less than 1 min.

MEDIUM
A2 standing military press
28,5x6
26x7
23,5x 11

Nice to add just 1 kg (2x0.5 kg disks from Body Pump class) to the weight, except that I forgot to get the BodyPump clips so the 0.5 disk fell off.

B2 close-grip bench press
30x11
27,5x13
25x17
Improvement in reps.

C2 mixed grip pullup
BWx2-2
A3 wood chop
21,3x5/6 (L/R)
Same as last training.

B3 renegade row
12x10/10 (L/R)


REHAB STUFF
A4 exorotations
3,8x17/17 (5 more again)

A7 face pull
8,8x20
Same as last time. Paying attention to form by keeping elbows high.

Cardio : since I’ve not done any treadmill work since early Feb I decided to ease back into it. I wanted to check how 60 second intervals would feel like. Dunno, but I guess I took it too easy.
Incline: 10% all the time until cooldown (10-0%)
WU: 4,6 – 5,0 km/hr
Speed: 4,6 – 5,0 for warmup / 5,0/6,4 km/hr for two 60/120 intervals and then 180s when this was too little effort / 5-4 km/hr for cooling down
HR: 140-150bpm for the first 2 intervals, up to 156 bpm for the 3rd ‘interval
Watts: normally I don’t notice, but now I did: 160/126 W for the intervals.
164kcal – 518 kcal/hr (-126 compared to Feb3 )
1,73km – 5,46 km/hr (-0,54 compared to Feb3)
No wonder it felt so easy! Yet it wasn’t that easy since I forgot to put on sox and without callus after that long period of not running my feet hurt (hopefully no blisters!)

General: pretty happy with results. Tuesday will be another max effort day and then follows a deload with high reps. I can almost smell the NROL workouts. Already tempted to tweak with the Break-In!

Training statistics
Volume: 8268kg
# of sets:31 (incl WUs)- # of reps 244 - avg reps/set :7,9 - kg/rep 31,0 kg

[Espi]

Getting more & more bummed that this time around maintenance keeps dropping along with intake. I'm thinking one of the major differences is that right now I don't do much cardio, so I'll ease back into HIIT-style training, which is exactly what the NROL program calls for. Still need to feel how intense 1 minute intervals are supposed to feel like.
On Saturday the 5 (=3.1) /6.4 (=4.0) km/hr (mi/hr) at 10% incline for 60/120s didn't feel intense enough, so in the end I did a 180s interval which finally got the HR high enough to make me feel like working.
The plan is to either keep increasing the incline from 10 to 15% and not increase speed as much , which allows for speedwalking.
Or I can try to really run and keep incline at 10% (the most comfortable high incline) and speed up to around 11-12 km/hr, which seems to be about the fastest I am able to run for 60 seconds at the time.
I kinda think that the latter approach would be the best as there's a limit as to the speed one can speedwalk and one tends to cheat at the end by jogging. Or get trouble like shin splints?

Still not sure how to do the squats/static lunges for Break-In. I'm inclined to use Smith for easy-ish back squats and then challenge myself more with real bb static lunges but use low weights (those I can lift overhead). It's so annoying when your gym spends €€€€€€ on beautifying the interior but flat-out refuses a 'dangerous contraption' like a squat rack. The real reason is that not a single gym is willing to have clients lift SERIOUSLY! These people take far too much time. A gym earns money by having a lot of 'no shows' and people move through machines. Why do you think factories stopped manual labour? Takes far too much time, costs too much money!

[Espi]

It almost seems there are more people reading my journal than questions in the NROL section: Squats & static lunges for break-in: Smith or free?

so, I repeat:

OK, so now I'm putting together an entire year's worth of NROL program and as everyone else, will be starting with Break-In.

And here's already the major problem.

My gym does NOT have a squat rack, only a Smith machine plus a fixed weights barbell rack. I'm currently doing bb front squats for my own current program. For those, I had to clean the weight off the floor, which limited the top weight to around 35 kg (give or take a few kg when dieting).
Recently the set up of the gym was changed, so that the bb rack is nearer to the free weights area and by unracking all of the other barbells, I don't need to clean it anymore.

However, I don't really feel comfortable trying to use it as a squat rack for back squats, for lack of safeties.

Also, right now I'm supersetting front squats with RDLs. This works OKish.
But when I supersetted with static lunges, even when those were done in the Smith machine I felt like dying because both are very taxing on balance, even a Smith static lunge.

For static lunges, maximum weight to be used would be much lower and getting the bb on the back shouldn't pose as much of a problem. Getting it off or finishing the exercise without toppling over is a whole different matter.

For the record, I'm hearing impaired and have serious balancing issues, like an inability to walk over a(n imaginary) white line. Yet, I can squat 100kg in a Smith. Static lunges haven't been done with low reps (40kgx8) but max was like 25kgx25). So, while I can see the importance of balance, it's never been good at any time in my life, and I wonder if it's useful to try and improve it with exercises that can work out to be really dangerous for lack of safeties like in real squat racks/cages. It's not a matter whether I'm going to topple over with lunges, it's a matter of when. E.g. I do this all the time when doing the walking lunge with UB twist as described on p. 69 (been doing those for a couple of months), and after all those weeks I still have trouble with them.


There's option 1:
lazy (wo)man's solution and do both in the Smith , which allows for much higher weights to be used. When paying very close attention to timing it should still be tough.

Option 2:
do free weight squats as goblet squats and do static lunges in Smith

option 3:
do free weight squats but now as bb front squat and do the static lunges in the Smith

option 4:
do back squats in Smith for real heavy lifting and use (light) dumbbells for static lunges

option 5:
do back squats in Smith for real heavy lifting and kill myself by toppling over with a (light) fixed wt barbell (using the fixed weight rack as a no-safeties 'squat rack'

option 6:
kill myself immediately by doing both back squat and static lunges from the fixed weight 'no safeties' squat rack. I'd need to use 2 barbells here to rack and rerack alternatingly and annoy the heck out of other gymusers.

BTW, the free weigths area is about 2-2,5 m x 2-2,5 m with rubber mats and 2 free wt benches. I'm always moving one of these or trying to work behind them if there's 2 other persons working out there.

I just can't see the forest for the trees anymore and would like some input now. Go for a slightly stable method that allows much heavier lifting, or go the wobbly road and use teeny weeny weights.

Phew!

When I'd finished typing it all up, I came with another option: do squats from the bench press station. That's how I used to do good mornings. Again, this only works reasonably well with low weights. Like e.g. in Break-In. Perhaps I'm overthinking, but I keep wondering what is better: kill myself with free weights as there's no safeties or do it the easy way with the Smith machine and but increase weights.

[Espi]

Tuesday May 1
TRAINING Go with the Flow # 7 week 4
all weights in kilograms

DYNAMIC STRETCHING /BW exercises
1 walking lunge (5 reps each leg)
2 spiderman crawl (5 reps each side)
3 ham stretch : Frankenstein (10 reps each leg)
4 Swiss leg curl (10 reps)
5 sissy squat (10 reps)

WAVE LOADING

A1 front squat
WU: 26x10
Wave 1 – 2
31x10 –32x10
33,5x9 – 35x8
36x8 – 40x7

PR for wt (highest wt used sofar and calculated 1RM of 50kg ! Easy peasy to get the weight on the shoulders when you can do it from a barbell rack that’s stripped empty! It takes a bit of technique to put the bars back as I need to keep them on the shoulders. When trying to do it with the hands, there’s too much strain on the wrists. When I do it from /to the floor I kinda bump the barbell down and almost let it fall on the floor but when the barbell moves below the elbows I’m catching it. Not earlier. Works like a charm.
When moving back the unracked barbells, I still was able to clean a 35 kg bb. Not bad!



B1 Romanian DL
WU: 57,5x10
Wave 1 – 2
67,5x7 - 70x8
72,5x7 –75x6
77,5x6 – 85x4

Feeling good and since this is supposedly my max-effort training only 6 reps for the last set wasn’t going to cut it. So instead of 80 kg I loaded 85kg. Yay, 4 reps (till failure). Supposedly my 1RM is 96,6 kg.

A2 pull up
BWx1-2

B2 pull through
23,8x 14
Another PR, highest wt used sofar. Supposedly 1RM is 36 kg. Mind you, I’m still progressing extremely carefully here as I don’t want to injure shoulders (I used to raise too far and turn it into a front raise .. ewwww).

REHAB STUFF
Mensendieck
Did them at home.


Cardio : still doing the ‘breaking in’ Upping speed by 0,2 km/hr
WU: 4,6 – 5,0 km/hr
Interval speed: 5,0/6,6 km/hr for two 60/120 intervals and a 180/0 interval
Cool down : 6-5 km/hr
HR: 145 /140 for 1st and 2nd interval. Up to 150 for 34d interval. That’s 5 bpm less than 3 days ago, despite 0.2 km/hr higher speed. Catching up quickly !
Watts: 166/126 W for the intervals /rest
178kcal – 534 kcal/hr (+16 compared to Apr28 )
1,84km – 5,52 km/hr (+0,06 compared to Apr28)
When finished, I got that prickly tingling feeling again, that seems to indicate increased blood flow. It was down near my calves though, so it could also be the wrong kind of tingling

General
Feeling much better than last week. I now take the raisins I used to eat in the pre-WO coffee to the gym. Much better. Also, from now on calories on either Sun- or Monday will be higher, so as to not be a weakling on Tuesday. Which I wasn’t . There was even time for cardio!


Training statistics
Volume: 11633kg
# of sets:21 (incl WUs)- # of reps 167 - avg reps/set :8,0 - kg/rep 69,7 kg

[UConnJulie]

Because of my background and feeling that balance is important (fall risk reduction and all that goes along with it) I would opt for smaller weights and do them unsupported. I don't have my book in front of me to know what the first superset is ... but if you can't safely do back squats because of lack of apparatus, then I'd either do goblet squats or "suitcase" squats with two DBs. For static lunges, I'd do them with DBs. Even though you are using lower weights, you will be training all those little stabilizer muscles and will be amazed at how fatiguing they are.

Balance is trainable. Generally we look at 4 components to balance ...
1. Vision: Most people rely heavily on the feedback their eyes are telling them about their world to balance. That's why many falls occur at night (among the elderly).
2. Inner Ear Mechanisms: like miniature carpenter's levels in your ears. They send information to your brain about where your head is in space and if it is level. (Yours are damaged from the hearing loss? Is that what I understand?)
3. Joint receptors: tell your brain where your limbs are in space. That's why you can bend your elbow approximately 90 degrees without looking at it.
4. Muscle receptors: things like golgi tendon organs ... help with kinesthetic sense and fine motor adjustments.

So we work with people with deficits all the time. Anyone who has had a joint replacement surgery automatically has diminished balance because they are no longer getting feedback from their joint about where they are in space. But they get better by training their balance. Same with blind people. Their joint and muscle receptors adjust to compensate. The same should be true with you. But it won't get better if you don't train it. Take the weights way down and work at it. NROL is a good time to do it since you will still be creating a lot of metabolic disturbance ... so lifting VERY heavy is not really necessary during the fat loss workouts.

Just my opinion ...

[Espi]

Thanks Julie : much appreciated.
For me, it's not just hearing but also #1 (eyesight), as my eyes squint again, which makes judging distances harder.
To my knowledge no real problems with #3 and #4, though I'm not really gifted in that department either.

Lisa already gave me great advice and if it's not too challenging to superset, I'm going to try bb front squats and db static lunges. I've tried this earlier in April, and failed because it was too challenging. Part of the problem was doing no less than 6 sets of each.
But I'll try again. With low weights for the lunges.

[UConnJulie]

So you have a double whammy ... all the more reason to focus on improving balance ... better to train the muscle and joint receptors NOW while you're young!!

[Espi]

LOL thanks for the compliment. I'm 43 Which is at the wrong side of 'being young'. But body composition has never been any better than it is now, but it's still not good enough, hence program #4.

Back in elementary and high school I really used to despise sports, because I sucked at everything school gym revolves around:
- no balance for gymnastics
- no distance judging for ball sports
- not enough speed : I've got these weird feet as well.

It was only much later, in my early 30s that I discovered my strong points: very good endurance and decent strength. Endurance sports didn't bring me the body I wanted though. Only strength training can do this, and even then it's hard work: is combining all the right elements.

[Espi]

Thursday May 3
TRAINING Go with the Flow # 7 week 4
all weights in kilograms

DYNAMIC STRETCHING /BW exercises
1 supine rows (10reps)
2 normal push ups (8 reps till failure +2 knee pushups)
3 Russian twist on ball w 2.5 kg disk (10 each side)
4 lateral lunge with opposite hand reach & touch (10 each side)
5 ‘windmill’ (10 each side)

A1 mixed grip pullup
BWx2

WAVE LOADING
A2 Yates row underhand grip
WU: no WU
Wave 1 – 2
37,5x12 – 40x15
42,5x12 – 45x 12
47,5x11 – 50x10
Nothing special. Did the first wave before starting the first wave of db pressing, so not a true superset.

B2 db press
WU: (2x16)x8
Wave 1 – 2
36x8 – 40x5
40x6 – 44x 4
44x4– 48x2

Was a bit dissatisfied with the 46x2 reps of last Saturday, so decided to do it again and up the wts a bit bolder. And yay! Managed two reps with the 24 kg dumbbells fairly easily! Barely any wobbliness. Calculated 1RM is 50,5 kg. That’s about as much as I ever pressed with a regular bb press.

MEDIUM
A3 standing military press
18x18-15
15x10

Getting exhausted fast. This is also partly a triceps exercise, like the close-grip benching is.

B3 close-grip bench press
32,5x9
30x11-14

PR for reps, calc. 1RM is 45,5 kg.

A4 wood chop
16,3x16/16 (L/R)
Four more reps than last time with 16,3 kg

B4 face pull
8,8x27
Six more than last time.

Cardio : once again, upping with 0,2 km/hr for speedwalk. And once again, managed 180s for 3rd ‘interval’.
WU: 4,6 – 5,0 km/hr
Interval speed: 5,0/6,8 km/hr for two 60/120 intervals and a 180/0 interval
Cool down : 5 km/hr @ 10-0%
HR: 120 for low speed, 145 for interval up to 156 bpm for the last 180s ‘interval’.
Watts: 126/170W for the rest/intervals
176kcal – 528 kcal/hr (-6 compared to May1) , due to easier cooldown
1,78km – 5,34 km/hr (-0,18 compared to May1)

General: the idea was to do mostly 10-15 reps today, but I was hellbent on trying to do another max effort for db presses. Again quite happy with the results, esp with the dumbbell presses. I didn’t do all the exercises I’d planned to, this particular training plan is a bit too voluminous, so it’s not that bad to not do everything. It was also a good idea to take my post-workout carbs along. Once again, extremely yummy freshly dried dates.. you do need to eat them straight from the plastic bag, as you’d get extremely sticky fingers! Likewise yummy were the green raisins I ate during the workout. Too bad this is a one-time batch, the bazaar no longer carries them!

Training statistics
Volume: 8518kg
# of sets:27 (incl WUs)- # of reps 280 - avg reps/set :10,4 - kg/rep 30,4 kg

[UConnJulie]

Originally Posted by Espi

LOL thanks for the compliment. I'm 43 Which is at the wrong side of 'being young'. But body composition has never been any better than it is now, but it's still not good enough, hence program #4.

Back in elementary and high school I really used to despise sports, because I sucked at everything school gym revolves around:
- no balance for gymnastics
- no distance judging for ball sports
- not enough speed : I've got these weird feet as well.

It was only much later, in my early 30s that I discovered my strong points: very good endurance and decent strength. Endurance sports didn't bring me the body I wanted though. Only strength training can do this, and even then it's hard work: is combining all the right elements.

Ahhh ... 43 is not old ... 93, now THAT'S old!!

You know, it is too bad that so many kids have that experience in primary and secondary schools regarding physical activity. I think a good phys ed teacher would help kids who don't excel at the traditional sports, find something that they like and do well in. Studies have shown that sport or fitness or whatever you want to term it plays an important role in self-esteem and success in life. Shouldn't it be the goal of every primary school phys ed teacher to find something physical that each kid likes and can do well at?

Glad that you stuck with it and found where your strong points lie ... it leads to a much happier and healthier life!!

When are you starting break-in?

[Espi]

Probably around May 15. Or perhaps a few days earlier as I always like to start a new program when TOM has arrived. Which nowadays tends to come at unexpected moments.
Shortest cycle was 21 days in the past few years, longest one over 30 days. Whichever way you look at it, it's good or bad news. Used to be 35-42 days and even up to 60 days when stressed. I must have had PCOS back then. The cycle shortens as soon as I'm eating less carbs/calories, but I can't pinpoint yet when is the decisive moment.
Now I'm taking morning temperature readings, I hope to find out more. Also whether or not the 2nd half (luteal phase) is shortening. This is not supposed to happen until menopause, at least according to what I've read about it.

Always TMI in my answers . I do like to work along with my body, and supposedly a woman is a tad weaker in the first and last week of the cycle. So, I make sure that my max effort days are put in the middle when I do a routine like this one with undulating reps.