The New Plan

In the gym yesterday to see fitness Stu who revised my regime to suit my duff shoulder. Now that I have a direction again (rather than just ambling in and randomly selecting a machine), I am feeling really positive.

A lot of the exercises are obviously focused away from my shoulder muscles, and the legs are now bearing the brunt of the workout.

The leg press that we have been doing since day one has now had the reps upped to 25 and I now am doing 3 sets.

But there are two new leg exercises added to the list. The leg extension. Where I hook my legs under a bar and lift it upward which works muscles across the tops of my thighs. 25 reps in 3 sets for that one. And the leg curl. Where I put my leg on top of the bar and push it down which works the muscles on the back of my thighs. 25 reps in 3 sets.

Fitness Stu is brilliant though and found a few exercises that still work my arms and chest but keep my shoulders immobile.

I am now doing two different types of seated arm curls with the free weights. One where I keep my elbow on my thigh and curl upwards. It is a really archetypical bodybuilder exercise and I can imagine growling at my bulging bicep as I haul massive weights up… Only I am using 5kg weights. And the other is the standard curl upwards with a twist of the wrist as I get about halfway up. 2 sets of 15 reps for each.

I also have a triceps push down exercise on the cable machine. My elbows are locked solid to the side of my body and I pull down on a bar which via cable and pulleys lift up a weight. 2 sets of 15 reps on about 5 -6 kgs.

Fitness Stu then wanted me to really work on the cardio work. So onto the treadmill I went. I have been doing the fat burn setting because I thought that would be the hardest but I was wrong. Apparently it’s all about elevating the heart rate for certain periods of time before letting it fall again. The best setting for improving my cardiovascular systems is interval training. No effort followed by lots followed by none followed by lots etc. So onto the treadmill I went and Fitness Stu pushed me up to 7.5mph (allowing me to let it fall to 6.5mph briefly when I was knackered). 20 minutes today but depending on how much time I have I am to do 30 minutes.

It was a bloody good workout and I was really binned by the time I was done, but one thing that became apparent was that on the effort sections where the treadmill inclined my calves were really hurting. Fitness Stu decided to add some calf step up exercises to help build these muscles. Stand on something with my heel hanging over the edge, and push upwards. 2 sets of 15 for each leg. Once I start to find this easy, I am to hold a dumbbell weight to increase the effort.

Cardio work doesn’t stop there either. I am to do 20 – 30 minutes on the cross trainer and after Fitness Stu had finished with me, I ended the session doing just that.

I had sweated buckets (my T-Shirt was wetter than my swimming shorts when I got home) so I showered and hit the sauna for a few minutes to cleanse the pores, still no swimming is allowed though.

In other news, I think this weeks pair of goals are going to die a death. Since declaring last week that I was going to go for a paddle, and go for a run up the Wrekin the coldest of cold snaps has come in replete with snow. The snowmelt has pushed the river level back up to dodgy highs, and the dark and cold is not encouraging me to go for a jog up a hill. Something different may be planned for Sunday but I am going to keep schtum about it until it happens.