New Abs exercises

I saw Fitness Stu last night with the aim to add some abdominal exercises to my plan.

First of all we are going to keep the plank in the plan, twice to failure but the hand to knee sits are out. Instead he suggested that I try sit up twists, twice to failure. Also added are some leg raises twice to failure. And last but not least are these crunches with a sit up aid where I twist my body and roll forward. Hard to explain, almost as hard to do but work my external oblique muscles like nothing else.

Then while talking through how the rest of my plan is going Fitness Stu mentioned that by about week 12 we should be changing the whole plan to keep the body guessing. It seems that muscles get used to exercises and slow their growing rate after about 3 months. New exercises also trigger slightly different parts of the muscle group to give a more all over growth. So at some point in the next week or so we are going to ditch all of the exercises that I have been doing for some new ones.

After spending about 20 minutes with Fitness Stu, I was left to my own devices again.

10 minutes on the rowing machine at level 5 for a quick warm up.

Two sets of 15 reps with the 5kg arm curls. Two sets of 15 reps 7.5kg arm curls.

Chest press 2 sets of 15 at 23kgs.

Shoulder press 2 sets off 15 at 27kgs.

Back extension 3 sets of 15 at 66kgs.

Arm curls 2 sets of 15 at 18kgs.

Seated dips. 3 sets of 15 reps at 36kgs.

The Plank twice to failure.

Twisted crunches. Twice on each side.

Sit up twist. Once to failure. (my abs were getting really tired and time was ticking on, otherwise I would have done two sets).

Treadmill. 20 minutes intervals at 7mph. I’m really enjoying running at the moment and I think I could go longer and faster if it wasn’t for the intervals. When I hit an interval peak I think my heart is going to explode… I think I want to get one of those heart rate monitors so that I can see how hard my heart is working during exercise.

As always I finished with swimming. 20 minutes this time .