Abs Tightening, a painfull chest and buns of steel

So, just past my 5th day of training. My workout days are Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. That gives my enough time to recover. Though now that my muscles have stopped complaining after every day of exercise it might be wise to speed things up a bit.

The push-ups are still giving me the most trouble. I restarted week 1 of the pushups since I couldn't complete it first time around.

Today I did the second day of the third column: 10 12 8 8 12+ and got to 10 12 8 8 4. So I couldn't do the last set, but I finished off to 14 doing girly push-ups just so that I got the maximum out of my arms and chest.

I'm at day 5 of the schedule for the squats and the sit-ups. The sit-ups are going great, I can finish the sets fairly easy and always go the extra mile doing some reverse crunches (about 40) and some scissor kicks.

I've also been looking into buying a pull-up bar which you can use in a door frame. I'm thinking of buying this badboy right here.

Oh yes..

Week 1 Day 2

So the second day of the program.

The schedule was (I'm going to use PU for push-ups, SQ for squats and SU for sit-ups):

PU: 10 12 8 8 12+
I did: 10 12 8 4 4

SQ: 13 16 13 13 16+
I did: 13 16 13 13 30

SU: 15 18 15 15 18+
I did: 15 18 15 15 21

I've had some serious muscle aching and stiffness last two days, but today I was fine. A little bit sore but not so much that I couldn't do the exercises.

I felt that the push-ups actually went but worse then the last time but the score is a bit better. I still think the program is a bit to steep for me here. The first set went fine, but I really struggled with the second and didn't improve after that. My muscles were already pulp. So the last 3 sets went very slowly, but I tried to get the maximum out of my arms and chest. Until it just didn't go any longer.

After that I did the squats, those were fairly easy. I tried to pay more attention to form this time and to slow down a bit. That made it a bit tougher, but I still completed the program fairly easy.

I did the same for the sit-ups. Take it slow and pay more attention to form. I actually didn't complete as many sit-ups as last time, but I finished up by doing some reverse crunches.

So .. that was that. On to day 3. That will probably be Saturday.

Week 1 Day 1

I've just completed the first sets of the first week of 100push-ups, 200squats and 200sit-ups and my body feels like pulp. The squats really made my legs go all rubbery and I couldn't finish the push-ups. On the other hand the sit-ups went quite good.

First I did the push-ups. Which is the heaviest exercise for me.

I started on the third column for week 1 day 1.

Sets of push-ups: 10 12 7 7 9+
I did: 10 12 7 4 2

My arms just couldn't do it any longer. I'm already wondering if I should switch to the second column as the third might be a bit too heavy. I'll try and finish all the sets for the third column for this week, and if I don't make it, I'll just do week 1 again.

As for the squats; the site says that when you've completed the initial test with over 30 squats (I did 34) you should start with week 3. But I'm not going to. I'm sticking with week 1.

Sets of squats: 13 16 9 9 13+
I did: 13 16 9 9 21

And for the situps (for which the site also advises to jump to week 3, but I'm going to ignore that):

Sets of situps: 15 18 10 10 14+
I did: 15 18 10 10 38

Now that 38 might be a bit off since in the end I started to get lazy / tired and probably failed to do the actual "good-form" sit-ups a couple of times.

My guess is that there will be some serious muscle aching tomorrow.

The Initial test

I've just done the initial test for 200 sit-ups, 200 squats and 100 push-ups.

The results:

Push-ups: 12
Sit-ups: 48
Squats: 34

So that puts me firmly in the "Average" corner, and also in the toughest third column for all three programs (su, sq, pu)

Humm.

Tomorrow I'll start off with all the "week 1" sets. Bringeth teh pain!

Starting off

So 2010 is here and its time for a new challenge. One of the challenges I've set for myself this year is getting fit. I'm now 29 years old now and well I've never been very sporty. I've done some skateboarding in my teens and twenties which helped a little but even in those days I wasn't really strong / fast / athletic. Lately I've been doing some running, but nothing really progressive. Just trying to maintain. I've always been as fit as I comfortably had to be to get through my day-to-day work. The physique of your average European geek.

But not anymore. This is the year I get ripped. Or rather, I'm going to try to get as strong / fit as I can get over the course of a year. While doing that I'll be trying to keep some sort of progress report thing going here. The name of the blog is therefore appropriately named "the year of pain".

To do this challenge, I will of course need some rules.

My goal is not to get "big" and as I don't like going to the gym, the first rule will be that every exercise I'm going to do will be either within the comfort of my own home or outside. So rule #1 is "no gym".

Another thing I want to do is not use weights. I'm going to do everything based on my own body weight. So rule #2 is "no weights"

Those rules will be enough for now. Maybe I'll discover some new constraints along the road. But I will cross that bridge when I get there.

The first weeks of the year I'm going to try to do the "famous" 100 push-ups, 200 squats and 200 sit-ups all at the same time. These all take about 6 to 7 weeks to complete. If I make it trough that, I hope to have some new exercises / training schedules lined up.

So .. lets get to it.