Eating wise I am back on track! The holiday splurge is but a distant memory and I clocked in at 108,7 kg! Earlier in the week I was even very close to the 108 kg but then started eating a bit more because my body was really screaming for more food. My exercise regime might have something to do with this as I kinda put the pedal to the metal here. Let’s dive into it!
Fitness
Once again, I didn’t miss one session. I think I can make it offical and say I like lifting weights.
Last month I lifted 26 832 kg and set myself a 30K goal. With this goal to be reached whenever since I do not want to push myself to much. Consistency and gradual improvements are still my main focus. Well, last week saw me lifting a total of 29 439 kg!
With this amount of kg’s lifted per week I’ll be closing in on the 1,5 million lifted in total within the next two months! Crazy numbers!
I have said many times before that progress is going to halt in the fitness department but this time I am serious.
The reason for this is pretty simple, I finally got a good 20 kg kettlebell!
Greasing the groove
For greasing the groove I keep to the 50 reps 8 times a day for my crunches.
Kettlebell swings I was at 25 reps with 10 kg for 8 times a day and then this beauty arrived.
20 kg of heavy iron. Don’t worry, I warned the delivery guy when he went to get the package from his van. It was a big eastern european guy and turns out he is a fan of kettlebells himself and lost 30 kg over the last 3 years!
With a decent kettlebell finally arrived last week I switched form 25 reps with 10 kg to 10 reps with 20 kg. Less weight in total, so you would think this would be easy enough.
Well, you would be wrong! It’s really a lot more exhausting and it probably explains why my body is screaming for nutrients.
It’s also a pretty great feeling to be honest. I already felt like I had a precent decent core strenght but this new weight is really ramping that up! I feel strong. Stronger than I have ever felt!
So my focus is now going to be to ramp my reps back up to 25. I am going to go slow and steady as is my habit. But since it is also lifting weights I expect my fitness progress to suffer from this. Injury prevention is still my nr 1 goal and this new kettlebell is pushing some limits there. No need to add extra pressure by also ramping up the fitness weights.
Another focus will be cardio
Cardio
Cardio wasn’t bad. But it also wasn’t good. I did about half of the rowing I should have done. But with stepping up the fitness weights and then switching to the heavier kettlebell I just didn’t have the energy for the cardio. I also just like the fitness and kettlebell swings a lot more than the rowing if I am honest. I never was a big fan of any type of cardio. But no exercise regime is complete without a decent cardio component. So I am going to keep at it but I am not going to feel too bad about it. Yes, it’s the weaker part of my work out regime, but hey at least I have a work out regime and it ain’t half bad!
The starts are difficult, restarts are worse 🙂
I tried yesterday morning to run. 700m and first hill …..can I take an oxygen mask?? 🙂 🙂 🙂 .
But this winter I took and kept a habit: take the stairs (I live in a big building so working from home needs a break – go to 12 floor and back).
I agree restarts are worse but I think we make them worse ourselfs. We get this number in our head of what we did just before we stopped. Like: ‘I used to run 2 km and now I am dead after 700m, this sucks!’. Which is kinda punishing yourself … The correct way to look at it would be: I did nothing last week and now I did a 700m run, yeah me!
It’s why I think ‘building a habit’ is better than ‘starting an exercise’. Building a habit focuses on consistency and with exercising you are more focussed on what you do. And yes, in an ideal world focussing on exercising will give you the best results but in an imperfect world consistency wins. In an imperfect world the person going for a run 3 times a week with it being sometimes only 500 m and sometimes 3km is in better shape than the person who quit running after 5 months, even if that perosn followed a perfect exercise regime during those 5 months.