Exercise update, Week 7

Another week, another decent shift put in.

• Monday: Rest day
• Tuesday: 40 minute Plyometric Insanity session
• Wednesday: 25 minute jog
• Thursday: Rest day
• Friday: Rest day
• Saturday: 1 hour basketball
• Sunday: 25 minute gym

Considering what a busy week it has been with evening business meetings, a heavy workload in the office, a wake service, a wedding and last but not least, the awesome, awesome weekend at church with Sidney Mohede and the team visiting, I'm rather pleased that I still managed to put in 4 solid sessions.

Of course, it's a whole mish mash of exercises depending on what time I can spare and it's not that intense by any means but I'll take what I can get. Even for the jogging sessions, I'm not going to the park but it's basically when I pick up my baby from my in-law's house - I jog on the road in the neighbourhood 20 minutes before going back for a shower and family dinner.

Ideally, I want to move on to do more weights at the gym so that I can beef up a bit rather than get even more skinny but there's a special requirement for this: we need to be home at the apartment and the wife needs to take care of the baby during the half hour I'm away. For today, she agreed to take the baby swimming while I went to the gym and although part of me didn't want to miss out on anything with the family, I knew it was the only chance this whole week I could get some work with the weights in.

After 1.5 months of this exercise initiative, there have been some results.

I'm considerably fitter. I feel it when I play basketball. I feel it when I jog. And I feel it when I don't vomit after a session of Insanity.

I see more muscle definition. But considering how little weight work I've done, this is definitely 'artificial' and I'm trying to make myself feel better by only remembering what I see right after a workout when the muscles are engorged with blood from the exertion.

The wife claims that I'm in a much better mood and that I hardly snap at her nowadays even for normal situations when I might throw in a snarky comment. So apparently, I'm more emotionally balanced...go figure.

And finally, unfortunately, I've lost 2kgs, which was one of the results I was trying to avoid. I've been eating more, volume-wise, since I started exercising even if I am trying to eat healthier. But I guess it was to be expected considering how much cardio-based exercise I've been doing.

However, I'm not going to cut out the cardio at this point. There's an inter-church basketball tournament coming up end October and I definitely need to be fitter to be able to compete.

I'll make an active effort to change it up and find a way to do weights from November onwards, even if I have to buy some dumbbells or kettlebells and leave them in my car to replace my jogging sessions.

Let's hope I can keep this up in the first place.

Categories: Health