After 17 days in a row, I fell flat on the 18th day. But I'm not too unhappy about it as it was expected and on the days I missed, the reasons I skipped exercise were worthwhile to me. The reasons ranged from spending family time together, taking my wife out for a Valentine's Day dinner and worship leading at church.
Here is how the week looked.
- Monday: Rest
- Tuesday: Rest
- Wednesday: 40 minute Plyometric Insanity session
- Thursday: 40 minute gym
- Friday: 30 minute run
- Saturday: Rest
- Sunday: 40 minute gym
Insanity is getting harder and harder to motivate myself to start up, and even though I managed to get one session in for the week, I'm feeling a very strong temptation to step away from it for awhile if only to get away from the pain for awhile! The run on Friday was a bit of an obligatory session as well because I was still having badly disrupted sleep due to the baby having diarrhea but I managed to push through around 6km in around half an hour before I rushed to cell group in church.
The one area I was content with this week was in the gym. I managed to complete two full compound exercise routines and feel myself getting more accustomed to the motions. On Sunday, I decided to try to meet one of my fitness goals for the year - to deadlift my own weight. I know that this is not a very ambitious goal because I've heard that some people can deadlift three times their body weight but I am still a complete beginner when it comes to weight lifting and I'm also not focusing on weights but mixing it up with HIIT and linear cardio exercises as well.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I managed to deadlift 134 pounds for around five reps (my weight is 128 pounds). And at the end doing the set, it wasn't my lower back or legs that were tired, but it was my hand grip, which is more linked to my forearm muscles than the main muscles activated for this exercise. (In case you were wondering, I don't look anything as good as the girl in the picture when I'm doing my deadlifts.)
One of the days going forward, I'm going to try a heavier weight to try to find the point where I can only do one proper rep and hopefully find a more accurate figure to the maximum weight I can deadlift. But to be honest, I'm not in a rush to find out because I know I don't have my form perfect yet and I really don't want to get injured because I have past back injuries which I have to watch out for.
For now, I'm happy that I hit one of my goals so early in the year, especially because I'm still so far away from all the rest of them at this point of time.
As it stands, I'm probably at about five proper pull ups, maybe 20 push ups (it's gone down because I'm trying to do slower negatives), 1 minute plank (barely), around 27 minutes for a 5km run, and the last half marathon goal will be smashed at the mid-year SCKL Marathon in June.
I'm looking forward to seeing where I'm at by mid-year.
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