I am in the process of recovering from my first ever Tough Mudder a few days ago, and also planning my future fitness goals.
I have had a very regimented schedule for pretty much all of 2012. At the beginning of the year, I was wrapping up my round first round of P90X2. After that, I jumped right into a mass phase where I had some pretty good success packing on some muscle mass.
April 19 2012
Next, I moved into a performance-based training schedule to prepare for Warrior Dash and Tough Mudder. Heading into Tough Mudder, I honestly felt like I was in the best overall shape of my life. I have been an athlete all of my life, competing at fairly high levels of competition in soccer and hockey (and other sports), however my level of fitness would generally be geared towards the sport I was to be competing in.
August 16 2012
For Tough Mudder, and something I will touch on in future blogs, my goal was to be as efficient as possible in many different facets of fitness and energy systems in my body.
Needless to say, I have been very regimented in my training, and diet as possible throughout the year. So I feel as though my fitness plans, at least for the next little while, is to be as opposite to that as possible.
I will still attempt to follow a structured schedule for the coming weeks, however my training goals will be far from structured. My Tough Mudder training was very specific in its periodization. I wanted to first put on a bit of muscle mass, then increase the performance of said muscle so that it could perform as highly as possible.
Now, my goals are to be a bit more 'primal' if you will. I am definitely going to step back a bit in regards to my cardio training. 2012 has been a year full of aerobic cardio, which is fine when I am training for an endurance event like Tough Mudder, but now that I no longer have a specific event to train for, my cardio training will be utilized much more efficiently with interval training - or in other words, higher levels of effort, shorter overall workouts.
Back to the 'primal' ideal, I want to lift stuff...heavy stuff. Most specifically, heavy weights. My resistance workouts will be targeted towards building a bit of hypertrophy, but to also maintain/increase my overall strength. With all of my cardio and performance-based strength training this year, I have no doubt lost a bit of my strength gains, as is the case when you don't lift as many heavy things!
I really enjoy watching the movie "Pumping Iron". For those of you who haven't seen it, you can actually watch the movie in its entirety on Youtube. It follows the bodybuilding phenomenon of the 70's, most notably Arnold Schwarzenegger in his heyday. Sure, these guys were 'roidin', but how else do you suppose you build muscles that large?
Anyways, watching the movie not only gives me a new appreciation for how much of a complete animal Arnold is, but also cracks me up at how funny/playful of a guy he is. Every time I watch the movie I get inspired to go lift heavy things! I will link part 1 of the movie below, you can then continue on to find the other 11 parts on Youtube if you wish!
I really enjoy using home-workout DVDs, mainly because the timing of the workouts keeps me from dawdling, and spending an entire morning working out. More often than not, especially recently, I find myself modifying or adjusting the workouts so much that I don't even watch them, it is just nice to have something on my workout room tv and some background noise.
So having said that, I have decided to really branch away from the Beachbody workouts as I am using quite a few modifications and concoctions of my own.
One of the main reasons for this is that I feel I want to build a bigger chest. I consider myself a 'hardgainer', and nowhere on my body is it harder for me to put on mass than on my chest. Because of this, I have created a couple different workouts so that I can attack my chest twice a week.
Day 1 - Chest & Back and Core
Day 2 - Plyo Legs
Day 3 - Shoulders & Arms
Day 4 - Core and Yoga/Stretching/Recovery
Day 5 - Chest & Shoulders
Day 6 - Sprint Training
Day 7 - Recovery
This will be my schedule for the next 4 weeks. I am currently planning on starting this schedule this upcoming Sunday (August 26th). If this schedule looks new or unusual to you, I will provide more details on each of the workouts towards the end of the 4 weeks. They may need some refining or adjustments to them, since they are new to me as well. I will check back in a few weeks to give you full details on each so that, if interested, you can add them to your repertoire as well.
I will of course keep you updated as I go, so stay tuned!
Quote of the day:
“Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.”
~ Joe Clark
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