Monday, February 17, 2014

Will have to improvise

I’ve designed this great twice-a-week gym workout to do the next couple months during my busy work season.  

It's well thought out and has the strength and conditioning emphasis I want.  But now a left bicep strain has put the pullups and chinups component of these workouts on hold.

In addition, last week I had to make other adjustments because I wasn't mentally or physically at my best.

But I continue making good progress with a single set of bar dips done during one of these workouts.  Last Saturday, I banged out a 20-rep maximum effort set.  I was pleased because those 20 reps, for this 200-lb. middle-aged man, represent two tons of bodyweight moved up and down using only upper body strength.

The high-intensity interval training part of my workout is also going well.  It's high-intensity and short duration running on a treadmill for a 20-minute torture session in my anaerobic heart rate zone.  The plan is for me to work harder each workout than the previous one until I eventually hit my anaerobic zone brick wall.

Something is better than nothing and at this middle-aged man point in my life, there’ll be training days where I won’t be able to do as prescribed and, therefore, will have to improvise.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did the bicep strain come from doing chin ups and pull ups?

Pierini Fitness said...

I believe heavy weighted pullups was the injury bandit.

Anonymous said...

I think you are fortunate that dips do not bother your shoulders. I used to do sets of 20 in my late teens and early 20s. When I tried to do in my late 50s I hurt my shoulder. Due to my advanced age it took almost a year to heal. I will stick with pushups.

Pierini Fitness said...

Pain-free training is fickle; here today and gone tomorrow. But wise training can always be the stable thread of how we train.

Despite occasional middle-aged man outchies, we can always train around them. They are blessings in disguise because they allow us to devote time to training areas we may have neglected.