THE EMPIRE
Hey Team,
So again mad love to those who have sent messages of encouragement and support!
So last we spoke I’d dropped my cardio and had focused on heavy weights going for big numbers.. However since then I’ve gone and done myself an injury, I’m not entirely sure what I’ve done but it locked up between my hamstrings and lats and fuck me It was sore.. now after a good massage and lots of stretching it seems there is something funky going on with my left side of my lower back / top of my butt. Because of this I’ve been going a little easy on the heavy leg days and I’ve been trying something different.
Typically my days would be something like, heavy chest and heavy back, which would consist of something like..
Incline bench in the smith
Flat bench
incline with dumbbells
Butterfly machine
standing chest press with resistance bands
All 4 sets of 6 reps adding more weight each time to max weight.
Then for back..
Dead-lifts – work up to max
seated row – cable machine
lat curls
Pull Downs – Cable machine
more or less throwing in different things I’m learning as I go.
However as much as I enjoyed that, I’ve been finding that for strength I’m better to do more reps at about 70% of the weight I was doing. so for deads for example due to the injury, Instead of chasing my PB of 225kg I’m now repping around 140kgs
I’ve also found that using resistance bands for a few exercises really good good, for example a leg press, normally its only the deepest part of a leg press that does the real hard work, however if you add resistance bands it keeps the tension through the whole movement and you don’t end up pushing big numbers but man you feel the difference. This isn’t easy to add to everything but where possible it’s a great thing to do for reps.
The other thing I’ve been dealing with lately is taking time off,
I find that when I take 4 or 5 days away for work it really messes up my routine and my strength when I get back, I try to do what I can while I’m away to stay active but when there isn’t a gym its really down to what you can manage during down times. which for me isn’t often much unfortunately. When I do make it back to the gym, I’ll add in cardio which since welly on a plate has been quite a bit, typically something like a 4km run which takes about 20 mins and a 10km bike which takes around the same maybe 30 mins. The general Idea is to accept that I’ve had time off and that means a step or two back, which by default means less numbers and I know I’ve got to work to get to where I was before I took the time off. That can be frustrating at times especially when you’re starting to smash goals on the regular but its all part of the process. I had 10 days off for my recent trip to wellington and in the first week back I got a new PB for incline dumb bells press. However I did lose some weight ( surprising given what we were doing there) but speaking of numbers.
I DONT CARE ABOUT NUMBERS.
Be it my body weight or the numbers I’m pushing on the weights themselves, for me its not about that at all, its about how I feel and to an extent how I look, I said at the get go that I didn’t want to get too serious with this, I’ve kept to that well I believe however from time to time I’ll push harder than I had planned and change a few things up here and there to see results faster. I don’t care what the number on the scale says, its not about losing or gaining weight. To be fair it all sparked from photos I saw of myself and I thought I needed to do something about it, so losing body fat is key, building a nicer shape is a bonus. It would seem I’m building more muscle lately as appose to losing fat, but I’ve gone down a couple belt loops and I feel a lot better in myself for it. For me that’s winning.
Food intake hasn’t changed much at all, I did do a detox of sorts after the wellington on a plate trip because that did have a very detrimental effect on my insides. Worth it tho! what a trip!! mostly I focus on keeping my food clean and often, and a decent amount of water through to flush things out and stay well hydrated.
So right now if I’m honest I still don’t have much in the way of focus or direction, I’m sort of going through the motions until I figure that out. Something that did stick with me was soemthing Juji said on their channel Juji and Tom, which was Why wait a week to train a body part, in regards to a day being chest day and another day being back day. Currently I’m on a 3 day cycle.
Day 1 – Chest and back
Day 2 – Arms and Legs
Day 3 – Core and Cardio
However when I have the time I’ll add cardio to those days and often I’ll throw in things I want to experiment with, this is also alternating heavy days vs Rep days. So today I did arms and legs for heavy. Core and cardio are my least favourite days I’m not gona lie.
I am becoming slightly more interested in things like supplements, however I’ve never used them before so I’d want to talk to someone I trust for that. One thing that I did do that I really felt was good was take a day for a massage. I made a post about it on the nzblokes page it was well worth it. Taking days to do things other than training is important, maybe its a walk in the bush, or a massage or whatever it might be; treat yourself. You are worth it.
Until next time team!
Also if you follow on instagram I do post a bit more often there about work out stuff, usually little tid bits I learnt etc.
Latest posts by Nic (see all)
- American eats good New Zealand food - November 28, 2024
- Tiny jetboat madness! - November 28, 2024
- Mad Mikes 5 Rotor hits the track! - November 28, 2024
- 1000HP Ranger Tank hits the dunes! - November 28, 2024
