This past week has been fairly hit or miss for both fitness activity and for diet. My wife this week said “When someone is visiting on vacation, your diet is also on vacation.” So it was when my sister came to see us. Instead of spaghetti squash with a red sauce, we ended up with a freezer of ice cream and a pantry of Oreos. Oi vey. Also, as we were being visited, our schedule was a bit shot and made it difficult to find time for extended workouts.
Even without a lot of time to dedicate, we still made it to the beach as a family, though I did not swim or romp or play much at all. I squeezed in some heavy squats on Monday as well as a push up workout. It was quite similar to one I have been doing recently where I do pushes Every Minute On the Minute to push close to failure consistently, only this time I increased both reps and time frame. I focused on 40 pushups every third minute, completing 6 sets. It was definitely challenging, and felt harder than doing 20-25 reps each minute, even though the former ended up in more pushups total. Tuesday I did pullups a few times during the day, hitting 20 or more reps three times. Then my family went for a nearly 2 hour walk which included a stop at a playground where I found some good monkey bars for completing additional pullups.
When we got home, I did a bodyweight Tabata workout I have used before. With 20 seconds workout, 10 seconds rest, cycling through pullups, pushups, squats, then sit-ups. The circuit is completed 8 times. I set a new best for this workout in pullups (78), pushups (200), squats (200), and tied in sit-ups (128). I don’t think I can get much better on anything but pullups, and I really would love to get to 100 in that. Everything else, I am doing it about as fast as I reasonably can without really sacrificing good form and tempo. This workout really does a good job of testing strength endurance while also benefiting from a long and drawn out challenge to aerobic functions in the body. I was winded early on, and it kept me winded throughout. By the end, I was gasping for breath. Overall, I find it to be a workout which allows scaling it to fit current fitness levels making it challenging no matter how in shape you are. Thursday, I mimicked the pushup workout from Monday, but I increased the reps by 5 each set to 45 reps x 6 sets. However, by the end of the second set I was already feeling a lot more fatigued, and ended up breaking up the pushups to mini sets: 45, 45, 30/15, 25/20, 25/20, 15/15/15. I could not tell if it was the slight increase in reps each set or a more determined focus on full Range of Motion in the pushup which made this feel so much more strenuous.
Today, I decided I should run again. I have been far too lax on my cardio this summer. I have completely abandoned what had been the training and focus on my mile time I began in April. So, today I ran a 5k. It is basically an out and back, but the out is down the road into a park, two laps of the park, then back home. Easy course. I went a little hard, but it did not yet feel like an all-out race pace, but I completed it in 20:29. Another couple seconds dropped per kilometer and I will finally be back under 20 minutes, which I am VERY excited for.
Diet wise, I ate way to many snacks Sunday night. As I stated, my sister visited, and while we did eat a rather healthy meal of baked sweet potatoes, broccoli, carrots, and kielbasa sausage, we also ate a lot or chocolate covered almonds, trail mix, and Oreos. Monday, I ate quite a bit better and only snacked on the chocolate almonds and a few Oreos. Tuesday was just a few Oreos. Wednesday, I ate no desserts! But Thursday we had friends over for dinner and I indulged in a bowl of ice cream, but it was only 2 scoops… and lots of manicotti! Really, our meals this week have been quite healthy (not SUPER healthy, but good). We made teriyaki chicken with pineapple, ate leftovers from the sweet potato sheet bake, and made the manicotti.
Oh, wait. We went to Red Robin Wednesday night…
Maybe my diet aggregated to normal person diet instead of healthy normal person diet this week.
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