Core training - an update and my most recent core workout

A few months ago I changed the way I thought about core. Rather than my core being an afterthought in a bigger workout, or not training it at all, I decided to train my core as if it was any other part of my body. 

While there are varied schools of thought on this approach (some of which say I'm mad), this way of training my core has really worked for me and enabled me to get some pretty good results. I've never been afraid to show off my core (even when I was super lean with little musculature) but changing how I think about training my core has really allowed me to get some more muscle in this area (combined with a super solid diet of course)

So while my diet has had the most impact on how my core looks, I'm quite happy to share my core workout.

I do this twice a week, takes me about an hour for the whole workout so perfect for a lunchtime training. This is what I train and I've been doing this a while, so for anyone just starting out, drop the weights right down, lower the reps by half and work your way up to these. I started doing most of the weighted stuff here at just body weight and I've increased the reps steadily as I've found it getting too easy. I do everything in this order and I don't rest between sets, I just move on to the next exercise straight away. Also if something hurts (like actually hurts not just "ow my muscles hurt") I adjust the workout to suit. I always listen to what my body says. Like in my last core workout hanging knee raises hurt my bicep, so I left them out for the workout.

So remember if you're just starting out -halve the weight (or drop it altogether) and the reps for all of these!

AJ's Core Workout

Cable Crunch

70 lb x 15 reps

110 lb x 10 reps

90 lb x 12 reps

Dumbbell Side Bend

20 kg x 20 reps (3 sets each side)

Crunch

20 reps (3 sets)

Reverse Crunch

20 reps (3 sets)

Bicycle crunches

26 reps (3 sets)

Flat Straight Leg Raise

12 reps(3 sets)

Hanging Knee Raise

10 reps (3 sets)

Jack Knife Sit-Up

12 reps (3 sets)

Weighted Russian Twist

10kg x 20 reps (3 sets)

Reverse Crunch

20 reps(3 sets)

Crunch

30 reps (3 sets)

Weighted Russian Twist

10kg x 20 reps (3 sets)

Dumbbell Side Bend

20 kg x 20 reps (3 sets each side)

Crunch

30 reps (3 sets)

Bicycle crunches

30 reps (3 sets)

Reverse Crunch

20 reps(3 sets)

Dumbbell Side Bend

20 kg x 20 reps (3 sets each side)

Cable Crunch

60 lb x 15 reps

90 lb x 10 reps

50 lb x 20 reps

I adjust this as I find it gets easier, because I always want to be pushing and challenging my body.

Happy core training!!

Shoulders!

I need some. Unlike @vaz1x I am not blessed with boulder shoulders. I am anterior dominant, with quite big traps, but my rear delts are so flat I'm bony in my shoulders... so sad!

So I'm working on them, and last week I was lucky enough to go to a shoulder seminar run by Phily, Joe Ulberg IFBB Pro and Jason. These guys are an amazing team and between the lot of them train (and are!!) some amazing athletes. They showcased some great theoretical and practical knowledge and it was so awesome for them to share their tips with those of us who are training. 

Their seminar completely changed the way I view my shoulder training and what I want to achieve from it. I've restructured what my training looks like, dropped the weight substantially and refocused my goals. It really reminded me how important good form and good quality reps are for muscle development. It;s made my shoulders a focus for another part that needs improving before the competition and I've added a good couple of sessions into my workouts each week.

My shoulder work now includes:

-Warming up... who knew this was important, right?
- medial work (side lateral raises)
-compound work (presses)
- more medial work
-rear delt work

Even though rear delts need the most work, they come last because working them first will ruin the quality of your presses... You need to give them plenty of attention though so don't wait until you're super fatigued before training them. It was awesome to get even these small tips!

Getting back into it!

So it's the first couple of days after deload week and I am feeling pretty good. While it's taking a little while to get back up to where I was before I took it a bit easier, I'm looking forward to pushing through. I attempted pull ups again tonight and was able to do 15 sets. The max was 5 reps in a set, but at least I was able to keep going.

So to celebrate:

Totally gratuitous picture...Showing some more progress!

My friend who posts great black and white photos inspired me to give it a shot, with pretty surprising results.

I'm looking forward to seeing more results as I go along. My next fat test is on 1 December, so it would be nice if I could drop under 20% this time. To help me along I've really committed to doing an extra half an hour cardio session 4 times a week to hit my goals. I'm still not enjoying it but I know when it really needs to be done.

Looking forward to lifting this weekend. I've got chest tomorrow night (Friday), Shoulders on Saturday, Squats on Sunday and deadlifts Monday.

I'm doing a public session with The Boss and his training partner on Saturday. This should be really fun and I'm looking forward to it. I'm hoping there will be a few other ladies who lift there, and it's not just me and a bunch of guys!

My friend recommended doing leg curls before my squats and so I'm looking forward to trying this out on Sunday.

Importance of diet and the day I started lifting people...

Haha well as you know it's still deload week (last day tomorrow woohoo!) so I don't have much to report on the training front. It's been good to get some rest but I'm ready to hit it hard again. I will be updating my training schedule again this week and moving some things around, but I'll update this when I've had a chance to think about it a little more.

Had some fun on level 4 today, @vaz1x and I have seen pics of people squatting people, so between my quads and her core, we thought we could possibly manage this. So with a warm up piggy back ride we decided I could actually hold her up, so decided to aim for the squat. We figured out the method, so I hit the squat, no problems. We didn't have anyone to take a pic of us this time, but now we know how it works we'll get a pic or two to share :P

There were some pretty crazy workouts going on (hers and mine were tame compared to someone training flips!), it was definitely Sunday funday.

In other fun news, I've been looking back through some pics and thought I'd share some progress so far compared to when I started. Sometimes it's really hard to tell how far you've come when you see yourself every day.

Before I started this regime I genuinely thought I was in pretty good shape. While my diet was still rubbish, working out and lifting heavy had given me what I thought was some pretty good muscle tone. 

The first pic I took on 25 August 2013. I started this training program and proper diet on 16 September 2013. This most recent pic was taken on 12 November 2013. I apologise in advance for the poor photography, it's not one of my strengths....

...but I think it's pretty safe to say I've made some progress...

I was quite surprised when I saw this comparison to be honest. It seems like such a short time ago that I feel I couldn't have come quite so far, just from cleaning up my diet. 

So, diet = important. Who would have guessed, right?

Massive thanks has to go to The Boss for this. It took more than a little encouragement on his part, but now I can see why it's so important. I'm so glad I'm more aware of the fuel going into my body now and I'm proud of myself that I have worked so hard at sticking to it this far, and this has shown a little more clearly why it was a good idea. Sometimes temptation will come along, but I know I can resist it, especially when I get such a stark reminder of hard I'm going so far!

Guessing it's time for another post....

But I don't really feel I have anything to say. That's because I'm resting this week, and I'm hating it! I'm training 50-80% of my normal weight and rep ranges and generally taking it easy.

And yes, I know all the theory. I know that pushing my body as hard as I do for an infinite period of time is not going to be good for it. And that taking one little week off, only lifting light, is going to be good for it in the long run. I know that my muscle recovery will be better and I'll come back even stronger.

But I'm so. damn. bored.

I hate not pushing myself. I hate not being able to test every day what my limits are and be proud of myself for breaking them. I find training is not as much fun when I'm not giving 100% and I slack off a little. I haven't even managed to bother with extra cardio sessions this week (and we all know how much I love them :|) that's how uninspired I've been.

It's been a rough week for that. But next week is a whole new week and I'm looking forward to seeing some new PBs.

On the bright side though, I'm starting to see a bit more change in my body and a bit more leanness. It's really showing up what I need to work on *cough* shoulders *cough* but it is nice to see the hard work slowly paying off.

My next body fat test is 1 December and I'm really hoping to see it drop under 20% there. I need to make sure my eating is spot on and get that cardio done to hit that target!

I'm (hopefully!) going to watch my good friend compete in a powerlifting competition tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing what competing is like and I really, really hope he does well. He's been working really hard (in between helping me with my lifting!) so I have my fingers crossed for him.

Recent training, program stuff and resting

I've had a pretty good week.

I've felt strong, trained hard, and think I'm making solid progress. Like I've mentioned before I've hit a few PRs recently. 

One thing I've noticed is I seem to be recovering really, really fast. Considering how often I train I would expect to be suffering more DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) than I am at the moment. I am taking a protein, BCAAs, L-Glutamine, a thermogenic in the morning and I'll take a preworkout if I really need a lift before working out, but I find the amount of food I'm eating is giving me enough energy to fuel my workouts on its own. I'm getting plenty of sleep at the moment which could be helping, and getting a good amount of rest between each body part I train.

I have been asked a couple of times how I break my training up recently, and it changes all the time so I guess I should do an update of what training at the moment looks like.

My arms, especially my triceps, are a weak point at the moment, hence why they are getting a fair amount of treatment recently. I've also added a few more cardio sessions of 30 minutes in the crosstrainer (elliptical) into my workouts to help burn some fat. I also walk to work most mornings which is a 3 km walk.

When I train I do my compound lifting first and then accessory lifting, or split the sessions up like on the weekends I might do one compound session, one accessory session. Each lunchtime session is an hour long because it's in my lunch break. Each evening session is between an hour and one and a half hours long, depending on what I'm training and how late I get to the gym. I'm learning to take a little more time when lifting heavy and resting a bit more between sets which although dragging my training time out longer is helping my lifts.

Ok, so this is just a basic breakdown, I don't always follow this exact routine, especially if I feel a certain body part has been overworked or I feel like lifting something else that day. It really depends on my mood and what feels good that day.

Monday : 
Morning: cardio
Lunch - Arms
Evening - Deadlifts

Tuesday
Lunchtime - Core
Evening - Chest

Wednesday:
Morning - cardio
Lunch - Arms
Evening- Legs/ Squats

Thursday:
Lunch - Core
Evening - Pull ups/ lats

Friday:
Morning: cardio
Lunch: Arms
Evening: Chest

Saturday:
Morning: Cardio
Afternoon: Shoulders x 2

Sunday:
Morning: Cardio
Afternoon: Squats and legs x 2

I switched my deadlift day from Saturday to Monday because I like to squat on Sundays and I wanted to put my deadlifts after my squats, as I felt my squats were better when I hadn't lifted heavy the day before. Since I've PR'd on deadlifts since I did this, I think it's working for my deadlifts as well. My 5RM has increased to 80kgs (176lbs) as well.

 I'm on a roll and I would hate to stop my progress. But, I have been pushing hard recently, so after my deadlifts on Monday I'm thinking about taking a deload week and lifting a bit lighter weights and working on some volume. I'll see how I feel after Monday, but it could be a good idea just to take some rest.

Recent ab pics as of 10/11/13

Progress and Motivation

So, I can say I'm pretty happy with how training has been going recently, I feel stronger and stronger all the time. 

As well as my 100kg deadlift last Monday, I hit a 62.5kg bench press last Friday and equalled the 100kg deadlift in training on Monday this week. I also increased my 5 RM to 80kgs, which seemed impossible only a few weeks ago. 

I'm training my squats solidly, I'm still hitting 60kgs without a spotter even on lighter nights. Although it does feel my squat is lagging a little behind my other lifts at the moment. I am going to focus a little more in getting some power through my squat, might hit up some box jumps for a challenge.

On Saturday I had a massive shoulder training with D, he really pushed me through some ladders and made me work a lot harder and faster than I normally do. I can see why his shoulders are so big when he trains like that all the time, I'll be taking more notice of that in the future!

This capped a pretty massive week in terms of strength gains. I can see some slight change in my figure, I'm leaning up a bit on my side profile and through my core. My upper body is still well ahead of my lower in terms of definition but I think that will improve more once I've dropped more body fat.

In the lead up to my next body fat test I've added a few more cardio sessions into my routine to try to help that along. It's a pain getting up earlier and earlier but I found only sessions on the weekend was not enough. Although it's been a little taxing, I am feeling good about getting more cardio in, so on top of walking to work every day (3kms, 25-20 minutes) I'm doing 5 half hour sessions on the elliptical each week.

I went with my work on a trip out of town yesterday, complete with catered deliciousness... I took a cooler bag full of chicken rice, kumara and protein bars with me. While I felt like a total weirdo putting my lunch together and eating it with people outside of my work, I was proud that I stuck to my diet no matter what the situation was that I was in.

I have been reading Total Recall, the autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it has been really helpful for my training mentality recently. He has such a positive outlook to training and was such an influential figure in this sport, it's been great to learn more about him. 

Arnold has such a good way of describing the process of training and building muscle, you have to take a objectively critical (not hurtful!) look at how you are doing and decide what needs work - add a little here, take a little off there. He says he thinks of it as being an artist, which I quite like. While reading, I thought there was no negative self talk or putting himself down, he approached his work with an analytical mindset. If he didn't feel he looked his best at one show, his talk is about what he thinks went wrong and how he is going to improve next time. 

He has such a competitive edge, he will do so much to be the best. He had a very high work rate, although he compliments other bodybuilders on their ability to train more and harder than him.

It definitely helps to remember this when I'm struggling to get out of bed or I don't want to hit the last set because I'm tired and sore. It's always a reminder to me that if I'm not getting up or doing the last set, my competition will be, and they will beat me because I've done the work.