How are things going?

Well, it has been an interesting two weeks, I'm getting used to eating the same food over and over!

Meal prep has become much quicker, taking just over an hour to sort the food for the week. I went to the local farmers market on Sunday and picked up a whole lot of fresh vegetables. It was a lot cheaper than the supermarket so while it meant two trips it was worth it. It is more expensive to eat this way, but I am seeing changes in my body already!

I had an interesting experience with a supp I took on Saturday. While I’m fine now,  it did remind me to take care with my supplements and that everyone reacts differently to them. 20 minutes after taking this particular fatburner, my whole body went read from my head to my toes. It had caused my blood pressure to skyrocket. I watered it down with litres of cold water and my breakfast, had a cold shower and covered myself in cold towels, and about 30 minutes later the effects subsided. So, I won’t be taking that one again!

We’ve switched from Giant Delicious Protein to Myofusion this week (seems the boys at Gymeez Wellington have been busy because they were all sold out!) so we’ll see how that compares. I like the chocolate Giant Delicious because it tastes like chocolate mousse haha. Always the way to get a girl to drink her protein!

As for training, my back seems to be coming right and I’ve been able to get back into lifting a little heavier again. It felt good to get back into squats again and I hit 67.5kg for one rep on Sunday. Was nice to shake off some of the cobwebs. I tested out how lunges would go and I found my left side was quite a lot weaker than my right. Part of this could be psychosomatic though so I will keep working on it.

I have started doing a lot more stretching and incorporating a little yoga into my life at night before I go to bed. While I know it’s important to stretch, I don’t do it often, but the results I've had from doing some simple back stretches at night has been worth it. I just do a few simple poses I found online (I’ll put the link here when I get home) and found that even something so simple has greatly reduced the pressure in my lower back.  I'll definitely keep up with this.

Incorporating more bicep/tricep work into my training seems to be going well, I definitely feel stronger on exercises for both. I’m working hard on core as well, I’m hoping this will translate to some heavier lifts elsewhere (and some nice abs for summer ;).

I find core quite boring so decided to set myself a program today. Looking online I went to bodybuilding.com, grabbed like 5 of their core workouts and added them all together into one. There are some repeats, but I do them in order, and will go back and do more of. It looks a little something like this:

Cable Crunches: 3 sets of 8-12 reps (30-45 seconds of rest)

Weighted Oblique Crunches: 3 sets of 12 reps each side (30 seconds of rest)

Crunches: 3 sets of 20 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Reverse Crunches: 3 sets of 12-15 reps (45 seconds of rest)

Air Bike Crunches: 3 sets of 12 reps (30-45 seconds of rest)

Crunches: 3 sets of 25 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Lying Leg Raises: 3 sets of 8 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Frog Sit Ups: 3 sets of 12-15 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Jackknife Sit Ups: 3 sets of 12-15 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Weighted Oblique Crunches: 3 sets of 20 reps each side (30 seconds of rest)

Reverse Crunch: 3 sets of 12 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Weighted Russian Twist: 3 sets of 20 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Barbell Side Bends: 3 sets of 8 reps on each side (30 seconds of rest)

Crunch - Legs On Exercise Ball: 3 sets of 8-12 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Decline Crunch: 3 sets of 8-12 reps (30-45 seconds of rest)

Dumbbell Side Bends: 3 sets of 8 reps (30 seconds of rest)

Flat Bench Leg Pull-In: 3 sets of 12 reps (30 seconds of rest)

I'll be off to do this in my lunch break, takes about an hour :) Maybe next post I'll be brave enough to put some progress pics! In the meantime don’t forget you can find me on Fitocracy https://www.fitocracy.com/profile/xoxAJVxox/?feed