Yesterday I met with a couple trainers who are clearly excellent at what they do. It was a tough decision, but I’ve decided to go it alone for a while longer (despite my Mother’s suggestion that I need a trainer to do it right—sorry Mom). But, I may work with a trainer as I get closer to my goal and may be running out of steam and need that final push. For now, I am making lots of progress on my own and I’m very motivated (obviously). And I kind of like doing it all by myself for now. I am very focused on me (almost meditative) when I’m at the gym (I am a muscle monk, if you will). And I spend a lot of time researching how to improve my workouts when I’m home and I really like being the Captain (and navigator) of my own little ship of muscle. Speaking of which, I have come up with a new split for my training that will have me working my calves, abs and glutes more often. Tonight is calves and abs and I can’t wait!
But my workout yesterday was courtesy of an excellent trainer at Gold’s Venice named Hedda Royce. We only had 30 minutes and here’s what we did. Can’t remember the amount of weight we did on anything, but here’s it is anyway:
- Circuit 1: 15 Smith Machine Squats, then 15 One-Legged Step Ups (per leg), and then Toe Taps and Calf Raises on Floor (with no weights) for 2 minutes. We Repeated This Circuit 3 Times.
- Circuit 2: 15 Leg Presses on Inverted Sled, then 15 One-Legged Lunge Squats (per leg), then 15 Calf Raises (on Machine with Weight) Straight, and 15 Pigeon-toed, and 15 with Toes Pointed Out. We Repeated This Circuit 3 Times.
That’s it and we were out of time (30 minutes). It was extremely painful for me because it was so fast moving and I’ve been doing my weight training with slower reps. I definitely felt the burn (like my thighs were on fire–literally!) And Hedda was really nice to work with. However, I must say, I’m not sore today, and with how painful it was to execute those reps so fast, I thought that I would be for sure. I wonder why. My hypothesis is that the fast movements with lighter weights don’t really cause as many muscle tears as my slow movements and lower reps with heavier weights that I have been doing these past few weeks that I’ve made so many large gains in strength and size. Slow and low (reps) with very heavy weight is the way that I’ve read that you should train if you need to bulk up (like I do), so I’m going to continue doing that for now. But I’m going to remember these circuits (and Hedda) for when I’m ready to get lean and shredded after I’ve bulked my muscles up more. My heart rate was up the entire work out and I know I burned calories because I was really hungry after! Thanks Hedda!
Speaking of that, here’s what I ate yesterday:
- Breakfast (37 g protein): smoothie with frozen blueberries, peaches, acai with added ginseng and 1 oz wheatgrass, bananas, 1.5 cups soymilk (10 g protein), 1/2 scoop Vega Complete Whole Food Optimizer
(7 g protein), 1 scoop Vega Sport Performance Protein
(20 g protein)
- Snack: large handful of peanuts (15 g)
- Lunch: Veggie Grill Chop Chop Salad (27 g protein)
- Snack: Builder’s Bar (20 g)
- Dinner: Mung bean sprout salad (25 g protein)
- Before Bed: (42 g protein) smoothie with banana, soy yogurt (5 g protein), 1 oz wheatgrass, 1.5 cups soymilk (10 g protein), 1/2 scoop Vega Complete Whole Food Optimizer
- Total 166 grams of protein for the day!!!
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