Weekly Weigh-in (Week 68)

Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.

This week brought with it some big changes to my workout plan that I'm exploring for various benefits. It also brought some good preliminary numbers in terms of body metrics and very delicious food at an event we got invited to yesterday.

So, what have I done to my workout plan? Well, as I mentioned last week I finished up my bulking phase and have decided a combination maintenance phase and some dedicated time working toward a six-pack was in order. As such I decided to experiment with the 6 Minute Abs chapter of 4HB. It's a pretty simple set of exercises, short as the name implies, that leaves me feeling like I've put in some hard work. A set of 10 myotatic crunches, 10 12-sec TVA exercises (the humorously named cat vomit exercise), and 75 2-handed kettlebell swings. You do this twice a week and when combined with a diet that allows you to stay under 12% body fat it is supposed to yield pretty impressive results in the abdominal region. We'll see how that pans out.

This week also saw Lara decide to join me in the gym, yay Lara!, with some stationary biking. As a result, I needed a plan that would keep me busy a bit longer than 6 minutes at a time. To help with that I decided to add on to the 2 6 minute abs days with some bodyweight circuit training. A circuit comprised of 20 squats, 10 pushups, 10 lunges on each side, 10 dumbell rows on each side, and 20 jumping jacks gets my blood pumping pretty well and presents a good full body workout in a short time. Last time in I completed 2 full circuits, working my way up to 3 and then increasing the weight on various exercises to increase the difficulty and get a better burn. Because I was in need of a 3rd day a week to workout I'm going to fill that day with some work on beast skills, right now trying to work on pistol squats, and then some treadmill work at or near my vVO2max to help increase that threshold. Better cardiac health, better respiratory fitness, and better running speed, all from a fairly short workout overall. I can live with that.

So what does the scale have to say this week about my efforts. 210, up a pound from last week, combine that with a .2 drop in body fat and I'm not doing terribly. I'm going to be shooting for keeping my weight fairly steady for now, or at least not actively trying to put on or lose weight, and see what happens. Until next week, keep striving to be the you you want to be.