Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
Running seems to be progressing smoothly, weight seems to be holding fairly steady, even been sleeping fairly well this past week so all told most of my measurables seem like they are doing pretty well from cursory examination, though the real numbers will hold out for later in the post.
You may recall from a few weeks ago I talked about doing some work on a plan for trying to trying to put on some muscle, one that I was basing on research into workout plans used by various actors to get into shape for movies roles as seriously buff dudes. Looking over the information I could find about what they all did there were a lot of similarities, so piecing those together should in theory give me results as close to theirs as possible with a smaller amount of effort.
Firstly, diet comes into play. Food is at least as important in these kinds of endeavors as the exercise so it pays to start here. Of course, high amounts of protein are a goal, minimal sugars, minimal processed food, and one somewhat strange common factor was restricting carbs to only the earlier portions of the day (and even then usually rice, oatmeal, or tubers). That one seems strange at first but makes some sense when taken into the context of time of day and it's relation to insulin sensitivity and the insulin response of most carbs. The other common factors were that they tended to eat a large number of meals, often eating every 2 hours throughout the day, and usually supplemented with protein powder and/or creatine. These things combined should help me provide a good base for the resistance workouts that form the other pillar of the research, and luckily they don't stray too far from what I'd been striving for already. The more frequent meals help increase the total amount of calories per day without making any single meal too large, which is a trick that may come in handy as things go on.
For the actual lifting the common themes seemed to be using compound exercises for the lifts, to increase the muscle groups activated in the shortest amount of time, 3-5 sets of a moderate number of reps each. The workouts tended toward splits between various body segments, which for now I'm going to try but may end up shifting things around later on, and minimal rest periods to keep heart rate up so that you burn some fat along with the building of muscle. I'm somewhat limited in my workout options due to the resources at my disposal with the fitness center at the apartment here, but hopefully the plan I've put in place should get me at least tolerable results. Once I get bored of this, get to a proportion I like, or stop seeing results from this I already know what I'm going to move to, but that's for later. For now it'll be 2 days a week of circuits and abs (much like I was doing before) on Sunday and Friday, work on the Chest/Back on Monday, Legs on Wednesday, and Arms/Shoulders on Thursday. Next week I'll report back on how the first week played out, and what exercises each day is composed of, but for now I'm going to sign off after the numerical round up.
So what's the scale say this week? 207, down a pound from last week. Not the best, but we'll see what this new plan does for things I suppose. Until next week, be the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 74)
Still Sunday for just a little bit longer.
Today has been a bit hectic and as such I don't have a post prepared for you guys, I might get one together this week sometime, but more than likely I won't and it'll be til next Sunday. For now though, I will update with my weight at least.
208, same as last week. Sticking pretty steady of late, and that's not a bad thing really. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Today has been a bit hectic and as such I don't have a post prepared for you guys, I might get one together this week sometime, but more than likely I won't and it'll be til next Sunday. For now though, I will update with my weight at least.
208, same as last week. Sticking pretty steady of late, and that's not a bad thing really. Until next time, keep being the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 73)
Sunday once again and time for the weekly update.
This week has been pretty steady in terms of most of the things I usually track, so not really much to talk about there.
So, finishing up the breakdown of my running cycle there are 3 other types of runs in addition to the ones I talked about last week. Each one of them is planned to be done in place of either a treadmill run or a timed run, once every three weeks. The cycle for them is setup so that I replace one run a week with one of my specialty runs.
The first run I've completed out of the selection of specialty runs was a tempo run. Once I get the heart rate monitor it'll help dial in the pacing for them a bit better, a pace that sustains 85-90% max heart rate for about 20 minutes. Luckily for me my typical running route is around 3 miles, which means that just tearing into it at a given pace should allow me to complete it in about the right amount of time. This run through I did the run at an average pace of 9:03, which I think was probably fairly close to what I'm after here based on what I have come to understand of the process, but without some harder numbers I'm not entirely sure. For now, I'll just shoot for improving the pace in small increments until I either get the monitor to check for sure, or I find a threshold at which I just can't pull it off anymore at which point I can reasonably infer I passed my lactic acid threshold by too far. The purpose of these runs is mainly to increase my bodies ability to process lactic acid and prevent my leg muscles from becoming acidic over the course of my long runs, but also to help me train for keeping a consistent pace across a distance.
The second type of specialty run I'm working on adding in is the hill run. Hill training is something I want to incorporate because I don't like it. This may sound odd, but I don't like it because it's harder than my regular running so by doing hill running I get better at it which will come in handy during races, and for increasing all of the various running related metrics. This run will take place on my treadmill day so that I can control the grade of the hills in addition to their length. My plan is that I'll do a quick warm-up, followed by alternating 2-3 minute sets at either 2% grade, or whatever I settle on my higher grade being. I'm not sure what it will be yet, though it'll probably start closer to 6-8% and then move up as time goes on with these workouts. I'll keep up the repeats for 15-30 minutes, a quick cooldown and then be done with the run for the day.
The last of the specialty runs is a type of training called Fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish. Basically you do your warm-up, then you pick a landmark and run to it at a fast pace, somewhere between "sort of hard work" and "full sprint" and then you run past there at an easy pace to recover before doing the whole thing again. It's an unstructured type of interval workout that works on improving speed, acceleration, and overall response of the various energy systems in place in the body. I'll likely do these with 5 minute bookends to warm-up/cool-down and then run my normal timed route using the random intervals outlined above.
So there you have it, my 3 specialty runs to flesh out my 3 week training cycle. Now from there onto the numbers for this week. 208, same as last week. Weight seems to have stabilized, and now that I've recalibrated how I'm measuring bodyfat that seems to have stabilized as well. One of these days I'm going to have to upgrade to something automated for that task if I want to start getting better numbers. Until next week, keep on being the you you want to be.
This week has been pretty steady in terms of most of the things I usually track, so not really much to talk about there.
So, finishing up the breakdown of my running cycle there are 3 other types of runs in addition to the ones I talked about last week. Each one of them is planned to be done in place of either a treadmill run or a timed run, once every three weeks. The cycle for them is setup so that I replace one run a week with one of my specialty runs.
The first run I've completed out of the selection of specialty runs was a tempo run. Once I get the heart rate monitor it'll help dial in the pacing for them a bit better, a pace that sustains 85-90% max heart rate for about 20 minutes. Luckily for me my typical running route is around 3 miles, which means that just tearing into it at a given pace should allow me to complete it in about the right amount of time. This run through I did the run at an average pace of 9:03, which I think was probably fairly close to what I'm after here based on what I have come to understand of the process, but without some harder numbers I'm not entirely sure. For now, I'll just shoot for improving the pace in small increments until I either get the monitor to check for sure, or I find a threshold at which I just can't pull it off anymore at which point I can reasonably infer I passed my lactic acid threshold by too far. The purpose of these runs is mainly to increase my bodies ability to process lactic acid and prevent my leg muscles from becoming acidic over the course of my long runs, but also to help me train for keeping a consistent pace across a distance.
The second type of specialty run I'm working on adding in is the hill run. Hill training is something I want to incorporate because I don't like it. This may sound odd, but I don't like it because it's harder than my regular running so by doing hill running I get better at it which will come in handy during races, and for increasing all of the various running related metrics. This run will take place on my treadmill day so that I can control the grade of the hills in addition to their length. My plan is that I'll do a quick warm-up, followed by alternating 2-3 minute sets at either 2% grade, or whatever I settle on my higher grade being. I'm not sure what it will be yet, though it'll probably start closer to 6-8% and then move up as time goes on with these workouts. I'll keep up the repeats for 15-30 minutes, a quick cooldown and then be done with the run for the day.
The last of the specialty runs is a type of training called Fartlek, which means "speed play" in Swedish. Basically you do your warm-up, then you pick a landmark and run to it at a fast pace, somewhere between "sort of hard work" and "full sprint" and then you run past there at an easy pace to recover before doing the whole thing again. It's an unstructured type of interval workout that works on improving speed, acceleration, and overall response of the various energy systems in place in the body. I'll likely do these with 5 minute bookends to warm-up/cool-down and then run my normal timed route using the random intervals outlined above.
So there you have it, my 3 specialty runs to flesh out my 3 week training cycle. Now from there onto the numbers for this week. 208, same as last week. Weight seems to have stabilized, and now that I've recalibrated how I'm measuring bodyfat that seems to have stabilized as well. One of these days I'm going to have to upgrade to something automated for that task if I want to start getting better numbers. Until next week, keep on being the you you want to be.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Weekly Weigh-in (Week 72)
Sunday yet again, time for the weekly update.
Mileage is increasing steadily, run today was over half of my current single week record, with todays run being over half of my first stage goal distance.
So, what exactly am I doing with all this running you may wonder. Well, it's actually a fairly carefully constructed running program I've cobbled together from various other training programs I've found online ranging from Jeff Galloway's Run/Walk/Run program for people shooting for completion of a Half-Marathon to programs designed to achieve specific time goals for Half-Marathons. I've looked them all over, and done a decent amount of independent research into various training options and strategies, and put together the program I'm using now, and the one I'm going to transition myself into in the next few weeks.
Currently I'm using two timed runs each at a total duration of 30 minutes, 20 minutes of intervals (80% "up", 20% "down") and a 5 minute warm-up and cool-down on either side; and a single long run each week run with 5 minutes warm-up/cool-down on either side of mile repeats (80% "up" 20 "down") for the target distance of the week. The immediate goal of the timed runs is to improve my pace and thus the distance per run. The immediate goal of the long run is to increase my distance running ability progressively, by adding a mile to the distance each week, until I reach my current target distance of 12 miles. After that I'm going to decrease the long run to 10 miles a week for a while as I work on improving my pace on the 10-milers. Sporadically I'll increase the long run up past the 12 miles I went to originally, in steps and then back down to 10 again to keep working on pace. The goal of all this being to get myself to a point where I can easily run the race distance in a reasonable pace.
In addition to that I currently do a weekly treadmill run of 3 minutes at what I have tested as my VO2max, the threshold at which exercise becomes more anaerobic than aerobic, and 3 minutes at 50% thereof. Repeats of that for most of the workout duration are designed to increase the threshold, and I increase both the high and the low speeds on those workouts progressively to ensure I keep improving. At the end of those workouts I turn the speed on the treadmill up to see how fast I can run for 30 seconds continuously. Another metric I track during these runs, because there are fewer other things to distract me than most runs, is my turnover. I pick a minute, of my 3 minute up interval, and count how many times my feet hit the ground. The idea being that the more times they hit the ground, the further distance I can cover in the interval at the same stride length, and since my barefoot running style means that my stride length falls within a certain range that I can't change all that much, increasing turnover is the best way for me to gain speed.
Well, that went on a bit longer than expected, so I guess I shall save until next week the changes I plan to make to my running schedule to turn a weekly cycle into a 3 week cycle with even more vectors for improving my running efficiency and capacity.
So, what about the scale this week. 208, down a pound from last week. With the sadly low percentage of my diet composed of protein right now I'm not all that surprised by the thinning out my increase in running seems to be contributing too. My bodyfat seems to be holding pretty stable, which means I am sadly losing some muscle mass along with fat, but I'm working on plans to change that. So stay tuned. Always be the you you want to be.
Mileage is increasing steadily, run today was over half of my current single week record, with todays run being over half of my first stage goal distance.
So, what exactly am I doing with all this running you may wonder. Well, it's actually a fairly carefully constructed running program I've cobbled together from various other training programs I've found online ranging from Jeff Galloway's Run/Walk/Run program for people shooting for completion of a Half-Marathon to programs designed to achieve specific time goals for Half-Marathons. I've looked them all over, and done a decent amount of independent research into various training options and strategies, and put together the program I'm using now, and the one I'm going to transition myself into in the next few weeks.
Currently I'm using two timed runs each at a total duration of 30 minutes, 20 minutes of intervals (80% "up", 20% "down") and a 5 minute warm-up and cool-down on either side; and a single long run each week run with 5 minutes warm-up/cool-down on either side of mile repeats (80% "up" 20 "down") for the target distance of the week. The immediate goal of the timed runs is to improve my pace and thus the distance per run. The immediate goal of the long run is to increase my distance running ability progressively, by adding a mile to the distance each week, until I reach my current target distance of 12 miles. After that I'm going to decrease the long run to 10 miles a week for a while as I work on improving my pace on the 10-milers. Sporadically I'll increase the long run up past the 12 miles I went to originally, in steps and then back down to 10 again to keep working on pace. The goal of all this being to get myself to a point where I can easily run the race distance in a reasonable pace.
In addition to that I currently do a weekly treadmill run of 3 minutes at what I have tested as my VO2max, the threshold at which exercise becomes more anaerobic than aerobic, and 3 minutes at 50% thereof. Repeats of that for most of the workout duration are designed to increase the threshold, and I increase both the high and the low speeds on those workouts progressively to ensure I keep improving. At the end of those workouts I turn the speed on the treadmill up to see how fast I can run for 30 seconds continuously. Another metric I track during these runs, because there are fewer other things to distract me than most runs, is my turnover. I pick a minute, of my 3 minute up interval, and count how many times my feet hit the ground. The idea being that the more times they hit the ground, the further distance I can cover in the interval at the same stride length, and since my barefoot running style means that my stride length falls within a certain range that I can't change all that much, increasing turnover is the best way for me to gain speed.
Well, that went on a bit longer than expected, so I guess I shall save until next week the changes I plan to make to my running schedule to turn a weekly cycle into a 3 week cycle with even more vectors for improving my running efficiency and capacity.
So, what about the scale this week. 208, down a pound from last week. With the sadly low percentage of my diet composed of protein right now I'm not all that surprised by the thinning out my increase in running seems to be contributing too. My bodyfat seems to be holding pretty stable, which means I am sadly losing some muscle mass along with fat, but I'm working on plans to change that. So stay tuned. Always be the you you want to be.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
