From the Lower body to the Mid
Next week the entire focus will be on the core. If the squat is the biggest game in town, the core is one of the most distinct universal physical requirements. Unless you are working something out in isolation, it is very likely that your core will be involved.
Now, I am guilty of this too, the core is not just the show muscles on the front side. It’s also those very often complained about muscles in the rear. The backside is half the core! It doesn’t have as much to show are a solid set of abdominals, but definitely not something you want to neglect when going over your foundation.
Lift with your back! -Rigby
(please don’t do that)
Unlike the lower body though there isn’t a single workout that can give you enough in both strength and coverage. So I’ll be doing a workout routine every day to make it happen. I used to really enjoy the Ab Ripper X that I followed on a P90x dvd. It’s a 15 min workout of 300+ movements designed to really get it on. Doing a quick review of it though, I noticed that it doesn’t have anything for the back. So, I’ll be making just a small adjust to it so that I get all I want in the one routine. (I take out just a couple exercises to include the last 3).
In and Outs
Bicycle
Cross legged situps
Pulse ups
Oblique V ups
Mason Twist
Glute bridge ups/Pelvic Lift
Back bridge hold
Plank
I’d say that if I do this ~4 times this week. I’ll call it a success. I want to say every day, but I’m not exactly sure how well I’ll react.
Review of the Squat week
Have you ever started out with high expectations and that heavy weight of reality drags you down? I’m not sure why I’d ever forget, but a sore lower body was that reality for me.
Not really though
I did squat every day: The end result is that I was getting some every day. Unfortunately at varying degrees of quantity and quality. For 5 of the 7 days, it was different sets and reps of body weight squats. One day I did make it to the rack and the last day I did some wall sits and jumping (I regret this one).
Whats that barbell weight? I didn’t actually try to find the max, but I was starting to feel the pressure as I was repping 225lbs. If I had to make a guess, I’d say around 255-275 would be a reasonable 1-2 rep max. I’m a little sad that I’ve lost some strength, but considering I’ve been out of the gym, its a fair restart point.
Sore: I decided to do the jumping and wall sits on day 2 and I wasn’t expecting to wake up the next day aching. Definitely made me a little caution about going too hard on the following days. By day 4 though, I was fine and it was usually the first couple sets where I would feel anything residual before the body was warmed up and ready to roll. Day 6 was the barbell and that was another level of being sore. While doing body weight of the same muscle group every day isn’t exactly bad, it also may not necessarily allow time for rest, recovery and growth. For barbell squats though, I definitely could not have done that every day, and lived to tell the tale. I’m glad there was only 1 day left after those squats because adding weight took it a step up.
Result: I am not going to continue squatting every day, but I’ll be keeping up with it as I go through the next few challenges, so that I am capable of taking on the more strenuous challenges later on.
~ 500 body weight squats a day. Done in sets of 30 or 50. Around 2500 total squats.
~ 6-8 reps at 225 for 5 sets. Also did warm up and cool down sets
~ 5 minutes of wall sits
~ 70 Jumps
Thoughts on the challenges
I did take some videos of me doing the squats, but I decided against posting anything to the tubes. If I had some sort of progression or something meaningful to show I think it would make sense to do it, but with it only being a handful of days it’s just me working out. It got me thinking about the week long format vs the month long that I’ve been contemplating and I think this is going to push me to the month long style. I’ll finish up with the couple week challenges I wanted to do while planning out the next style.
Show that all you got to do is start
One of the most important parts of making a change is just starting. By doing 1 week time frames that allows me to show a larger amount of topics and challenges. With so much out there and so many ways to get going, I don’t think there is a lack of opportunity in “Just starting”. The one thing that I don’t like about this though is that just starting is also just the first step. The most important part after starting is continuing to move forward…
Progress and Progression
Some of the most motivating and powerful inspirations is showing a starting point of not being able to do something or not being very good and showing success after putting in the work. The time frame for that varies a lot based on the activity or skill, but I do feel like a week puts a lot of restrictions whereas a month would give a little more opportunity. The biggest downside I see in this is that it will be a little harder to show more activities and it will be a lot harder to have “perfect” months. It’s a lot easier to commit to 1 week than it is to show up every day for a month.
Idea
January
Starting this January, my idea is to try out some of the monthly format. It will still involve the weekly update, but maybe not as large of a post and be more total frequency from me. Once the idea is rolling, I could have four challenges going on at the same time.
Share with me!
Join, share and propose!
Currently I’m the one doing all the things and the ideas of what to do are my own. The goal though, is for others to share thoughts/progress/stories. If you are already here at the beginning, lets get started! Otherwise I’ll keep chugging along until the little community I image becomes a reality.
Thanks for being here! More importantly though, get started and take on that challenge!