62 Days to go... Everything will be alright in the end

Good evening blog followers,

I am starting this blog with another apology, it’s again been sometime since my last post, and so the food diary is all off again and it seems I didn’t manage to ever make a note of what I have been eating, but I can assure you where possible it has all been good decisions AND new ideas, and even smaller portions, and Porridge seems to be the way forward!

So I have been really busy at the training, I am still going more times a week than there are days in it, so I figure it’s all good that I am getting to the gym this much, working harder than ever before and not feeling so much pain, but then as the PT pointed out the other day pain is good and he gave me some killer exercises to get on with for the next couple of weeks on their new TRX A-Frame thing in my new program.

On Thursday I thought it was really time to test my steel with the new program, so I arrived at the gym nice and early, just late enough to miss the usual stampede of the regulars and get myself up to the gym with minimal fuss.

I started off with a warmup and moved on to my TRX Circuits, These consist of TRX Squats that involve holding onto straps on this A-Frame leaning back a little then squatting right to the floor then up again with a little jump, then I have walking lunges with weights (We all know about these and they KILL) followed by more squats on a BOSA ball, this is kind of a half of an exercise ball mounted onto a base, so basically you are balanced (well more teetering) on top of this ball thing and doing full squats and back up 15 times, without falling off, the theory is not only is this strengthening the legs it’s also strengthening the core as it’s having to work VERY hard to keep you upright and stop you from falling off, all I know is it’s allot harder than it looks and IT HURTS, but once the BOSA ball is done I get a short rest before I start all that again.

In my first rest period, I took a quick look around the gym, as I am getting fitter I tend to be finding I seem to be able to look up and around as I recover, previously I have been Dying / Sobbing into my gym towel, but as I looked around it struck me that the only person with a smile on his face, was me! I was the only happy person stood in the middle of a whole flock of miserable sheep, I didn’t get it, all these people were a sea of new faces to me, we were short on regulars but still, if you don’t enjoy it and if you don’t want to be there why ever are you there? If you’re not passionate about it in some way, shape or form, or even you don’t crave that AMAZING feeling you get when you do really well, why get out of bed… I mean commendable on one hand that they do it, but even myself, if I didn’t enjoy the gym and the workout and the feeling I get from it, there is no way on this earth I could get myself out of bed at 6:30 in the morning, It also worries me as I look around some days that many of these people, especially the new faces are doing exercises incorrectly or using machines incorrectly, not only can this reduce the life of the machine, but watching some people it WILL cause some serious damage to their body, perhaps they don’t think they need to see a PT once a month for a program, but even if you don’t do everything they suggest, it’s good to see what you are doing right and wrong and speak to someone who knows more about your body than you probably do, sometimes I feel I want to intervene, to help, to stop them doing any damage and show them how to do it correctly, but then the question is, if they are already doing it wrong, and clearly haven’t asked for help and advice thus far, do they really want a slightly overweight sweaty blokes help and advice? I tend to guess not, so generally I opt to tut under my breath and carry on my own merry way.

Then after my short break and my I carried on with my Circuits with a smile on my face and a few odd looks from bored looking people.

After 3 sets of the circuits, it’s time to do some ab work, again this is on the new TRX frame, I basically have to extend the straps, get down on my hands and knees and put my feet in the straps, then I use my core to lift me off the floor like an elevated plank and begin to crunch, trust me it DOES NOT take long for your abs and core in general to tire out from this, but it’s 15 reps and 3 sets… once this is done I stay on the floor and do something very similar only instead of crunching both legs… I “Mountain Climb” that is crunch one at a time… then comes the really fun and MOST challenging bit of the whole set, getting back out of the sodding straps, you now have no strength left in your core, your desperate to stretch and you can’t lift your feet out… Will take some practice I think.

The rest of the program is similar to before, I have 3 sets of circuits consisting of Mountain Climbers, Swiss Ball Roll-out, and Russian crunch things (Sorry the correct term eludes me right now) so basically MORE abs, then single arm row, and assisted pull ups, this about wraps up the resistance stuff.

So then it was onto Cardio, he wants me as well as getting on with endurance stuff, to be pushing some interval training to, so I hopped onto a treadmill and set-up some speed interval training, you set two speeds, slow… and fast… slow was 6KPH this is a brisk walking pace, the treadmill describes it as a “Jog” but my stride is bigger so for me it’s a brisk walk, and my fast pace was 12KPH, this is probably about an 85% - 90% effort for me, I can sprint faster but not on a continual interval basis.

I started off setting it for 20 minutes, already being warm I wanted to kick off with 1 minute low, 1 minute high and so on… sadly the treadmill couldn’t tell I was already warm and made me wait 3 minutes before I could up the pace, but then I was off… the first few intervals were okay, I even upped the speed a little, but once I reached the 10 minute mark the minute sprints were feeling more like 5 minutes and the minute rest as such was feeling like 5 seconds, but I kept pushing, walk 1 minute, hit the button.. sprint 1 minute… hit the button walk one minute… hit the button sprint one minute… by the end of the 20 minutes my heart was going, the blood was moving and I felt great… I cooled off on a spin bike just to flush out my legs and finished with some “Ahhhh that’s good” stretches :)

Then Friday morning it was spin off the pain time, so again I was up bright and early and attached to my spin bike, sadly our brilliant Friday / Sunday instructor is leaving soon, but because of this he is breaking the rules and mixing it up already, they usually mix tracks before a new release, just to get you used to a different workout and so that people can choose tracks they really enjoyed training to, well his choices today were epic, and I noticed they tended to favour mountain climbing, and as we know I am much happier climbing with masses of pressure and resistance on my legs that trying to get my “Rugby Player” legs moving fast, it is possible but it hurts allot, although even this is getting easier.

So an amazing spin session was had we even did out last climb to “Phat Bass” in the dark with just the disco lights, it’s a brilliant way to train as you don’t look at the actual number on the screen (i.e. your gear) you just concentrate on how it feels if it’s killing your legs your okay, if they feel okay you need more resistance so you push it up, if you can’t keep to the beat and they are killing AND you can’t breathe you need to pull it back just a little.
Two more spin sessions have followed since Friday, and I am ready and raring to go again tomorrow morning, I am really starting to think this becoming a spin instructor would be a great idea, I love it... So why not get paid to do it lol. 

Now here is a little motivational speech for you…
“Everything will be alright in the end, and if everything is not yet alright, then it is not yet the end”

So more to come, and more hard work, but I can assure you I am feeling the benefits and so is my running... I will be fitting in another long run this week too, and I am hoping even a road running session.

As for the food, I will carry on in the same vein, with the help of my new secret weapon, Cayenne pepper... It's a huge metabolism booster, but watch out... a little to much and you'll sweat like mad!

Now for the business bit, I NEED you support, I need to raise £1600 for Asthma UK, a much overlooked charity who's work save millions of lives, they need our help, that's why I am pushing my training to the very limits to find out more about Asthma UK and how they save the lives of people suffering from this debilitating condition visit their site at http://www.asthma.org.uk then when you are ready to sponsor me, pop along to http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/JohnClitherow and give anything you can... OR  shout me and I'll come and find you with my sponsorship forms.

Live well,

Jay (Red John).