Part one: Setting Short-term goals

So you have finally found a friend who is committed to the workout plans you’ve created and both of you want to lose 15 lbs within a three month period. To lose all this weight you both decide that you will cut out all the unhealthy junk food which you occasionally have once or twice a week. We all know that you both want to achieve these goals so you both try very hard. But eventually one of you will inevitably fall back to where you once started. This master plan of losing all this weight and banning all the comfort food sounds great in theory but will you follow through?

Do not set yourself up for a major fall back because this will discourage you from achieving your goal. Instead, try setting up a short-term achievable goal. By having a several short-term goals, you can find the time to accomplish more things than having just one long-term goal. Also, short-term goals allows you to see faster results which will help boost yourself confidence in your workouts. An example of a short-term goal would be increasing your repetition in your exercises or adding an extra 5 minutes to your cardio workout per session. Make your short-term goals manageable and feasible for yourself so you won’t disappoint yourself! The time range of a short-term goal would be 1-4 weeks depending on the difficulty level the goal might be.

I would like to apologize for the lack of updates on my daily progress, but I would like to let you know that I have followed thorough on my daily workout and cardio plan!

Tuesday: I worked on my Back muscle.

Pull Down- 1 X warm up 90lbs 18 reps

5 X 105lbs 15 reps

Handle-pull Down- 1 X warm up 60lbs 15reps

5 X 75lbs 15 reps

Dumbbell  Row (Chainsaws)- 1 X warm up 25lbs 15reps

1 X 35lbs 15 reps

4 X 40lbs 15reps

Machine Seated Row- 1 X warm up 65lbs

4 X 90lbs 8 reps

Dead Lifts- 5 X 135lbs 7~8reps

Shoulder shrugs- 5 X 45lbs 12~14 reps

Wednesday: Shoulders/Tris (a previous post of mine has my shoulder workout)

Thursday: Legs/Bis (a previous post of mine has my shoulder workout)

Cardio Session:

I went on Wednesday and Thursday and I swam for an hour. It was my first time back in the pool so I tried to make it as light as possible for my body to get use to this sort of exercise. The combination I did for my work out was 1X50m easy front crawl followed by 1X50m backstroke. I would then give myself a 30 sec breather and I would start over again with the front crawl. I did this for an hour and I was quite tired since I haven’t been training my endurance for a few months now. Hopefully I can do better in my next session for this week.

Fitness Redefined.

You are over at your parent’s house and you can smell the apple pie rising in the oven while you’re having a conversation with your mother. The salivary glands in your mouth starts producing saliva and your stomach starts growling. You just joined a fitness gym a week ago and promised yourself that you won’t consume those “empty calories”. Although avoiding all the comfort food that we have become familiar with is almost impossible to do in the long-run, we can still indulge in moderation.

If you deny yourself of that box of chocolate that is stashed all the way up on the top shelf of the cupboard, it will eventually find its way down with nothing in it! Instead of cutting out all the sweets and goodies from your diet try eating them in moderation. This will allow yourself from dipping your hands into the cookie jar all the time and help minimize your desire to consume these treats! By allowing yourself to indulge once in awhile helps prevent you from over indulging in one sitting which frankly is not healthy at all. So if you feel like eating some potato chips remember just to eat them in moderation!

Work out summary for today: Chest workout

Flat Bench- 25lbs X 20 warmup

30lbs X 15 reps

35lbs X 15 reps

2 X 45lbs X 15 reps

Incline Bench- 20lbs X 15 reps

25lbs X 15 reps

30lbs X 15 reps

2 X 35lbs X 12~15reps

Free-weight Flies- 5 X 20lbs X 15 reps

Dips-                        5 X 15 reps (with reverse weight helpers)

I am always looking forward to my chest workouts because it is one of my favourite muscle groups to train!

Fitness Redefined.

It is your first day back in the gym and you are already wondering if your muscles are going to feel the pain tomorrow! For the majority of us, we will definitely feel the lactic build up and the microfiber tears in the muscle. We shouldn’t necessarily regard these events as a bad thing but rather a good thing. All these painful indications is a sign of progress toward your desired goal of achieving that healthier lifestyle! Just remember not to over work yourself on the first few days back and just take it slowly to allow your muscle to be re-acquainted with the different exercises you perform.

So I have decided that I will be swimming 3 times a week for my cardio sessions. I will also be adding some elliptical training to supplement my cardio work out later on in this training program. I will be following something similar to this swimming training http://swimming.about.com/od/sampleswimworkouts/l/bl8weeksmptempl.htm
but my training will be more fitness oriented rather than technique improvement.

Rest day synopsis:

My legs were a train wreck! I could barely walk on Friday or Saturday but I managed somehow (don’t we always). My adrenaline must of kicked in during my Friday night martial arts and lion dance performance because it was pain-free for an hour or so (or it could of been the figment of my imagination). On Sunday, I could still feel the pain through my martial arts class . Hopefully by Monday the pain will subside and I can start my cardio training in the morning.

Fitness Redefined.

If you are thinking that you can’t go to the gym because you’ve got no time then think again! Everyone of us is bounded to time meaning that we only have 24 hours in a day to spend. Assuming that we spend 8 hours of that time sleeping, we are left with 16 hours left to spare. We will also assume that we are working full-time (8 hours a day) or we have school full-time. This will leaves us now with 8 hours left to spare. Now imagine what you can accomplish with those 8 hours. You can spend those 8 hours watching your favourite television sitcoms or spend it sitting in front of that computer monitor chatting away your time. Telling yourself that you are too busy is not an option now because you have 8 hours to do something productive! It is up to you to take the initiative to manage th0se 8 remaining hours and scheduling an hour of workout would be an excellent start. Now you’ve schedule in that 1 hour cardio session you can spend those 7 hours doing whatever needs to be done!

The gym can be quite intimidating at times with those big juice monkeys and their overstimulated biceps or those eccentric yoga teachers with their extravagant figures. These are some of the reasons that might push us away from going to the gym. But all these reasons are just excuses for not even giving yourself a chance at becoming a big juice monkey (Ok, ok not a juice monkey but a few levels below that) or attaining that slender look. These excuses will get you no where from achieving that desired goal which you’ve set out for yourself. Without giving yourself a chance at trying out the gym you may never know what we are missing. So pick up your sorry lil’ bum and take yourself to your local gym to get that deserving workout.

Sometimes your workout schedule maybe interrupted by different things such as outings with friends, homework, errands, etc. And sometimes these interruptions may become more and more persistent to the point where you have neglected your workout schedule. It is important to stick to your workout schedule because eventually it will become a habit in your daily routine. An excellent way in keeping to your workout schedule is to find a friend who wants to join you in your daily workouts. This will give you more incentive to go to the gym because now you cannot just not abandon him/her one day leaving them wondering where you are. Also having a friend with you while you workout will boost your self confidence as you perform your exercises. You will encourage each other by pushing yourself to your limits and achieving a better workout session.

There is also one last thing I want to mention on this subject. If you want to change for the better, then do yourself a favor and change for yourself. Do not change just because someone important asked you to. The change must come from one source and that source is you. You are the one in control. You are the one who has the will. You are the one who will change.

Daily Workout Summary:

Today I went to the gym to work on my legs and biceps. I have managed to get an excellent leg work out but a mediocre bicep workout. Here are the exercises I did:

Legs

Squats (on the Smith Machine) – 20lbs warm up 20rep

1 X 70lbs – 20 reps

1 X 90lbs – 17 reps

3 X 110lbs – 15 reps

Stationary Lunges – 1 X 70lbs – 15 reps

3 X 90lb – 15 reps

Hamstring Machine – 50lbs – 15 reps warmup

1X 60lbs – 15 reps

3 X 70lbs – 15 reps

Biceps

Standing Arm Curls- 20lbs warm up 15 reps

3 X 35lb – 8 reps

Yours truly,

Fitness Redefined.

This summer I want to look extra lean! No, not extra lean as in ground beef extra lean!?

Anyways, I want to incorporate a cardio session in my workouts so I can start burning off that winter fat that I am carrying around! I am deciding on whether to do swimming for my cardio workouts or jumping on to an elliptical machine. I am quite fond of the latter, but I really want to try out swimming for a change. I have already started lowering the weight on my resistance training and increased the reps (10 – 15 repetition). All I that is missing now is just the cardio sessions which definitely will help speed up the process of redefining my whole body!

Although I know that some muscle mass will be lost through this new program I am not so quite worried about that. The only thing that I am worried about is sticking to the new schedule! Yes I will admit it. I tend to deviate on certain commitments in regards to my work outs (and may be other things ), but if you’re determined enough to get what you want then you must go for it. Don’t hold back. I will come up with a cardio session by this week and I will have it posted on Saturday night.

I think my diet will have to be altered a bit to achieve my goal of toning down. I will try to reconfigure my portions that I consume, but I don’t think I will go as far as to calorie count. I am thinking in the lines of separating my meals into 5 snacking periods so I can maintain a optimal blood sugar level so I won’t feel fatigue throughout the day. But I will surely look into changing the way I eat so I can achieve my goal!

Brief summary of today’s work out:

Today I worked on my shoulders and triceps these are the exercise I did:

Military Press- 14 reps- 35lbs (warm up set)
5 X 12 reps- 40lbs

Front Raises – 5 X 10 reps- 15lbs

Side Raises – 5 X 10 reps- 15lbs

Close-grip shoulder lifts – 5 X 10 ~40lbs

Triceps:

Skull Crusher followed by close grip bench press – 3 X 10 reps- 10lbs

Reverse Skull Crushers – 2 X 10 reps- 10lbs

Later on in my posts I will create small video clips of me showing you how I do my workouts so you guys can follow along if you like.*

*You may want to check with your physician before you start trying out these exercise because it may cause some people problems.

Welcome to my latest blog, Fitness Redefine!

I have created this blog to rant about my daily workouts at the gym and other physical activities which I partake during the week. Other things that I want to talk about on my blog will include a set of goals (both short and long term goals) and daily self-reports of my progress. I am still contemplating whether or not I should post pictures of my progress so I can see the before and after pictures. All in all, this blog will have a variety of fitness related content which I will spew out to anyone who wants to read!

Cheers,

Fitness Redefined.