Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Hitting the Weights

After a reasonable racing season, I am trying to vary my workouts beyond a core of running, swimming and bicycling.  I have always enjoyed weight training and for the past month, I have been disciplined about getting in the gym about once/week.  I have a simple routine of legs, chest, back and arms which I complete with varying success.

My leg workout consists of squats, lunges, deadlifts, single leg hamstring curls, and single leg extensions.  I feel these give me the best bang for my buck and I can usually pull off 10-12 sets in 20-25 minutes.  Today I managed a full set of squats at 115 pounds.  My short term goal is 135 pounds and I would love to be at 185 pounds by next spring.

For chest I stick to flat bench press, incline press and cable crossovers.  I was working towards a bench press of 210 pounds, but got side tracked.  After starting over I am back at 135 pounds with no plans to max out for another month.  As I am reading “Lone Survivor” by Marcus Lattrell, I threw in some push-ups.  I planned on doing 4 sets of 20.  That quickly turned into 3 sets at 20, 14 and 7 respectively.

For back, I always start with pull-ups as a gage of strength to weight ratio.  Today I had a breakthrough with 6 pull-ups (prone-medium grip from a dead hang).  I then do lateral pull-downs and seated rows.  In a perfect world, I would do t-bar rows, but alas I have no t-bar.  I need to start bent-over rows at some point.  I would like to get up to 10 pull-ups.

Arms are an afterthought.  I do a few sets of alternating dumbbell curls, pulley push-downs and occasionally military dumbbell presses.

My biggest weakness is core strength.  I intend to research this some and start to incorporate a few exercises a week.  I can probably do these at home.

A final thought is explosive power and cross-fit type exercises.  I believe these lend themselves very well to practical strength.  However, I will probably wait at least 6 months before incorporating these. 

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