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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