Decision Made. Over the weekend, I finally made a decision about the whole fit v fat v muscle issue: muscle it is.
I really like what working out has done for my upper body. I can see my pecs. This is new. (OK, well, it’s not exactly new, I’ve had visible pecs before, but it’s been probably 20 years so I’m going to count this as new. ;-)) Plus, my shoulders and arms are getting larger and better defined . . . and I am getting stronger.
I need to sit down and plan my exercise so I can work through some sort of progression and use that as motivation and a goal. I need to challenge myself, mix things up, and really push myself harder so I can get more and better benefits from my exercise.
While I still want to rid myself of some of my fat, as I’ve said many times on this blog, in my experience, diet absolutely controls my weight / bodyfat percent, not exercise.
Lately, my diet has been about 80% on target and the 20% bad stuff is killing my progress. This remains a problem for me to solve. If I’d stop sneaking snacks and adding Free (Cheat) Days, really buckle down and eat well, I’d see my bodyfat start to drop again.
Exercise Excitement. Meanwhile, in exerciseland, I’m stoked about using my new Power Tower in my workout. I did a few reps of various things on Saturday and Sunday, but not much. Today I get to really work on it and do some serious sets.
Exercises 1-4 won’t be affected but it’ll definitely help my pull-ups — letting me do true assisted pull-ups rather than the not-quite-sure-how-much-I’m-helping-with-my-legs “assisted pull-ups” I’ve been doing. Plus it’ll allow me to do dips again for the first time in a long time.
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Notes | |
| 1 | Myotatic Crunches | 2 | 25 | |
| 2 | Cat Vomit Exercises | 2 | 10 | |
| 3 | Kettlebell Swings, 50 lbs. | 2 | 25 | working up to 1 set of 75-100 reps |
| 4 | Push-ups | 4 | 25 | decline |
| 5 | Pull-ups | 2 | 10 | assisted |
| 6 | MEFT† — Dips | 2 | 10 |
Review. Done. I did the push-ups in quick-succession sets of 40-25-25-10. The pull-ups and dips were both assisted. I think next time I’ll use the smaller bands to give a little less assistance. We shall see.
The kettlebell swings were in two sets of 10 and 45 because I was interrupted in my first set and I wanted to push a bit further today.
In my experience, myotatic crunches and cat vomit exercises, done correctly, are much harder to do than the regular crunches I was doing until a few weeks ago.
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Plan for Week 44.*
And we’re off to a rousing start . . . last night I ate some cake and ice cream.
Way to “buckle down” there, John! . . . damnit.
| Day | Fast? | SCD? | Run/Exer? |
| Sunday | No | No | |
| Monday | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tuesday | Yes | Yes | No |
| Wednesday | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Thursday | Yes | Yes | No |
| Friday | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Saturday | No | No | Yes |
Red = a negative deviation | Green = a positive deviation | Blue = a note |
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