Skip to main content

The recovery week is here

I have been doing my strength and mass gaining exercises for about 6 weeks now. Time to take a break. Let the muscles recover completely before my next bout of extremities. I just completed shoulder and trapezoids exercises today and I did not feel good about it.

All this week my performance has not been so good at the gym. First I did fewer reps than before week on my bench press this past Monday. I also did not do as well as I expected on my deadlifts too. Then I had a very weak bicep curl on Tuesday. Today (wednesday) I stepped into the gym with very low confidence. My body does not feel all energized. I felt tired even before I started. Not good. I picked up 42.5 lbs to start my shoulder press but again could not do any better than previous week. I could not finished my 3rd set at all. Not even a single rep. Which is bad news. My body is demanding rest. And rightly so too. It has been a little over 6 weeks since I started my mass gain phase. I need some rest.

Respecting what my body is telling me I decided to give myself this week off. I have been lifting very heavy for the past few days and that compounded with a very busy week at work aggravated the situation. It feels great to even think about the week off. It is unlike the feeling I get when I have to miss gym because of other reasons such as I am busy at work or because I have to travel etc. Looking forward to a restful week...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stats for Oct 2009

So it has been a month since I started bulking up. How am I doing so far? Here are the raw numbers Exercises Squats: 170 lbs, 8 reps Deadlifts: 185 lbs, 10 reps Bench Press: 110 lbs, 4 reps Pull ups: Body weight + 25 lbs, 7 reps Overhead Press: 75 lbs, 6 reps I am doing well in all exercises except bench press. The exercise that is already closest to my goal for end of december is my pull-ups. I can already do 7 reps with 25 lbs hanging off my waist! You can check out my previous post for the goals I have set. Body weight and fat Weight: 120.8 lbs Fat %: 12.2% I am able to add weight as expected. But my body fat % shot up too much. My goal for end of december was to weight 125 lbs at 12% body fat. But I am already over the limit for my body fat %. So I have to lower it and at the same time increase my weight. Very unlikely. I might have to revise my goals, but I will see how it goes and hope to make better predictions for my next bulking phase. It is not at all easy to ke...
12 comments
Read more

The Big Switch: Strength Training to Muscle Mass Training

I have so far been training for strength without giving any though to the muscle mass. My aim was to do 3x5 benchpress, rows with 1x my body weight, squat with 1.5x and deadlift with 2x. I have reached all my goals except for deadlift goal. So now that I have enough strength I want to switch my training to build muscle mass. Another reason is because I am getting bored with the strength training and my central nervous system seems to be getting taxed heavily for too long. Switching to muscle mass training means nothing more than reducing the weights to 80% instead of 90 to 95% and then doing 8 to 10 reps instead of 3 to 6 reps. I am not going to completely switch to muscle mass training. I plan to do strength training one week and muscle mass training the next week. Here is my plan Week 1: 3 x 8 with 80% 1RM Week 2: 6 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 3: 3 x 9 with 80% 1RM Week 4: 7 x 4 with 90% 1RM Week 5: 3 x 10 with 80% 1RM Week 6: 8 x 4 with 90% 1RM At the end of the 6 weeks and ass...
2 comments
Read more

End of an Era

Image via Wikipedia It has been a long time since I gave any updates on my progress. Actually it is almost 3 months! There have been a lot of developments on my personal front which was the main cause of this much delayed update. My progress has slowed down considerably too. I was hoping to be at 140 lbs by the end of this year with 7% body fat. That seems like a dream that will not be fulfilled this year. I will not even be able to meet the 140 lb goal let alone the body fat %. So what happened to me over the last 3 months? I have been in the US for more than 8 years now! I loved every moment that I was here, starting from the early struggling days of my MS to my current stable job state of today. However even before coming to US, I promised to myself that I will be back in India after gaining 5 years of work experience in US. Now that the goal has been realized, it is time to move back to India. So in the last 3 months I have been working towards the goal of moving back to India. M...
4 comments
Read more