In Good Shape?
It’s Friday the 8th. June and it has been raining here in South Wales for over 24 hours non-stop…drought, what drought? So I am patiently waiting for the postman to come with a letter from my bank with my new debit card PIN. My previous card had been compromised with 2 unauthorised payments which my bank had immediately noticed. Good work by their fraud team!
Anyway, my plan is to go to the gym after lunch for a workout. This will be my third this week- I usually do 3 or 4 workouts per week and have been following this regime for many years. Being a qualified Fitness Instructor, I devise my own fitness regime tailored to enable me to acheive my particular goals. For those of you who are interested, my fitness plan is a 4 day Split, meaning a different workout on each of the 4 days, and is as follows:
Workout 1…10 minutes hard cardio-vascular on a Cross-Trainer, followed by 6 shoulder exercises, followed by 4 arm exercises.
Workout 2…10 minutes hard cardio-vascular, 8 chest and then 3 stomach exercises.
Workout 3…10 minutes hard cardio-vascular, 6 back and then 3 stomach exercises.
Workout 4…No cardio-vascular but 8 different leg and “glute” exercises followed by 3 stomach exercises.
Each of these sessions lasts for 75 to 90 minutes, including long stretches at the end. The system I use for most of the resistance exercises is a “pyramid” system. This means that I do a set of 12 repetitions of a particular exercise at a starting weight, followed by a set of 10 rep’s at the next weight up, followed by a set of 8 rep’s at the next weight up and finishing with a set of 6 rep’s at a higher weight still.
The above system is very good for building and maintaining lean mass[muscle tissue] plus increasing and maintaining a high strength level. I know this from my own use of the system and from the results obtained by my clients over the years.
Also important is flexibility, particularly as one gets older. Therefore, I do my long stretches religiously after every workout, each stretch lasting for 30 to 45 seconds.
It is also vital to work on one’s balance as the years go by, so I incorporate ways of maintaining that as well…no falling over in the street yet!
The result of doing all this for many years is that my quality of life is so much better than most people enjoy. I can still climb mountains, maintain my garden and perform all of those DIY tasks with relative ease. I know scores of people from their twenties through to their fifties who simply could not achieve a climb up a modest mountain such as we have here in the Brecon Beacons. Also, I do have an ego to feed and I do like what I see in the mirror when I strip off!
My reason for this post is to give a nudge to those of you who keep putting off getting fit. Get going with a properly devised program, 3 to 4 times a week and make it part of your life…you will not regret it, I promise!
Just to explain…here in the UK, a cell phone is called a mobile phone…hence the headline “Mobile Internet Money”!
As you can see, I’ve got a Twitter box in the right-hand column which shows my latest “tweets” and has links to my Twitter account. Obviously I had to be shown how to do this originally, so I thought that I would pass on the process to to you as a spot of personal coaching!. Here are the steps:
