achieve my weekly fitness goals

on this goal, for various reasons too dull to go into, but instead of Iron Leopard I seem to have turned into someone who always has an excuse (it’s too dark, I’m too tired, I don’t have time, going to the gym never seems to translate into weight loss so why bother, it’s raining etc. etc.)

This morning however I did make it even though it was raining, the first time for some time, and remembered the crucial thing: whatever else it does or doesn’t do, it makes me feel better and lifts my mood, and that’s the most important thing.

The plan for this week is:

• Monday: short weights session at home
• Wednesday: 45 min treadmill
• Thursday: 20 min intervals
• Friday: short weights session at home
• Sunday: 45 min treadmill

This may be over-ambitious given how little I’ve done recently, but I’m feeling quite optimistic this evening.

I’m a day late getting here, but for once that’s not because I’ve been slacking :)

Plan for the week was:

• Mon: recovery day done!
• Tues: 20 min high-intensity intervals for some reason the Nordictrack wasn’t working so did 30 min easy cardio instead
• Wed: 60 min tai chi done!
• Thurs: 30 min easy cardio + 10 min weights at home did 20 min intervals, no weights
• Fri: 30 min easy cardio done!
• Sat: recovery day did 60 min easy cardio instead, just couldn’t help myself ;)
• Sun: 60 min easy cardio + 10 min weights in the gym did about 5 min weights at home (which I can feel today!) and walked for an hour

Pretty happy with that.

This week:

• Mon: day off
• Tues: 30 min easy cardio
• Wed: 30 min easy cardio, 60 min tai chi
• Thurs: 20 min intervals
• Fri: day off
• Sat: 5 min lower body weights, 30 min easy rowing
• Sun: 5 min upper body weights, 60 min easy cardio

The plan was:

• Mon: recovery day done!
• Tues: 20 min high-intensity intervals + 10 min weights did the intervals but not the weights
• Wed: 30 min easy cardio, 60 min tai chi did the cardio but not tai chi due to mix-up over location
• Thurs: 60 min easy cardio done!
• Fri: recovery day done!
• Sat: 60 min walking outside + 10 min weights did nothing
• Sun: 60 min easy cardio done!

A mixed bag. But 2 hours 50 min spent in the gym, so not a disaster by any means. The one thing I seem to have trouble with at the moment is the desire to do weights. I don’t know why I’m so resistant to it.

This week:

• Mon: recovery day
• Tues: 20 min high-intensity intervals
• Wed: 60 min tai chi
• Thurs: 30 min easy cardio + 10 min weights at home
• Fri: 30 min easy cardio
• Sat: recovery day
• Sun: 60 min easy cardio + 10 min weights in the gym

This week, the plan was:

• Mon: early gym, 30 min light cardio done!
• Tues: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals done!
• Wed: 60 min tai chi done! and also did 30 min light cardio
• Thurs: 30 min weights did about 10 min in the end
• Fri: early gym, 30 min light cardio done!
• Sat: day off! done! walked for about an hour
• Sun: 10 min weights + 60 min light cardio didn’t do the weights as my shoulder is feeling rather fragile, but did the cardio

Overall: very happy with that! Somehow telling myself it’s easy cardio means I make it out of the door in the morning. I have also decided to abandon the Nordictrack for that, as holding on to the bar thing at an incline of 15-20% seems to give the same heart rate as not holding onto the bar on the normal treadmill at 8-10% incline, which is a more natural movement As G puts it, there’s a reason why old people use zimmerframes. Cheers ;) Will continue to use it for intervals though, got it up to 35% on Tuesday!

This week, more of the same.

• Mon: recovery day
• Tues: 20 min high-intensity intervals + 10 min weights
• Wed: 30 min easy cardio, 60 min tai chi
• Thurs: 60 min easy cardio
• Fri: recovery day
• Sat: 60 min walking outside + 10 min weights
• Sun: 60 min easy cardio

The plan this week was:

• Mon: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals + short weights session in evening done!
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi done!
• Fri: 1 hour tai chi in the park! cancelled due to rain + short weights session cancelled due to, er, it being Friday night ;)
• Sat: 30 min rowing couldn’t gain access to machine so couldn’t do rowing, you can probably tell how sad I was about that…
• Sun: gym weights + cardio of some sort depending on what I feel like done!

Something of a mixed bag as per usual.

This week is week 1 of the new regime… a concerted effort to get on top of things between now and Christmas. I’m going to try to do a mixture of low-level easy cardio (heart rate about 125 bpm), serious intervals, weights and tai chi. Here is an article which explains the thinking behind this. I really enjoyed the easy cardio today so am hoping that the fact that it’s easy means I might find myself less reluctant to do it. Ideally I suppose one would do it outside i.e. go for a walk, and I do walk about half an hour a day anyway, 15 min to work and back, but I guess I am a gym bunny at heart (snort) and like being on the treadmill with the ipod on rather than getting run over by a mad cyclist out on the streets of London in the pouring rain ;)

• Mon: early gym, 30 min light cardio
• Tues: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals
• Wed: 60 min tai chi
• Thurs: 30 min weights
• Fri: early gym, 30 min light cardio
• Sat: day off!
• Sun: 10 min weights + 60 min light cardio

This week the plan was:

• Mon: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals done!
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi + short weights session at home done!
• Thurs: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals not done, due to late night music from party outside Wed evening – decided sleep was more important
• Sat: gym weights + 30 min cardio not done, due to total lack of inclination

So the week started well and then tailed off. I’m not going to let that happen this week. Absolutely not! ;)

• Mon: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals + short weights session in evening
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi
• Fri: 1 hour tai chi in the park! + short weights session
• Sat: 30 min rowing
• Sun: gym weights + cardio of some sort depending on what I feel like

This week the plan was:

• Mon: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals done and made me feel really good
• Tues: free weights session of unspecified length, even 5 min is better than nothing not done
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi done!
• Thurs: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals not done
• Sun: gym weights + 30 min modest intervals did weights at home and 30 min rowing instead

So, mixed success – not great but not a total disaster. This week I’m determined to do everything on the list!

• Mon: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi + short weights session at home
• Thurs: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals
• Sat: gym weights + 30 min cardio

Hopefully the gym will be open this week so this is the plan:

• Mon: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals
• Tues: free weights session of unspecified length, even 5 min is better than nothing
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi
• Thurs: early gym, 20 min high-intensity intervals
• Sun: gym weights + 30 min modest intervals

The plan for the week was:

• Mon: 20 min intervals (remembering that more is not necessarily better) done!
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi done!
• Thurs: 20 min intervals done!
• Sun: 15 min weights and 30 min cardio er, about 5 min weights but did 60 min chronic cardio, just couldn’t help myself ;)

Not bad for first week back. The main reason I kept going yesterday was because I had some new songs on the ipod, in particular Little Boots (Stuck on Repeat and Remedy both quite europoppy and great gym music) and La Roux’s Bulletproof at long last, as well as Ladyhawke which has been on it for about 6 months now. _{wondering why all these electropop girls have names beginning with L?}

Unfortunately the gym is closed this week due to a little maintenance problem but that must not stop me and is definitely an opportunity to get back to using the free weights at home.

• Wed: 15 min weights
• Fri: 20 min rowing intervals
• Sat: 15 min weights
• Sun: 60 min chronic cardio

that it’s time to re-establish this goal, in the less shoutily-worded form that FD has set up. It used to work really well for me, so I don’t know why I stopped doing it really. At the moment it should be easy to get up bright and early and get down the gym before work, all it needs is determination.

This week:

• Mon: 20 min intervals (remembering that more is not necessarily better)
• Wed: 1 hour tai chi
• Thurs: 20 min intervals
• Sun: 15 min weights and 30 min cardio

Quite a light week to get me back on track. Paws crossed it works!