Workout 07

The End.

2007-12-24T15:27:00.001-08:00

Well, it has been a long year but it looks like I made it through the workout plan fairly well. In the end I ended up making just shy of 75% of my schedule lifting days and ran about 1100 miles. Overall I can say that it was well worth doing and I am more than thrilled with the results. In retrospect I wish I had worked on my diet more earlier on but what can you do? I have started planning my next year's worth of goals are they are a little bit different in scope than this years, but I am not going to go to far into it here. This blog will not be updated moving forward as the intent was to document a single year. I have created a more general fitness blog here. Above is my start pic as well as my pic for the end of each phase. Ugh, that start pic frightens me. Here's to not letting that happen again.

End or Phase 10

2007-12-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

And there you have it the end of the 10 Phase Men's Health program. The last 4 weeks had a week and a half of travel which caused me to miss 1 of 12 lifting days. 5 of 16 running days. Final weigh is was 173 lbs and 13.9% body fat. This compares to 192.6 lb. and 21.3% body fat when I started. A loss of 19 lb. and 7.4% body fat. I will probably post some kind of recap later in the week.

End of Phase 9

2007-11-26T11:39:00.000-08:00

Another four weeks with a lot of travel, but only ended up only missing 3 of 15 lifting days. Running and 6 of my 19 running days. Ugh that lack of running took its toll on the numbers. 172.6 lbs and 15% body fat. Ohh well 4 weeks left in this whole process and hopefully I can recover.

End Of Phase 8

2007-10-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

It looks like my hopes of an uninterrupted four weeks were dashed and I ended up with a week of travel. I ended up only missing 1 of 16 lifting days and 2 of my 20 running days. The next four weeks include one and a half weeks of travel which shouldn't mess with running to much but not sure what the lifting will go.

Numbers at the end of Phase 8 were 168.8 lbs and 13.9% body fat.

End of Phase 7

2007-09-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

I had two and a half weeks of travel this time around and it was hell on my schedule. I missed 5 of my 12 lifting days and 2 of my 23 running days. As is the case with these things, running faired a lot better than lifting. In addition to having a crappy success rate with workouts I also pretty much ate like crap (read: I drank to much beer). I am back home now and it looks like I will get a 4 week stretch with non travel and I am hoping that nothing else comes up as I would like to have at least one good stretch of lifting this year.

Numbers at the end of Phase 7 were 172.6 lbs and 14.6% body fat.

End of Phase 6

2007-08-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

The travel during this phase didn't seem to have as large of an impact as it has in the past. I missed 7 of 24 lifting days and only 2 of 30 running days. The running distances have been a bit shorter than the past due to the heat. The longest has been 7 miles with the majority being under that. My final numbers for the are 176 lbs (down 27 from when I started) and 15% body fat(down 7% from when I started). Looking at the first and last picture I can see a bit of difference, but I am not seeing a whole long in the last three phases. That is kind of a bummer.

End of Phase Five

2007-07-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

This phase was pretty spotty. I had two weeks of travel and managed to lose my luggage. This caused me to miss a few days or working out. I ended up missed 6 of 12 lifting days and 8 of 11 running days. Another crappy 4 weeks. The final numbers are 180.4 lbs and 16.2% body fat. The next phase is a total of 8 weeks and I already know I have two weeks of travel planned. Hopefully the impact will not be huge.

End of Phase Four

2007-06-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

This phase started pretty strong. I had managed to add some swimming in on the days that I didn't run, but then I managed to some down with the flu. In then end I missed 7 of 12 lifting days and 7 of 19 running days. Overall it was a pretty crappy 4 weeks. At the end I ended up coming in at 178 lb. and 15.7% body fat.

End of Phase Three

2007-05-07T19:06:00.000-07:00

Phase Three was four weeks long. During this time I ended up had a week of travel during phase three and as expected it messed with my schedule a bit. I ended up missing 3 of 12 weightlifting days and 3 of 19 running days. I have also added Yoga and some swimming but but have been in fairly small amounts. I doubt the yoga is doing much in terms of visual fitness goals, but it great for removing built up tension from run. At the end I ended up coming in at 180 lb. and 15.9% Body Fat.

During this phase I added an abdominal workout to my regular gym days as well. The ab work out consists of the following:

Crunches
V-sits
Side Oblique Crunches (both sides)
Reverse Crunches
Seated Side Bends
Jackknife Sit-ups
Oblique Twists
Vertical Leg lifts
Arm and Leg reaches (both sides)
Twisting Reaches

I do each of these for 30 seconds, and then once I have made it through all of them I go back and pick four and do them again for another 30 seconds each.

More On Diet

2007-04-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

I had previously posted about the diet I am following, but this is consistently the are in which I get the most questions. So, I will try to go into a little more detail here.

Like I said, the first part of it to determine the number of calories I can have in a day. To do this, I multiple my actual weight by 11. Currently my weight is 180. So, that means I can have 1980 calories in a day. Next up is to break that down. Since I am lifting my goal is to eat 1 gram of protein for every lb. of body weight. So, I am eating 180 grams of protein a day. A single gram of protein has 4 calories. That means my 720 of my daily caloric intake is protein, and that leaves 1260 left. Of those up to 30% can be fat, and the rest are carbohydrates. 1 gram of fat has 9 calories. If I were to hit the 30% exactly then that would be 42 grams of fat, and leave me 882 calories for carbs.

I also break this down into 6 smaller meals a day.

To get a handle on this I had to write down everything I ate every day for a week. That gave me a good idea on where my base what and where I need to change my diet. It also gave me a bit of a shock as I didn't realize how much I actually ate in a day. To find out nutritional information I suggest using fitday.com or dailyplate.com. Both have many common store bought products as well as fast food eateries listed.

Cardio change

2007-04-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

I finished the milage build up this week. For more on that, click the link in the sidebar on the right.

Overall it was really effective. I have some tentative plans coming up for my running schedule, but I am not ready to commit to them just yet. Until then my running will be looping through the following 4 week cycle:

Week 1 Sun 8 Tue 5 Wed 6 Thu 5 Sat 4
Week 2 Sun 9 Tue 5 Wed 7 Thu 6 Sat 4
Week 3 Sun 10 Tue 6 Wed 8 Thu 7 Sat 4
Week 4 Sun 6 Tue 4 Thu 5 Sat 4

End of Phase Two

2007-04-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

Phase two, like most of the phases in this workout, is only 4 weeks long. This time I had a week of travel, and that caused lifting to be put on hold for a week. So, it was a little discouraging to not see such a huge change in the pic. I made 13 of 16 lifting days, and 23 of 24 running days. By the end of this phase I was 185 lb. and 17.4% body fat.

Also, during this phase I read an article on Men’s Heath about diet, and am following the guidelines it laid out. What I do is multiple my weight by 11 and that is the total number of calories I have in a day. I then eat one gram of protein per lb of body weight. Of the remaining calories I can have up to 30% be fat and whatever is not used up by protein and fat can be carbs. I tend to never really get that much fat and eat more carbs.

End of Phase One

2007-03-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

Phase one was 8 weeks long, but I had a trip to in the middle of it and that meant I had to put everything on hold for two weeks. During the two weeks, I tried to get to a gym and do some interval training, and a weightless workout, but I wasn’t has consistent as I would have liked. Over all Phase one had 24 lifting days of which I managed to make 17. I had 42 running days and made 41 of those. I ended up 186.4 lb. and 18.70% body fat.

Beggining

2006-12-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

So, this is me at the start of a year long workout plan. I am getting a few week jump on 2007, but what can you do. I plan on following the Men’s Health 10 phase Homegrown Muscle program. In addition I have started a running plan that you can see here. At this point I am 3 weeks into the running program. When I first started that I was 203 lb. and 22.2% body fat. At the start of the lifting I am 192.6 lb. and 21.3% body fat.