Training an old man

December 4th

Day off time! I was expecting to be working with Steve today, but the jobs he had lined up fell through. So I have time to type a few words, get a haircut and get a few things sorted.

This morning was not an early start. I was sleeping quite soundly when Catherine woke up, saw the time and launched into action. She had managed to set her alarm for 550pm rather than 550am and as a result had awoken with a start at 720am. I was happy that she had mistakenly forced a rest on herself, but was less pleased at being given a minor heart attack. I chose to get up a short time later in order to make the most of the day and the adrenaline surging through my veins.

This morning’s gym session was legs and back. At the moment I am doing a split training program, which means I train different areas on different days. This was my third session of the week, having started on Tuesday and trained each day since. My split routine consists of back and legs on days 1&3 and chest and arms on days 2&4. I don’t always do all the sessions concurrently, but I find it easier to keep consistency by doing it that way. The structure of the program means I have 48 hours rest for the muscles worked in each session. In the future I may add an additional body weight session at the weekend just to stop my muscles going stale with two days off over the weekend.

From next week I am starting a new program called escalating density training or EDT. You can read a little more about it here. I started Catherine on the program this week and she was feeling it by the end. No matter how many years you have trained for, there is always something new you can try to push yourself harder. Essentially you perform back to back sets of two exercises for 20 minutes using your ten rep max weight, but only performing 5-6 reps for each set, therefore not reaching failure until much later in the session.

For example:

I could do Deadlifts with 90kg for 6 reps, 

followed straight after with 6 reps of dumbbell chest press using 27.5kg dumbbells.

I repeat these two exercises back and forth for 20 minutes, no rest between. Towards the end of this 20 minutes I should only be getting 1-3 reps out per set if I have the weight right. 

I end up lifting a huge amount of weight, but without overloading early on, or without sacrificing form. Naturally I wouldn’t suggest this to beginners as they may not keep good form or have the appropriate core strength for the whole 20 minutes. I myself haven’t been back to the weights for that long, but I spent the last four weeks working on building a base. Realistically I should really be doing this for another four weeks, but I feel pretty good in my endurance and my form is holding up really well. I basically haven’t gone nuts like the 20 year old version of myself! I will look at using the EDT for the next month to 8 weeks, before returning to the endurance split.

Tomorrow I will probably do my ten rep max tests as my training session, so that I can start next week on the right weight. I’ll let you know how they turn out, so we can all see my progress (provided I make some ;))

Right enough chatter for now, I have some more chores to do and mullet to get chopped. Oh and I have a new book to download - The Power of Now. I do like my philosophising and have wanted to read this for awhile now. I’ll let you know how quickly I scoot through it.

Until tomorrow,

Tom :)