Wellington · Living

I blame trying to keep up with Twitter and Facebook for my failures to post to my journal. Checking them, checking my forums, checking checking checking, and I end up with no time to be. To write.

But I've got time to workout, because, dammit, I'm paying for it, so I'm going. So let's write about my workouts, 'cause there was a progress check, and more to write than can just be Twittered.

Last night I had another six week progress test with my trainer: once again, I can't believe it's been six weeks since the last one. And, once again, good results. Like last time, by the official scale, I gained weight, and again, it was a WHOLE POUND. Since the last check-in with a doctor had me at 210, to me it looked like I'd lost a pound, but that's probably because they were different scales. This scale said I was 208 last time, and it said 209 yesterday. In short: no real weight change within errors of margin.

But I know I gained muscle, because I lost body fat and see some changes elsewhere. By the test, I'm down to 20.7% from 21.5% last time. My forearms gained another 1/2 inch, my shoulders another 4". Other stuff didn't shift much past errors of margin, but they're showing as more defined. And I see by reviewing my last post that I was pushing around 60 lb dumbbells for chest stuff, and now I'm onto the 70 lbs, and doing more than 10 reps. Pete isn't much for weird nicknames or stuff, but he calls those the "caveman" dumbbells, because they apparently have stone in them. We're onto 175 on the bench press for 6-8 reps, so I'm back up to my most maximum weight ever, but now once a week.

Heart rate and recovery have become ridiculously low values, which I guess they should, since I'm up to jogging for an hour two to three times a week.

All good news, really. The best news, though, is that while I thought this six-week boundary meant the heavy lifting was over, and it was onto fat burning time, it's not. We're just going to really begin the hypertrophy phase in two weeks. I'd thought that this was the muscle-growing phase, and so with the boundary, that'd be the end of muscle gains for a while. But no, Pete's been upping the weights, but keeping a mix of strength and stability exercises all this time. He wanted to do that for eight weeks, then begin the low-rep, high weight, get-massive program. When I get back from my beach vacation, we really begin.

So, maybe not in the best shape for this summer, but hopefully in good for fall. And really, has there been that much reason to have a beach body this "summer" so far?