Saturday, May 1, 2010

Taking the Initiative—Switching Gears and Workouts

I thought I could go through with doing the Stage 5 workout but I don’t find it appealing enough.  As mentioned in a previous post, it consists of 4x4 (reps/sets) of the exercises from Stage 3.  I don’t think those particular exercises are going to be helpful to me with extremely heavy weights.  I don’t like taking 2 minutes per set recovery time as it makes the workout unbearably long.  So, I have decided to switch gears and do a Men’s Health workout 2x week (Transform Your Body) and add a Marine circuit for the 3rd day.  My warm-up will be exercises from Women’s Health (similar to the Men’s Health Big Book of Exercise warm-up) and continue to do some level of high intensity interval training.  Last week my pyramids went well and I believe I can start 60/120 (6-8 rounds) using under 8 minutes miles for the sprints.  Based on what I have been reading, if I am only doing 15-20 minutes, my sprints should really be much faster but I am not there yet.  The other cardio days I will start with 30 minutes and do some version of intervals at lower levels and eventually work up to 45 minutes.  I will re-evaluate my fat %, I am hoping to be at or below my last measurement of 20%.  I will do this workout for three weeks and then review Stage 6 and whether I want to use that as the next round.

My GERD symptoms continue and I am working on eliminating some other types of food for the next month (prior to my annual physical) to see if I can improve.  If not, I may discuss other options with my doctor.  The symptoms are mild but I do not want any deterioration of the esophagus or stomach lining.  I am not sure if this is really acid or (as other research indicates) and immune response situation.  I have another chronic immune response issue and this concerns me.  Despite this, I feel pretty good and my workouts are effective. 

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