Time for an update

Ok, so I've been pretty slack at both my fitness activities and posting on this blog.

For one reason or another I haven't been going to the gym that much lately over the past few months so now I've finally got back into it a bit.  Since restarting I've found that I have put on a little weight and have definitely lost some fitness and strength.

The first few times I went to the gym I didn't get through everything I wanted to, was knackered and then sore for days.  On Monday I made a few changes and feel a bit better for it.

My warm-up on the stationary bike is a piece of cake - 15 minutes fairly hard out on the cardio setting.  Then when I hit the weights I dropped the weights I was working with quite a bit.  This let me do full sets of all the exercises I wanted to do plus one extra.  I was still working pretty hard and keeping my heart rate up but didn't take as long to recover between sets.  When I had finished I felt great and was pretty pleased with myself.  I plan to follow this routine from now on and only increase the weights once I feel I've made some gains.

I was fairly fairly good on Tuesday night but didn't want to push my luck at the gym two nights in a row so I rang Mark and we went for a bike ride instead.  It was fairly windy so hard work at times but I still enjoyed the approximately 15km ride.

I decided to have a rest night tonight and intend to hit the gym again tomorrow night.  Friday will probably be another day off as we are planning a decent mountain bike ride on Saturday - this will be a good test of my fitness...

Good to be doing something again and enjoying it!

Getting back into it

Last night was my first time back at the gym after my holiday (two weeks).  During my holiday I did get some exercise in the form of walking and a few bike rides (only one ride was hard work).

Feeling that my aerobic fitness is not up to scratch and that this probably holds me back a bit when doing weights (getting knackered too easily) I've decided to take things a bit slowly but to try and increase the amount of cardio that I do.

So, last night when I jumped on the exercycle I dropped the resistance slightly (by 1 point) and didn't peddle hard out.  I keep the rpm on the bike in the mid nineties and this got my heart rate up to the mid 130's.  While I normally push a bit harder and only bike for 10 minutes, last night I did 15 minutes.

After the biking I felt pretty good and had covered just under 7.2km.  If I had done it at my normal rate I would have probably got somewhere over 8km.

I then hit the cross-trainer and did my normal cardio routine of 10 minutes on the "cardio" setting.  Here I went a bit harder (more like my normal routine) and cranked out 2km in 10 minutes with my heart rate peaking over the target of 141bpm.  By now I was a sweaty mess and knew I'd done something...

I then hit the weights but didn't manage to get through my whole routine, only lasting about 35 minutes.  Overall, I enjoyed the workout and will back tomorrow night for another go but still with the emphasis on cardio.

Today I concentrated on walking (later in the month we are having a walking challenge at work) and managed to knock out 9,500 steps with the help of mowing the lawns, walking the dog and whatever I managed at work.  It takes a bit of work to hit the target 10,000 per day...