Not Just a Man's World

This was week three of my four week bodyweight workout experiment.  Anyone who read my Work-Life balance post the other week will know that I have radically changed my program.  I had two main reasons:

(i)                   work-related things at the moment mean that it would be handy to have a bodyweight equipment-free workout that will be effective and which I can bring out whenever I need it – a completely new program like this needs a testing period of a few weeks to make sure it is effective and none of the exercises start to aggravate anything (eg. does it contain more push ups than my elbows can survive?); and

(ii)                 I couldn’t face my workouts any more.

I was struggling to keep any momentum and, after nearly five months of excellent progress on the last program, my body and mind needed a complete change.

This week

I felt a bit like I was battering my head against a brick wall this week on my left glute though Chris assures me that I am improving.  He watched various parts of my workout this week and had to point out that I was struggling so much with my left leg pistols that I was doing something that more closely resembled a single-leg deadlift, rather than a single leg squat because I was leaning over my leg so far trying not to haul myself up on the doorframe.  Changing my form should mean I start to improve at these – it certainly felt different for my second lower body workout of the week.

Thanks to Chris’s observant eye we also established that my pull ups are going nowhere fast.  I’m struggling to keep my lats engaged and not to use my traps again – most likely because of the huge amount of desk work I’m doing at the moment but whatever the reason, something needed to be done.  Despite it not being quite in character with the spirit of this bodyweight series I’ve dropped to drop to ten sets of doubles and am adding some weight to my pull ups instead.  Chris is then helping me to do 3 sets of 5 reps afterwards with assistance (using two resistance bands tied to the pull up bar and then hooked round my knees).

Lower body workout

• 10 sets of 3 reps, Pistol squats – As I said before, I had a form amendment.  While my right leg is now quite happily doing all my reps without any assistance from the doorway (except to stop me falling over sideways on the later reps) my left leg is still requiring a full total body haul on the doorway to get out of each rep.  That said, I could certainly feel my glute engaging at the bottom of the movement each time on my second workout which is an improvement on before.  I’ve continued to keep this at 5 reps though until I can do both legs without doorway assistance.
• 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Single leg curls from high bridge – I was doing a silly number of reps by the end of the week – 25, 20 and 10.  I do worry that my form isn’t brilliant since I’m sure my lower back shouldn’t be quite so sore at the end.  I’m going to do a bit of investigation about form and see what I can do to improve this next week.
• 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Single leg knee-extension from plank position – I’m still struggling to improve my rep total on this, mostly because my core is so sore or tired by the time I get to this.  Still not much improvement on total reps.
• Hip thrusts, DC training style – I kept all the exercises in full but dropped the weight a little and finally started to get a better performance.  My glutes really don’t know what is hitting them these days.

Upper body workout

• 10 sets of maximum reps, Pull ups – As I wrote in the introduction, I have finally decided that continuing to bash away at the maximum reps isn’t getting me very far and is highly depressing, so I added weight to ten sets of 2 reps for my second workout this week (followed by some resistance band assisted reps).  I successfully did this with 2.5kg although my second rep was messy for most of the workout.
• 10 sets of 4 reps, shifting to 4 sets of 10 reps, Press ups – I completed 8 sets of 6 reps and sailed straight through 7 sets of 7 reps this week.  They make my triceps burn but I’m pleased that I can get out a full set without stopping between any reps on the first set.  Endurance and press ups is not something I’ve been good at before so this is an interesting experiment and is hopefully going to help my bench press too.
• 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Inverted rows on slings – For some reason, my second workout of the week resulted in a big increase in reps on this.  Whether it was the different pull up workout or finally moving through the brick wall I’d been at before, I increased to 7, 6, 4 reps which was a surprising jump from my previous 5, 4, 3 reps.
• 3 sets of maximum effort reps, Reverse skull crusher on floor – As predicted I saw a big increase to my reps on this and then found that, having increased my reps, I could get a good number without wedging my knuckles up against the wall again.

Grip

• Grippers – After a good performance holding the sling with 5kg it was time to move to maximum reps on stronger grippers on my second workout.  Total reps over 10 on each hand with 150N so the slings with weight have definitely helped.
• Fingerboard dead hangs – I increased my holds to 10 and 20 seconds and as a result moved down a row to even smaller holds.  Apart from the need to use my other hand to uncurl my fingers afterwards, I was pleased with my performance.

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week thirty-one (bodyweight 2)
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week thirty-three (bodyweight 4)
3. Powerlifting progress 2010: week thirty (bodyweight 1)
4. Powerlifting progress 2010: week thirty-five