My recovery week is over.  I am not sure how effective this week has been in terms of recovering but I know it was necessary.  Even if I don’t recovery fully from a physical standpoint, emotionally I needed a break from being in the gym 10 hours a week. 

I had a personal training session today with Ali, and did an hour of cardio after my session.  There wasn’t much weight lifting during my session today, a third of the session involved boxing.  Another third of the session involved the TRX, and the final third was a mix of light resistance training, and core work. 

We started in the cardio room with 15 minutes of boxing.  I quickly realized that my hands were moving faster than normal.  It might be a result of the rest, yet I did take my first two pills of a product called Core Zap which is a pre-workout jump start pill.  It’s comprised of 250 mg of Epimedium stimulates testosterone production, 50 mg of Geranium which produces a similar effect to adrenaline, its part of the formulation to create more focus in the brain, 500 mg of Sulbutiamine stimulates the part of the nervous system which controls physical activity, 1000 mg of L-Tyrosine an essential amino acid, and 200 mg of Caffeine which is equivalent to a cup and half of drip coffee. 

I bought this product not too long ago, it’s the first time I used it.  I was in dire need of a little boost this afternoon.  There were no adverse side effects like the jitters, so I feel good about it the product so far, but who knows I could be on the toilet all night.  My plan is to stay away from this type of product as much as I can, I’ve gotten this far without much help from suppliments, so I don’t want to start now.

After the warm up of boxing, which included quite a bit of kicking, Ali had me start with the TRX.  I performed a series of squats, squat jumps, and one legged lunges.  I am really starting to like the TRX, for someone like me who is still trying to develop a full range of motion the design of the TRX makes it easier to perform any motion completely. 

From the TRX we moved out to the Reebok slide, along with some light resistance work which included a heavy band.  The band was put around my waste, and Ali held the other end, leaning his body backwards.  Using my legs I had to pull him along, the harder I would pull the deeper Ali would lean back.  On the Reebok slide I did Mountain climbers, and side shuffles.  I’m not a big fan of the slide, but in trying to find new ways of working certain muscle areas it’s a welcome change. 

Towards the end of the workout I did quite a bit of core work, especially focusing on the abs.  I did a set of crunches using the TRX.  Even doing crunches with the TRX is beneficial.  By having the ability to pull yourself up slightly, it makes it easier to get past the half way point, that crucial part of a crunch which where it can become a full sit up.  Also as you become tired from the sit ups, the ability to use more of your back and arms to help get your abs to the point of failure is great.

My moment of pride today, was the final punch combination.  Twice in today’s workout I did a burnout of punches doing 100 crosses, 100 hooks, and 100 uppercuts.  Maybe my 300 punches was a shout out to my short term goal of breaking 300 lbs.  The video below is of the second set of burnout punches, and was the last thing I did with Ali today.

In terms of eating my day went ok.  This whole week I have not been as diligent as I should about what I eat.  The major issue I have with my food consumption this week, was that several times I overate.  Each instance of overeating was brought on after an extended time period between meals and snacks, each time it happened I probably was 3.5 to 4 hours from my last meal.  Today at lunch I reached a point of being full, and continued to eat small pieces of pork.  It was completely unnecessary, I was eating unconsciously.  Fortunately I caught myself after the third needless piece of meat but the damage was the same; I don’t want to start down that road which causes me to stretch my stomach out further.

Going into next week I have to prove to myself that I not only can get back into a regular workout schedule but I can maintain the healthy eating patterns I had before this last week.  It’s not as if I ate Twinkies and ho-hos, all week, but it just felt off.  I made good choices relative to each meal, and maybe that’s all I can ask for, we don’t live in a vacuum and much of our adult lives revolve around social events that occur at meal time. 

I have a deep tissue massage scheduled for tomorrow evening, and a chiropractor’s appointment next week.  My right shoulder is giving me pain, and I find it difficult to hold a plank because my right shoulder will become tender.  I’m not sure if I injured it at some point in my life, it’s a constant nagging problem, even when I lift and do dumbbell chest presses, my right side always gives out prior to my left.  Being right handed you would think the left side would give out first.

My weekend is going to be full of work, being a holiday weekend both washes will be busy.  I have already packed my lunch for tomorrow, and have some chicken breast ready for dinner tomorrow night.  I think I’m going to try a recipe from Rocco Douchebags book.  If I could make the foods I am eating now taste better, it would give me more reasons to stay on point.  In writing about the changes in my meals, I have been trying really hard not to use the word diet.  Because the word diet denotes a sense of being temporary, a short term fix for a long term problem.  I am making lifestyle changes.

A tool which has helped with this lifestyle change is the use of an app I found for my IPad.  It’s a food journal, and it makes logging my meals a breeze.  Further the database has foods from a handful of major chain restaurants, and items entered into the database from other users.  It makes trying to analyze my calories significantly easier, because I don’t have to google search it, and then find the right item from a reputable website. There is some variation from calories in the app, from the ones posted on livestrong.com, yet the variations are small enough that it won’t affect the total for the whole day.