Meal Log

My morning started with an early personal training session.  I didn’t get much of a warm-up because I woke up at 6:45 AM, Zap arrived promptly at 7:00 AM.  We got started working on the chest muscles. 

He started me off on the smith press doing a burn-out of an incline bench press with a 25lb plate on each side.  Starting at 10 reps, and then doing 9 reps, then doing 8 reps all the way down to 1 rep.  It’s a way of doing 55 reps without counting to 55, it helps to keep your mind stay focused on continuous motion because the workload seems to be shrinking at a rate faster than you actually are, I like tricking myself into doing more work.

Following the burn-out he changed the weight to 45lb plates and I did 4 sets of 15.  In between each set of incline bench presses I did bicep curls with 25lb dumbbells.  After the incline bench press we went down to the flat bench and with the same weight I did 4 sets of 15 reps.  In between the flat bench I did curls with 15lb dumbbells in a seated position which isolated my biceps.

The final superset involved doing a decline bench press on a machine, I’m not sure what the weight was set to but again I did 4 sets of 15, and in between the bench sets I did a 21 gun salute with a curling bar.  21 gun salutes is a 3 part bicep curl exercise, first you do 7 reps curling half way up, and then 7 reps curling half way down, and finishing with 7 full curls. 

My final exercise was to do a burn-out of chest presses on a resistance ball with 25 lb dumbbells. 

After my workout I took the mutt for a walk and went to the hospital to see my mother.  When I got to the hospital my sister had already arrived, and my mother was fully dressed in her street clothes.  Apparently she had already been to physical therapy, and had been given a green light to go home, and I’m sure if I let her she would have tried to drive home (she had the right knee replaced).  I wonder where I get my determination, and drive?

When I got to her house I was amazed that she got of the car without my help, and walked to the house without any help.  Last year when she had the same procedure on the other knee, she was so out of it that she fell down on the back patio.  Today if she wasn’t drugged up I’m sure she would have jogged to the door.

After dropping her off, I went to check on the washes.  I left work just before 5:30 PM so I could get home and go to work out with Ali.

I was able to get home relatively fast, and got a good warm-up on the Arc Trainer.  I spent 5 minutes at an incline of 10 and resistance level of 30, and then spent 5 more minutes at full incline and resistance.  It was the first time this week that I’d used the Arc Trainer.  I was surprised to find that my leg soreness was starting to dissipate. 

We warmed up with a really solid boxing session.  My punches were crisp, and the pop of the gloves caused other people in the gym to glance over at us, or it might have been my grunting, perhaps they thought there was big fucking bear humping a goat. 

We probably went for 15 minutes. 

The first round of boxing was followed by medicine ball tosses, first a chest toss, then a lateral toss which forced me to use my oblique’s, and lats.  From the medicine ball drills we went into some leg throws, the kind Sam taught me in Malibu.  Ali doesn’t throw as hard as Sam, but has me work for a longer period of time.  He had me doing the leg throws for a minute straight out, a minute to the left, and a minute to the right.  When time was up on the last leg throws, I thought I was going to puke.

From the leg throws he had me doing two sets of planked dumbbell rows with a 30 lb dumbbell.  First I did 15 reps, and the second time around I did 20 reps.  In between the dumbbell rows I did a full body cable row, it’s almost like playing tug of war with the weight stack.  I did this on each side of my body for a minute each. 

From here we went to box again.  Ali wanted me to punch as hard as I could, every time he felt the punch was weak he would have me repeat the punch until the power level satisfied him.  We then went and did some bicep curls with 15 lb dumbbells, the dumbbell curls were done while I walked around the gym.  In between this walking dumbbell curl, I did a series of abdominal exercises, flutter kicks, side leg crunches, and holding my legs 6 inches from the ground.

At some point we worked on the TRX doing bicep curls, and a one armed back row.  I don’t remember at what point he stuck the TRX in but the work done on the TRX helped to give my muscles that burning sensation.  Every TRX exercise seems to give you a deep burn. 

 He also at some point had me do two sets of pushing the heavy bag from a squatted position, the focus being to use my back and arms.

We ended the session with boxing.  Part one of the final boxing cycle was to do 50 crosses, 50 hooks, and 50 uppercuts.  Part two was to do a series of combinations until I burned out.  By the end of the last session of boxing my arms felt like my legs do after a 5 hour hike, like jello.  All I need was Bill Cosby and my jello like arms would have been complete. 

My workout with Ali felt awesome; I got a great workout and was happy with how I performed.  It was one of those rare session were you are able to give it your all and leave it in the session. 

I followed my session with Ali by doing a final treading class for the week.  I used the Arc Trainer because I wanted a really good sweat.  I warmed up for 5 minutes with the resistance set to 30 and the incline to 10. 

Here’s how it went, I did 6 minutes full incline and resistance, 6 minutes of recovery, 5 minutes of full incline and resistance, and 5 minutes of recovery, I repeated this pattern all the way down to 1 minute.  By the final minute of recovery the time was reaching 47 minutes.  I ended up doing another three minutes straight of full incline and recovery, which brought me to minute 50. 

Cardio Log Here.

In the final 10 minutes of the cardio workout I did 5 sprints, 1 minute or recovery,  followed by 1 minute of sprinting.  I reduced the incline to 0, and started the resistance at 40.  On sprint two I lowered the resistance to 35, and raised it back to 40 on sprint 3, on sprint 4 I lowered the resistance again to 35, and lowered to 30 for the final sprint.

Based on how I was feeling this morning I wasn’t sure I would get the work done today. I’m proud of what I accomplished today, and feel that I had one of those weeks were in terms of the work I made significant progress, but in terms of weight I probably didn’t lose any weight.  In my third week at the ranch I made substantial progress in my fitness, I felt better, I looked better, but on the scale there was no change in weight, yet I had a big swing in body fat percentage.  I think this is one of those weeks.  I feel better, I’m almost down to the last notch on this belt, I feel stronger, but I’m not expecting a big dip on the scale Sunday morning.

I am contemplating condensing my workouts to 3 days a week, and doing 3-4 hours on those days and resting the other 4 days of the week.  I may also decide to start cycling my workout periods, perhaps working 3-4 weeks straight, and then taking 1 full week off for recovery.  I would like to meet with a trainer who works with Olympic athletes, or professional athletes to better understand how much rest is needed for the amount of work I’m doing.    I want to be able to perform at peak levels to maximize my muscle building, and calorie burning. 

I am having a hard time accepting what I’m starting to see in the mirror.  Not only is my jaw starting to square off, but my shoulders are looking more muscular, and my legs have leaned out.  If you took a picture of my body from the legs down you would have no idea that the upper body looks like Chris Farley. 

The rest of the weekend I’m taking off, I’m going to try and get a deep tissue massage, and maybe Sunday morning or Saturday evening I want to go to the gym to do an dynamic stretch, to get my blood moving, and ,maybe help loosen up before my deep tissue massage.

It is now officially two months from my first day in Malibu.  I can’t believe the amount of progress I’ve made in two months.  This is the type of growth I’ve been desperate for the last three years, but it took a drastic trip to teach me how to get out of my own way.  This new way of living is habitual.  As confident as I am in my development, I can’t help but feel a slight hesitation in trusting myself.  I still don’t trust myself enough to put myself in difficult situations like going out for drinks, or functions which involve eating in a situation where I can’t control what type of food emerges. 

I think maybe the trust in me will come as my confidence grows, and I have a deeper faith in myself.  How strange it is that I still have doubts about maintaining this lifestyle long term.  I won’t ever go back, fuck it, I won’t allow myself to think this way, and when I can I am going to beat it out of me with more intense work.

I am in control of my destiny, and I am in control of life, I have made the choice, and I won’t allow myself to get in the way of my own success.