The Tasks And The Plan

The Tasks are clear:

• Lose fat,
• gain muscle,
• learn how to pose.

The plan for losing fat
Doing an indoor rowing marathon this year in end June or October – need to explore those options – and using this for a lot of cardio/endurance work to lose the fat. This is in planning for a while already and I think it will nicely accommodate my needs for the championship.

For starters I would like to lose something like a stone (a good 6 kg) of fat. That should give me at least a rough idea what sort of muscles I actually have around my legs. Well, and the upper should look rather neat by then. I may risk losing a bit of muscle mass as well due to the forced endurance effort, but I have enough time to build up afterwards. For now it is important to actually be able to see the muscles, so that I then can make a plan on where to focus the weight work on.

Timing:
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday morning rowing, and Sunday power walking
I still have to figure out the details of the rowing training. But those are the only days which make sense. Power walking is something I do with a friend who has rather short legs and basically is her training in which I join in. It is a light session which gives a bit of kick to the calves and is relaxed movement of the muscles in fresh air.


The plan for gaining/keeping muscle – before marathon
Doing BB as I did before. I am training on a 2-split, meaning each muscle is trained once per week. I usually start with a 5 minute indoor rower warm up, and need one and a half hours to get through a program.

Timing:
Tuesdays - Split 1
Chest/back/arms (bench, incline bench, pull over, cable fly, row, pull down neck, triceps cable, biceps machine)
Friday - Split 2
Leg/ABS/Shoulder (leg press, extension, curl, calves seated, ABS cable, leg raises, hyperextensions, dumbbell press, barbell neck press, cable lateral lift, reverse cable fly).

The plan for gaining muscle – after marathon
Cutting down on massive endurance work and cranking up the training intensity/frequency. I may skip rowing training entirely for a while, adding posing training. At a later stage the rowing may come back to help burn excess fat. I am plannig to go three times a week for weights instead of two, changing either the split (more likely) or the frequency.

In changing the split I may do:

• legs/and arms in one session,
• ABS and Shoulders in another, and
• chest/back in a third,

adding more exercises to each muscle group.

In changing the frequency I will train 3 times a week with one week legs twice and chest once, and the other week the chest twice and legs once.

I used to train four times a week and I hit the overtraining barrier rather quickly. So I need to avoid that. I will pick up a lot of information as I go along, though. Hence I will just see how it goes and adapt accordingly.


The plan for learning how to pose

• Taking up ballet classes again (once a week) for flexibility, balance and posture
• Adding a proper stretching session
• Checking out a gym in town where at least one of the trainers is competing and hence might be able to help with posing and other questions,

I have a half hour stretching routine which I want to integrate straight away. If I were only to do weights I actually wouldn’t need the stretching so much, as usually every exercise that flexes has a counter exercise that stretches. But with all the endurance work that contradicts the weight exercises I need to take care of flexibility. I hope it will pay off in the end when the posing training will start in ernest.

Timing:
Ballet on Monday, Stretch on Thursday

Well, and in this blog I will write it all down... the changes, the measurments, the assessments, the hiccups...