Naperville wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 10:47 pm
Some of you guys/gals are in the prime of your life. Enjoy it while you can.
That's the plan!
In fact at the beginning of November I made some changes.
No alcohol at all and workout at least once a day, often 2-3 times. Ride my road bike to work at least twice a week.
Typical day for me is running a few miles when I wake up, working a 10-15 hour shift on my feet, then spending 90-120 minutes at my 24 hour gym after work.
Workouts are typically 45 minutes of kickboxing, 30-45 minutes of weight training, then another 15-20 of kickboxing.
I've got a 120ish lb muay thai bag which is perfect for power shots and leg kicks, a much lighter half length bag that's good for movement work, and a water filled aqua bag I use for working power punches and certain types of flying knees.
Weight training I have every piece of equipment I could want at my gym, and a benchpress & squat rack at home, so I'm well covered. First week I only worked cardio, second week I started hitting the weights. Just doing basic stuff like bench, squat and deadlift with accessory work sprinkled in. Lots of pull-ups and leg lifts from olympic rings.
Two weeks in and I already feel a lot different.
My cardio has never been better at any point in my life. I'm taking fewer breaks during KB practice and runs, and it takes a lot more effort to get me breathing hard.
Sleeping so much better. I barely stay awake long enough to smash some food at night, sleep hard without waking up, then wide awake before my alarm goes off each morning.
I've definitely gotten bigger despite essentially no weight fluctuations. Thighs, abs, chest and arms have all bulked up while overall body weight is always between 209 & 214, which at my size can be accounted for by whether I weigh in on an empty stomach in the morning or weight in after dinner.
Food....I feel like I never eat enough. This is one change I hate. I love food but being this active my caloric requirements start to feel like a chore. Like waking up in the middle of the night with hunger pains despite eating a huge dinner, and feeling like I can't go more than an hour without eating something. Always hungry, always.
KB technique has been coming along a bit. Snapping headkicks and roundhouse kicks in general better, turning my hip over more. While I always focus on fundamentals, I've also been practicing some of the more exotic strikes like flying switch knees, reverse crescent kicks, tornado kicks, axe kicks, spinning elbows, jumping high kicks etc.
I plan to do this for another two weeks then sign back up to some sort of martial arts gym. I wanted my cardio to be good enough to weaponize during sparring before I got back into it.
This isn't the biggest I've ever been, but I'd say I'm in the best overall condition of my life. I was a lean 225lb at one point but my cardio was not this good. I never ran consistently for exercise until this summer when I found a pair of shoes that made it a lot more comfortable (salomon speed cross)
I wasn't exactly out of shape last month but drank a bit more than I should and wasn't hitting the gym consistently. These days even if I wake up feeling like I got run over by a mac truck, I take my gym bag with me. Sure enough, when I clock out for the evening,I'm always ready for a workout no matter how exhausted I felt earlier.