My alarm went of at its usual time. 5am. Although it’s Labor Day and everyone else is asleep, I have work to do and no time to waste. I jump in the car and head to the gym. The lovely thing about holidays is that the freeways are ALWAYS open. No traffic, smooth sailing, getting to my destination a lot quicker. I arrived at the gym around 6:30am.
I’m never at Gold’s at this time in the morning. It’s a totally different environment. It was quiet and not too many people around. Typical I suppose since it is a holiday, but you don’t understand, Gold’s never sleeps. I’m normally at the gym around mid-day so it’s bumping with loads of energry. But oddly enough, as much as I love that hustle and bustle of the late morning crowd, I rather enjoyed the emptiness of this morning.
I had some plans today to just chill with a friend. So I was aready planned for a botched workout schedule. The order of the day, and for tomorrow as well, is morning cardio prior to Meal 1. 45 mins, steady intensity, focusing on keeping my heartrate between 125-150 BPM. Normally when I’m running up in the hills, or duing dance classes, I maintain anywhere between 140-170 BPM. But being that this week is solely about glycogen depletion and replenishing, that’s not the most important thing. I’m not trying to kill it, simply prime my body for the huge refeed that I’ve already got planned later this week.
Now, because nothing bores me to TEARS more than sitting on a cardio machine for anything longer than 10 minutes, I like to play a little game with myself. Today’s game occured on that fancy new Precor Elliptical machine. It’s that one that changes gait pattern according to your stride. So you can go from stair stepping, to gliding, to long strides as quickly as your body can switch between those motions. So when I’m rocking out 45 mins, I’ll do something like 10 mins forward strides, focusing on keeping my HR at XXX amount. Then 10 mins backwards stride with the resistance cranked up high trying to keep my HR at XXX BPM. I’ll come up with various schemes to keep myself focused and challenged, and from getting off the damn thing absolutely bored to death. The combo of that with my music pumping in my ears gives me the best feeling in the world! Finally, Roxie can follow her in gym cardio program lol.
So after cardio came my weights. Now normally, I’ll take a few hours off between my AM cardio and weights when I’m doing a double header as I call it. But because my schedule limited that, I just did it afterwards. In any case, again, this week, the work is ALL DONE. My main focus in the first 3-4 days of my peak is to deplete my body’s glycogen stores, so the order doesn’t really matter in my opinion as I’m not focusing or lifting for performance. Normally if I were to do cardio, it would definitely be after.
My weight training program was pretty basic. The focus is on high reps/volume and low intensity (meaning light weights). Essentially, I’m focusing on hitting everything so it’s a full body workout. Today’s workout focused more on upper body (chest/back/shoulders/arms) and a little bit of calves. My aim is to hit 4 sets for back and chest, 3 sets for shoulders/arms, 2-3 sets for calves. All of the reps were in the 20-25 rep range. So it’s pretty high volume. And at this point, shit, I’m lifting LIGHT. I’m talking like, some things I had 5 lb DBs light. The tempo is controlled (about a 2/0/2/0 or 2/0/1/0) but most importantly it’s all about time under tension. So it takes about a minute or so to complete each set of all my exercises. It’s that kind of endurance work that really taxes the system and your body starts drilling through your glycogen stores. Rest periods are short, about 45-60 secs btw each set.
You’d be suprised how TAXING that stuff is on the body. I mean, essentially you’re hitting about 100 reps per body part. For back and chest I did 200 reps as I mixed in some DB bench presses with Freemotion Cable Presses (machine seen in the pic above) later in the workout, and seated cable rows with seated cable lat pull downs. By the end, Rox felt pumped like a MUTHA!
Of course the diet has to follow along with the same goal. So for the next couple of days, my carbs will be getting progressively lower. Today’s plan for me looked like this:
M1: 100g Chicken Breast, 58g Avocado
M2: 100g Chicken Breast, 100g Sweet Potato, 3 Fish Oil Caps
M3: 4 Large Egg Whites, 100g Russet Potato
M4: 115g Tilapia, 1c Broccoli
M5: 100g Chicken Breast, 2c Mixed Green Salad
M6: 4 Large Egg Whites (Omelette w/ some fibrous veggies – asparagus, mushroom, onions and pepper), 3 Fish Oil Caps
For my last week, I take out protein shakes. In fact as of late, I’ve much preferred getting my post workout protein from food sources. So I’ll have chicken or egg whites mostly. Sometimes I’ll have nitrate free Beef Jerky. Since I’m so close to the show, post workout is very clean, so I’ve eliminated my high GI simple carb sources (bye bye fat free ice-cream, I’ll see you next week). I feel like I come in tighter as well when I keep it all simple. I decided to see how my body adjusts and changes with chicken breast, tilapia, and egg whites as my main protein sources during my peak. In the past I’ve included 96% FF ground beef in there, and also some things like Greek yogurt. But right now, I’m being truly spartan! But you know me, just because I’m dieting, don’t mean it’s gotta lack flavor. My M3 looked like this –
It was pretty tasty. I ended up putting way too much granulated garlic on my potatoes but eh, it was delish. My chicken I prepared in the oven yesterday. Simply seasoned it w/ salt/pepper/garlic/onion, covered it with foil and baked it til it was done. I was too lazy to let it brown up lol. The potatoes I like to keep already sliced up and sitting in a container covered with water in the fridge. It makes for easy grabbing, measuring, and cooking. Season that baby up, put it in the oven at 450 (my go to temperature for everything lol), and in 10 mins you’ve got some roasted yummy goodness!
Water is at 2 gallons. But I’ve been slacking today, I got in my first gallon, and now working on the second. And just in time too because, MAN, I’m THIRSTY!