...and a deltoid and bicept / a hot groin and a tricep / makes me *uhh* shake!
It's surprisingly hard to essentially re-start this journal. There's so much that has happened during my inactivity here that it's hard to know where to start and what parts to explain (or not explain). But here goes.
In the beginning of January ladywaterlily, my brother and I were on Malta for a week (which was great). The relevance of that for this journal was that while there, I bought a copy of Men's Health (the magazine has been called Cosmopolitan for men - I'm not sure which mag that insults more ^_~). Perhaps the reason why I bought it there was the lack of inhibitions in a foreign place; I still have a somewhat low self-esteem viz my physique and as such I might not have bought the mag in Finland. But I digress (again). The point of my buying the mag was that it had the beginning of a 12-month workout plan, the slogan being something like "Get in the shape of your life in 2010 months".
I thought, why not? I had been working out with Wii Fit for closer to a year and I felt I wasn't progressing much with it. The dumbbell exercise routine I had picked up from the net around the beginning of last year was also starting to reach it's limits (plus it wasn't really a muscle-building regime, which is more what I'm interested in). So I bought the January/February issue of MH, which had the initial six weeks of the 12-month workout.
The Jan/Feb workout was great. It had been designed to be done in a gym and and therefore I had get a bit creative in a few of the movements as I was doing the whole thing at home (and one the moves was so difficult I just scrapped it). Never the less, the workouts were fun, suitably difficult and yielded visible results - this despite the fact I had to keep a week's break because of falling ill.
Two weeks ago I moved to the next four-week phase of the 12-month plan. According to the magazine, this section of the plan is about building muscle fast. Okay, I'm smart enough to realise that the claim I could gain 5 kilos of muscle in four weeks is not going to happen. But apart from that, at halfway point of phase 2, phase 2 feels less effective than phase 1. Despite the fact I'm following the workout plan more closely this month (OK, this month required more creativity in adjusting the regime to just dumb-bells and chairs, but this time I'm doing all the moves and following the instructions more closely), I feel I've archieved less than I did during the first two weeks of phase 1.
It could be that phase 1 was such a big shock to me that it yeilded more results. With my body being more used to the constant excercise by now, results could be harder to get. On the other hand, the whole 12-month plan claims to be designed (also) for people starting from a fairly low level and such I would have presumed they'd have taken this into account when planning the regime. Then again, the workouts in phase 2 were apparently designed by a different person from the one who came up with phase 1. Phase 1 mostly used combination moves (training leg muscles and biceps with the same move, for instance), which for me at least was very effective. Phase 2 doesn't do those, which could also be an explanation for the relative lack of results.
Well, we'll see where the 12-month plan takes me. I started it out partially out of scientific curiosity anyway, so if something doesn't work, it's not that much of a big deal. Maybe at the end of the year I'll have gathered enough first-hand experience to came up with my own workout regime from the most effective moves from this year.
In the beginning of January ladywaterlily, my brother and I were on Malta for a week (which was great). The relevance of that for this journal was that while there, I bought a copy of Men's Health (the magazine has been called Cosmopolitan for men - I'm not sure which mag that insults more ^_~). Perhaps the reason why I bought it there was the lack of inhibitions in a foreign place; I still have a somewhat low self-esteem viz my physique and as such I might not have bought the mag in Finland. But I digress (again). The point of my buying the mag was that it had the beginning of a 12-month workout plan, the slogan being something like "Get in the shape of your life in 2010 months".
I thought, why not? I had been working out with Wii Fit for closer to a year and I felt I wasn't progressing much with it. The dumbbell exercise routine I had picked up from the net around the beginning of last year was also starting to reach it's limits (plus it wasn't really a muscle-building regime, which is more what I'm interested in). So I bought the January/February issue of MH, which had the initial six weeks of the 12-month workout.
The Jan/Feb workout was great. It had been designed to be done in a gym and and therefore I had get a bit creative in a few of the movements as I was doing the whole thing at home (and one the moves was so difficult I just scrapped it). Never the less, the workouts were fun, suitably difficult and yielded visible results - this despite the fact I had to keep a week's break because of falling ill.
Two weeks ago I moved to the next four-week phase of the 12-month plan. According to the magazine, this section of the plan is about building muscle fast. Okay, I'm smart enough to realise that the claim I could gain 5 kilos of muscle in four weeks is not going to happen. But apart from that, at halfway point of phase 2, phase 2 feels less effective than phase 1. Despite the fact I'm following the workout plan more closely this month (OK, this month required more creativity in adjusting the regime to just dumb-bells and chairs, but this time I'm doing all the moves and following the instructions more closely), I feel I've archieved less than I did during the first two weeks of phase 1.
It could be that phase 1 was such a big shock to me that it yeilded more results. With my body being more used to the constant excercise by now, results could be harder to get. On the other hand, the whole 12-month plan claims to be designed (also) for people starting from a fairly low level and such I would have presumed they'd have taken this into account when planning the regime. Then again, the workouts in phase 2 were apparently designed by a different person from the one who came up with phase 1. Phase 1 mostly used combination moves (training leg muscles and biceps with the same move, for instance), which for me at least was very effective. Phase 2 doesn't do those, which could also be an explanation for the relative lack of results.
Well, we'll see where the 12-month plan takes me. I started it out partially out of scientific curiosity anyway, so if something doesn't work, it's not that much of a big deal. Maybe at the end of the year I'll have gathered enough first-hand experience to came up with my own workout regime from the most effective moves from this year.