Day 44. Broken Resistance Band, Fish and Planks !

Last week while doing the pull-down the handle of the resistance band came off. I would like to believe that my muscles are suddenly generating more power but that surely was not the case. I somehow got through the whole week using them and yesterday got them replaced. I was not expecting the shop to replace them because there wasn't any warranty but those guys were kind enough to give me a new one. God bless them.

After sticking to chicken for the first month it was natural to get fed up of it. I have been eating fish last two weeks and loving it. I have suddenly re-discovered my love for fish. I am used to eating fresh-water fish and was a bit apprehensive about eating fish in HK but i forget that these days you can get whatever food you want and where ever you want. It is just a matter of looking around and there is always a whole variety of them available.

Today, I was able to make up for the lost PCP day. After erring for the first time, it took me two weeks to get back on track. Yesterday after the soccer I did my Day 42 jump-ropes in the evening and today morning I did my Day 49 Jump-ropes and in the evening finished my Day 43 workout. I wanted to do Day 43 and Day 44 today so i am in sync but I was dreading the plank and the push-up (still !!) so much that i couldn't get myself to do it. I think the way the exercises have become intense now it will get very difficult to make up for a lost day. Obviously the idea is to not miss any workout but then sometimes things aren't just in control.

Finally, it was time to do the weekly measurement and things are looking right on track. Sometimes i want to guess what would these no.s look like at the end of the PCP but it is more exciting to see them change every week and feel motivated rather than get fixated on numbers.

	6-Sep-09	13-Sep-09
Weight	85.9	84.8
Fat %	24.8	24.3

Hope the rest of the gang is getting through the grind smoothly. Have a nice week 7 everyone.

Day 38: Weekly Assessment & Making up for lost time

Here is the result from the assessment yesterday.

	30-Aug-09	6-Sep-09
Weight	87.5	85.9
Fat %	25.1	24.8

Think it is alright. Just need to keep up the tempo. After Patrick's comment on the blog about not tweaking the schedule and not skipping the Jropes, I managed to make up for the lost time yesterday by doing the Day 36 workout in the morning and jumping ropes again in the evening. Jumpropes have become quite smooth and in the last three sessions I have managed a neat 1500 without tripping.

Well, ofcourse my calves are hurting and had to wear an anklet to work. The area between the calves and the foot on the back of my left leg has been hurting a little (courtsey: pistol) and yesterday while doing the pistol, i realized that my left leg is a bit weaker compared to right one. Surprise Surprise :). Well i thought my left wasn't too bad but anyways. I had to take support on both sides for doing the pistol squat for the left leg but today was even worse and i had to do that for both the legs.

Even after 5 weeks, push up was still a struggle after the third set. Had to resort to the knee support in the final set.

Hope everyone else is having a great time. It is becoming difficult every passing day and that is making me even more determined to see it through.

Day 36: Break, Tweaks and Jumpropes !!

Hope everyone is doing well. Have been a bit irregular on the blog. Will try and update the blog more regularly.

I had missed the workout last saturday and had thought of doing it twice sometime in the week and Friday seemed like a good day to do it because of a relatively easy day that it is. On thursday i only got started on the workout by 11 pm and then i just couldn't get myself to do the jump ropes friday morning. I am really scared of missing out because of injury or sickness and i didn't want to stretch myself too much. Friday evening i came back and did my regular work out for Thursday. So all in all i have missed a day of workout and which doesn't make me feel too good about it and if that wasn't enough i decided to take it easy today. We had gone for soccer early morning and the heat was merciless. We played for about 90 minutes and it was a good game. Pretty Intense.

So now i am thinking of tweaking the program a li'l bit. Just push everything out by a day. So my jumprope gets replaced by soccer on Saturday mornings and the week starts on Sunday for me. Patrick, does that work? I don't want to be a slacker but just think that soccer is a bit harsh on the legs and then doing jumpropes might push me over the edge. It might not for all i know but i don't want to take chances.

Last week was quite good. I could feel the change when it came to jumpropes. I did 1500 twice in the week without tripping or stopping at all in between. Today i felt much fitter and was tirelessly running around on the soccer ground. We play on a smaller 5-7 a side field. Real test would be getting through a full game on the standard field. Will get there for sure.

V-Sits and floor jumps have been challenging but they would get easier for sure but now we have the new devil in the form of pistol squat. Will get through this as well. :)

Have a nice week 6 everyone.

Day 30 - Induldgence, +Ve Result and a Missed Day.

First of all congratulations to everyone on their successful completion. I was looking through the pics and I could see a world of difference. Excellent work !!

The week was pretty hectic and had some relatives over for dinner on Thursday. I couldn't do my workout on Thursday but thank god that we have an easy day on Friday. I did the jump ropes for Friday in the morning and finished my Thursday's workout in the evening. After finishing the workout I realized that the skin on my toe had peeled off and was hanging loose. Thankfully, it was painless.

Saturday we headed off to Macau for the weekend. I had packed my jump ropes and resistance bands but could not get around to doing my workout. I had thought that would swim instead of the jump ropes. My calves were crying out and the loose skin was still hanging there. We went out for dinner to a Portuguese place - had steamed cod and boiled kale. Had egg pudding and if that wasn't enough forced my wife into having a double scoop of tiramisu gelato and happily volunteered to help her. Well good indulgence and that too for dinner.

Today I managed to swim for a short while in the morning and after coming back to HK finished my work-out. It was quite difficult but managed it somehow. I managed 1000 jump ropes in one stretch which made me quite happy and then did my usual weight and body fat measurement. Here it is.

	23-Aug-09	31-Aug-09
Weight	88.8	87.5
Fat %	26.3	25.1

I guess with the carbs disappearing from dinner the weight should hopefully look better with every passing week. Fat%, i am pretty sure the killer exercises will take care of. I will upload my photograph tomorrow.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week 5.

Day 25 - This is not going to get any easy !!

Just finished my workout and was probably my worst till date. This is seriously getting tough. I was trying to look up the right technique for the floor jump and I bumped into one of the PCPer's (Corry MacDonald) blog. Guess what i found. She was trying to compare her workout and diet towards the end with what they were doing in their sixth week. Read at your own peril. :)

Towards the end.

Jumprope : 4sets x 5 mins

Floorjump : 4 sets x 20 reps

Push Ups : 3 sets x 40 reps...I do these with my feet elevated on a chair and as of yesturday can do my full 40 reps per set! YAY! You can do it too if I can, I never did more than a few 'men's pushups' before the PCP.

Lawnmowers : 4 sets x 20 reps

One Arm Biceps Curl : 4 sets x 20 reps

Triceps Dip : 4 sets x 20 reps

Shoulder Press : 4 sets x 20 reps

V-sits : 5 sets x 50 reps


Week 6' s workout-

Jumprope 4 x 3mins

Floor Jumps 4 x 10

Push-ups 6 x 15

Triceps Dip 4 x 15

Biceps Curl 5 x 20

Forward Shoulder Raises 4 x 15

Standing Shoulder Fly 4 x 15

V-sits 4 x 20

Leg-Ups 4 x 20

Locust pose 4 x 30 seconds

what the f***? Will we be doing this. Well, I would definitely want to do all of this but going by the workout i had today, this looks almost impossible.

Need a lot of inspiration for what's coming. Nadal's poster, i thought was a laughing matter, I seriously need it. Here is another song/video i find quite inspiring.

Hope the rest of you had a great day.

Day 23: Sad Stats.

	9-Aug-09	16-Aug-09	23-Aug-09
Weight	90.3	88.3	88.8
Fat %	26.8	26.9	26.3

Well my fear regarding the weight was correct. The weight has actually gone up. So some thought needs to be given to that. Body Fat % has gone down which hopefully means that my muscle mass is increasing. If not for that i would have been pretty despondent. Well, i am sure i will have lots of questions for Patrick when i catch him online next. :)

Hope rest of you are having a good time and seeing some motivating results.

Day 21.

Hi Everyone ! Hope you all are having a good time. Haven't been able to update the blog regularly. Work has been hectic, don't get much time after the work and the workout. The past week went well in terms of exercise except for my struggle with the pull-ups. I tried doing it on our neighbour's massive door frame but there is not much space and am always a bit cautious that the door might open any time and it would be a pretty unpleasant site to see someone hanging from your door-frame. Don't want to imagine the expression on their faces. :)

Having a few problems with my diet mostly because of the timing. I wonder if you guys face the same problem. I do my workout in the evening after coming back from work so that is around 8-9ish and so by the time i finish my dinner, it is already 10 and then i would normally sleep by 11-12 if I have to get up at 630 as my work starts early. I am really bothered about the fact that i am not getting enough gap between my dinner and sleep and also the fact that I am not getting enough sleep. Sleep, I can manage over the weekends and even otherwise that doesn't bother me as much. That is just making me a bit anxious and i am getting a feeling that tomorrow when I measure my weight, things might not look good. I know the obsession with the weight is not right and results would show up eventually but it is good to see some change. Let us see what happens tomorrow. I do notice a few changes though. Went for the soccer today in the morning and i think i did pretty okay stamina-wise. Just that it was so hot and only 8 of us had turned up, we were knackered within 45 mins to 1 hour.

We had gone out for dinner to a Chinese place yesterday. Didn't want to explain as much as they were mostly senior ex-colleagues who left my company over the last two years to work else where. Veg rolls, Sea-food soup (was pretty salty but i hope it was natural salt), Deep Fried Prawns (I know, I know !!) and then pecking duck with pan-cakes. Except for the deep fried bit, i think it was okay. Hopefully. Dim-sums, noodles and dessert followed but i avoided them. It wasn't too difficult as i had snacked on some carrots before the dinner. I came back around 10:30 and then waited a while for the food to settle down and did my jump-ropes around mid-night :) and normally i would go over the top with the jump ropes but i just did my 1000.

Have you guys realized that we probably have the best possible schedule. It changes every Saturday and Friday is the jump-ropes day. It is like just before the weekend and you are already pretty tired after 5 days of work and you get a nice little (i think much needed as well :)) break. Sat when I have all the time in the world it is the start of a new week so easy to plan and motivate myself.

Digression. Today we have the semi-finals of the Cincinnati open. Nadal plays the Joker and I hope Nadal wins the semi-final. The other match would also be quite interesting as Murray plays Federer. Am pretty excited.

Happy Week 4 !!