To anyone with a gym membership that actually uses it, 100 workouts in a single year probably isn't that great a feat. But to someone like me with no gym membership and just a collection of odd weight plates and bars in the backyard, well nailing the ton when it comes to workout sessions is something I'm pretty happy with.
Especially when I'm 41 years old, asthmatic and something like this caps off my biggest year of fitness ever.
However it wasn't without it's lessons along the way..
THE SETUP
-A barbell bar (which I've had since my mid twenties and it's still going strong, thanks Jo!
-An E-Z curl bar
-Dumbbells
-A pair of 8kg kettle bells
-Lots and lots of random weight plates from .5kg to 10kg. Various brands, various colours.
-A backyard (this started off in Carrara Gold Coast Queensland and finished up 1380km down to the road in Albury NSW
-A bench press (thanks to my amazing wife)
-My Samsung so I could use the
Fitocracy app to record and score each workout and to post the results up on Instagram
-Water
-The occasional protein shake
-Plenty of food the next day
-Once in a while I'd use the Macro app on android to see how I was going (and how I should be going) eating wise.
WHAT CONSTITUTES AS A 'DECENT' WORKOUT?
Back in the day when I was doing the Secret Men's Business workouts with training legend Arj Parrera I'd consider any session where I'd have to peel myself off the floor and stagger back to my car as a kick ass workout. Now if I can rack up a session of at least 1000 points on the Fitocracy app, I deem that as decent. The more weight involved and the more complex the move, the more you score so as an example:
Light weight barbell curls would score you very little, kettle bell swings would be somewhere in the middle while decent weight on a barbell overhead press or a kettle bell clean and press set/double kettle bell push press would score you a lot more.
(So if you wanted to rely just on arm curls, you would need to do a whole lot of them in a single session to get over 1000 points.)
Most of my workouts involved either barbells or kettle bells or both with other exercises and bits and pieces thrown in for good measure. Even squats were in there sparingly as much as I hate the things.
BUT THEN I MOVED THE BAR SO TO SPEAK
The name escapes me of the book I flicked through midway through this year (when I find it again I'll link it here) but it was all about adding ten percent more across the journey which wasn't much from the outset but added up significantly at the end/over time. Inspired by that, a 1000 point target now became a 1100 target - that was the new yardstick for a decent workout.
Some days it would be a challenge getting over that, some days I was so tired I didn't hit the limit and on others I well and truly flew by it.
Lowest session score: 522
Highest: 1766
Target score: 110000
Final score: 116594
LESSON LEARNED ALONG THE WAY
-The plan wasn't to get to 100 in a year until I saw I was getting close to it. No actually the original plan was to see what I could get up to within 365 days and then build from there. But around the 75 mark I started to realise that without pushing things too hard, I could make the 100 and that would be a fantastic achievement. Like I said, this is me we're talking about who would usually workout once a weekend and that was on occasion. 100 in a year is something I really didn't bank on me be able to fit in.
-I stopped when things started hurting. No pain, no gain hey? No. Not keen on injuring myself when muscles started to hurt more than the usual post workout soreness, if something felt wrong I backed off. There really wasn't much point in pushing through and having to take a week of doing nothing because I'd strained something.
-If you want to be drained of any and all energy the next day, only use kettle bells. Yeah heavy weights would make me nice and sore for a day and a half, 2 x 8kg kettle bells on the other hand were like a well seasoned wizard just hit you with a drain endurance spell on a critical hit. I don't know what it is about these tiny buggers (although I suspect it's the full body movement of exercises such as the KB clean and press) but swing them enough, push and press them enough and the next day you'll want to do absolutely nothing involved whatsoever. Even walking home from work the day after became a monumental chore not due to soreness but more not having the energy to put one foot in front of the other.
-I've never run out of weight plates until this year. But I kept building up the weights on the bar before I got to the point where I thought well now I'm going to have to buy some more. Which in all honesty it a pretty great feeling when you're strong enough to lift everything on hand. So I bought 2 x 10kg plates. And then another 2 x 10 later on, finally getting to a level to be able to dead lift 100kg for the final session, something I'd never done before.
-All this exercise didn't help my sleeping, it was actually the reverse. If I exercised too late in the day, I was too pumped up to sleep easier. Kettle bell workouts kicked the crap out of me but kept my system awake late into the night. I don't sleep well normally (it's a work in progress) but the occasional session didn't help either which was strange.
-Action shots work better on Instagram than pics of you looking tired after a workout. A no brainer this one really, once I'd finish a workout I'd put up a pic of me post workout with a score attached (using the app Layout to put them both together.) Headshots would get a rudimentary amount of likes (not much), action shots a bit more (mid squat, mid lift, mid swing etc.) Best effort was this one on the swing way up to some kettle bell push presses.
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| Hello new Facebook profile pic! |
-There was only one workout in all of the 100 where I actually did something for my abs. I decided to try sit ups with a weight plate just so I could tick it off. Let's just say it wasn't that exciting or impressive enough to become a regular thing.
-A couple of times I lost heart. Low energy, low enthusiasm, bad day, too sore etc. I started a workout, got half way through it and decided it would be better to come back to it another day. Usually with another day of rest I'd be back at it, covering lost ground anyway.
-I've gone back to eating more fish, especially for breakfast. I had a random tip on weight loss from an ex-NRL player: 'If you want to lose weight, eat clean and avoid fruit due to the sugars. If you want to lose weight quickly, eat a lot of fish.' While I wasn't aiming to lighten things up, I did eat a lot more fish this year from tins of tuna to Basa fillets. At just $10 for a 1kg frozen bag I've taken to having some grilled fish a couple of times per week for breakfast with just a dash of chilli powder for taste. Delicious!
-I didn't need to lose weight but now I'm 3 kilos lighter. Cleaning up my eating habits definitely hasn't hurt here, especially swapping out random afternoon trips to the bakery for a protein shake instead. In my drawer at work I have a bunch of mini protein powder sachets for post workouts and on my desk, a shaker. I felt strange using it at work the first few times but given the amount of people doing the same, I fit right in!
-There was only 1 day where I performed two workouts on the same day. Boredom? In laws in town and I needed some quiet? Too much caffeine? No idea. But I knocked out 1100+ points in the morning and with time to spare later in the afternoon, I did it again. As novel as it was, it certainly didn't inspire me to continue to do this, especially after the general soreness of the next two days...
-I still hate squats but did them anyway. I can't remember who said it (either the late Charles Poliquin or Pavel Tsatsouline) but one of them suggested doing squats first in a workout. That way they're done early, out of the way and you still have just enough energy to do everything else. Which doesn't work so well if you leave squats last, especially feeling motivated enough to knock them out after huffing through everything else. So true to form, I did mine towards the start of the workouts where I included them.
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| I even tried out some kid squats! |
-I didn't eat enough calories to grow bigger. Yeah that was a big takeaway from plugging things away in my little Macro app on the phone, I nailed the protein needed as well as the fats but lacked the calories. Considering how much I eat, this was a surprise as I figured I'd sail right past it but I guess not. I did however cut back on my rices and pastas which is impressive given how much I enjoy both..
-I'm already planning what to do for next year. Crazy I know. Even though I'm taking the rest of the year off from exercising (all 18 days of this year left at the time of writing) I've already worked out that my target next year will be at least 101 workouts across 2022 with a minimum score of 1200+ Fitocracy points.
On top of that I plan to reward myself for the long haul by throwing some money into one of my backup accounts with every workout. If I pay myself a cent for every point gained during a session, I'll be out of pocket the equivalent of a coffee and a sandwich which really isn't much.
However, after doing this 101 times all going well I should have $1200+ gaining interest in the account come Christmas. And that's a pretty nice self-xmas present after another big year of working on my fitness.
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