Tuesday 1 January 2013

A year of workouts in an excel sheet.

I take notes daily of my workouts: what I'm doing, how fast, how far, how many series and how many reps: an excel file for every year. This allows me to verify the changes in my training routines, and usually, every 1st of January when I start the new excel sheet, there is something to tweak as I stop doing a type of workout or I add something new.
Today, when I started the new file, I did not change anything from the last one. Possible reasons are that I've found the correct formula or that I'm not progressing anymore. Well, as I am happy with my performances and with my overall fitness level, I don't worry very much.
The basics of my training technique is to vary as much as possible the type of exercise and of intensity, the only thing that never change is the time: every training session, be it mild or wildly heavy, lasts between 45 and 50 minutes.
In my excel sheets I consider seven types of different workout, so that I may do something different every day of the week - I don't plan resting days but light days, days of total rest happen when I'm too busy or if I feel sick. During 2012 I just had 21 days of total rest and they were never consecutive.
The seven basic types of workouts are:
-mountain biking: usually it tends to be mid-heavy cardio as basically the 45 minutes of exercising are only steeply uphill. I consider coming back downhill a funny side effect of the workout.
-circuit training: alterning cardio (usually sprinting) with strenght exercises (sandbags, tire-flipping, that kind of stuff)
-fastwalking: I consider it one of my resting day, I just walk uphill as fast as I can, sometimes using ankle weights.
-footbiking: it's my new addiction of 2012. It totally replaced running (I still run but just short sprints as a part of other types of workout)
-bodyweight: just basic series of pullups, crunches, pushups etc. with no cardio involved.
-a cardio mix: to avoid boredom, I mix different types of cardio exercises. Typically it can be running around my basement, hitting the heavybag in my garage and jumping on and off the benches in the near park.
-something playful (the second day of almost-rest): it involves light seasonal activities, it may be swimming in the river, playing badminton, a basketball game in the outcourt, powerkiting etc.
I think that what really keeps me going is the variety of workouts, I'm not lazy when it comes to moving and to stay outdoors but the real enemy for me is boredom. I really can't understand people that spend their training time in a gym moving iron machines day after day.

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