Submitted by Jon on Sun, 14/09/2008 – 11:32pm
Tonight I decided that it was time I took a new approach to my attempts at getting fit. As I have stopped kung-fu for now, I need to increase my body weight training. I walk a few miles every day during the week, and cannot run on my dodgy ankle at the moment, so some home circuit training is the answer.
This evening I decided that rather than just simply do 100 press ups, I would do an equal number of squats and sit-ups too.
It was a very tiring workout, but I split it up into bite size chunks, and updated my Facebook status as I went, which provided some encouragement, of sorts, from friends that were online. Actually the most common comments were along the lines of “don’t think you stand a cat in hell’s chance of doing the 300 haha” and, after doing my first 100; “You would have been 2/3 of the way there if you didn’t stop to tell us all your progress!”.
I started at 10.15pm, with 25 press ups, and finished at 11.08pm, with an impressive 15 press ups. I obviously took a lot of rests in between sets. The squats were relatively easy, the sit ups harder, and the press ups a killer near the end. But I did better than usual on the press ups. If anything, giving myself more time to recover, by doing sit ups and squats, must have helped.
But I got there in the end. And the workout is attached for all to marvel at!
Tonights 300 workout turned into a 500 workout!
Submitted by Jon on Tue, 23/09/2008 – 12:21am
It has been over a week since I did my first 300 workout circuit, as I managed to get another cold during the week that lasted until today. I was still feeling a bit run down today, but felt I had to do something.
I decided on a different approach tonight, to do 400 exercises in total, adding star jumps (jumping jacks) to the press ups, squats and sit ups. Also, I decided to do sets of 10 reps, with each circuit more intensive that last time, but with longer rest periods.
I did the first two circuits (80 exercises) of star jumps, squats, press ups and sit-ups and a relatively gentle pace. For the next circuits I started increasing the intensity, by adding jumps to the squats, and attempting claps on the press ups (all I actually managed was to get my hands a few cm off the floor).
I did 9 sets like this, and then on the 10th, as I was still feeling like I had some energy, I decided to work harder and to failure on the last set. So for the last set I completed, in quick succession, 70 star jumps, 50 squats (without jumps) 15 press ups and 25 sit-ups.
In total I managed to do 520 exercises, a massive 120 over the objective for the night! Well done me.
Although I am not actually trying to build my biceps, they have responded a little from the press ups (although surely mostly triceps?), which is why have have added a pic. Maybe I will add some curls into the workout later. There is a dummbell sitting under the bed unused…..
I plan to do the same again next time, hopefully in a couple of days. Maybe I will aim for 600!