Weighed in at 86.4kg yesterday morning.

Skipped the lunch time swim to meet an old collegaue who i hadn’t seen for quite a while, but went to the gym after work. The weights program I am doing is divided into four 4-week segments. I’m in the first of these segments at the mometn, which calls for light weights and lots of reps as follows:

Low weights, minimal strain – 30 reps of:

Squats

Lat Pulldown

Knee Extension

Hamstring Curl

Bent-arm Pulldown

Bench Press

Bicep Curl

Core

Calf Raise

Seated Row

Dips (machine)

Tricep Extension

The idea behind the low weight/minimal strain approach is that your muscles respond to work much quicker than your joints & connective tissues, leading to an imbalance and hence greater potential for injury. To combat this, a slow build-up is appropriate before increasing the weights and decreasing the reps in the later segments of the program. This segment is the ‘adaptation’ phase, where you’re not really doing any significant lifting, just getting your body used to the idea.

I usually precede the weights with a 10min row as a warm-up too, gradually getting faster as the clock counts down.

Week 2: W: 1 session