Today’s Workout!
Today was Leg Day! Many bodybuilders dread this day because it is by far the most taxing of workouts. Your Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Glutes, and Calfs are all taxed. The larger the muscle you work, the more taxing it is on your entire system. I find on Leg days that my circulatory system is taxed the most. I am always out of breath at the end of an exercise and typically have to take 2-3 minutes breaks between exercises to recover sufficiently before moving on to the next exercise. Today, let’s address a few more topic areas: Muscle Soreness, Beginning a new workout routine.
Muscle Soreness
When you have sufficiently attacked a muscle group, you’ll discover that within 24-48 hours you’ll begin to feel some stiffness and achiness in the muscle groups you’ve worked. This is because you actually do physical damage to your muscles if you work them to failure. Working muscles to failure result in the microfilaments of your muscle fibers to rupture. When this happens, the body adapts by building a larger microfilament to replace the one that was damaged.
The easiest way to get through muscle soreness is literally just working through it. You don’t need to take a day off or any of that. Just get in the gym, get the blood pumping, and work through it. By the time you’ve hit your second or third exercise you’ll notice that the pain is gone. Don’t let muscle soreness wreck your schedule.
One trick to avoid too much soreness is to incorporate some cardio into your routine. You can do 20-30 minutes on the treadmill, add cardio acceleration to your workout, or some other type of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) in between your weight lifting exercises. This cardio work will keep the blood flowing, help your muscles clear out any lactic acid that has built up, and minimize the amount of soreness you may experience.
You can also hit the sauna after your workout, take a hot shower, or take a really hot bath when you get home. All of these will minimize muscle soreness from workout to workout.
Beginning a new routine
If you’ve been following my workouts, you’ll notice that some of the exercises I am working through on this new routine are actually utilizing lower weights than those I achieved toward the end of the Shortcut to Size program. When beginning a new routine, my goal is to complete the routine. Since a new routine puts different stresses on different parts of the body and because this workout is more grueling than the previous routine, I always start with a lower weight on a new routine to better allow my body to adapt to it and avoid any senseless injuries while trying to do too much too quickly. This leads to another quick chat about motivation.
Motivation
We all have our own personal drivers as to why we do something. Mine is literally nothing more than maintaining my health. There are a lot of folks who are in the gym to make themselves look better, but for me, it isn’t about aesthetics. I literally want to continue to feel good, sleep good, maintain low levels of stress, and continue to improve my strength and endurance as long as this body will allow me to.
Well, that’s it for today folks.
Today’s Workout
Squat 2 9-11 Legs 11/110.0 11/110.0
Front Squat 2 9-11 Legs 11/90.0 11/90.0
Leg Press 2 9-11 Legs 11/250.0 11/250.0
Leg Extension 2 9-11 Legs 11/145.0 11/145.0
Walking Lunge 2 9-11 Legs 11/110.0 11/110.0
Romanian Deadlift 2 9-11 Legs 11/115.0 11/115.0
Lying Leg Curl 2 9-11 Legs 11/60.0 11/60.0
Seated Calf Raise 2 9-11 Calves 11 x 208 11 x 208
Standing Calf Raise 2 9-11 Calves 11 x 208 11 x 208
Cable Toe Raise 2 9-11 Calves 11/7.5 11/7.5
