Serious stuff

I've taken advice from more experienced colleagues, read fitness magazines and set up my training programme but it seemed that my body had gotten used to the regime I had set up and was refusing to lose any more weight (muscle weighs more than fat I keep telling myself!) or change shape (look slimmer).

A lot of the training material indicated that I needed an accurate measurement of how hard my heart was working while training so I invested in a heart rate monitor. It's a Polar F11 and comes complete with chest strap and training manual. It also has software that can be used to download training programmes and upload training results to Polar's Personal Trainer section of their website.

So having trained for 4 days last week I was very tired and not feeling too good with a throat infection I developed on Saturday, I decided not to train on Monday. I also had the hangover (no alcohol involved) of a long trip to London to see Aerosmith at Hyde Park Calling. This required a 15 hour round trip and an arrival back at home at 3 a.m.

Before going to the gym I tested my resting heart rate and Polar's OwnIndex which is an indication of my maximum oxygen uptake capacity (VO2Max). My resting heart rate was around 56, which I thought was good but my VO2Max was very low at 24. So even after all the training of the last few weeks basically my fitness was poor - ouch!

So into the gym for the following programme

2m30s at 14km/h on treadmill (increase of 30s on last time)

6m of interval training (2m at 10km/h, 1m at 6km/h, 2m at 11.5km/h, 1m at 6km/h)

13m at level 15/25 on cross trainer

2m on bike at level 8/25 (my legs were very very tired)

32 bicep curls on 22.5Kg

32 standing rows on 22.5Kg

32 tricep pulldowns on 22.5Kg

3x15 reps at 50Kg on the thigh abductor

3x15 reps at 30Kg on the hip abductor

2x15 reps at 110Kg on the leg press

75 advanced sit-ups

20 back curls

Result
Duration 53m
Max heart rate 163 (93%)
Avg heart rate 144 (81%)
Calories expended 515
Fat burn 35%