Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Going to Failure/Life's Opportunities

Today started off great! Ana and I had a very small glass of wine around 7 PM last night and found ourselves completely passed out. It was from the long day we had at work but I am pretty sure the wine played its role. Waking up around 8 AM, we both started to do our homework. We both really don't get an off day with school being on our days off of work. School was a breeze and caught some early dinner at the mall. Ana somehow always gets something more delicious and cheaper than my meal. Went to work shortly after the mall to finish up some of our management internship homework and finally got home!

Tomorrow is my birthday, so I decided to kill myself at the gym so I can have a fat-day for myself at dinner tomorrow night. I am most likely going to engorge myself over all of the pasta and free bread, like always. I decided to train legs/arms. Legs was planned but I threw in arms because there was a lot of douchebag-looking teenies up in cedar park tonight. So my routine tonight was:

Legs
5 x 10-12 hammer-strength Leg extension(warm-up)
5 x 10 Squats ATG w/small plates underneath ankles
5 x 10 hammer-strength Leg curls
4 x 15-20 Calve raises

Biceps/Triceps
4 x 12 Seated arm curls
superset w/ 4 x 8 seated hammercurls
superset w/ 4 x 12 Lateral raises

4 x 12 Skullcrushers
superset w/ 4 x 10 french press

3 x to failure hammer-strength preacher curl

Lifting tonight felt amazing. I ate a moderate diet of carbs and protein with a good amount of dat good fat we all need to look for(Polyunsaturated). Had my pre-workout 30 minutes prior so by the time I was done warming up my legs, my thighs was feeling 'dat feel' we all need in our lives. I have been training the last 3 months with the right amount of intensity( Thanks to my good friend Austin), which has made my sessions actually shorter. I finished the work out a little under 45 minutes. Good to keep the heart working at a good training pace, really focusing on the motion and the activation of the muscle throughout the motion.

Squats are a pain, but it truly is the best compound movement you can do. I have been doing squats almost religiously and I have notice a significant amount of body fat decreasing since then. It only makes sense. Your legs have some of the largest muscles, it only makes sense that training them will help you shred the unwanted fat that we all have. There really is no such thing as 'spotting'. To get shredded, you need to put your time into your sessions. Don't find yourself constantly looking at your phone, it defeats the purpose of being at the gym. The gym is YOUR time, put in the effort in and you will get the results you are looking for.

Arms wasn't planned at all but with the amount of traffic tonight and teenies, I threw them in. I didn't spend much times with training arms but I did superset all of my sets to get the maximum amount of volume into my biceps/triceps. People have such a strong misconception when it comes to training arms. Swinging weights around might work for some, but clean form and moderate weight will do the trick. To be able to only pump out 4 curls vs. 10 curls, I can honestly say you will have a better activation of the muscle with cleaner form. Don't get me wrong, we all need to put in time and lift heavy shit once in a while, but that's the difference with strength training and bodybuilding. They go well together but depending on your goals, if you wanna lift heavy shit, strength train. If you wanna just look rip and shredded, hypertrophy rep range is a good idea.

Finished the session with preacher curls. Good weight, pushed out as many reps as I could willingly and forcefully. I was able to rep out a consistent 8 reps before it really started to burn, but continued to push myself out of my comfort-zone with the reps. It got pretty high up there and my arms were bloated. Nothing feels better then your arms feeling like they are about to blow out of your skin. That's when you know your workout was successful.

So today I incorporated a failure set into my session. Gym problems honestly are exactly like daily life problems. Sometimes we don't like to push our limits and we like to work with what we are comfortable with. But if we are not striving for a change, how will we ever know what could have been? Work has been really getting to me lately. I work for a company that means well and it has always given me opportunities to grow with it on a regular bases. I haven't really tried to move up but they are giving me the opportunity to. We should take advantage of situations like that in life because we should always make the best out of life's opportunity. I might not be planning to stay with the company forever, but life throws curve-balls at you. If you are working hard and being recognize for it, moving up can't hurt you. Don't be afraid of failure, you won't know what failure is if you are constantly avoiding it. Plus if you do fail, you are just improving yourself. At the end of the day, its about resting your head on that pillow, knowing you took advantage of opportunities to better yourself and your life.

Shit Happens

Yes indeed! Shit happens. I have decided to join the blogging world after seeing all of my sister's post about my baby niece, Noelle. I have found myself wanting to write down a lot of my thoughts lately. However, most of my memorable thinking pops up during my workouts. OH NO,  ya'll are probably thinking. Dennis is starting a FITNESS blog. No, that's actually not the case. You are obviously reading this because you found yourself clicking the link. Curious enough to click the link, so I'll make  worth your while. This blog will  have a lot of readings about fitness, but ultimately this will be my diary. Most likely the majority of my post will happen right after the gym, but that is totally irrelevant. Like I said early, I just happen to think more at the gym. I hope ya'll enjoy these short reads I will be posting regularly!