12 lbs in 12 weeks (Week 6)

Another good week.  I lost 1.5 lbs from last week, which puts me at 162.5 lbs, which is 2.5 lbs below my goal weight for this week, 165 lbs.



I was rather busy last week with some work-related projects, and I didn’t get to the gym as often as I would have liked, but in spite of that I was able keep my weight loss on target.

Note that weight loss is effected by a combination of dieting (consuming fewer calories) and exercise (consuming more calories).  I’ve been watching what I eat, so I’m able to lose weight without necessarily exercising too.

However, weight training definitely depends on how often you, er, actually train with weights, so you cannot expect to cheat and make progress on increasing your strength.

For upper body, I divide weight training into two classes of exercise: pulling weights vs. pushing weights.  I do pushing exercises on one day, and then pulling exercises on the next day.

Pushing exercises include bench press (chest), overhead press (shoulders), and tricep curls.  Pulling exercises include lat pulldown (back) and bicep curls. 

I try to do each kind of exercise three times per week.  If I miss a day, I give priority to chest exercises, since I think it’s true that a bench press actually works many different muscle groups.  I can bench press around 50-55 lbs.  Ideally I would like to be able to bench press my own weight, but that’s going to take awhile!  In the meantime I’m satisfied to add 5 lbs per month.  I figure that by the end of this 12-week fitness program, I should be able to bench press 60 lbs.

Although push-ups are technically a pushing exercise, I try to do them every single day, as I use this as a broad measure of my upper-body strength.  This week I did 20-21 push-ups, so there has been consistent progress there as well.

I remember a few years ago I was able to do 29 push-ups, but I was never able to do that again, and I stayed stuck at something like 10 push-ups.  I think the key to making progress has been to both get myself on a proper weight-training regimen, and do push-ups every day.  I’ve been adding 1 or 2 push-ups per week, so by the end of the 12 weeks I should be able to do 30 push-ups or so.  My ultimate goal would be to be able to do 100 or more push-ups.  (I just read that Herschel Walker does 750-1500 push-ups every morning.  Yikes!  I obviously have some work to do…)