No much today Stay fit and motivated.

BODYBUILDING DETERMINATION by Zhasni

Today is one of these days where I really suffer. I had my leg workout yesterday. Squats with 185kg, leg press with 430kg etc. A strong and powerful workout.

Last night I could barely sleep as the lower back and legs very hurting, in a positive way. This morning it was fine, but at around lunch the sore muscles came in full effect. So Mission Accomplished. Really?

Is it really necessary to have this pain. Do one give more harm to his body than what is good?

Let me put it this way. There is pain and there is pain. If you are doing it right the pain will come from the muscles, if you do it right the pain comes from ligaments, bones etc. And this is fatal.

I am doing bodybuilding and weightlifting now for more than 20 years and can count on a fair amount of experience. I know exactly when to stop, how to train and how to listen to my body. This prevents me from doing stupid things and severe damage on my body.

On other words, the pain today comes from sore muscles and I can’t wait to go back to the gym tomorrow for my latissimus workout.

But I always need to take some issues into consideration. First I am older now and need more rest to recover. So I take my time and sometimes an additional day off if I have the feeling my body needs it. Which come again back to experience and listening to the body. Secondly I am a ectomorphic bodytype, means I will never look like Mr. Olympia or a professional bodybuilder, but that wasn’t my goal anyway.

And finally I set some goals over the year. First goal this year was 550 kg in legpress. I reached this goal and then decided on 180kg squats. Also this goal has been reached. Now the side effect: My quats are 4 cm bigger now, my legs are strong as hell and I have gained less fat in my bulk cycle than last year.

This will give me a good starting point for my summer diet which will start within the next 4-6 weeks (Do not wonder I live on the Southern Hemisphere). If you would like to join me with my summer diet and look shredded than stay tuned and register with my RSS feed.

What is you opinion. Is pain necessary with bodybuilding or not?

And for some motivation another bodybuiling video from Zhasni. Stay fit.

On Sunday I had a very special training. I had chest training on my list and felt a bit overtrained, because of the hard training sessions from the days before. I decided to do only one exercise.

I did Machine Chest Presses and nothing else. 2 sets for warm up and then 5 sets with increasing weight and decreasing reps starting from 12 reps down to 3 reps. After 20 minutes I was finished and went home.

Guess what? I had a very sore muscles the next day. Now my question: Is it really necessary to do 3-4 exercises with 3-4 set with lots of reps to do a full muscle workout?

Yes and No. My option is that you should shock the muscle with every training. And once in a while a training with only one exercise is a shock. But it only works if you focus on the exercise. Do every single repetition with perfect form: no jerking, no bouncing, no slumping…no cheating! You should feel the movement and how the muscle works a 100%.

Let me know about your experience with this.

Thank you to those who commented on last week’s piece.  So fun to share and get excited about your fitness journey, isn’t it?

As you know, I am the Zumba stringer for this site.   Zumba is a dance fitness program based on Latin and world rhythms invented by Colombian dancer/ choreographer Beto Perez in the mid 90′s.    I’m going to repeat this until the whole world can say it back to me and until the whole world shows up at a class in one of thoses skirt with those jangly little coins and shakes till they sweat.

… Okay, I will give my guy readers a pass on the skirts.

Even though I talk about Zumba to anyone who will listen, some are still confused.  My mom exclaimed, “I’m not a dancer. I won’t get the moves.”  Hmm, shows how well Mom listens….haha.

Zumba is NOT just for dancers. Zumba is NOT just for girls.  Zumba is NOT just for outgoing, spastic people.

Then, who IS  Zumba for?  EVERYONE that wants to ‘ditch the workout and join the party.’  That’s their tagline.   You DO have to like music and having fun.  Jangly coined skirt optional.

As I shared in my innagural article, I have been a fitness freak for upwards of 15 years— working out every single day.  Some days, I viewed it as a drudgery, till Zumba came along. I started attending regular classes in early 2010 and in August, I myself went for Instructor Training.  As I type, I am choreographing routines in my head and preparing my song list to teach my first class, which will happen in the next week or so.  I’m glad to have you all with me for this exciting time.

In the meantime, check out www.Zumba.com if you think you would like to see if there’s a class near you.

Enjoy this visual of people of ALL shapes and sizes (and not necesarily ‘dancers’) having a blast while —oh yea– working out!

Have a GREAT week!

~Jill

What a great Cape Town spring day. This weekend was soo nice and the weather really great. Lots of sun

Today I had a bit of a fitness Sunday. I started with a walk in Hout Bay. A very nice dogwalk is the Rocket Road trail that leads to the wreckage of the Bos 400 ship. It takes about 1 hour from the car and back.

After that I went to visit the so called “South Africa’s only encompassing premium health, wellness & lifestyle event – the Look & Feel Good expo” at the Cape Town Congress Center. The event was a bit disappointing. Only one exhibition hall and not really what I have expected. I left the expo after 20 min again.

Next was the daily visit to the gym. Today another leg training towards the goal of doing 180kg squats. I did some reps with 160kg and it went much better than last time. So the final goal is coming nearer.

Then I tried the so called Virgin Life Care HealthZone which is basically a tool that measures you body fat, your weight and your blood presure. Since a short while we have to of this stations at the Virgin Active Garden in Cape Town. I was curouis to find out how got they are balanced and tried both. And this gave a big surprise.

Within 15 meters from one station to another I gained 800 gramm in weight, lost 3% of body fat and my blood pressure came from 107/83 to 120/80 or so. Very strange isn’t it? So I can not really trust these machines and would rather consider to buy an own device. Maybe Virgin Active can recommend me someting more reliable?

To finish my fitness Sunday I did another dog walk in the De Waal Park.

I really like these laid back Cape Town Sundays

How was your weekend? Let me know. Have a good one.

Yesterday I had officially a shoulder workout on my plan, but switched to a chest workout instead. I ended up with a very good training session with a very classic training routine.

I started with machine bench presses (2 sets warm up, 4 work sets a 10 reps, increasing weight).

Thet very pullovers ath the machine (4×10), incline bench press at the machine (3×10), cable cross overs (4×10) and finally 2 sets of machine bench presses.

The whole chest training did take about 25 minutes. I tried to make max 2 min rest between sets and went straight from one exercise to the next.

You might think no free weights, too many reps? Yes and no. Actually I am a strong beliver in free weights, as these exercises use a lot of small muscle areas to stabilize the main muscle group that you are training. But on the other hand you can greatly concentrate on certain muscle areas while working with a machine.

As you know I try to change my routine (workout plan) constantly to shock the muscles every time and do not allow them to adopt to a certain training.

What was different with this chest training. First I did machines only, secondly I trained with very slowly and concentraded movement. So I could fully concentrate on the muscle. Actually it worked very nicely as I had very sore chest muscles today.

After the chest workout I did a biceps routine with barbels.

Here a nice video with another very classic chest workout routine. Have a look.

And as always you are welcome to comment on this posting.