Back to basics

Today's blog comes to you from the comfy surrounds of my sofa. I'm here for a reason, I'm sore and not really enthusiastic about moving. The cause, a thorough back workout.

We did a complete back workout yesterday, but that's a bit of a misnomer. The exercises used are really over all body workouts but mainly hit the large muscle groups of the back.

We started with chin ups, three sets of twelve. My last set had to be assisted, me being tall and long I find chins difficult. My training buddy, Denny, is small and blocky, he eases through the chins. This morning the latimus dorsi muscles are well worked all the way down to the hip. It's a great feeling.

Moving from the chins, we went straight into deadlifting. Deads' are a super compound exercise. It looks ridiculously simply, you pick a weight up and stand up straight. However, it is much more than that. Form is everything for deadlifting, if your form is off you run the risk of seriously injuring yourself.

My heaviest deadlift recorded was 160kg's, this day we went as far as 100. We were aiming for more reps, and we achieved three sets of ten. Denny struggled with this, I was surprised, he usually leaves me behind in every other exercise. I like deadlifting though. After three sets, the buzz kicked in and the second wind arrived, good timing.

To finish the back workout, we used 30kg's for dumbell rows, again high reps. These were tough as we reached the end.

To add insult to injury, we did a bit of body sparring for 3x3 minute rounds. Denny has no technique so it was all about movement, high work rate, standing toe to toe at a light fast pace. He was knackered. I was ok funnily enough, I felt good though. Maybe it's just Denny stepped out of his comfort zone for some exercises he doest normally do.

Today I feel well and truly worked. I think it'll be a day off. Going to get some veg for juicing later on today, I live for veg, it's alive inside you know!

I've changed my protein also, instead of my usual whey isolate, I've changed to egg albumin. No reason for the change other than I've always wanted to try it, not that you notice any immediate difference. Egg protein does however have a higher BV, which means it's digested quicker and put to use sooner.

In the news, our finance minister has pancreatic cancer. Lenihan is at the other end of the political spectrum for me, politics aside, he's a human being and I hopes he beats this horrible disease, once he recovers he can set about abolishing the banks, scrapping NAMA and putting that 90 billion into local government so they can directly employ workers of all nationalities to get about developing our infrastructure, they could start with constructing a proper school for Gael scoil Barra!