Friday 12/16

Friday: Carb Day! Doing reptition upper body.

  •  20 pieces of chips
  •  Protein shake (2 scoops)
  •  1 Clementine
  •  Another protein shake (post workout, 3 scoops)
  •  5 Dinner rolls (went to this free dinner at ffc, turned out to be very lame. This is a story for another time)

The lifts:

  • Pushups, 4 sets of 15, 90 seconds rest between sets
  • Lateral pull down 70 lbs supersetted with facepulls of 90 lbs (I actually don’t remember the exact numbers here.. the scale in my gym is weird. It was labeled 6 and 13). 12 reps each, 4 sets.
  • Lateral raises, 5 sets of 12 reps, 15 lbs (20 is hard! but i did more sets so its good - still improved from the last repetition upper body day)
  • dumbell shrugs supersetted with tricep pushdowns. 50 lb shrugs x 10 and pulldowns were 60 lbs (once again, the numbers are fuzzy). repeated for 3 sets.
  • Minor grip training holding a 20 lb dumbbell on end for as long as possible.

Thoughts:

  • Working out at 11 pm SUCKS,  you lack so much energy and just cannot bust through your lifts. I also lifted AFTER dancing, which made me already tired. I was also mentally tired from finishing finals. I think the ideal time to lift for me is 11 am. I did it for a few weeks when the semester started and it was GREAT.
  • I don’t feel as sore this morning, so once again, I feel like working out at night contributes to this. I think mental work is better done at night; BUT not urgent mental work. Being selective about what tasks I do at what time is very important to being able to do more throughout the day.
  • My elbow hurt near the end of the tricep pull downs, so I probably won’t lift again until Monday. I’m still considering what schedule I should pick to do over intersession- four lifting days per week might be a little too much. I’d rather dance four days a week and lift three days a week.

A little update on my life: I’m pretty pumped for this intersession, it has been a long semester and I haven’t had time to do anything that I really wanted to work on, so I will be looking forward to doing the following things:

  • Lifting and following a carb cycling diet, which I realize is the easiest for me because its like every few days I get to enjoy carbs and I can definitely go a couple of days with lower carb content, so I think I am definitely moving in a good direction to make myself healthier and look better.
  • Music: I have been so out of touch with music in my life. I want to play more cello, piano, and possibly guitar (my roommate has one). It feels great to advance skill based hobbies.
  • GAMING! Of course, not a break if there isn’t gaming. Looking forward to play quite a few games on my steam list. (I own ~100 games but have really only played 7 of them). On the subject of gaming, I want to start making commentary videos/playthrough videos. I purchased Fraps and it works great. This also ties in with learning how to edit videos, put music in, etc. Definitely plan to spend a few days at DMC learning how to use applications such as photoshop, after effects, etc.
  • Research! I’m developing this cool interface for my simulations and also writing a paper. I got a prototype working and really looking forward to making it more efficient, getting more functionality in, etc. Have also slacked off on research for most of the semester, and I really want to make some great progress. As for the paper, it is a bit daunting to write a real scientific paper, but my PI and grad student are both super nice and clear about it. They make it sound really easy and step by step, so I look forward to tackling that too.
  • CS. I am looking to learn mobile app development too, I think this is a useful skill to have.
  • Dance. POWER ALL DAY! I really want to get some sexy power moves, but also work on style on my off days.

So.. definitely very busy. I think I’ll start by making a priority list of what things I will tackle step by step, to make sure I can get as much out of this intersession as possible. SO MANY THINGS TO DO, NOT ENOUGH VACATION TIME!