Day 3 – Legs

Today is leg day. I know a lot of people (especially some self-conscious guys) don’t tend to do a lot of leg days and would rather pump their chest and build their shoulders by doing shrugs (yawn!) – I’ve seen a lot of them across a load of different gyms throughout the world, but I love leg days. Squats and dead lifts (with a hex bar) are two of my favourite exercises. I’m guessing a regular dead lift would be in there, but my belly tends to get in the way and it feels uncomfortable – always best to train hard and make little adjustments along the way, I feel.

 

Workout

Going with the heavy sets again, today I would be putting my leg muscles under some strain. Yet, this was also a little bit of learning for me as I’ve not really done a 5×5 on legs before, so it took me a little while to get used to understanding how heavy I should go, and my fitness professional helped with encouragement that I should be near failure on rep 5, not thinking like it’s a walk in the park.

 

So, onto the actual exercises:

• Squats: bar to the back of my shoulders. 5 reps of 5 sets at 6okg (but did go up to 62.5kg on the last set)
• Hex bar dead lift: bar + 40kg (moved up to 55kg) – did 5 sets also on this.
• Romanian Dead lift: bar + 30kg (up to 40kg on last set) – again, I did 5 sets and did feel quite a bit of this in my back and legs.
• Calve raises: no.10 on a calve raising machine for 5 minutes. I had to stop one or two times for ten seconds or so, but completed a total of 100 reps

 

 

It was the first time I had completed this and the whole session was tough. I’m glad I did it, but my legs were weak afterwards, especially my calves.

 

 

Food

Lots of protein today (as usual), but with some tasty parts in there as well.

 

Breakfast

Some pork loin, cashew nuts, onion, and kale. A rather healthy breakfast (as per the norm) with some protein and some healthy green veggies in there.

 

Lunch

Chilli and feta cheese was a nice change (not! hahaha!) from the other days, and it was a good final meal. This portion was slightly smaller than the other two days mainly because I was training just after lunch.

 

After lunch/post workout

A gluten free ciabatta with crunchy peanut butter (Whole Earth’s organic) and a banana. Healthy fats, some protein and maybe a little too many carbs, but this was after working out so boosting glycogen stores was a must here.

 

Dinner

Makerel, eggs and brocolli. I do like a bit of oily fish for a big protein boost in the evening and I felt as though I had to offset some of the additional carbs I’d consumed earlier in the day. (I am aware that you can’t really ‘offset’ carbs, but sometimes it’s good to think that you’re giving your body a lot of different proteins, healthy fats and antioxidant green veggies.)

 

How am I feeling?

Today I was really tired when I woke up and I’ve been trying to consume quite a few limes lately because lime is good for you and helps to alkalize the system. Something which came up in my starting fat analysis was that my body is inflamed. Alkalizing helps with this.

Todays’ leg workout was hard and I know I’m going to be feeling it today, but I did enjoy it. I always enjoy leg days even when I’m doing cardiovascular HIIT leg days.

Tomorrow is  rest day, which I’m looking forward to. Not because I won’t be in the gym training, but because my mind is a little fatigued with having to think all the time about getting my posture correct and keeping my form while lifting some heavy-ass weights.