I love reading your posts in here. I may not post straight away, as I feel that I need something to say - and furthermore have my own exercise in tow too - otherwise I feel ashamed listening to your efforts without me actually having done anything! 
If you see what I mean.
Lion Queen - Gym ‘n’ swim - Just what you need in this heat. I bet that pool feels great after a sweatbox workout on the machines 
Bob - You’re coming to terms with your setbacks I think now bud. Where once you would be quite rightly irritated with yourself for not being able to run like you used to, I think now it’s a matter of doing the best you can mate. Good days, bad days. We all get those. Listening to your recap of your run yesterday, no mate it probably didn’t go as well as you’d have liked, but you know as well as we all do that next time it could well be a different story. The heat isn’t helping either. Stick at it matey, your willpower is untouchable and you’re still a legend at what you do 
Same with you, Suzie. That poorly toe must be a real bugbear sometimes, but hey, you are back enjoying your first love, surfing and that must feel exhilarating. Even a relatively light jog must feel wonderful in your environment with all that wildlife and beauty around you. Keep at it 
There’s a lad on the bodybuilding site I’ve recently gone back to who recently did a workout of sets which were backwards way on, reverse sets; starting heavy and going lighter through each set. Game to try anything once, I thought I’d give my own version of this a go this week, my first effort taking place this afternoon. Big powerlifters lads like “Newcy” over there would p!ss all this, but for my waning frame I used my usual exercises, selecting a suitable variety of upper body ones that might work with this scenario.
The daunting area in this was actually beginning a set at the heaviest weight, as I would normally be building up to it as a finish in the normal swing of things. This was a tester for me but I gradually managed to get a grip with it all and decided that to have some kind of goal in all of this, I would make sure each subsequent set afterwards of decreasing weight would increase the reps of the previous set. In the event I managed this every time, although sometimes it was a gruelling task. Read on peeps…
Monday, 23/6/18: Reverse sets, part 1:
(All weights in kgs)
Tricep extensions:
25x30 warm-up
12x60, 15x50, 20x40, 50x30
*A suitably mediocre exercise to begin with. I knew I’d need to do a warm-up first to get a little more pumped up, so going straight to 60kg next wasn’t even trying to my triceps. Handled with ease.
Smith flat bench press:
6x70, 10x60, 15x50, 20x35
*The 70 felt cool, I’ll start heavier next time.
Shoulder press:
8x70, 10x60, 12x50, 20x30
*No problems here also. As with the Smith above, I’d be looking for 80-90 tops on both these exercises normally but as a first time doing these reverse sets I deemed it foolish to attempt today.
Lat pulldown, hammer bar:
10x60, 12x50, 18x40, 25x35
*Again, no bother with these. The increase of reps on each set wasn’t a struggle at all. My programme for this routine will have a rough draft following this write-up and will be revised each session with heavier weights.
I never thought I’d wanna do this kind of madness again. I thought I’d be happy with the light high reps. Never give in, never give up. Never too old to rock ‘n’ roll, never too young to die lol.
Chest cables, downward pull:
10x35, 12x30, 14x25, 16x20
Hi-pull bicep cable curls:
10x35, 12x30, 16x25, 10x20
E-Z preacher curl, c/g, low pull:
7x50.5, 9x45.5, 11x40.5, 15x30.5, 25x23
*I knew this exercise above no other would be the ultimate test in this set structure. Starting off at over 50kgs on the biceps curl bar and working back was a terrifying apocalyptic vision of horror. Expecting to struggle even lifting the bar without having done any prior lighter sets, very oddly indeed the bar went up like a rocket and I continued fully to the shoulders for seven reps – that’s more than I would usually finish with! 3-4 is my normal max.
I had to have a sneaky peek at a bicep flex to make sure I wasn’t using somebody else’s arms!:roll:
Tricep pushdowns:
25x20, 50x15
Bicep stack curls:
20x20, 25x15
Ab crunch:
40x35, 50x30
Time: 1hr. 20mins.
After this workout I felt great and I still had energy in the tank despite the heat. A cold shower was absolutely wonderful, the first time I’ve been cold for two months. Loved it.
For the rest of this week I’ll be going through my exercise list and I’ll end up doing the full lot in this way by Friday if poss. Tomorrow, I’ll going to see how my legs fare using the same procedure.
Thanks for reading.
So that’ll be twenty one miles this week of nothing to write home about jog’s, although there is always time and space on the forum just to let my fellow exercise’ees know that I haven’t been slacking.
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! How sweet that Maddie the Cat comes to greet you. What a good dog! I mean cat… For someone who had to lay off for some time, you are looking very fit. If I had to take off that much time, I would look like Winston Churchill.
