56 Day Fitness Challenge #56DFC

[ironlion27]

I have decided to go on a 56 Day Fitness Challenge to break through a personal training plateau, I would love to invite all the readers to take up arms and join me over the next 56 days in setting a firm fitness goal and pursuing it. This challenge will start tomorrow 7/12/11.

Step 1- My Goal
I’ll be trying to improve my body fat by 4%. This is roughly an 8 pound swing. So that’s a relational change of muscle to fat by 1 pound per week. This might be too steep as I already practice regular exercise but that should be a good goal for me.

Step 2- Battle Plan
I have come up with a quality workout routine which I have outlined here and a calorie count that should work well with the new workout plan. I will be consuming right at 100 calories a day lower than what I am burning so that I will have the required materials to make muscle but will still be at a slight caloric deficit to burn fat.

Step 3- Logging Progress
I will be using the Jefit Android fitness app to follow my workout progress and my weigh ins. I will be using My FatSecret to follow my diet.

Step 4- Community
I’ll be tweeting with the #56DFC throughout the project and hope you will too.

I have incorporated this into my blog but I will be keeping this thread updated as I go as well.

 

[AllTheWay]

good luck!

 

[ironlion27]

Thanks AllTheWay, i'll keep you posted as we go! Pretty excited today, I start tomorrow.

 

[ironlion27]

I’ve decided to do HIIT training at the end of my weight lifting programs. I’m going to be doing 15 minute cycles on days I weight train then 30 minute cycles on the pure cardio days. Why HIIT?

HIIT increases the resting metabolic rate (RMR) for the following 24 hours due to excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, and may improve maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max) more effectively than doing only traditional, long aerobic workouts.[7][8][9][10

Recently it has been shown that two weeks of HIIT can substantially improve insulin action in young healthy men.[12]

In my research I have found that long term studies of HIIT training have shown plateau patterns and therefore, I will be doing traditional cardio for weeks 5-8.

HIIT seems to improve the aerobic capacity only over a short period of time and then stalls. This is indicated for example by the original Tabata study which shows rapid improvement in the first four weeks but almost no improvement in the next two weeks, while the steady state group had pretty consistent gains over the full six weeks.

I have incorporated this into my blog but I will be keeping this thread updated as I go as well.

 

[ironlion27]

Workout
It's been a week since I started the 56 Day Fitness Challenge. After tweaking my traditional cardio to doing HIIT cardio I have noticed a little more energy in my day to day life. Unfortunately, I have noticed some of my muscle groups, especially my low back, legs and shoulders, staying sore longer. This is obviously attributable to the exercises I have chosen to perform during my HIIT cardio. There is a lot of emphasis on squatting movements and on the shoulder regions indirectly.

I'm not too concerned with the soreness lasting a little longer because of these exercises. It seems to tell me that I'm just working those muscles more than I was before switching to HIIT. I have a full week routine with only 4 weight lifting days which is plenty of recovery time so over-training isn't a concern at this point.

Diet
I've kept the diet almost spot on with the exception of a single day. Some call this a cheat day but I don't like this idea. A diet shouldn't be a passing phase like the fad diets we see on the news every other day. They should be a way of life. Habitually eating to ones chosen diet is the only way to have long lasting results and as healthy a life as possible. So the idea of taking a day off every week to BINGE eat is totally counterproductive.

Instead if I have some room for a treat on my calorie intake I will enjoy a caloricly appropriate beer or a desert type item. Diet isn't a single battle fought on a single day, it's a lifelong war which is to be decided by one's perpetual desire for self betterment or by one's disinterest with their own well being. On the other hand once in a blue moon you really want a banana split and you don't have the calories, so what? Eat the damn banana split! What, do you think your going to live forever? One splurge every month or so is no big deal but one full day a week of scheduled deviancy is not the right attitude. Pardon me while I climb down from my soap box for a minute. In a nutshell a diet should be a habit not a fad.

I have incorporated this into my blog but I will be keeping this thread updated as I go as well.

 

[ironlion27]

So last night was our first weigh in for our 56 Day Fitness Challenge. I lost .1% body fat in the first two weeks…this is not on pace to hit the goal. I’m going to tweak my calorie intake a little lower rather than upping my fitness program as I am already clocking in considerable time at the gym. I was working at a 100 Calorie deficit before but I’m going to go ahead and bump my calorie deficit to 200 calories and see in the next two weeks how the numbers stack up and go from there.

 

[400Lb Gorilla]

i am loving your methodical approach. good luck on the challenge