08/08/08

- A special day for elite sportsmen and women world over. The 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

The Olympic games is the pinnacle of most sports men and women's careers and always makes for a good show with many guaranteed outstanding sporting performances.

Having swam in the past for Great Britain I will be closely following the swimming during the course of the games, but on this blog I will also report on any other outstanding achievements as well as the obvious blue ribbon events (men's 100m running etc.). And looking into the training equipment and methods used by the best of the best!

The opening ceremony begins tomorrow - August 8, and the closing ceremony is on the August 24th.

Let the games begin!

It looks as though the gym I'm going to be joining in September is getting a "Power Plates" machine, there is a lot of interest surrounding these machines, although I've never seen a good solid review on them or even a developed published training program.

I've written a review the power plates machine a few posts back from all the information I've collected online, but still have yet to test one out. Looking around some of the health and fitness forums some users have left reviews and some tips on the machines. From what I've read and found out from online and user reviews the vibrations just make your muscles work harder when exercising on the machine because they are fighting to stabilise themselves, helping to develop core fitness as well as exercising the area you're targeting.

To get the most out the power plates machine you'll really need decent circuit or routine set out for you which I hope to publish here on my blog once I joined the gym and have eventually got to use one of these machines, watch this space!

Power plates machines are lowering in price and they are actually affordable for the home user, as well as various power plates training DVD's becoming available. It would be great for some users to write their reviews of the machine, leave a comment letting me know of your experience or training program you may have developed on a power plate machine.

Last night I after my run home from work I worked through my "home dumbbell fitness routine" my sit ups set and my press ups fitness routine. It was a great set where I worked up a real good sweat and afterwards I was feeling pretty tired.

I stayed up quite late, till around 12am which is normally ok, but I was really feeling the affects of the exercise, not in a negative way, but just feeling tired and that my routine is making a difference. This morning I woke up for work at the regular time but then hit the snooze button on my alarm for 3 minutes.... I woke up whole hour and a half later! (what I thought was 3 minutes) I was late! I suppose on the up side I was looking better :D!

This is a classic example of making sure that if you're working out and your fitness routine is making an impact, then your body needs the extra sleep and rest to recover. A good nights sleep can really help your body in many ways:

source: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/sleep-your-way-to-better-fitness.html

This "oversleep" has highlighted a couple of things to me, 1: That my fitness routine is having an impact on me (and I felt I was looking even fitter this morning) and 2: I need to get enough (more) rest!

From the research I've done today it looks as though the average person generally needs 7 hours of quality sleep when working out.

Some useful tips to ensure you're getting enough rest and help you to gain from your fitness routine are:

1. Get plenty of sleep – track your sleep.
I can track my sleep but just need to make sure I'm in bed by a certain time!

2. Set realistic goals and time lines for your fitness program.
DON'T expect to work out for a week and then to be on the cover of men's health magazine or woman's fitness, respectively.

3. Join a group to surround yourself with motivated people - No one's added me to my "Gyminee.com"account yet! My username is "Swimace"). Although I am looking to join the gym in September.

4. Track you progress. - I've always highlighted the importance of this, if what you're doing is written down you'll defiantly know and see you've progressed!

5. Tell everyone about your goals. - I thought this was a great idea I picked up from another web site! If you tell people what you're aiming for then you've set your goals out to other people, so every once in a while they'll be sure to ask how you're getting along. It will also help to keep your goals realistic!

An early night for me tonight I think!

Over the weekend I managed to keep my training routine and have incorporated my dumbbell training into a daily schedule. And I've actually started noticing physical differences, I certainly seem to be getting more "cut".

I am lucky and have a very high metabolism due to my swimming career early on in my life, so the running I am doing 3 times a week is certainly helping to build up a sweat and get my fitness levels up, but once I'm home after my run I'm doing the following sets standing:

25 x Alternate Dumbbell Curls }
12 x Dumbbell Flies } x 3
20 x Dumbbell Shoulder Press }

Between each of these sets I'm doing 25 controlled press ups on the dumbbells.

After these 3 sets I'll do a sit up routine as I'm looking to get a define and cut six pack by September and at the end of the sit ups I'll do another 25 press ups on the dumbbells to make a total of 100.

I will write up my sit up routine later this week as the explanation may require pictures or videos.

I'm also really enjoying access to www.gyminee.com at the moment so I can track my fitness goals and targets, also log pictures to track progress! If you like you can add me as a gyminee.com buddy! My username is "Swimace".

Yesterday I got to "Go Ape" in the trees at Alice Holt.
"Go Ape" is a tree top adventure course that involves attaching yourself to cables and pulleys then climbing from tree to tree between platforms, lunging into cargo nets, scaling wooden ladders and hopping across "Indiana Jones" style rope bridges, all to reach the end of the course where you zoom down a zip line all the way to the ground.

There are four separate courses that get more nerve racking as you move along. Non of the courses in the forest are for the faint hearted, and the height takes some getting used to with the platforms around 10 meters high. As you're going through the various stages of the course your realise you're really using your core stability to help yourself balance. As I've been training at this sort of thing for a while now (if you have followed my blog) I was doing a few pull ups when hanging off of the cargo nets and rope bridges.

Today in the office I've already heard that most people that got involved are fairly tired and achy from yesterdays activities.

For increasing strength and stamina and more importantly reduce tiredness for this type of activity I recommend "calisthenics" which are body weight exercises that can really improve your physique and fitness levels.

All in all it was a great day!As predicted by London Weather Gal the weather was beautiful! It was hot and sunny all day long and I even caught the sun! So today am sporting a very slight tan :D

I'd recommend "Going Ape" as a great outdoor activity for a good day out to get those muscles and joints moving, get fit and have fun!
"www.goape.co.uk"