Mid-Semester mayhem

Week eight somehow coincided with my school week eight - the last week before our mid-semester break. It's usually chocka-block with exams but we got off lightly this year.. 3 of our exams were held in week 7, so this week we just had to tackle a Pathology test, a Neuroscience exam and a Chiroscience assignment. All of which have been tackled successfully! 

We received our results for the exams held in week 7.. now I may have had a few vacant brain moments during my week 7 exams, so I was SUPER EXCITED when I got my results back yesterday with all my marks above 90% Yippee!! 

Michelle suggested that I slightly change my gym plan, to focus on a short, sharp weights session.. Big lifts, compound exercises only, and then to finish with 30 min cardio (up from 20min). So ideally I spend about 30 min on weights, 4x a week, but I work HARD!

The idea is that lifting heavier and involving more muscles and joints will 1) burn more calories during my session 2) make my muscles more metabolically active (this means I burn more calories at rest) 3) avoid over-training  which leads to muscle loss.

This new plan = AWESOME! My aim this week has been to do four compound exercises per workout, maxing out at 10-12 reps, performing four sets of each exercise.  Thank golly gosh for  bodybuilding.com as a resource. (Check it out if you haven't already.. loads of exercises and info!) For those that may not be familiar.. a compound exercise is one that requires movement of more than one joint, vs an isolation exercise that generally just works one muscle/joint.

This is my knee! Circled is the
bone fragment that was removed.

So! My favourite workout: Legs day! Without a doubt!
In December last year I had a much needed knee operation where I had a small piece of bone removed from the front of my tibia (shin). Since then I have been reluctant to squat or lunge too heavy.. but on Wednesday I cranked that barbell up to 50kg and smashed out a set of 12, happy as larry!!!

This is the heaviest I have squatted since I injured my knee.. so the heaviest in about 2 years!! Needless to say, my bod is feeling it...walking down the stairs HURTS (no knee pain though!!)

Squats = awesome bum

My weigh in this week is on Saturday morning which I was secretly happy about as this means One More Day to Smash It In The Gym before scales and pinch day!!


Happy friday people! Get under that barbell and crank out some squats if you haven't done so in a while.. or ever.. its so worth it!

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” 

― A.A. Milne