Training Plan

I asked a few of the trainers in the gym what the training strategy should be and the gist was I shouldn’t do straight weight sessions or cardio classes. I had to mix up the exercises, short bursts and quick changes. The mantra I took from that was I need to attack the body over the next few weeks, and never let it get comfortable in a routine. That isn’t as reckless as it sounds as my general level of fitness is pretty high these days, I could probably do H&B now but I wanted to do this properly and step up my training. I resolved to draw up a plan with three pillars in mind. 

1) Pick routines I always find the toughest in class.

2) Increase the toughness by about 25%.

3) Escalate each routine slightly each week.

I drew up what I thought was a fairly good schedule which can be found here.

I was enormously proud of meself when I asked one of the trainers to give it the once over and he only had one or two tiny tweaks to add. He also asked where I got it from because he didn’t realise I’d cobbled it together meself!

The basic gist is lots of short bursts of running but the legs need to be really tired and tested first. So quick sets of exercises then straight into a sprint with a minute of rest between.  I’m hoping this replicates the experience of H&B as best I can.

There’s swimming on Sunday as a semi rest day and because I bring me kids swimming every Sunday anyway.

I also incorporated two runs a week of 10Km or more because I need practice at running that distance and I’ve become a huge fan of running in the past three months, even though I never ran before that (I’ll bore ye with that story later on, it was another Damascene conversion).

At the end of each session I’ve added a core session of a four or eight minute Tabata routine. The reason being even when you give it your all in a routine by the time you’re finished and get your breath back you always have that one little bit more to give and I want me body to learn how to tap in to that for when I inevitably want to give up on the day of H&B.