During March’18, I made structural changes in my weight training regime by shifting to bit heavy weights across all body parts. The excitement of seeing positive results was welcoming, however something was missing which was preventing my body to take a proper muscular( “V”) shape. It took me sometime to realize that I missed doing core strength exercises. That was the reason, bulges on my lower part of chest & abdomen were still persisting. I decided to make some changes in abs workout & phoned up Kunal to discuss the changes required in our workout regime.
Me: Kunal, although we have been doing extensive weight training, I can still feel bulges in my stomach & abdomen! What do you think?
Kunal: Bro, I was also giving it a thought for quite sometime now & I understand we missed doing core strength exercises.
Me: Yeah! To be specific, we have missed regular abs workout. Let us restructure our workout regime & include abs & side laterals every alternate day with Sunday being full functional & core workout day.
Kunal: Sure thing bro!
It was 5th March’18, & I started our morning at 4:45 am with 10 minutes treadmill run at a speed of 13.5 which gave me some confidence booster to take up the most tough part of core strength, the abs workout.
I started with half crunches & leg hold alternately which started giving me pain after 5 reps. I realized, my body was not accustomed to core strength exercises & I needed to do regular “abs” to remove the remaining bulges on my stomach.
I slowly & steadily started doing flat bench raise, dragonfly, oblique exercises & inclined leg raise (3 sets 20 reps each) on one day & half crunches, leg hold, ab wheel roll out & planks ( 3 sets, 20 reps each) on other.
The pain from these workout was exorbitantly high & on some occasions, it was unbearable. On this I consulted Shadab!
Me: Shadab sir, I am having regular high pain while doing abdominal exercises. Further, specifically while doing leg hold, I find it difficult to make my hand reach my toe. What should I do?
Shadab: Sushant ji, start with less repetitions & increase repetition when you body become used to it. During this time make your body more flexible by continuing treadmill run/walk & skipping. Also have a protein & fibre rich diet. Try to avoid any carbs after 4 pm in evening.
Me: Sure sir!
During next 3 weeks, I regularly did abs workout & side lateral exercises on alternate days. It started showing some good results & I was able to increase my repetitions from 10 to 15 per set. I could see the level of bulges going down. I now wanted to focus on eliminating bulges & having structural cuts on low part of my chest.
With this objective, I moved to next level of workout with these existing workout regime plus new & more complex workouts. Going ahead, the next level of “abs” workout brought its own share of success & challenges which I shall share in my next blog.
In case you want to know how I have been able to convert these challenges into opportunity, I’d be really happy to connect.
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