#4
Self Reflection:
This past month, I was able to learn a lot about fitness and nutrition through not just research, but through working out. The human body is a master at adapting to whatever it is given, yet there is always something that can be changed in your diet or workout routine. There will always be muscle imbalances, there will never be perfect form, there will always be a cheat day. For me, the biggest takeaway from this project is not anything from my research, but understanding that my workouts and diet will never be “perfect.” There will always be some “missed opportunity” by not doing a certain exercise or not getting enough of a certain vitamin or mineral. There is only one thing that never fails to give a reward, and that’s hard work. If you give your all in the gym and work as hard as you can to optimize your diet, you will meet your goals over time. I can say with confidence that I met my first goal from week #1 which was to keep enjoying my workouts. My second goal was to see some progress in the gym given that at the start of the project, my strength was plateauing. With my optimized diet and consistent workout split, I think I pulled myself out of this plateau and was able to gain some strength on all my lifts. Overall, I would highly recommend this project to anyone who wants to put their body to the limit and want to reach their fitness goals. I used to hate all science until I really got into working out, and now I spend hours of my free time researching ways to improve my workouts.
To respond to Mia’s comment on my last blog post, The rest of the exercises I do are resistance training and physical therapy. There are two goals of resistance training: strength and hypertrophy (muscle-building process). To meet both of these goals, I need to work out in two different rep ranges. For strength, most people agree that 5-8 reps is optimal. For hypertrophy, a higher rep range of 8-12 is optimal. Training for strength will also build muscle, just sub-optimally and the same goes for hypertrophy training. The exercises I choose are fairly simple, but still very challenging if done correctly. My personal favorite is the deadlift, which works almost every muscle in the body. I don’t want to go over every exercise I do as this will be a really long blog post, but I work out every major muscle group twice a week and usually about 18 sets per week, per muscle group.
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