Weigh-In
Woke up this morning and did my weigh in as usual and I am down to 103.9kgs again this morning which is amazing as I haven’t done much due to my knee and also I went out for a meal and a couple of pints last night as it is my Son’s birthday today and the restaurant that he wanted to go to is closed today.
| 18/10/2021 | 104.4 |
| 01/11/2021 | 104.1 |
| 07/11/2021 | 103.4 |
| 15/11/2021 | 104.2 |
| 22/11/2021 | 103.9 |
Looking at the numbers for this month so far you can see that I was still over 104 kgs up until the 7th when my weight was down to 103.4 kgs which was the lightest that I have been this year only to hurt my knee on the 9th while doing sprints so after that I did no exercise really until this Friday when I rode to work and worked in the office all day and then walked around town and home with my Son and Saturday when I did my first training session and gates sessions since the knee injury. While I was injured I put on 0.8kgs mainly due to increasing the amount of Coca Cola that I have been drinking again and the obvious lack of exercise due to the knee. Due to the increase of exercise this weekend and lowering the amount of pop drunk I have managed to get my weight back down to 103.9kgs! its not quite down to where I was before the injury but I am at lease back under 104kgs and I have dropped 0.4kgs since this time last week! This is all the more impressive as I literally did 2 days of exercise at the end of the week to get the weight back down! I also had to rest yesterday as my knee was really sore from the training the day before.
This pattern also shows that the intermittent fasting although not causing weight loss on its own, IS a really useful tool to control the weight gain when I get injured! At the beginning of the year when I got hurt for example I put on almost 2kgs in the same amount of time so I have more than halved the amount of weight that I put on while hurt which is pretty good.
I am going to get signed up for the gym this week and start my rehab and getting into shape the right way by getting my body better conditioned which will hopefully not only reduce the number of injuries that I get in the run up to the Worlds next year but it will also speed up the weight loss too as the more muscle you have the more energy the body needs to tick over so the more weight will be lost when not exercising. I am joining a gym near my work to make it easier to get to the gym when we actually move back to the office full time (if we ever do!) and also meaning that I will have to ride 15 minutes to the gym so I can get 30 minutes of riding in a day. Also riding to the gym also means that I can get straight to doing my pre-ride warm up to keep the consistency (skipping and some dynamic stretching) and do not need to do any aerobic exercise to warmup, therefore reducing the amount of time that I need to be in the gym.
The plan from now until the end of January/ Early February is to go to the gym at around 5:30am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and do a split weight routine. Monday and Friday will be leg days and Tuesday and Thursday will be upper body days. I will stick to machines during this time and it this phase will be my general fitness phase which will focus on balancing out muscle groups and building stability in my legs etc. As I will be riding to and from the gym 4 times a week I will not be adding any more aerobic exercise to the mix and I will see how the weight loss goes with just adding weights to the equation. On the bike this winter I want to focus on improving my manuals/ tap manuals and pedal manuals as well as learn to jump as I am really bad at jumping at the moment. I am thinking that on Sunday’s we may add a pump track day as this will help with overall bike handling as well as quickly improve both manuals and jumping so it has to be done. Pump tracks are also really good at building fitness so its a win win really. Unfortunately we do not have any pump track locally although we do have a 5 or 6 good ones 30 minutes away and about 20 between 30 minutes and an hour away so we will not get bored thats for sure!
During this phase I am going to commit to doing sprints twice a week (Tuesday night with my friend on the flat and probably Friday lunchtimes or evening doing downhill sprints) as well as either Basketball or Racing at Bristol on a Wednesday night and training and gates on a Saturday. I will also try and get at least one but hopefully two manual sessions in during the week too so that when I am on the track at weekends I can put the improved skills into practice.
After this developmental phase I will hopefully have lost enough weight and gained enough muscle mass and conditioning to be ready to start power lifting and increasing the weight used, instead of using the machines with lower weights, and start a couple of days a week doing plyometrics too to work on my power production. The advantage that I have is that both BMX racing and Basketball use the same energy systems and therefore the weight/ power training exercises/ programs are basically the same and I have years of experience training for basketball so I should see good results from this phase of training. On the bike will also change a bit as I will try and add more track days during my lunch break during the week to start getting full laps in and work on building on the bike skills further.