Wow, I can’t believe that we are already halfway through our entire GGAB Fitness Training Regime. Our bodies and exercise plans just continue to get better and better. Today I re-strategized how we were going about the upper body day and feel like I have made significant developments to the activities.
If you’re just tuning into this post and haven’t read any of the other GGAB Fitness Training Regime days, I recommend you start out with the Badminton Training Regime #2 – GGAB Fitness Training. Then make your way through the other posts so that you can understand what we are doing here.
Once you have done that, it’s time to get on with today’s post.
The Exercises
Here are today’s exercises:
- Quick jog and stretch
- 10 sets of 20 pointing footwork
- 5 sets of 12 push-ups
- 3 sets of 1-minute plank
- 3 sets of 45-second v sit
- 5 sets of 12 rotation v sit with weights
- 5 sets of 12 touch heels
- 5 sets of 12 touch knees
- 5 sets of 12 tricep pushdown
- 5 sets of 12 supermans
- 5 sets of 12 bicep curls
- 3 sets of 30 wrist curls
- Stretch
Compare today’s exercises with day 8 of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime.
There weren’t any changes in exercises that we were doing, but you may notice that suddenly, we are doing 5 sets of many of these exercises. Then you may also see that instead of doing 3 sets of 20 reps for many of these exercises, we are doing 12 reps instead.
So it’s actually about the same in terms of quantity. 3 sets of 20 are 60 overall, and the same goes for 5 sets of 20. The only things that went up in numbers were our planking and v sits with both getting an increase of 15 seconds.
However, despite increasing the intensity of two exercises in numbers, today’s workout felt much more rigorous and practical than previous upper body workouts.
Let’s take a more in-depth look at what 5 sets of 12 reps really does for our training.
By lowering the number of reps I am doing and increasing the sets, I can increase the speed of which I do each set and rely on the anaerobic process for generating energy to my muscles.
The anaerobic process is when your muscles don’t use oxygen to create energy to function. This process, however, does not last long term, and you will run out of power in a short amount of time due to excess lactic acid being created and not transported away.
Many sports are like this, especially badminton. Badminton isn’t a marathon, it’s a sport of fast-paced rallies with small breaks between each rally.
By training the anaerobic process via activating it through short, fast reps and then strengthening your ability to recover and activate the anaerobic process again via more sets, you can effectively create a similar situation that your muscles face in badminton.
Then your fitness and endurance levels will jump through the roof because you are already so used to putting yourself out of breath all the time.
This is called high-intensity interval training or also known as HIIT.
It’s a training strategy that works very well for sports athletes. I will probably modify tomorrow’s lower body exercises to be like this as well.
Diet and Sleep
Diet and sleep have remained the same.
I ate 3 meals again today with breakfast consisting of peanut butter on toast and water, lunch of fried rice with chicken and other vegetables, and dinner of rice with chicken, ribs, beans, and peppers.
Sleep still sucks. I slept at 12 AM again and woke up at 9 AM. This habit is tough to change. I’m falling into it right now by writing this post at 9:52 PM!
I will try my best though to fix it.
What I do want to talk about a little in today’s post is a follow up to power napping and meditation.
It’s a strategy that I talked about a little in the second weekly recap of the GGAB Fitness Training Regime. Unfortunately, I was not able to test it today.
Having woken up at 9 AM with a class that was starting at 10 AM, I didn’t have the time to go meditate in the morning.
After the class, I got back home at 12 PM and ate lunch. Then my brother and I started our training. Since the training took about 2 hours and I had to leave for work at 3 PM, I did not get to power nap.
But I could definitely feel the difference during work.
The power nap I took yesterday certainly helped my ability to work. I wasn’t getting drowsy at all yesterday compared to today where I was quite exhausted.
I would definitely want to include the power napping strategy a bit more into my daily schedules.
Thoughts and Feelings
Even though I’ve already written down more than 500 words just talking about HIIT, I do want to talk about it a bit more.
The changes we made today certainly benefitted our fitness. I can already feel and see improvements in our body just from this one day of exercising. This strategy is a lot more potent than I initially thought.
The main catch, though, is that you have to do each set full-speed without stopping. You have to do it in a way that hinders your ability to breathe. In some cases, you might not even be able to have one breath while doing the exercises.
After each set, you should feel profoundly out of breath and breathing heavily and quickly. This is how
you can push the limits of your body with these exercises.
I was not able to take full advantage of these exercises in the first two weeks, so although I can feel myself improving, it wasn’t quite the leaps of improvement that would have excited me to share it right away.
This HIIT training, however, is something that has extreme potential for badminton players. I will definitely be working on this and share and good training regime that can make you a better badminton player.
But overall, doing this training regime continues to surprise me in every way, and I am learning so much. I will continue to share everything I learn with you so that you can improve your badminton too!
Progress
Now for the pictures and numbers. Here they are:
Person 1:
Weight: 143 lbs
Person 2:
Weight: 119 lbs
Conclusion
And that’s it for today. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them down below as I will be glad to respond to them! As always, good luck in your games and have a great day!