So there has been a big transition in my life: I am back in school! From office life to b-school. The life here in my b-school is very rigorous and demanding. From classes to projects, from teams to simulations, from CV preparations to clubs & committees, from events planning to all the parties! To say the least, we got no time to sleep.
With no time to sleep, it’s evident I have no time to workout too! But what will happen if I don’t workout? I rot and die in vain.
I sat down with a pen and paper. Set my next fitness goal, broke down exercises for it and diet required. Diet was tricky, as I had limitations of sticking to inside-school resources. Next, I worked on time, which was the bottle neck here. I figured out I could squeeze my workout till the extent of it going from 2 hours everyday to 1 hour every second day. I, thus, had a plan.
My plan was to gain muscle. I was at 84 kg, needed to be at around 92 kg. 8 kg to go. I was to follow power-lifting program. For each day, I decided to dedicate half hour solely to single power-lifting exercise. It was a cycle between bench-press, squat and dead-lifts. Although I must admit, I did skip a few sessions of squats and bench-press just to dead-lift. I am inclined towards that exercise, as it works out entire body and also gives immense burn.
For remaining 30 min, I was to workout on other prominent muscle groups. Like day 1 could see a good amount of bicep-curls being thrown around for biceps and some pressing for shoulders while day 3 could see a few rows for that taper back with some extensions for tricep heads. This way, I was shaping my muscles while packing real strength.
For the diet part, I stuck to what I knew best: carbs. I had 10 boiled eggs for breakfast, with a litre milk, some breads. Lunch would see 3–4 chapatis with loads of pulses and veggies. A good burger in the evening snack for extra calorie boost, followed by skipping dinner for meeting deadlines.
I am at 90 kg now, on day 33. I have gained a few extra inches of fat which would require some running on my part.
The point here is that I could do things with my physique in good time even with short amount of time being devoted. The key aspect was planning. We may go inside our new routine hoping to be able to shape workout routine with new routine, but without proper planning, we see us neglecting fitness for meeting deadlines. It is important we realise this trap and work on it.
So what should be done?
- Write down your fitness goal. It could be a number you wish to see on your weighing scale, it could be number of inches you want your biceps to be of, or number of abs. Write it down.
- Break the goal into body parts. For example, if my agenda is to go from 110 kg to 80 kg, my target areas would be fat, lack of muscle. I would work on these two.
- For each part, identify the exercises required. So for the hypothetical me, the fat burning would require me to engage in intense cardio movements.
- Next, map exercises to time required and squeeze that. So if I require 30 min running for 5 days a week, I would break it down to a 15-min H.I.I.T (High Intensity Interval Training) session for 3 days in a week. With this, I have reduced time requirements without compromising on the promising output.
And that’s it, you have your new work out plan! The only thing needed now is for you to stick to it!
Guys, we make plans for everything. Routines for every activity. It is important we sit down and plan our workout, creating some space for fitness in our busy schedules. It’s am investment that won’t ever ditch you!
3-Dimensional Fitness 