Review of Week 6 - Belly Off

This should have been my 7th week on the Belly Off programme but I was on vacation last week in Vienna, Austria. I still managed to complete the workouts and the 350/100 bodyweight challenge on the Saturday but I had to substitute some of the exercises as I did not have access to a chin/pull up bar, inverted row bar etc. So I wanted to repeat week 6 again.

I was really worried about going away to Vienna. The Austrians are famous for their food and in particular their deserts. I was very strict whilst I was over there and every time we ate out I only ate salad with chicken. I ate virtually no bread and just stuck to lean meats and wholegrains. I also managed to work out quite a bit. I did two 5k runs along the river Danube (beautiful) and also did two workouts including the 350/100 challenge. So the net affect was that I still managed to loose 1lb that week, which is pretty good when normally I would have expected to put on around 4/5lbs when I was on holiday!

Anyway, onto this week and the repeat of Week 6 of the Belly Off programme. I changed the timing of my workouts this week to Tuesday and Thursday and then did the Bodyweight Challenge on Saturday. I have actually started to add more reps and weight to a lot of the exercises in the Workouts to give me an even harder workout. And it worked because this was the first week for a while where I suffered a bit of stiffness after doing Workout A on Tuesday. But I was fine again by Thursday.

One other thing I did this week worthy of note. At the gym where I am a member every month the set a new gym challenge and for May it was how fast you could complete a 1000 meters on the rower. So on Tuesday before Workout A I gave it a go and I managed to do it in 3.33secs which was a pretty good time and put me at around 15th place on the board. So on Thursday I wanted to give it another go and I managed to do it 5 secs faster and finished with a time on 3.28, which was good enough for top 10. So I was really pleased and most of the people above me were either personal trainers or extremely fit athletes! So not bad!

Came to Saturday and the Bodyweight 350/100. I normally do my Bodyweight challenge on the Saturday morning but this weekend we went into London to take my little boy to watch Playhouse Disney. So I did the workout in the evening instead. One thing I have noticed is that I seem to workout better in the evening than in the morning. I think it’s something to do with the fact that I have more energy in the evenings having taken on board more fuel during the day.

I watched the Week 6 pep talk and bodyweight challenge video by Craig and he mentioned that the unofficial record for the bodyweight 350/100 is 22mins and that when he first did it he managed to complete it in 27mins. I was aiming to do it in around 30-33mins. On week 5 I finished the 350 in 28 mins and the bodyweight 100 in around 6 mins. So combined I was sure I could do it quicker than 33mins. I did the challenge and I managed to get it done in 28.36 which I was delighted with! I actually finished the 350 in 22mins, which smashed the time I did the week before. So I was really pleased .

Important to note that I am still completing most of the exercise reps in sets. The only ones I don’t have a problem with completing in one go are the squats, lunges , step ups , stability ball curls and jacknives and jumps etc. For the press ups, pull ups and chin ups I still break these down into more manageable chunks. So for instance on the press ups I did 30/10, for the close grip push us I did 20/10/10 and for the chin ups I did 5/5/5. So if any of you guys out there are still worried that you can’t complete all the reps in one go then don’t worry, I think most people are in the same boat.

So what’s the bottom line this week? To be honest I don’t know as I have not weighed yet but will be weighing tomorrow. So far I have lost 11lbs in 6 weeks since I started the programme, so I am on track to do my target weight loss of 15lbs for the full 8 weeks. I am going to step it up even more in the final 2 weeks to give it one final push.

I have also taken pics this week and updated my Belly Off profile page. So now you can compare the difference between Week 1, 3 and 6. And boy is there a difference. Please take a look at my profile page below and let me know your comments/feedback.

http://bellyoff.menshealth.com/SNC/ViewItem.aspx?pguid=f11af873-2ef5-4d59-802c-892406ffe605&itemguid=c09509c9-eb40-44f0-9ff3-07bbb0cabad5