Off Season Day 21 - Lifting the weights

Although today I had planned to concentrate on lower core and legs I decided to also factor in some strength work on the arms.  I did this because it has been a couple days since the last such session, and I can do this every 48 hours (body permitting) and time will soon be running out for this type of exercise.

Thus, I doubled the weight on the dumb bells I use, lowered the number of reps to six, and increased recovery time to two minutes between sets.  On top of this, I afterwards ate more than I was comfortable with.  On Thursday I'll increase the weights again for some of the sets until I find the point where for all of the various lifts I am hitting serious muscle fatigue at the end of the sixth lift.  The plan is to then increase the number of lifts in each set, and ultimately add another circuit.  If I am consistent, I should be able to get to that point and be feeling the benefit before I tail off into the pre-season proper.

I then went through my regular circuit for Core/legs.  Total time spent was 50 minutes, the most I've given yet this year.  It's probably a little longer than I'd ideally like, but that is a function of the addition of the weight circuit (with its concomitant recovery periods between each of its sets) to the routine.

On a more mundane level, I have now completed the third week of my program according to schedule.  With the two runs I've had this past week I have introduced aerobic work, and with inline training starting and games starting up again (tomorrow and Saturday) I'll be getting good anaerobic workouts as part of my weekly round, as planned.  If I aim at three runs a week, and three weight sessions as described above, I'll be well set up to move into the hockey specific training (agility, quickness, speed) in the lead up to the pre-season.

I am pleased with my progress so far, have already advanced my workouts to beyond where I had gotten after two months last year.  And it gives me great satisfaction to colour the sidebar annotation on this blog to green for my Week 3 notations.