Week 3! Leg Day #1

Me looking like a total mess after a gruesome Leg Day.

I am already on Week 3 of Phase 1. Holy wow, I can't believe I have made it this far! Anyway, last night was my first leg day of the week (I am training legs twice this week). And Week 3 is the first actual muscle-building portion of the whole program. Below are the workouts I completed:

Glute ham raises 3-20
Leg extension 40x10, 50x10, 50x10
Wide stance barbell squat 40x10, 40x10, 40x10
Barbell lunge 50x10, 50x10, 50x10
Barbell deadlift 60x10, 60x10, 60x10
Lying leg curls 30x10, 30x10
Barbell hip thrust 40x10, 40x10, 40x10
Standing calf raise 20x10, 20x10, 20x10
Side lying clam 3-15
Twist crunches 3-20\

As always, I added extra workouts. Thus leg day really becomes Legs, Glutes & Hips day. This is because I would like a more well-rounded lower body workout. Squats, lunges, and deadlifts are great lower body exercises, however they target the legs primary, glutes secondary. I added barbell hip thrusts, glute ham raises, and side lying clams to really activate (isolate) the gluteal muscles. Next leg day, I will add hip abduction & adduction exercises as well as some weighted glute kickbacks.

My legs have definitely gotten stronger. I could have done 50lb. reps with my squats, but I probably would have ended up dead before I could finish the rest of my workout. It's all about pacing yourself, not trying to lift the heaviest thing you can to look like the meanest m*******r in the gym. I execute progression overload with every week, when I can afford to.

What keeps me going and motivated in the gym is that the lighting in the gym makes one's muscles really show through, and I keep looking forward to looking more and more defined as my training continues.

My shoulders look amazing. My biceps and triceps are killer (too bad for all the upper body fat masking them). My midsection will probably not whittle away until I incoporate high-intensity cardio in my routines and begin carb cycling. My lower body is strong, and my pride.

I can't believe I have made it this far! :)

My new food scale, and my endless notes.. not obsessive at all..

Oh, and on a random note, I finally got my food scale in the mail! Now I can truly fine-tune my macros! :)