You Are Your Own Gym

This morning on our run LFC (@LittleFairyCult) and I were chatting. Or so I thought, apparently LFC doesn’t listen too well when we’re running and seemingly didn’t hear a word I said. Maybe it’s because she got ‘in the zone’ and sprinted off, or maybe the wind rushing past her ears depleted all noise coming from my mouth, maybe it’s because we’re insane adrenaline junkies who get up and run at 6am. Anyway, I was rambling on about my previous session of ‘YAYOG’ or You Are Your Own Gym. I later received a tweet from her asking me what YAYOG was and told her that I’d previously explained, alas, she knew nothing and suggested I blog about it here, so you guys can get a little insight too.

First though, a little background as to why I’ve chosen YAYOG as my fitness routine. I’m using MFP (or My Fitness Pal for the acronym deficient) to track my calories/workouts etc. Unhappy being put on 1200 calories a day I started to search for alternatives when I found the Road Map. Basically here’s how it works (I will go into this more on a later blog, but for now a little overview, since this post is for YAYOG), most people cannot sufficiently fuel their bodies on 1200 calories a day, and burn 200-500 through exercise. You need fuel, otherwise your body converts the easiest available resource into energy, that resource is – muscle! This is bad, muscle burns more calories than fat, so what do we need more of? Yup, muscle. How can we do this while trying to lose weight? By feeding our bodies what it needs to survive, plus a little bit more for building muscles. At the same time we need to build those muscles through strength training. Which brings me to YAYOG.

You Are Your Own Gym is a bodyweight exercise programme. I can’t afford to join a gym to do a training programme such as Strong Lifts 5×5 (which is one of the programmes recommended by the Road Map), so I asked for an alternative and was pointed in the direction of YAYOG. It’s a book (or The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises). And an App. These are the only tools you needs. In fact you don’t really need both, one or the other will suffice. But I like books, the developer of this programme and author of the book is Mark Lauren has written a really good build up with just the right amount of jargon for my brain to process.

Mark Lauren is a certified Military Physical Training Specialist, Special Operations Combat Controller, triathlete, and competitive Thai boxer. He has effectively prepared over 700 trainees for the extreme demands of the most elite levels of the Special Operations community. (Source 20.09.2012)

Sounds good right? He really knows what he’s doing. And it’s not hours and hours and in the gym. It’s all done at home, for 20-30 mins a day, 4-5 times a week. I can do that I thought. So I am. There’s 4 10 week programmes from Basic (for beginners, like me) to Chief (for the elite, not at all me). As advised by the Road Map I’m doing 3 sessions a week and just letting the programme last longer than 10 weeks, since I’m also doing C25K, and 6 x 30 mins workouts a week is plenty. I’ve also upped my calories since it’s a very active lifestyle, I’m not scared by the increase in calories, since those calories are going to help build my muscles, which will do what? Burn more calories. Hurrah!

Here’s a little overview of what I did yesterday. I have the You Are Your Own Gym iPhone App, it was a measly little £1.49, it helps me with times and reps.

The first couple of weeks are about building up Muscular Endurance. To do this you need high volume/low intensity, which means ‘ladders’ of a bodyweight exercise for 7.5 mins . Ladders work by doing one rep of a given exercise, followed by the same durations of time it took you to do that rep of rest, so it took 4 secs to do a push-up, you rest for 4 secs. Then you do 2 of them. It took 9 secs to do 2, so you rest for 9 secs, then increase to 3, then 4 and rinse and repeat, until you can’t complete a set. You got to 8? Well done, now go backwards, yup, back down the ladder, you now do 7 and rest for the length of time it took to do 7, then 6, all the way back down to 1. If you still have time left you go back up the ladder as far as you can until muscle failure and back down again, until you reach 7.5 mins. Then you rest. That’s right rest, twiddle your thumbs, do some knitting (I actually cooked tea during my rest phases), what ever until your next ladder. There are 4 ladders each day for these next 2 weeks. I managed to do 55 Classic Push-ups (semi-easy variation, with hands elevated), 43 Let Me Ins (moderate variation, which is the default), 51 Seated Dips (moderate variation, with knees bent) and 43 Let Me Ups (semi-easy variation, with knees bent, feet on the floor). It was a mixed work out that consisted of push and pull exercises and work all these muscle groups:

• Pectorals
• Shoulders
• Triceps
• Deltiods
• Lats
• Biceps and
• Forearms

The app restricts your ladders to 4 steps up and then back down again, I searched for an answer as to why this is, since I thought you should go as high up the ladder as you can, but Mark and the developers of the app came to the decision that we’d tire ourselves out trying to go to far, fine by me. It wasn’t easy, but building strength and muscle isn’t supposed to be.

I hope I can keep it up. I’ve never completed any fitness regime to the end. I’ve started C25K 4 times and never made it past week 3. But I believe in this, I believe in the Road Map, MFP, C25K, my own determination and LFC’s motivation to make me a stronger, healthier, leaner person.

Let’s see if I’m still here in 10+ weeks!

Don’t forget you can follow myself, @ohmy_cupcakes, LFC, @LittleFairyCult and our other Littler Fairy, MalinVK, @MalinVK, over on Twitter using the hashtag #LittlerFairies.