First Day of HST

Yesterday I did my first day of HST lifting, which means I was doing pretty light weights for 15 reps per exercise, and not surprisingly it was really easy, as well as a bit embarrassing. See the way HST works is that instead of doing the traditional 3 or so sets of each exercise on a given day, then doing that again around 4 or 5 days later (which is about how long you really should wait if you want to make gains in your lifting), you do one set per day, every other day, three times per week (you give yourself a workout weekend every week), adding about 5% more weight to the exercise with each workout. The idea is that you are doing roughly the same number of sets over time (three per week), but you are always increasing the load you are lifting, and this progressive load stimulates your muscle growth more efficiently.

Anyway, so you start with two weeks of progressive loading doing 15 reps per exercise, then drop to 10 reps for two weeks and finally finish off the program with two weeks of 5 reps per exercise. But remember that each day you go up in weight by about 5%, so by the end of the program, on the very last day, you are lifting the maximum amount of weight that you are able to for five reps.

So HST starts off deceptively easy, with the first day feeling very light, and as I already mentioned, you feeling a bit embarrassed. I mean, here you have been lifting for awhile, built up to heavier and heavier weights, until you are no longer the newbie lifter in the gym, then suddenly you drop to a weight below even where you started! For instance, my max squatfor 5 reps is currently is 205 lbs (actually, it's more than that, but while I'm doing low carb I'm weaker, so I figured I give myself a realistic goal), but yesterday I was doing only 85 lbs. for my first day of HST while a girl next to me was doing about 30 lbs. more than that. WEAK!

Anyway, but the nice thing about doing HST is that I enjoy full body workouts, and that's what I'm able to do in under an hour on this program. I get into the gym, do everything quickly, hit every muscle group and then I'm done. It's also great (did I say this same stuff in my previous post?) because while I'm on low carb, my body can't do more than about an hour anyway, much less find the energy to push each muscle group to lift near max more than one set. So it works out well.

Speaking of low carb, I pulled out the sticks Wednesday night and I was already in Ketosis, which was still true for the first HST workout yesterday (and my cardio work-out today). I was able to get into Ketosis so quickly because I did cardio (10 minutes) , sprints (15 minutes) and a jumping-jack/jump-rope combo (3 minutes) in the gym on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I must of burned up all my glucose stores. So, it's all gravy (or actually fat) from now on.

Yeah, this was a boring post... perhaps I'll have more energy for more creative writing later, but right now my blood sugar levels are just too low :P