Drop sets

Today's blog post is titled "Drop Sets" because they nearly broke my shoulders. I am  giving myself over to drop sets, not only do they make you feel the burn, but they make YOU feel like you're actually pushing yourself. I don't usually sweat too much during strength training (except on legs), but with these drop sets, I was sweating buckets. If you don't know what a drop set is it's very easy to do and a great way to add muscle. Let say, like today, I am doing lateral shoulder raises. I will take 3 weights, I did 15 lbs, 12 lbs, and 10 lbs. On my first set I use the 15 lb weight until failure, and then right away I use the 12 lb weight to failure, followed by the 10 lb weight to failure. Make sure you keep your form because it gets really hard near the end, and its tempting to just jerk around like a crazy person to get in some more reps. Injuries are not worth it.

This is what I felt like today :)

Shoulder Workout:

SUPERSET # 1

• Seated shoulder press ( 20 lbs each arm) (12,12,12)
• Rear delt fly (12 lbs each arm) (12,12,12)

SUPERSET # 2

• Front raise (12 lbs each arm) (12,12,12)
• Shoulder row (25 lbs each arm) (12,12,12)

DROP SET

• Lateral raise (15 lbs x 7) (12 lbs x 7) (10 lbs x 5), (15 lbs x 9) (12 lbs x 9) ( 10 lbs x 10), ( 15 lbs x 9) (12 lbs x 9) (10 lbs x 9)

A great shoulder workout, I highly recommend you go out and do it right now! As well as this, I did a 10 minute ab workout, which I want to try and get on video to post, and 40 minutes of HIIT on the treadmill.


Now for the food! I haven't had a stirfry in ages, mostly because there was too much oil, too many vegetables to cut, and I always seemed to screw them up. But I succeeded this time. Just a note though, I am a firm believer that most vegetables should be eaten raw, so in this stirfry, I only had them on the fry-pan long enough to heat them up, not really to cook them.

Vegetables in the stir-fry included celery, red bell pepper, radish, red onion, and grated carrot.

While the noodles and vegetables were in the fry-pan I added about 3 tbsp tahini, 1 tbsp franks red hot, and 1 teaspoon tamari. Feel free to add more salt or seasonings, I just wanted something easy and plain.

Now I have to get ready for work (again), and start to plan tomorrows leg workout.

P.S. I made a kick-ass smoothie yesterday. I steeped some chai tea, about 2 cups worth, and waited for it to chill. I then blended it with a sprinkle of cinnamon, 1 tsp honey, 1.5 scoops Sun Warrior Vanilla Protein, 4 handfuls of spinach and a medium sized banana + ice. It was sooooooo delicious, and it gave me lots of energy so that I could smile at people while they were completely rude to me at work :) I think I might need another one of those tonight.