I’m staring down the barrel of a new challenge and I’m so ready. Now, I’ve never been the type of person, or athlete, to base their training or fitness goals around aesthetics. I have always trained to be able to better do something, whatever that something is. Aesthetics has always just been a cool side effect of hard training, or occasionally, a rather uncomfortable reminder of my lack of effort. It will be a slight shock to the system now as I attempt to focus almost exclusively on aesthetics, aiming to drastically change my body composition over the next couple of months.

THE NEW CHALLENGE

Gain muscle, drop fat. Simple, right?

Well… I really love food, like reeeeeally love it. I have definitely indulged a little too much over the festive period and I’m feeling more than a little ‘fluffy’. I also know that (sadly) you simply can’t out exercise a bad diet. So basically everything is going to have to change! My body fat is currently around 19% and the aim is to get down below 15%. My training will take on a more lift-all-the-heavy-things approach and my calorie intake is going to have to decrease (boo hiss), I will also have to track everything via My Fitness Pal so that we can make tweaks as we go along, if needed. My body tends to respond quite quickly to any changes in training loads etc so I’m really hoping that continues to be the case here!!

It feels slightly odd to be focusing on this when what I really want to be focusing on is triathlon however, opportunities come your way for a reason and I’m a firm believer in giving each one as much energy as you can muster, so for the next couple of months at least, this is my challenge. I will still be aiming to swim each week and get in one long bike ride and at least one run with my crew back in North London to keep things ticking over before returning to triathlon properly in April / May. For now I will be posting weekly updates of how my new challenge is going and what training I’ve been doing, along with progress pictures *gulp*, I’m hoping the slight shame of ‘going public’ with these non-posed, non-sucking-in-and-holding-at-just-the-right-angle, non-filtered images will keep me accountable here. I also don’t really believe in scales, especially not with a goal such as this one where the aim is to increase muscle mass! Progress pictures seem like the most sensible and accurate way to go, if a little anxiety inducing.

So let’s get to it! Day 2! Yesterday was a naughty little set featuring a whole host of arm / shoulder / chest annihilating exercises. On the menu today is a bunch of moves aiming to work that posterior chain! Can’t wait! Check out the ‘gram for some on-the-go action! Ha!

You can see Week 1 and Week 2 here.