{"id":2721,"date":"2009-10-12T03:19:18","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T01:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=2721"},"modified":"2015-02-18T17:54:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T22:54:55","slug":"alpha-male-challenge-week-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/alpha-male-challenge-week-3\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alpha Male Challenge &#8211; Week 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s routine continued the trend from last week: once again the number of reps dropped and the tempo of each rep increased. In addition, some rather murderous drop sets were introduced: sets of 12, immediately followed by 10 reps (20% drop in weight), then by another 8 reps (with another 20% drop in weight).<\/p>\n<p>Yes, this was kinda painful. It was only done for two exercises in each workout, but that was more than enough for me. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>John is still struggling a bit with finding the right weights to start with. This is less of a problem for me &#8211; although I did &#8220;miss&#8221; on my barbell shrug weight. I chose 135 pounds, which I figured would be just about right for me, given the slowish 3-0-1-0 tempo&#8230; but I miscalculated. My shoulders handled it just fine, but the weak spot was my grip&#8230; I had to (briefly) set the bar down twice towards the end of my second set, as my fingers were starting to ache (note to self: bring straps next time BB shrugs are in the line up).<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->We&#8217;ve gotten several Prowler workouts in since I first posted about it&#8230; and &#8211; while it may be a coincidence &#8211; I&#8217;ve noticed a small, but definite boost in my a.m. cardio performance this week. Shoving that thing around IS a real heart-pounding workout (a physician friend of mine likened it to pushing a Chevy Suburban), so I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised to find it&#8217;s having a positive impact on my stamina.<\/p>\n<p>We had it out again today&#8230; I was tempted to raise the weight slightly, but decided to hold off. But next week, I think I&#8217;ll try adding another 10 pounds to it. (baby steps&#8230;). We&#8217;re shooting for two sessions\/week, weather permitting.<\/p>\n<p>One other\u00a0thing I&#8217;ve noticed is that my weight has dropped off a bit.. I normally weigh around 125 &#8211; 126 lbs. &#8211; but the last two weeks I&#8217;ve been hovering between 123 &#8211; 124 lbs&#8230; and the last few days, I&#8217;ve been flirting with the low end of that range. I haven&#8217;t noticed any serious strength loss, and I do look a bit more defined, but this is as far as I want to go&#8230; so I need to be more vigilant about my eating, and make sure I&#8217;m getting sufficient calories to cover the work I&#8217;m doing. It&#8217;s funny, &#8217;cause it doesn&#8217;t really FEEL like I&#8217;m doing more work, but perhaps that&#8217;s the nature of a whole body workout. I&#8217;ve been doing split routines for a long time, which hit individual muscle groups thoroughly, but aren&#8217;t the most efficient when it comes to burning calories.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose I should have anticipated this, however&#8230; the Alpha Male Challenge is oriented towards fat loss.<\/p>\n<p>Next week&#8217;s program will be an incentive to eat more, that&#8217;s for sure&#8230; it&#8217;s the last week for the &#8220;Muscle Up&#8221; (endurance) wave, but it also looks like the worst. There are 34 sets, and most of &#8217;em (24) use a 3-0-3-0 tempo! Urrrrgh&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s routine continued the trend from last week: once again the number of reps dropped and the tempo of each rep increased. In addition, some rather murderous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,14,28,29],"tags":[109,317,584,610,1347,1526,1546,1867,1775,1810],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9895,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2721\/revisions\/9895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}