End of a gruelling but awesome Body 360 Session

My morning session was at Titan Fitness Phuket, taken by the ever cheerful Kim. A very tough session but noticed that my HR is gradually dropping compared to previous sessions. I am gradually getting fitter – woohoo!

The session consists of a warm up, followed by  2 rounds 6 exercises. Each round is done three times. The exercises themselves are done for 30 second high intensity intervals, followed by a 15 second break before the next. After that, time permitting, there may be a bonus round (often abs!), followed by a cool down and stretching.

Today’s session was as follows:

Round 1:

• Medicine Ball Clean
• Medicine Ball Burpee
• Dumbbell Curl to Press
• Dumbbell Burpee
• Upright Rows
• Renegade Rows

Round 2:

• Medicine Ball Push Up (These HURT!)
• Push hold & Wipers (on your back, medicine ball held in the air, legs straight up, lowering them to left then right)
• Knee to Elbow (plank, right knee to left elbow & reverse)
• Bridge (Essentially “hip ups” from your back)
• Crunches
• Plie Squats

For the geeks among you, here is a breakdown of the session as recorded by my Garmin Fenix 2:

Heart rate zones for Body 360 @ Titan Fitness. 21/10/2014

I was hoping to add the graph that shows HR through the session as well, but can’t find it on the Garmin website. Perhaps it is only available through the iDevice app….although that would suck.

Afternoon Session: Muay Thai @ Chockchai Muay Thai Phuket

The gang post an awesome 2 hour session.

I was very slack with my Muay Thai training last year, so am pleased to be gradually getting back in to some sort of rhythm. After last weeks sessions with Turbo Fairtex, I decided to go along to my friend ChockChai 3k Battery’s new gym.

The gym itself has yet to open, but is already looking good and is a welcome addition to Soi Tad Eaid (“camp road”). It sports an already impressive team of trainers, including Muay Thai champions Tukkatong Phetpayatai and Yuttajak Kaewsamrit Chaikam. Heading the team is Chockchai himself (Boonpeng Klaphayak), who has an incredible record of 243 Muay Thai matches and 112 boxing matches under his belt. At his prime he was Asian boxing champion, defending the title for some six years until a young upstart by the name of Manny Pacquiao eventually relieved him of it.

Anyway….about the session…

I arrived a little early, and as a result spent a good 8 minutes running longer than anyone else….error! In total, I’d say I ran around the mat for 15-20 minutes. This was followed by three rounds of skipping, then it was time for hand-wraps and water.

The class took the form which many do in Thailand. 3 rounds of shadow boxing (4-5 minutes), 3 rounds of bag work (which I am pleased to report was carefully monitored by the trainers, who made helpful suggestions and corrections to everyone), followed by 3 rounds in the ring with a pad holder (I was fortunate enough to be working with ChockChai himself). After that (which is quite gruelling enough ), we clinched for 15 minutes (actually, I cut it short by 5 as my HR was peaking).

Just when we thought it was all over, we were told to do 100 knees and 100 “teeps” to the bag, followed by 200 sit-ups and 100 push-ups! Fortunately a little mercy was had and it was dropped to 100 sit ups. Sadly, as we had been doing 20 press-ups IN BETWEEN each of the 9 rounds (did I mention that?), my arms were simply too fatigued to comply, but I managed the sit ups and used the excess pussy time to do back strengthening exercises to compensate.

I really enjoyed the session, going to go again on Thursday and see if I can improve a little. My left leg is fluid and quick at the moment, but my right seems a little stiff and lacks power – something to work on!

Nutrition:

My food for the day was as follows:

Snacks (Post workout)

This left me with an overall calorie intake of 1467, while burning 2780 (not including Basal Metabolic Rate).

Assessment:

Overall, today I managed to burn 947 Cal in the first session, and a staggering 1833 in the second! I haven’t included calories which my Vivofit reliably informs me I also burned just walking around (14313 steps, sessions NOT included)…. Very happy with the way training went, and with nutrition, although I am worried that the calorie intake is a little low for the training intensity.

For my own reference, I’d like to do a post on each of the following:

Fenix 2
Vivofit
Titan fitness
Malaysian Gym
Chockchai Muay Thai
Phuket Top Team
T-Rex Muay Thai and MMA.

I think I’ve pretty much decided that as the readership of the blog is fairly minimal, I’m going to dedicate a post a day to the previous days nutrition and fitness. These posts may get a little in depth and geeky (they may not, I haven’t decided yet…), so if you’re not a fitness geek, feel free to ignore them!

Today was my first day back at training after some rather debaucherous birthday celebrations in Krabi at the weekend. I decided to ease myself in gently with a relatively easy going session at Titan Fitness Phuket – the “Body 360″ class.

Hannah and I were doing this class regularly earlier this year with a very good instructor named John Priest. He has now moved on to pastures new and I was a little concerned that the class may be the worse for it. However I was pleasantly surprised and the new instructor Alex, together with one of the owners, Kim, took me through a superb hour of training.

I AM IN AWFUL SHAPE!

The class aims to work the whole body, with a combination of cardio, weights and resistance based exercises. For today we used: Dumbells, Kettle Ball and Plyo Box. After a 10 minute warm up, we went through two sets of exercises (approx 6 per set) and did each set three times. This is something that a few months ago was a precursor to proper training. It burned a little fat, improved cardio a little and built a little muscle.

Today it has left me almost unable to walk!

Sadly I didn’t manage BJJ in the evening as I was simply too fucked. Doh!

Back at it tomorrow morning though, so wish me luck!

On an unrelated note, our Thai lessons are coming along fantastically! We are able to read and write the majority of Thai script now. That isto say we’re just over halfway though the alphabet (44 Consonants and 22 Vowels), and have covered most of the ones we see most frequently written. This has led to us wondering the streets reading signs like kindergarten kids, much to the hilarity of the Thai’s. It’s like cracking a code….and it feels good. Very good.

I will try to sort pictures out soon to make this blog a little more visually interesting. In the meantime, love to all xx

I’m starting again as yet another reboot has begun. Hardy Hemmingway 3.0. Or is that 41.0? Can’t be sure, but the fact is I’m on another mission, and this time I mean it….. no, really….

The next nine months are dedicated to self-improvement. Physically and mentally. I am limiting myself to three paid clients and four charity projects as far as work goes (I’ll reveal all later). Other than that I shall be learning and training. Simple as that.

Having been in Thailand for quite a while now, this is the year that I get serious about the language. I’ve been learning gradually as I’ve been here (with the help of some excellent beginner lessons early on from the esteemed Cherry and Merry), but now it’s time to take it to the next level. Hannah and I had lesson 1 yesterday with the both witty and excellent Kru Gai (“NOT GAY HARDY”!) at Lingua Plus, and are on our way to earning our Educational Visas.

The Education Visa is a necessity these days for staying in Thailand long term unless you have a business, job or family here (unless you’re of a certain age with a bank full of cash, in which case you can spend a little “retirement” time here). The application process is quite simple; fill in a form with your school, provide a copy of your passport and copies of all stamped pages therein, then just attach 10 photo’s, give them to your school and await an invitation from the ministry of education. Simples.

Work and education are taken very seriously here, and all correspondence is to be considered formal. This means that while you may spend 99% of the year dicking around in tank-tops, flip-flops and shorts, you’d better wear a suit for any application photos! Hmmmmm. A suit.

Why didn’t I think of packing one?

Perhaps it’s the fairly consistent 30° heat.

Or the high humidity.

Or the fact that I’m always on a motorbike.

Maybe it’s because it isn’t the best attire for Muay Thai or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

..or swimming for that matter…

Anyway, the fact remains that I don’t possess a suit in Thailand. The closest I have is a black shirt, which has absolutely no idea what an iron looks like, and has frankly seen far better days.

It is said shirt I was wearing when I went to have my photos taken. It is the miracle of Photoshop, Thai ingenuity and healthy “We’ll get around it” attitude to ticking bureaucratic boxes, that resulted in the pictures I attach. I’ve never looked so smart. Again, REALLY. I have ACTUALLY never looked so smart. Or white. Evidently having a healthy tan isn’t best at the ministry of education. Thanks for the new skin tone guys!

Anyhoo, thought I’d get into the swing of writing again. Been meaning to all week, so much to say…gotta start somewhere! Forgive the disjointed missive, things will improve…

Right, off to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in an hour. First time training in MONTHS. I’m sure the lovely crew at Phuket Top Team will look after this old codger though. Second session of the day incidentally @GarethBowen! Dived in the pool for the first time today. Adored it!

If you’re interested in watching my fitness journey, a more detailed account is available on my (open) myfitnesspal account.

Ciao for now, oh, and nice one Scotland!

Side view - some work to do

I have taken “before” pics – they haven’t worked out great so will try and refine my photography method