Last Increase & Leg Day PR!

I've decided that this past Sunday was my last increase before I do a cut starting this coming Sunday. I definitely have gotten to a level of food where my body is completely happy at, which is great news in terms of finding my maintenance. So once I'm done with my cut, I'll know a good place to reverse back to. It takes a lot of time and patience to figure this stuff out but I can't even stress how much it is worth it!  

I've decided I'll start my cut slow in order to preserve as much of my metabolism as possible. So I'm not gonna go crazy and cut 500-600 calories the first go because then it would be miserable trying to go lower than that when my weight plateaus. I've backed off on HIIT a lot the past several weeks too, which was purposeful because my main focus has been to just really try to build up some muscle. Meanwhile, my running is increasing which is great timing if I need to up my cardio. Let me just add real quick you can totally do HIIT and cardio during a reverse and still build muscle. What I meant by focusing on building muscle was simply a matter of time since my workouts are time-limited I allotted most of it to lifting. 

Basically everything is falling in to place and I'm super excited! I haven't done a cut in a longggg time, and I'm curious to see what's going to happen. I can feel my body being much more muscular compared to last fall at this time so I'd love to be able to see more of my hard work! Arm muscles are finally coming in plus I can see a slight separation starting to form between my hamstrings and glutes which is like all I've ever dreamed of haha! Well that and quads but my hamstrings are the weakest part of my leg so it's exciting to see that progress. I honestly can't wait to keep moving forward towards my goals!

Sunday morning before church, I celebrated increase day with my usual helping of oats! Not sure how that tradition started during this reverse but it's something I look forward to since I'm not able to have a nice sit-down breakfast any other day. I made hot oats with a banana sliced, tablespoon of honey roasted peanut butter, and sweetened with stevia. 

All those extra carbs on Sunday were put to good use for my Monday leg day! I still can't do squats because of my lower back, but honestly I don't miss them. This might be taboo in the #fitchick world but I'm not really about squats. People ask me how I managed to grow my quads so much and honestly squats were never the answer for me! I utilize three machines to really grow my quads: leg press (narrower foot stance to isolate quads), smith machine lunges (keep the weight on the front leg, really sink straight down without leaning forward to keep the quad contracted without bringing in the glutes too much), and leg extensions. 

For the leg extensions I do a whole variety of reps, sets, and mixing it up to make it different every week. This past week I did a set of single leg extensions for each leg then immediately cranked the weight up to do a set with both legs. Talk about a burn! So it was like a tri-set and my legs were jello after that. The same goes with the smith machine and leg press. I'm constantly pushing myself with heavier weights and/or higher reps to make sure I reach failure each time. I keep track so that I know each week how much I need to go up in weight. 

I've gotten some questions about how I know I've reached failure. This is the way I think about it: if you get to a point where another rep makes you want to cry well then you're there! Well, no, you don't actually have to cry haha! Here's a great example of reaching failure in my past workout. I was doing the leg extensions and I was shooting for 10 reps on my last set with both my legs. I actually failed at 9 like my legs dropped mid-rep, I couldn't finish out the rep. When I was at 8 and struggling I said to myself "ehh push through, shoot for 10" but that clearly didn't happen. 

I'm actually thinking about doing a separate post about lifting and muscle failure because there is debate about whether or not it's good for your body to train that way. Let me just say something really quickly but I only train to failure on certain exercises and muscle groups. Like when I used to do squats I didn't train to failure because I wouldn't want to fail mid-rep with 165 pounds chilling on my back. Even if I did have a spotter I still wasn't comfortable training that way, especially with my lower back. 

The same goes for leg press but that's because I still need to be careful with my back. So it all depends people! Listen to your body and figure out what works for you training-wise. 

BUT I was excited this week because I got a new PR! I've been extremely cautious with upping the weight too much on leg press so I've been just adding higher reps a lot rather than higher weight. Well since my back is doing excellent with cutting out squats, I can really focus on going heavy on the leg press. I told myself I would do 4 plates each side for a total of 360 pounds (some people count the weight of the sled but I don't) and I admit I was surprised at how much easier this weight felt. I really thought I would be riding the struggle bus to get out 1 rep but I got 3! And was able to do another set of 3! 

I'm going to give it another couple weeks before I try for 10 plates but in the mean time I'll be slowly adding in more weight on top of 8 to see what I'm capable of. It just goes to show our bodies can be so much stronger than we think!