Remedial Training - Day Six
On Thursday, we learnt about this thing called Overloading. It's a phase in the training where you purposefully overwork your muscles - stressing it beyond it's usual level. The planned pushing of training limits supposedly will help to increase your improvements. Key is planned and also knowing your limits.
We started the RT with a dose of Smallvile. Yeah the story of young Superman going ga-ga over his love/ex-love/might-be love etc. Before we can really see the end of the show, the lecture started on how we go about doing our training and the different phases of training. Blah blah blah...we learnt about overloading and stuff while I struggled to keep awake.
Anyway, skipped back half an hour. While doing in-processing, I met one of my platoon guys back in NS. Surprised to see him after all these years and also not surprise to see him in RT. Even not surprising to know that it was standing board jump, which was his Achilles heel back in NS, that bugged him till now. Anyway, always nice to see a friendly face amongst hundreds of sweaty men.
Back to training. We had the usual warm-ups, jumping jacks and push-ups before we were all herded into the gym. Yes! After five sessions I finally get to enjoy the coolness of the aircon. The closest I ever got to the gym after the first day's orientation, was when I walked in to go for in-pro or while running 2.4km past the gym.
That evening, the objective of the training was to do weights to train for pull-ups and standing board jumps. We started with doing bicep curls with our free weights - i was left with a pair of 3 kg ones - to my joy. But after doing a few reps of it, we were told to pair up and use the 5kg pairs. Each one is supposed to start off with 20 counts of curls, before handing over to the partner to repeat. Then it was 19 counts, followed by 18...and so forth. By 15 counts, my left bicep was curling up in pain...I realised my left arm is very much weaker than the right. And since both arms were weak to start with, it wasn't a good sign when I fail to bring the 5kg up with my left arm.
Anyway, from 15, we jumped to 10...9, 8...till 5 before we stopped. Overloading. Very, very much over.
Next we lift both weights above our weights up and down for a couple of repetitions. By then, the arms, especially my biceps are slowly stiffing up in anger. It's like the false pretence of having strong bulging muscles. Just that they hurt as well. Didn't know 5kg can be such a pain.
Next we did the forward lunge with either 10 or 12.5kg on each hand. Since I'm more to the heavier side, I was deemed strong enough for the 12.5kg. So with an additional 25kg, it wasn't that easy doing the forward lunge, the extra weights putting strain on my thighs and ankles.
Before we know it, the gym session was over. No running this week. So to make up for it, I walked back home from Bedok Camp. It wasn't long but good nice walk instead of bugging my parents to pick me. Yeah, I did that before...I was hungry, and tired...
Anyway, one more session tomorrow before Thursday's IPPT test, which I can safely declare myself - Fail. My biceps still hurt. I think I flexed too much yesterday while trying to show Yann the effects of the exercises. That's what Overloading can do to you if you don't know your limits...and also don't try flexing them. It's pointless, and painful.