On Monday Ped was on a cover shoot out of London so we were unable to train. He did do some intervals over the weekend on his own though, so I was actually glad to give him an extra day of rest.

We were joined by Paul, the Men’s Fitness videographer, at our session. For this reason we trained at Fitness First UK, as the larger space and more natural light makes shooting easier. However, I’d planned to use Fitness First later in the week as it has a couple of leg machines not available at NKD Ambition. We therefore switched our training week around and did legs instead of upper body.

Unfortunately Ped’s hip was quite painful from the start. As I’ve explained in previous posts, it’s an old injury site that needed an operation and therefore I believe that after 8weeks of volume and weight being put through it has started to inflame and become niggly. For this reason we actually had to conclude that this would be our last leg session of the transformation that we would use squats, leg press, split squats, deadlifts etc. Anything that directly loads the hip will be avoided.

For this session, we pushed through, changing a couple of exercises and certainly lowering the weights.

The session looked like:

Warm-up/mobility

1. Ergo Intervals 15on/15off x 4, 30on/15off x 3sets
2. Supersets
   1. Squats 62.5kg 8reps x 4sets
   2. Fronts 32kg 10reps x 4sets
3. Supersets (one leg both sets, then the other leg both sets with 30secs between legs for rest)
   1. Single leg press 30kg 8reps x 3sets
   2. Split squat bw 10reps, 10kg 10reps x 2 sets
4. Supersets
   1. Leg curl 25kg 12reps, 30kg 10reps x 2sets
   2. Leg ext 45kg 12reps, 50kg 10reps x 2sets
5. Complexes (x 2 sets)
   1. Farmers walk 48kg 20metres
      Sit-ups 10reps
      Toes to sky (hip raises) 10reps
      Plank 20secs
   2. Farmers walk 48kg 40metres
      Sit-ups 10reps
      Toes to sky (hip raises) 10reps
      Plank 20secs

Ped coped well despite the hip. The rower he found tough, the short sprints with short rest into a longer sprint left him very out of breath as expected. The good thing was his recovery time ready to start the squats is hugely improved from our opening intervals sessions.

We worked with Ped’s pain and didn’t increase it at all, hence the lower weights. As expected, the leg curl and leg ext didn’t cause any pain. We will therefore base any future leg sessions around this type of movement.