Monday, July 22, 2013

Ramadhan, Training and the Butt Conundrum

As I'm writing this, I'm already half way through my 13th day of  fasting.

Training wise, things are going along fine.  I have hit a plateau in certain lifts, but to be honest I think it's more to do with my ability to digest food than my true strength level.  What the heck do I mean by that, exactly?

During this fasting month, I have made it a practice to eat light first (light is pretty much a few pieces of bread with eggs/corned beef or a few pieces of kuih) then perform my Maghrib prayers and then start training. This is usually around 8.30pm.  So I actually have more or less a 45-minute window to let the food settle in my stomach.

Sometimes this works well.  Other times I feel like I'd start regurgitating what I've eaten earlier.  So during times when my stomach feels a little weird more often than not my lifts start to suffer a bit.

But overall, progress has been okay.

***

My quest to re-inflate my deflated butt has had its ups and downs.  So determined was I to improve the state of my glutes that I read a lot of articles posted by Bret Contreras (the Glute Guy, as he is known) on glute development and activation and even bought one of his e-books to satiate the nerdier side of me.

So far I have been including barbell glute bridges on leg days and have faithfully performed Jason Ferruggia-prescribed bodyweight buttsercises daily but with a single modification.  The original prescription was this:

Glute bridges 4 x 25
Clam shells 4 x 25
Bird/Dog 4 x 25
Lying side abduction 4 x 25

I discovered performing donkey kicks (see vid below) activates my glutes much better than performing Bird/Dogs.  So I switched.  So far I can see some slight improvements on my butt and I am pretty encouraged because I've only been seriously sticking to this regiment for a couple of weeks.  Hopefully the state of glutes would improve soon.



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