The Alpha Male Challenge – Week 1
John and I started the Alpha Male Challenge program this week. Although we’re both veteran gym rats, there are elements of this program that we haven’t done for a while, so it was a good change up. It also left us a bit sore, but that’s par for the course.
We continued with our usual early a.m. cardio routine for the “Play Heart” requirement. We’ll be adding in other, more “playful” activities as we go along (like using the Prowler – lol), but figured the current routine was good enough to begin with. Since he’s a corporate warrior, John was able to follow the suggestions in the book for his “Work Heart” points, but since my “office” is at home, I had to improvise. I got my points by jumping rope, doing calisthenics, and hooping at intervals throughout the day. This is stuff I often do anyway, as it helps perk me up (I can only sit in front of the computer for so long…). So, nothing really new on this front.
The weight sessions were another story, however – I haven’t done whole body workouts in a long time. The first “Wave” of the “Alpha Wave Training” emphasizes muscular endurance, so there are a lot of 20 rep sets… with only 1 minute rests between them. Needless to state, there was a certain amount of guess work involved in choosing the weights, although I pegged it pretty well. John had a tougher time with this – he frequently started too heavy, and had to lighten up as he went along.
Despite the intial fumbling around, the workouts moved along at a pretty good clip. We’re working at “Level A”, so there are 30 sets per workout. That’s a fair number of sets, but it still only took about 75 minutes (including the dynamic warmup).
One downside of the “Challenge” is that my workouts are now tied to John’s schedule, rather than my own. This means hitting the gym between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. during the week – definitely not my preferred time. But it does help to have a workout partner/spotter around for this sort of workout, so I’ll manage.
All in all, it’s a challenging workout – I was definitely feeling it at the end (hell, I’m still feeling it NOW… time to go put my feet up for the night!).
September 28, 2009
I’ll second that – it’s going to be challenging. The program has given me ideas for different exercises for my workouts in the future. I haven’t done plyometric exercises in a serious way before and it will be interesting to see what happens. The alpha attitude drills and goal setting parts have also been valuable. I’m feeling it tool.
October 4, 2009
I just got done reading the book. The workouts do take a little different approach than what I have been doing lately.
I have one week left on my current program, then will be gone a week to Kentucky. I plan on starting it the week I get back.
I will be keeping tabs on John and you’re updates to see how it’s going.