New Rules of Lifting for Women Stage 2 Recap

This is long overdue, but I wanted to throw in a quick recap for Stage 2 of the New Rules of Lifting For Women Plan.

Recap of Stage 1 can be found here.

After a very long and tiring 8 weeks of Stage 1, the short and sweet Stage 2 was a refreshing change up.

Unlike Stage 1, Stage 2 was a quick and dirty plan consisting of only 4 sets of each workout, instead of the previous 8. Each set was a little more challenging with longer workouts (9 workouts opposed to 5), harder moves (dumbbell prone cuban snatch, anyone?), consistent reps (2 sets of 10 reps down the line), and longer rests (75 seconds down the line).

Even with all that, I prefer Stage 2 to Stage 1 in a heartbeat.

Weights

*Note I only included the stats for the workouts that required an increase in weight. Push-ups and crunches were left out of the final numbers.

Stage 2 didn’t feel as if there was enough time to increase weight increments too much, but even a slight raise in numbers over the 4 weeks makes me happy. Any major increases above can probably be traced back to starting out too light – a bad habit I see that I do.

What I liked most was that Stage 2 wasn’t long enough for me to become terribly comfortable with it. It was just enough for me to get the slightest hang of it before moving on. My body grows bored very quickly of the weight room and prefers to be constantly challenged in new ways. Shorter plans allow me to constantly change it up.

Stage 2 felt like it was very core focused. My abs hurt after the first day with the ‘cable hoizontal chop’ found in workout A and the swiss ball/ reverse crunch/ lateral flexion combo in B required a good amount of mat time. I became very comfortable with the ebb and flow of it all.

The only thing I wasn’t a fan of in Stage 2 was the 75 second rests between each rep. I tried really hard to stick with that, but when it came to the time spent on the mat, I felt like I was just twiddling my thumbs. I had to remind myself to step back and relax. Strength training isn’t about how fast you get through the routine and those rests are built in for a reason. I kept thinking back to the book when the author said you would still get a workout speeding through the sets, but it won’t be the same workout and it probably won’t be the one you want. Thinking of that forced me to stick with the rest times as much as I could stand.

Measurements

No big changes this stage, just a tiny bit here and there. Nothing is getting crazy bigger, so I’ll take that as a good sign.

Photos

End of Stage 2 Photos: 8/22/11

Wow. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to see a vast improvement in the photos, but having them go down the page like that, I definitely see a difference. Especially in my back. Everything just looks…smoother.

I also feel like the little pouch in my stomach has gone down some. Now, I’m DEFINITELY motivated to kick it into high gear with Stage 3!

Tagged as: New Rules of Lifting for Women, Training