Went to the doctor early today, about my bouts of vertigo the past few days. Turns out, MSG or monosodium glutamate is the culprit. I ate instant noodles all week long last week and it finally caught up to me. MSG affects the inner ear, hence affects the sense of balance.

I have recovered a bit already though. This morning was the first morning I’d woken up without feeling immediately dizzy upon sitting up from bed. I felt good enough, in fact, to work out again this afternoon.

My workout was the usual 30-minute thing with the really heavy weights and the two-sets-per-exercise, 30-second-rest-between-sets routine. I got rid of the deadlifts and exchanged it for a lateral pulldown. I also put the shoulder press as my second exercise, so I get a little bit more umph on my shoulders. What should have been 30 minutes, lasted 45 minutes though — I repped to failure on my first set on the bench press and I had to get out from under the bar and re-set the thing on our Gold’s Gym smith machine (no worries — the machine had it’s own auto-spotter). Plus, I felt a bit dizzy upon finishing that first set, so I had to rest a few more seconds before doing the next set. I’d increased weights across all exercises, though, so all in all it was still a good workout.

Tomorrow, I should be feeling up to 100% normal, so I should be able to hit the gym without the dizzy spells.

No, it isn’t some [insert favorite expletive here] aerobic or pilates or whatever kind of thing. I’m talking about weight training, to build muscle and strength.
I’d been thinking of a way I could work out during the week, even while having to go to work everyday. Just to give a brief background of my situation, I work in Makati, and I live in Project 8, Quezon City. It takes me 1 and 1/2 hours to drive to the office, making a total of three whole hours on the road each day, just going to and from work. So I spend 9 hours at the office, and three hours travelling every day. It doesn’t really leave much room for working out.

Actually you could probably squeeze in an hour of gym time either before going to work or after office hours. I know some guys who do that. However, I’m one of those people who probably think too much and find a hard time sleeping early, so finding time to rest and start heading off to sleep is at a premium for me. Also, I’m familiar enough with my mind and body to know that if I work out at night, I’d probably be too hyper to get a good night’s sleep then.

So until now, I’ve only had time to work out on weekends. I haven’t been able to figure out how to squeeze in a good workout during weekdays — until I came upon the October issue of Muscle and Fitness! They had a really great article about 30-minute workouts, and I chose to adapt my own workout to one of their training programs.

What I got now is a whole body barbell workout that incorporates really heavy weights, five exercises (six if you count the abs exercise), two sets per exercise — with the first set consisting only of six reps, while the second set has 8 reps — and 30-second rest intervals between sets and only the time it takes to set up the next exercise after each body part exercise. I tried it over the last weekend, and I’ve been able to clock in exactly 30 minutes, and that includes warm-ups at the start and cooling down at the end.

The really heavy weights involved, makes the whole workout really intense, even if it only lasts 30 minutes. Enough to make your whole body sore a few days afterwards. Using this particular training program, I can now see myself working out during the week, in addtion to working out on weekends. I’ll start trying out weekday workouts after I’ve settled in, in my new geek job.

Like I always say, there’s nothing wrong with being a smart tech geek and still being a strong and fit musclehead.