Building Core Strength-Wave of Challenges & Opportunities which Crossed My Path

I have been waiting for this day post my transformation from bulk to lean. It was functional competition at a leading health club & some of my gym buddies were also there to take part in the competition.

While going to the venue, I phoned up Kunal:

Me: Hey bro, are you coming for the event? I am really excited! Now it is time to test out stamina given that we have been regularly doing abdominal & strength workout!

Kunal: Yeah bro ! I am actually nervous about the competition.

Me: Bro, we have been workout well. Do not worry, we will be fine.

As we reached the venue, we could witness a high energy level & we were already charged up.The competition which included push-ups, weighted planks, Ber-piece, chin-ups lasted for an hour. I was able to do 60 push ups, 25 Ber-piece,1.5 minute weighted planks & 15 chin-ups. Although, I performed decently, I was way behind the winner. This made me realize that I needed to focus more on stamina & strength workout.

After this great experience, I decided to take next step forward in functional exercises & discussed this with Shaad sir:

Me: Shaad sir, this functional competition was testing time for me & I realized that I need to build more strength & stamina.

Shaad sir: Sushant ji, you have been working out well! However, in order to further augment your stamina we should increase your difficulty level.

Me: copy that Shaad sir!.

The very next day, we increased the number of sets & reps of the existing abdominal & side lateral workout.Besides, we also started next level of abs workout. The first week of this new high energy workout was really challenging time for me since weighted planks( 30kg-35kg-40kg/3 sets, 2 minutes each), half crunches & weighted leg raise(7.5 kg-10 kg-12.5 kg/3 sets, 12 reps each) made me believe that the best is yet to seen from me. However, after 2 weeks of such rigorous work-out, I started feeling satisfied with positive changes in my strength level.

But now I wanted to work more on my functional strength & check with Shaad sir if we can go to next level as I wanted to achieve supreme strength before indulging in full flow weight training.

Please stay tuned to know what I did next which really inspired lot of my gym buddies. In case anyone wants to connect to gain more insights on my functional workout journey, feel free to connect with me on sushant@thesushantkumar.com.

Originally published at thesushantkumar.com on November 19, 2018.