So my January was going OK exercise wise, with the late starts at work, the longer day light hours and just the general good feeling that summer give I was going well. Marine Fit, Navy Seal workout, a hill run with a 291m vertical climb and I even blew the dust off my dumbbells.

Then with the beginning of term looming work turn to complete chaos and I was finding all sorts of excuses, the main one being that I was just too tired. I skipped day after day on that excuse but when I did make it out for a run I noticed something really odd, I was going faster and faster. I haven’t run anything further than 6.5km since February 2011, instead preferring to focus on getting a decent cardio workout to combine with some form of resistance training, usually callisthenics.

I had a good run last Saturday and thought that I’d gotten through my flat spot, only to find myself skipping Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. By Thursday I’d decided enough was enough and threw my running gear into a bag and took it to work so that I could run at lunch time.

I decided to combine Thursday’s run with a workout I found in the January 2012 issue of Australian Men’s Health. It’s pretty simple, four exercises, no rest in between and six rounds starting with six reps of each and dropping a rep each round until the final round is just one rep. The four exercises are Hindu push ups, assisted chin ups, inverted shoulder press and upright power row.

The article in Men’s Health mentions that if you get through the full six rounds in less than 15 minutes to add an extra round next time starting at seven and if you can complete eight rounds in less than 15 minutes, according to MMA trainer Chad Waterbury you’re “ready to rumble”.

I finished six rounds in just over 9:30 so resolved to start at seven next time around. On Friday I ran a new personal best for both the 5km and the mile, shaving 0:44 off my previous best for the 5km. I think I set that PB when my Nike+ was misconfigured too, when I first used it, it added roughly 20% on to my distances but this time I know I did that 5km in 23:00.

Not content with that PB, I then sat down and powered through Hard Corps Abs from Marine Fit. Two of school’s gun rowers were impressed with my core strength too as I busted out the atomic sit ups, one of the most painful exercises known to man I’m sure.

Today I put in another good run of 5.5km (23:43 for the 5km too) followed by the Men’s Health MMA workout again. This time I got through seven rounds in 12:09, somehow I think eight rounds in under 15 minutes is a realistic goal for next week.

I also jumped on the scales at work and found I’m a little heavier than I thought, coming in at 80kg although I did have shoes on. Therefore I have around 10kg to drop but I think it’s a realistic goal. I’m still 22kg down on the heaviest I ever weighed.

And my final word of warning to those out there, it takes a lot of hard work to get that extra weight off. Most of that weight loss came from training for half marathons when I was putting in 30-50km a week, and take it from me, that’s very hard work, hard enough that I think twice before I bite into a Big Mac.

So I’ve changed my plan a little bit with regards to my exercise. The old plan of alternating between MarineFit and Navy Seal six days a week was a good one but it lacked one important factor: It just wasn’t fun. The problem with that is that if it’s not fun I’m likely to start finding excuses to not do it so time for a change.

I’ve decided to go back to my old reliable method: running. I enjoy running, it’s a good way to stay in shape and requires not additional equipment, especially since I got a new pair of running shorts and a new pair of socks for Christmas from my wife.

I’ve also decided not to really push the envelope with distances, wallowing in the shallows of 5-8km runs and supplementing it with weight training once I’ve built up a decent level of running fitness.

Yesterday I managed a really good 6.5 km run at lunch time with a good time and felt almost perfect the whole way around. Almost because I managed to roll my ankle on some uneven ground around the 1km mark, thanks earthquakes!

Thanks to that little hiccup I had to give myself today off running because the ankle doesn’t feel quite right. It’s not particularly painful, more stiff than anything but I know running on it will slow down the healing process and I’d rather avoid that.

So lately I’ve noticed that my workout routine has been anything but routine. In fact, my schedule has been all over the place with a laundry list of excuses. “I’m too tired”, “Don’t have time”, “Gotta cook dinner”, or the old classic, “I’ll do it later”.

Starting now, I’m back to my alternating regime of weights one day, cardio the next. I managed to get in a run last week, something I really enjoyed and hope to do more of. Not quite sure how I’m going to balance slow cardio with HIIT training yet, but I’ll figure something out.

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that I’ve lost a little bit of muscle tone. When I was working out every day last month my arms were noticeably firm, while they’re by no means soft, they’ve certainly gone backwards in a month. And that’s something that only hard work can fix.

So I’ve been doing largely the same routine with weights for over six weeks, so it’s time to change it up. After six weeks your muscles adapt to the movements you put them through and it’s when you are likely to hit a plateau, both in terms of fat loss and muscle gain.

I’ve been steadily increasing the amount of weight I use and am currently at 9kg on each dumbbell, but I’ve changed almost every exercise in my routine to avoid the plateau. With my calf healed up too, I’ve included some lower body moves and added in some compound moves as well.

• Lunging squat to military press – replaces flat chest press
• Kettlebell swing (12kg kettlebell) – replaces knee ups and back extensions
• Squat to bicep curl – replaces/supplements bicep curls
• Tricep kick back (2.5kg dumbbell) – replaces overhead tricep extension
• Upright row – only unchanged exercise, suggestions welcomed
• Reverse dumbbell flies (2.5kg dumbbell) – replaces bent over row
• Wrist extensions (2.5kg dumbbell) – new exercise

Overall I’m enjoying the new routine, it makes for a good change and with the compound movements, I work a lot of major muscle groups at the same time. I’m going to stick to this one every other day for the next six weeks, although I may replace the upright row with something else.

In terms of the way I look, I am now quite happy with how my arms and shoulders look, but my chest and stomach need a little more work. Actually, they don’t need that much work as I can feel there is some good muscle mass there, there’s just a layer of fat covering them that I need to burn off.

Surprisingly, rugby season isn’t that far around the corner so I’ll need to build a bit of an anaerobic base for that but I’m confident I’ll be in the best shape I’ve ever been in for a rugby season, hopefully that will help with my decision making on the field.

I’ve been a bit slack with my workouts this week just gone, mostly due to the fact that work’s been crazy and I just couldn’t find the motivation to workout after a hard day. It looks like that’s settled down now, so I can’t wait to get stuck in again this week.

One of the most effective methods of training it to keep your body guessing, so today I changed up my cardio regime to an activity I haven’t done in over eight months: swimming.

My lovely wife gave me a new pair of togs for christmas so it seemed a good idea to try them out too.

When I used to swim, I would do 400m and often felt dreadful afterwards. Clearly I’m in better shape than I used to be because today I did 500m without too much trouble. In fact I would have gone further had it not been for aching triceps and lats.

Tomorrow I’m back on the weights, have added an extra kg to them and feel like I’m maybe a week away from adding another.

After my calf improved to the point where I could work out again, I set myself the goal of working out every day until Christmas. My routine took a little tweaking and did at one stage require a day off due to over training, but I made it.

The object of the exercise was to prove to myself that I could do it. When I was only running, I couldn’t run every day, I needed at least one day off in between to allow my joints a chance to recover. By mixing cardio with weights, I can allow my muscles to recover from weights while doing cardio, and allow my joints to recover from cardio while doing weights.

I’m still not back running yet, my physio tells me I’m about a week away from that, but I’ve been doing Tabata boxing sessions for my HIIT training, and cycling for my steady state cardio.

Very generously, I’m giving myself Christmas Day off working out, but after that it’s every day until New Year. Haven’t had a drink in four weeks tomorrow, and don’t intend to have anything until New Year’s Eve.

No matter how well you prepare for something, it’s often something simple that will come unstuck for you. That’s what happened to me on Saturday afternoon.

Mum rang me up and asked if I was going for a bike ride, I told her that I was and we decided to go together. Since it was bright sunlight and very hot, I put on plenty of sunscreen. The ride itself was great fun, chatting away to Mum and riding for over two hours.

It wasn’t until after the ride I realized the mistake I’d made, you see I’d put on my sunscreen standing up and when wearing cycle shorts, they tend to ride up just a little when you sit down and peddle. Turns out it exposed about 2cm of skin that didn’t have any sunscreen, so I had some very nice burn marks on my legs.

The next simple thing that got me was today during my boxing session. As I was pounding away during a 20 second high intensity interval, the bag suddenly fell you the ground, leaving me a bit stunned as to what just happened. Turns out the hook the bag hangs from had sheared in half, looks like I hit a little harder than I thought.

Popped out and picked up a new, and stronger hook and rehung the bag tonight, hopefully it stays put better than the last one.

In terms of how my workouts have been going, I’ve been quite enjoying them, although my weights sessions either feel really good or make me feel like I’m going to die, but I think I’ve already built up a little extra muscle mass and I’ve gone in one more hole on my belt.