Okay, so I took another look at RC's program ...

and decided, nope, not for me. Rachel C0sgrove may've gotten great results with it, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't do much for me. Alternating two workouts for four weeks, without changing exercises, volume, or rest periods in that time ... nope. I'm actually sort of surprised it worked for Rachel, to be honest, although maybe it had been so long since she'd done any real resistance training that her body would've responded to just about anything involving actual weights.

Anyhoo, I went rummaging around my computer and came up with a nifty little dumbbell complex workout that I downloaded a while ago. It's a 6 week program, with three different workouts meant to be done on nonconsecutive days, and what I like about it is that it incorporates undulating periodization, meaning that Day 1 is always a low volume heavy weight long rest day, Day 2 is always a medium volume medium weight medium rest day, and Day 3 is always a high volume light weight short rest day. Each week the set/rest/rep scheme varies, so that for instance on Day 1 this week I did 5 sets, 4 reps, with 90 seconds rest between sets, while next week I will do 6 sets, 3 reps.

Each complex is meant to be followed up with 10 minutes of HIIT, but the work to rest ratio varies each workout so that some days are more intense than others. Today, for instance, I was supposed to perform 15 seconds of very high intensity exercise followed by 45 seconds of recovery. Next time the ratio is 25 seconds of moderately high intensity exercise followed by 35 seconds of recovery, and the time after that, 20 seconds of high intensity followed by 40 seconds of low intensity. This is the thing I may play with. For instance, today I did ten minutes of a fitness girl workout (2 rockets, 2 star jumps 2 tuck jumps, rest 15 sec, repeat 3x; 15 squat jumps/20 mountain climbers; 10 split jumps each side/20 mountain climbers; 10 straddle jumps with 5 seconds to reset between each jump; go back to the beginning and repeat until 10 minutes are up) It was sort of fun. I did it in my stocking feet and really tried to point my toes on the jumps for the prettiest possible line.

Thing is, with complexes even on "heavy day" you really can't go all that heavy because, face it, even when the complex consists of only 4 exercises and you're only doing 4 reps, that's still a 16 rep set. So I'm thinking I could do this program and then on alternate days do Resolution, which is all about going heavyheavyheavy.

Well, maybe. We'll see.

I'm so funny ... a couple weeks ago I was all "I wanna get strong and who cares what I look like," and now I'm more "Hmmm, this is looking a bit soft, maybe I need to tighten up my diet and add a couple more HIIT sessions."