Testing What Happens If You Stop Exercising for 4 MONTHS

This week in the gym – Next week cardio and when that video is live it will be linked right here: (Not yet!)

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[Music] the plan is simple it has been over four months since I trained properly so I’m going to test my cardio and my strength and see how much Fitness I’ve lost by the summer I need to be back in Peak condition but it’s be interesting to see how far from that I am right now and at this stage can I even remember where the gym is well it wasn’t down there going to be doing 10 tests or challenges and many of these are things that I’ve done in the past so I’m going to have a pretty good idea as to whether or not I have fallen behind going to break them down roughly into five that are cardio based that’ll be the next week’s video and today five that are more strength and power based it’s been so long since I’ve been here I can’t remember the code to my padlock right first one is something that I was pretty rubbish at before so good just knows how bad it’s going to be now as somebody 6’6 and way over2 200 when it comes to the gym and the bench press in particular I’m a pretty good runner I have never been particularly strong relative to my size and only really tested my one rep max on the bench press once before a couple of years ago in this video 80 goes up very very easily 90 is a bit more of a struggle but it goes up as does 95 just having done 95 I then try the 100 kilos so 95 kilos will be needed to match my previous best which on paper doesn’t sound that much and actually when 70 went up this smoothly I had images of discovering that my strength had hung around while I ate junk food for months on end but then I try 80 kilos and realize that I may be now very close to my limit all of a sudden there is no way on Earth I’m going to get 90 so I hunt around for the smallest weights known to man and go for 85 [Music] and that is not happening so bench press down from 95 kilos to 80 that’s roughly 15% reduction and at least it can’t get any worse you’d [Music] think pull-ups if bench press demonstrated that I’m now weaker this is going to demonstrate I am now also heavier even at my fittest the combination of ridiculously long arms and a high body weight just combined make pull-ups tough I’ve never got more than 10 and typically when working out we do a few sets to failure reps probably around eight at best here I warm up for a couple of reps with an elastic band and already can tell I’m not getting eight or seven or [Music] six so that’s one that’s 1 and 3/4 man there’ll be no more reps today that’s about an 85% % reduction in pull-up ability at this point I’m wondering why I even bothered to film any of this my hope is that much like a perhaps slightly larger person confidently wearing a bikini on the beach I’ll be told that I’m brave and inspirational for showcasing an aspect of me that some may regard as suboptimal so just remember people in the comments let’s just be nice to one another and if nothing else I’m better than my wife she is absolutely rubbish at pull-ups she’s fine on the beach so dips the next and if you’re now thinking the barrier to entry for a couple to become Fitness YouTubers appears to be quite low I know isn’t it so these are interesting I used to be better at them than pull-ups despite it obviously being a body weight thing still in fact I used to add five or 10 kilos and still be able to get reps of eight I would hit 10 with just body weight very easily I’ve never tested it but I’m going to estimate my previous maximum reps at a conservative 12 I’m calling that a not particularly solid four roughly a 65% reduction what was that okay got two more tests to do going to go and do those at home was going to do them here but uh started getting recognized in the gym and bearing in mind how embarrassing the whole thing was I don’t want to be here anymore the gym this morning was horrible I am genuinely quite surprised I was as useless as I was I’m not sure if I am now left excited with the huge amount of work that is to come or terrified about the huge amount of work that is to come in case you’re wondering why you’re not doing squats and deadlifts two reasons historically never really did them I’ve got no idea what a maximum squat would be ever um I did do deadlifts once to one rep max I think I got around 200 kilos so close to 450 maybe but I didn’t routinely do them so I wouldn’t I wouldn’t know what I was testing against the other issue is that part of the reason I’ve been off for so long is my back has been an absolute Nightmare and if I do crazy heavy squats crazy heavy deadlifts my back will crumble into pieces right what am I doing on the bike I was going through my old videos looking for bike stuff I’d done in the past to work out what I could do on it for measuring my cardio Fitness which is coming in the next video and while doing that I came across a video that I made when I very first got the bike where just for a bit of fun I tried to see what maximum wattage I could hit just for a fraction of a second and I got over 1500 watts 1523 I’ve got the target of 1500 watts done with zero cycling experience I now have lots of cycling experience relatively speaking but zero Fitness what does that equal in wattage okay going to go for it recording on the Wahoo app uh oh do my shoes up oh I can’t get off it for God’s sakes th9 90 okay I don’t know I can go any faster than that go try for 1100 Watts that sucks that sucks 1086 it’s worse Jo I think that might be apart from the cycle ride I did around the V Drome that didn’t go very well that horrible stupid horrible that might be the only thing I’ve done flat out in the last 4 months so maximum Sprint down from 1,523 to 1,090 that’s about 30% reduction I have to admit I thought I might just have some sort of natural retain cycling ability that would burst through there but I didn’t 500 met concept 2 row it’s going to take me in theory around 1 and a half minutes so it’s the the longest of all these challenges in fact it was almost one that I thought I’d stick in the next lot the cardio stuff but it does rely on being strong and powerful that short 500 met distance in a way that some of the longest stuff that I’ll be doing on here doesn’t I’m not a rower I’ve never done a huge amount of rowing but the rowing I have done I’ve always been okay because I’ve been tall and fit that’s about it right now I’m still tall so if you ever wondered what would happen if you took a one trick pony and removed his ability to do that one trick you’re about to find out I went back through my old videos and found me competing against my kid in a 500 meter Road Challenge from a couple of years ago I may have gotten a bit quicker than that by last year but the result then is good enough to use as a marker here 1 minute 24 seconds got him oh if you have any useful comments about my rowing technique uh just type them into the comments of someone else’s video my main concern here was wrecking my back actually my main concern was looking useless my secondary concern was wrecking my back so I went out at around about a 139 split and held that for the first 100 m felt okay so picked it up for the second 100 m to a 134 split and then held that for the third 100 m and then ran out of everything consequently the fourth 100 m was a 137 split and couldn’t even hold it below 140 for the final thing that was a 143 for that 100 m gives me an overall Time 1 minute 37 seconds for 500 M about 16% longer than my previous fastest time when you are when I am eating all of that junk food for months the burgers and the burgers it’s mostly just Burgers you’re telling yourself as you sat on the sofa watching Netflix that it is so pleasurable to be doing that that any lost Fitness that results from that behavior will be worth it and then you get to this point and you measure that lost Fitness and you realize I mean it’s worth it their burgers are amazing it’s definitely worth it but you do lose a lot of Fitness cardio going to check that next next video next video next week unless you’re watching this video in the future in which case that video might have already happened in which case it will be linked in the description there’s also a link there to our patreon Channel and a huge thanks to all the people over there who allow us to make these videos the way we enjoy doing them without stopping halfway through the Fogg you somebody else’s stuff and if you have any questions about how I intend to get my fitness back then drop those in the comments section and obviously if you want to do nothing more than just tell me I am brave and inspiring stick that down there as well I’ll probably assume you’re being patronizing but put it anyway [Music] me