Category — Fit & Healthy Blog

The day after the first day back is usually pretty bad … but I think I’m fairing pretty well.  I hate to admit it, but I have always been on-off at the gym, so I’m getting pretty experienced at what the first workout should be like and how best to avoid the next-day soreness.

I had succeeded with one exception.  I have always had trouble with tricep exercises because of my shoulder issues and so I went back to an old one I haven’t done since college … the behind the back one where you hold the weight with both hands.  Learned a lesson … make sure you stretch out the abdominal area first.  This exercise pulls on your rib cage … so, needless to say, my upper abdominal area is stiff like I did 200 crunches.

I’ll be back tomorrow for another light workout.

Made my first appearance back at the gym today.  It’s been about 2 months since I last ventured in.  Not surprisingly, nothing has changed.  The same married women is walking on a steep incline on the treadmill and the water fountain is still broken.

Myself, however, am not quite the same.  I have lost quite a few pounds and have a few new injuries that I am going to ignore (which is still the norm).  Since it has been awhile, it was a really light workout.  Still pushed out 3 sets of each exercise, but only did a 1 or 2 exercises for each body part.  Tried to do a full body workout, but missed the back somehow.  Only realized it walking back into the change room and seeing a routine posted on the bulletin board on how to build your chin-up power … looked interesting … i think i will incorporate that into my future workouts.

Finished off the session with a 15m half-cycle … lets see how I feel tomorrow.

Another one of those things that I’ve never really understood is acupuncture.  It’s considered traditional medicine, yet a large percentage of “westerners” have never experienced it.

I just happen to have a friend that is a registered physio and is now looking into acupucture.  To get licensed he needs some guinea pigs, of sorts, to practice on.  Well, 9am this morning, I became one of those.  He wanted to focus on one area, so we discussed my various aches and pains and settled on my right shoulder.  I’m not quite sure how I injured it, but my range of motion has been very limited for a number of weeks and I’ve been too lazy to see a physio.

We started off with some ROM tests to see where the pain and limited motion is located.  He then decided on two needles in the shoulder and one in the hand … kind of a weird feeling watching him place these needles in me, for which I could barely even feel the contact on my skin.

However, the 4th needle, which is part of a different technique (i’ll get the name later), was a bit painful and strange.  The idea is like deep tissue massage with the intent of breaking up a large knot in my rear-shoulder-back-area.  The feeling was very similar to electro therapy after an injury to stimulate your muscles … with an added touch of pain.  Not unbearable pain, but simply just pain.  An hour later, I can still feel the muscle that was worked on.

Stay tuned for Friday, as I go in for session Zwei.

Well its been more than 3 weeks since my last workout, with a combination of Christmas holidays and starting a new full time job I fell off the wagon…hard. I accept that failure but need to get back on track and do it fast.

I worked out again today for the first time with a colleague from work, and hopefully he will push me to keep up the habit. I am also training a split program (4 days a week with Wednesdays off and the weekends off) the whole body is worked on over a three day period. I will go into more detail of the program in tomorrow’s entry.

I had a quick weigh-in today as well and tripped the the 220 mark, so I am up a couple pounds of holiday excess, but I feel  confident that will come off pretty quick.

I was able to go into the gym today with a far better attitude, and it showed in the energy I had. Even though my bench press still remains weak at a mere 135lbs (I am used to being able to handle 225lbs for 8-10) the rest of the workout was solid.

Do numbers mean much?
Personally  I believe when it comes to weight training so long as the weight you are using (whether that be relatively light to what others are doing or what you might be used to doing) is a challenge for the reps you have to do, you will make progress. Your muscles can’t tell the difference between barely pressing 135lbs for 10 reps or 225lbs for 10 reps, all they know is that they can only press whatever weight it is for 10 reps, and then that is it. Does that make any sense?

Training calves
I miss training my calves, something I used to do just about every workout, as they are always a hard muscle group for me to develop, I think I may start adding calf raises at the end of my workout before cardio.