Category Archives: Strength Training

Not Giving It My All

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Lee | 12 Comments

This is the last week of boot camp. I think that when you do an online program like this and there is no one literally there to push you, it’s much, much harder to push yourself. At least it is for me. For the past 8 weeks, I’ve done a large majority of the workouts. But like I’ve said before, I haven’t really given it my all. I’ve lifted lighter than I probably could, I’ve walked Murphy as my daily cardio, I’ve skipped core work. I’m totally aware that I’m only going to get out of this as much as I put in.

However, it’s just really, really time-consuming sometimes and I wonder how much I really want it. Tonight, for example, I did what was supposed to be Workout C plus a “short mountain”. The short mountain is basically 20 minutes of cardio plus a 5 minute warmup and cooldown. Workout C was as circuit workout comprised of 6 exercises, done 5 times. That took 45 minutes. By the time I was finished, it was 7. I still had a 25 minute commute home from the gym (it’s near my office) and Murphy would need to be walked too. If I’d done the additional 30 minutes of cardio, I wouldn’t have sat down to dinner until at least 8:30 after walking Murphy and showering. That’s just too late. So again, I opted to count my 20 minute walk as cardio, which I guess it is in a way, but I’m definitely not getting my heart rate up, that’s for sure, especially with Murphy’s incessant stopping and sniffing (and marking).

I’m not quite sure what my point is here, but I’m frustrated, I guess. Mostly at myself for not seizing this opportunity as well as I could have. Maybe an in-person trainer would work better for me. Someone who could actually push me right then and there. I wish it could be Tina but even though we both live in metro Atlanta, we’re about 45 minutes from one another. Metro Atlanta is really spread out!

I have a really fun weekend planned, so I’m not going to dwell on this anymore. Just need to get through Friday. Maybe I’ll do the short mountain workout at lunch.

Sorry, no pictures. I actually looked through iPhoto to see if I had something relevant, but I got nada.

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Posted in Strength Training, The Gym

Tagged bootcamp

A New Plan

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Lee | 14 Comments

I’ve come to realize this about myself, while I have decent running endurance, I don’t think I’m really in good shape in general. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not in bad shape, but although I workout regularly, I don’t really challenge myself especially when I don’t have a set plan.

Enter set plan:

Last time Tina did her online bootcamp, I was in the middle of half-marathon training and I knew that if I signed up, I wouldn’t stick with it. The second round, however, started at a perfect time: today!

The first workout consisted of two chest exercises, supersetted (Is that a word? We’ll pretend it is.), two back exercises, supersetted and two shoulder exercises, supersetted. After that, we were to do a five minute cardio warmup, ten minutes of 60 second intervals and five minutes of cool down. For my warmup and cool-downs, I walked on the treadmill at 3.5. For my intervals, I did 7.2 mph for the hard part and 5.2 mph for the recovery.

Bootcamp day1

Ass successfully kicked. I can’t even bother to smile for the camera. I don’t know why I don’t push myself as hard when I’m not following a plan, but I don’t, so this is going to be really good for me, I hope.

It took about 45 minutes, so I got home around 7:30 and by the time I took Murphy for a walk, it was 8. Fortunately, I made dinner last night and had leftovers for tonight.

Impasta salad

This was Thai Zucchini Impasta Salad. It was really good but took forever to cut all the veggies. My hands were seriously starting to prune by the time I was done. I could just have sub-par knife skills though, who knows. Definitely something to prepare on the weekends, which I did, and eat leftovers during the week.

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Posted in Strength Training, The Gym, Vegetarian Meal

Tagged bootcamp

Lifting Lighter?

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Lee | 17 Comments

Sometimes when I go to the gym, I’ll be in a weight room full of guys and it’s happened on more than one occasion that someone has tried to help me by correcting my form. It’s annoying more than anything, but after I hurt my back, I realized that maybe they’re right.

Whenever I read magazines and blogs and articles about weightlifting, the general theme is always to lift heavier. There are so many articles out there that talk about how women are afraid to lift heavy because they are afraid to bulk up but the whole light weight, high rep thing really isn’t working for them. I believe that, I do. But I think what happened was that I was lifting too heavy and compromising my form by doing so and that’s how I hurt myself.

Now I can’t prove for sure that it was deadlifts that did me in, but I kind of think they’re suspect. I’m not a particularly strong person. I have a hard time putting on muscle. My parents aren’t particularly muscular either. It’s just the way that I’m built. That’s not to say that I can’t put on muscle, but naturally, I’m just not a muscular person.

So I think that when I hear of people lifting a certain amount of weight, I think that I should be lifting that heavy too. It’s not a case of comparison; it’s more like, if I’m not lifting that heavy, am I wasting my time? But when I injure myself doing it and can’t work out for two weeks, that’s really when my time is being wasted, right?

This is really just a long winded way of saying that now that I feel better, I think I’m going to focus more on having correct form and using lighter weights than swinging things around like a fool using heavier ones.

Muscle