gym log: Tuesday

[supercheesegirl]

I rocked at the gym tonight. 30 minutes on the moving-arms elliptical, for 2.8 miles. I think an eventual goal would be to do a 10-minute mile without breaking myself. I'm getting close.

I think I am possibly weird: I was running (or at least what qualifies as running for me) while listening to VNV Nation and watching house porn on HGTV. (House #2 was so beautiful! I think I may have made little oohing noises, but I had the music turned up too loud to hear myself. Why don't I have $1,300,000 for a pretty house??) I occasionally watched a little of Alton Brown making puff pastry porn on the food network, but overall, the house porn was much more exciting. Also, I can watch house porn without the damn close captioning (unlike Jeopardy, for which close captioning is really necessary if you want to know what the answer actually was--I haven't been able to watch Jeopardy at the gym since they got the new TVs that don't have close captioning). I will have to request a channel change to HGTV when I work out from now on.

Also did all the arm weights. I'm still doing the lowest possible weight and just increasing the number of reps. I had to go to 20 reps on the one arm machine tonight to feel anything--I may have to up the weight on that one soon. I can definitely, definitely tell the difference the weights are making in terms of strength. I'm still not seeing a difference in terms of tone, which is frustrating. I want skinny arms again. Did the one thigh machine too, which I think is doing good things for me. I need strong thighs for yoga. Did my basic stretches--not a full yoga routine, but I did all my arm strength yoga moves.

Now that my arms are getting all strong, I'm going to start using my Conan icon for gym posts. It's not like I'm pushing the wheel of pain or anything, but still.

Weight after workout, including sneakers: 160. Which is about what my weight is these days.

I went to the gym on Friday 5/21 also, and did 30+ minutes on the elliptical and an hour of yoga, but the next morning I went to NYC and forgot to post about it. So that was the last time I was at the gym. I don't feel too bad about missing all this past week, because I had a wart treatment done by my podiatrist a week ago (last Tuesday) and it was really painful. Today was really the first plausible day for me to get back to the gym. I went to yoga class last Thursday and even that was really tough--had to do all my downward dogs on one foot. Which I don't mind when I'm able to switch the foot periodically, but with one gimp foot, that meant my left leg had to do all the work and I couldn't feel balanced. Meh. Better now, though. And the warts look like this time they might actually turn black and fall off. Fingers crossed.

Comments

[sleepyworm.livejournal.com]

just so you know, from my time at the gym, I learned that doing a lot of reps at a little weight is just not nearly as effective or efficient as doing fewer reps with more weight. I think you're fooling yourself if you think you can't do any more than the lowest weight. Adding one thing to the weight stack will probably be completely doable, and you'll surprise yourself if you give it a try. Doing 20 reps is just too many reps. Try using enough weight that you feel like you're going to crap out around 10 or 12 reps. Like you really have to struggle to make it through the last one. That's what you need to do to actually cause change. And, as they told me, it's silly to worry about getting "too muscley" if you use too much weight or something. That only happens when you spend 5 hours a day pumping iron.

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

But I have been seeing progress with the way I've been doing things. My arms are without a doubt a lot stronger than they were before I started lifting. But I'm not going for strength, I'm going for tone. I've read that using less weight and more reps is better for tone, and more weight with fewer reps is better for muscle.

I wouldn't mind if I looked "muscley". I'm just worried that my arms are going to keep getting bigger without looking muscley at all. I've got the floppy chicken wing upper arms going on, and that's the main reason I'm lifting. I know I can handle using more weight, but I don't want to be bulky. I'm already bulky! I want to be streamlined!

[sleepyworm.livejournal.com]

well, what I mean is that you're not going to bulk up unless you spend an inordinate amount of time and effort, more than an average person with a day job could spend. It's not something I would worry about if I were you; the "bulk" from being too muscley is very different from the "bulk" you're talking about. And I still think you should up the weight and lower the number of reps; the harder your muscles have to work, the more fat they'll burn to fuel the muscle growing process. And losing the fat around the muscles is probably what you're envisioning when you say "toning".

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that if it's taking you 20 reps to start feeling it, you should have upped the weight a while ago. It's just not going to do all that much to do a whole lot of small effort compared to a bit of great effort.

[apostrophe-esss.livejournal.com]

next time, although it is june, please use conan with the santa hat.