I went to the gym last Wednesday and did the hanging abs thing (officially called the Vertical Knee Raise, I've learned) after 40 minutes on the bike (burning 313 calories). Then I went again on Saturday morning and again did 40 minutes on the bike, burning still more calories, and I did the VKR and some other muscle work -- I did three sets of chest presses and one set of shoulder raises. Shoulder raises are always so depressing because even on the lowest weight setting I can barely do a dozen! Yesterday I felt pretty good after the arm work, just some slight tenderness in my right tricep. Today I can barely move my LEFT arm! That is, if I contract it to below 90 degrees, or if I try to raise it above my shoulder, it gets painful. Ugh.
This afternoon I'm going back to the gym. This was to have been our first visit using childcare, so Daniel and I could have worked out together, but Cecilia has been running a low fever for almost 24 hours so I had to cancel the childcare and Daniel and I will switch off. I cancelled twice last week because we decided the times we'd signed up for were too late to be practical (but they'd been the only ones available). So I'm sure the childcare people think we're completely flaky, and they haven't even met us yet. This is not a good start!
Anyway, I did meet my goal of exercising three times in the week. Food has been another matter -- I haven't set any goals, but whatever they might have been, I've failed on them. My weight so far seems to be going up. The only promising sign right now is that last Friday my jeans were decidedly more comfortable, though since then they haven't been better so I'm starting to think it was wishful thinking. Or maybe my normal intestinal issues went away inexplicably for just one day. Bleah.
Weigh-in tomorrow will not be good -- but at least I'm exercising, so I don't need to feel totally depsondent!
2 comments:
Emily, if you haven't met with a trainer yet you really should... You want to make sure your form is right to avoid permanent damage. While you WILL feel sore after a good resistance workout, it shouldn't stop your normal range of motion! You also don't want to over work the muscles. I have the same issues with the shoulder presses - the machine's lighest weight is still too heavy to do a full set. My trainer said stop when you can't do anymore - or do the exercise using free weights. You can usually pick up a 3 to 5 pound weight and do the same motion for the same workout.
There are two free personal training sessions (orientation to the equipment) for this gym so I'm planning to take those. These are machines I was trained on at the Y ten years ago but my ability level is probably completely different so I really need someone to help me calibrate the weights. I'm not worried about form, just that I'm overdoing it. Or possibly underdoing it in other muscle groups.
With free weights, my form IS terrible. I tried them several times at the last gym, and I never felt like I was working the right muscles, and I couldn't seem to isolate a muscle group the way I can on the Nautilus-type machines.
Just for the record, though, I didn't lose normal movement -- that's just where it REALLY felt sore. It's weird that it didn't show up until 48 hours later! Today it is better (it felt great during the cardio workout yesterday) but not completely healed, so by tomorrow it should be fine.
Post a Comment