Tag Archives: gym

Tales of Trauma from the Treadmill

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It is a rare occurrence, a morning like this. My alarm goes off at 5am and I. Am. Ready. I am ready to hit the gym, ready for the day. It is going to be a good day, I just know it.

I throw my feet over the side of the bed and reach for my workout clothes. I efficiently perform the bodily contortion known as “putting on a sports bra.” Speedily I don the rest of my gym wear, grab my water bottle and head out. (picture source)

Bestie and I walk in to the gym together. It is like one of those movie scenes where the cool group walks in slo-mo. We should be in slo-mo. We have arrived.

Just thinking of all those people still snoozing makes me feel even more superior as we place our water in the holders on the treadmill and get situated.

Earbuds in, music up, C25K app on. I’m in the groove now and everyone wants to be me. Look at me running, look at my stride, my even breathing. I turn to the side to say something to bestie about what was on the TV.

SCREEEEEEEEEETCH

The side of my sneaker slides off the belt of the treadmill. Half on and half off, it literally makes that noise when a needle slides across the record and all the action stops, while I gasp and grab clumsily for a handhold. BOOM BOOM BOOM my feet clunk as I try to catch my balance and my stride again. Passerbys stare.

The rest of the day I am back to my usual non-cool, non-superior-feeling non-slo-mo self.

Fake Arms ’til you Make Arms?

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This morning I was so proud of myself for doing 12 reps at 50lbs on the triceps extension machine. What I’m finding with the weights is that am actually capable of lifting more weight than I think I can, but 50 was a pretty big accomplishment. And this is good, because my arms? They need work.

While I’ve always been heavy (well since about 6th grade), I’ve been blessed with the luck to be fairly well proportioned. I carry the extra weight evenly distributed throughout my body, and I’m a fairly good height (5’6). I go straight up and down the same width the whole way, pretty much. But ugh, my upper arms, I do hate them. I know I shouldn’t hate any part of my body, but these upper arms are the bane of my existence.  I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve had to not buy clothes that would fit otherwise, but my arms wouldn’t. That makes LoLo a sad bunny.

So while I know that one can’t pick a specific spot on their body and work towards losing weight in that one area, I think (am I right?) that if I work on toning the muscles in that area, the rest will come eventually. Holy Hannah I hope so.  I don’t do a specific arm workout in my regimen, but when I’m doing the weight circuit I really focus on trying to be able to build up to more weight on the arm machines.

My goals here? To be able to un-self-consciously wear tank tops, especially to line dancing. I’ve braved it a couple of times but thought about what I looked like the whole night, and that’s not doing me any good, or letting me have any fun.

It feels like my upper arm area might be the last to see improvement, simply because they have the farthest to go. But I can report that I now have itty bitty guns, I know they weren’t there before. I guess I should take measurements now so I can see any improvement, but I really don’t want to.

Do you keep track of your measurements other than your weight? What areas are you working hard on to see improvement?

Faking it: The Schedule

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Source http://www.flickr.com/photos/vm1757/

I had a gym membership at Planet Fitness for a year before I set foot in the door.  I really don’t know why.  It was easy to put it off for a few days after signing up, and then the longer it went the more of a feeling of panic I would get each time I thought about it. Almost like there was going to be someone standing at the door as I came in, who would point at me and yell “WHY WEREN’T YOU HERE BEFORE THIS, WHY WERE YOU PAYING FOR NOTHING, CLEARLY YOU NEED US!” So I didn’t go, and I didn’t call to cancel, I just….did. not.

In January, my best friend M agreed to sign up and be workout buddies with me. With that impetus, it began. Although, I was quite proud of myself a few weeks ago that I continued going while M was sick and couldn’t be there.

I always thought I wasn’t really a big fan of exercising for its own sake. Until just recently I would have said that I would rather play a game, or dance, or go on a hike–something that had a tangible immediate goal, something real–than go to a gym and jog on a treadmill. I still think that’s a great way to exercise, and I try to incorporate that as much as possible. But schedules are busy these days and having a set time to go to the gym for fitness just made sense. And now I actually find myself enjoying the process.

My schedule is as follows:

Monday 6am- gym for cardio (We’re currently doing the C25K program for most of these workouts, sometimes if we’re feeling the need for a change up, we’ll get on the recumbent stationary bike.)

Tuesday 7pm to 10pm Line Dancing! I’d say, at this point with all the dances I know, I’m getting in a good 60 minutes of straight up dancing during that time, with breaks in between.

Wednesday 6am we do the 30 minute circuit of weights that Planet Fitness provides. They make it very simple, Green Light you go, Red Light you stop.

Thursday 6am cardio

Friday 7pm Line Dancing Lessons which are sometimes tougher than Tuesday nights, especially if it’s a small class and Cowboy Gary won’t let us sit down!

Saturday/Sunday M and I change this up depending on what we have scheduled, but one day of the weekend we try to get in an hour workout, both cardio and the weight circuit.

I’m thinking I need to add in more weight training, especially after reading this article: 
http://aeryssports.com/workout-eat-repeat/fashion-cardio-vs-weight-training/
.  I’ll see where to fit that in.

I took my first Zumba class last week on Presidents’ Day and loved it! Unfortunately it is at 6pm, making it nearly impossible to get to on a work day. I’m looking around to see if there is another class that fits better.

I’d also like to take a class to learn how to use Kettlebells, but I haven’t found any in our area that aren’t associated with a gym (I’m not switching gyms just yet).

Do you have a set or flexible schedule for working out? How does that affect your commitment level?