Image from ChrisScheelGolfFitness.com:
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| It isn't just golfers who get this injury |
Today I only did 30 min of cardio (3.37 miles) and concentrated on Push Day: pecs, delts and triceps. Well, not so much triceps because there's elbows involved with that (sigh). I get 3 sets of 10 reps at 135 lbs on the Smith (yay!), do my standard killer delt routine (very little resting with 3 supersets of front and lateral dumbbell raises, 3 additional sets of lateral raises, followed by 5 sets of rear inclined or bent over raises, all with those lovely shiny chrome plated 15 lb Beauty Bells). This takes about 15 minutes. Then Decline benching because damn, I'd really like to fill out the lower half of my pecs. Don't need any height on them, just depth.
I toy briefly with the idea of knocking out as many pushups as I can. Granted it's been months since I tried that, and I got to 50 but the last 5 really really hurt. Depending on where you place your hands, it's either your triceps or your pecs getting the workout. The further apart your arms, the less your tricps are involved. Closer together concentrates all the pressure on them. Turning your hands in or out also changes where in your arms you feel it. And never do "girl" pushups from your knees. Pushups is a whole body workout (keeps your core firm like planks), and doing them from your knees defeats the purpose. Plus, it's killer on your knees, and I got problems enough with them already! Sometimes I can feel my right knee cap on the verge of floating out of position and I don't want to imagine how painful it'd be to have a dislocated knee cap.
The scale in the locker room reads 106.4 (the same as yesterday). My home scale consistently reads 2 lbs lighter but that's usually after I've peed a hundred times since coming home (all that water makes its way out at some point, usually sooner than later). I'm thinking I'm going to have to find a therapist or a sports doc to consult about this elbow, because the one thing I absolutely do NOT want to do, is stop working out.
I love deadlifts. I think they're my favorite lift (it doesn't hurt that I'm built for them--long arms and torso, short legs). In the US, the benchmark of strength is the bench press (which I'm not built for--the long arms). Everywhere else in the world, it's the dead lift.
ReplyDeleteI disagree about never doing push-ups on one's knees. For people starting out who may not be strong enough to do a proper full push-up, the knee push-up is a good introduction. It's probably better to do an easier exercise with good form and more reps than a harder exercise with bad form and fewer reps, particularly if the bad form can result in injury. If done with proper body alignment, the knee pushup is an adequate upper body workout with a little bit of core thrown in (certainly more core than a bench press). When I'm doing reps to failure days, I'll do as many full push-ups as I can, then drop down to my knees to get a few more reps out.
I knew I'd get a rise out of someone when I wrote Never do girl pushups. Good to know someone's reading this and keeping me honest!
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