Still Feeling It...

My son and I were surprisingly sore from Wednesday's lunges. He thought it was the hip stretch, but I knew better. It's been a long time since I've been sore enough to hesitate walking down the stairs. That's sore. And surprising, since it was a simple body weight exercise that didn't leave us breathless (like burpees). My son tells me that we should just do lunges on Wednesdays, and today we won't do the Step Mill. Fine with me. Today we warm up on the Recumbent Bike and then trot off to the Treadmill. It's a beautiful sunny day and there's not a lot of people here. Great!

My son has forgotten the headphone adapter for his iPhone 7 so his phone is useless. I show him how to watch TV with the close captioning on at the various cardio machines. He knocks out 5 more pull ups. Once he's more comfortable, I'll nag him about getting his hands actual shoulders width apart. It took me a while to get that part figured out as well. The Mayor is ridiculously loud today. I'm glad when he finally leaves because the gym is suddenly quieter in spite of the piped-in music. I turn my tunes off after cardio is done so I can be more responsive. Another regular big guy stares at my son for a long time. I don't feel threatened otherwise I'd be in his face in a heartbeat. I think the guys are just confused for some odd reason that I can't figure out. Not my problem. Don't really care. Just don't get in my way.

The big blue mats have disappeared from the stretch area. Ugh! No doubt they're being tossed since holes and rips have been patched more than once with blue duct tape. My son and I use the classroom. There's no one in it at the moment. We pull out the small squishy body mats to use for cushioning against the wood floor. My son groans at the mention of push ups so I give him a choice: 20 regular push up or 10 T-push ups. He opts for the Ts because there's less of them. Then we do our elbow planks, bird dogs and side planks. It's helpful that he can see his form in the big mirrored walls. I add back the bicycles and crunches. They feel easy.

I show my son the Breaker Bench. I know he'll be fine with just the bar since he's benched 50 lbs at the Smith. He's surprised at how much harder it feels though. I explain how it's a whole body exercise because he needs to stabilize the bar. Today's his first time so we stick with sets of just the bar. Next time I'll add maybe 5 or 10 lbs. Again, it's his arms that feel tired. Still, I have him do a few sets of DB Presses. They're only 10 lbs for each arm, but come directly after benching. Eventually he'll build up some muscle stamina. (He actually had a Fair Life® chocolate shake this morning with 15 grams of protein. I, on the other hand, had coffee and nothing else because I was in a rush to get stuff done. So he's fine, but I'm actually hungry. Ugh.)

Time for "the back" and I realize that I've skipped one of the most popular back exercises: the lat pull down. He looks at the station perplexed. I move the pin to 20 lbs, the lowest setting, and stand up on the seat, explaining to him "this is what short people do." I've already adjusted the knee pads so that I don't pop out of the seat once I sit down. Hands shoulder's width on the bar handle, pull down and arch into it, as if you were trying to pull the bar onto your upper chest. I explain that this is like a practice pull up. We start at 50 lbs and move up each set. The handle is weird with rubber grips only on part of the bar. My son complains that gnarly bits are painful to hold so I tell him he can just switch handles. The smooth bars in the handle rack are so light I suspect they're aluminum. My son stands on the seat and wrestles with the big D-ring to make the exchange. It's good for him to know how to do these things. When he's older, he'll be able to walk around like he owns the place.

"Where do you feel it?" I ask him. "Arms" has become his stock reply. We move on to Seated Cable Rows. He's not sure he can do more than 50 lbs so I tell him to do sets of 12. For the last set, he knocks out 15. Well, that's obviously too light for him and now he knows it, in spite of having his arms feel tired. Next time we'll start with 60 and see how many reps he gets. He wants to know if we're done yet. Yeah. We do hip stretches and shoulder rolls. I ask one of the staff if Gym Owner will be replacing those big blue Mats. She says Yes, even though he didn't want to. He argued that everyone can just use those squishy body mats, but she pointed out that those are useless for foam rolling and lots of other movements. I told her that I totally agreed. I'd have to give up my Mat stretch routine! And I don't want to do that. (Doing splits on a wood floor is quite painful. I'm always impressed when I see dancers performing routines where they land flat on the hard ground. Yes, I've been watching episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance" on Hulu lately.)

Ignore Step3 for waterproofing eye

The gym scale tells me 110.4 lbs. Kind of weird. I'm not burning the calories like I usually do, so I'm not quite sure what my body is doing. I do feel bloated and out of shape. Ugh. But at least I've figured out how to keep my left eye waterproof: skip Step3 when applying the Transparent Dressing. Step2 affixes the sticky film to your skin. Step3 removes the paper backing and allows the dressing to be soft, flexible and transparent. But over the eye hollow, the dressing works better if it's stiff, as it is with the paper backing. The stiffness seems to allow water to run off your face (like a good roof line) instead of having it seep inside the edges of the bandage. So weird, right? But I've done this twice with identical results so skip Step3!

There's a scary heatwave warning for this weekend. We had plans to go visit Caramoor's percussion celebration, but I'm prone to heat stroke so better for me to be inside with the A/C. Which is kind of a bummer because it sounded really interesting, and on a nice summer day, say in the 70s, it could be a whole lot of fun. My hubs thinks he's going to make it to his kali fighting class, but they don't have A/C in their classroom so I think he's being overly optimistic. We'll see... forecast is for it to be in the 90s but feel like it's in the 100s. Ugh. Monday, maybe I'll show Max the Inclined Breaker Bench...


Heatwave Friday

15 Recumbent Bike + 3 cd
Manual Level 1
Calories 73
Miles 1.95
AHR 105 (63%)

30 Treadmill
Speed 3
5% Incline
Calories 202
Miles 1.48
Ft Climbed 456
Average Heart Rate 109 (66%) / 122 max (73%)

Max pull ups 5
Max T push ups 10

Elbow Plank 60s
Bird Dogs 2 x 60s
Side Planks 2 x 60s
Bicycles 50
Crunches 30/20

Max Flat Bench
Bar (45) x 12 x 3

Max DB Press
10lbs each hand x 12 x 3

Max Lat Pull Downs
12 x 50, 60, 70

Max Seated Cable Rows
50 x 12, 12, 15

Stretch