I have much less of an excuse now that I've reduced cardio to 20 minutes, down from 35. But I still have to convince myself, even on a "vaguely decent spring day" like today. At 55F, it's not terribly cold after the polar vortex whipped through over the weekend. But the garage is chilly. And there is intermittent rain, although the new gravel in front of the garage door is extremely pleasant. Otherwise, I'd be standing in a mud puddle while leaning into the door to get it open.
I'm wearing gym clothes and a fleece vest and hat, but after 10 minutes I'm able to toss those items. I don't really want to get too sweaty. I do my 20 minutes while staring mindlessly at mostly nothing. Sometimes I glance at the HR monitor but mostly I watch the timer, breathlessly waiting for time to pass. (You know your equipment is old when the only way you can watch a DVD is to hook up coaxial cables to the back of the monitor.)
The nice thing about taking a few days off and allowing your body to forget it ever exercised, is that doing those exercises again will make you a tad sore, which, if not debilitating, can be a fairly pleasant reminder that muscles are indeed at work. (Wow, that's a long sentence.) I feel my abs while doing crunches, and especially during elbow planks right afterward.
I angle my elbows out until the left one doesn't click or hurt when doing pushups. I'm less successful doing pullups and have to muscle through the last two. I only get 16 as the stress on my forearms starts to overwhelm my right elbow. The bar on the Power Straps is set so high that I'm only at a 30-degree angle for overhand and underhand Inverted Rows. The underhand position feels awkward and eventually hurts my right wrist. (I have such wonky joints.) Meanwhile, the strap handles themselves are so low that I can lay on the floor and stretch my arms straight up to grab them. That greatly increases the difficulty of the movement.
DB Supersets feel fine. I've draped both my fleece vest and my hoodie on the bench because there's nothing more annoying than a hood/hat/hair bun/braid flopping haphazardly under your head and/or shoulders while you're trying to do Rip Skulls. (Yep, still a princess!) EZ bar bicep curls and RG curls are standard and feel fine. A few stretches and then I'm done.
NYS plans to slowly re-open stores and other facilities. I'm not sure where gyms fall. My son's kung fu school's New Year's Banquet has been postponed until December and there's little chance we're going white water rafting with the Scouts this Memorial Day weekend. Oh well...
It's the first day of the school Spring break so I let my son sleep in. I also slept in until about 9:30. Still, it took me quite a while to get myself together enough to head to the gym. I have to rush because I scheduled my son's annual physical exam for 1:30 and I always underestimate how long it will take me to complete mundane tasks like my gym workout, showering, etc.
The weather is Spring crazy, torrential rain one minute and blinding sunshine the next. I don't know how to dress for the season. Should I pack flannels and fleece? It's already late morning when I start with HIIT cardio. Humidity means I'm sweating easily so I just drag my hoodie around to drape over the benches. I could just bleach spray all the benches I use, but that requires additional effort because half the time the paper towels have run out and the bleach spray bottles are either empty or misplaced.
After pull-ups, I slip into the classroom to do core and actually remember that I was doing to time myself doing pushups. I'm nervous that this will take me an embarrassingly long time so I am kind of rushing my pushups. I needn't have worried. Next time I'll try to see how many I can do in a minute. Because after I count to 50 and look up at the stopwatch feature on my phone, I'm surprised. It reads 34:13 seconds!
I complete the core exercises and then do my standard Smith Inclined Presses. No surprises there although my joints are still a bit wonky. Yesterday, my right wrist throbbed and I thought for certain that it was a carpal tunnel flare-up. But it's passed so I'm not quite so worried. I'm chalking it up to the increased humidity lately.
Because I'm at the gym a bit later than usual, there are a lot more people in the free weight area, including The Mayor. Ugh. He's not as loud today, probably because he has no posse to kibbitz with. But he is constantly in my way, and I'm paranoid enough to think it's on purpose. It doesn't help that I think my family and I walked past him and his wife and in-laws at a local sushi place last night. My husband decided to treat my son to his favorite food, sushi, after completing the Boy Scout NYLT second weekend. And of course, I had to have Hot & Sour soup and pan-fried pork dumplings as well. Salt galore!
I don't have time to muse as I move from Inclined Press to DB superset to Skullcrushers. Then a super quick mat stretch and I'm off to shower. I bought myself a new towel because the old one, with daily laundering, started to unravel in the dryer, leaving highly-electrostatic threads attached to everyone's clothes.
The new towel adds a pound to the scale, which is better than the last new towels I bought which added 3 lbs to the scale! My threadbare towel added nothing, but of course, it's unraveling as well so now it's trash. (I'd be lying if I didn't admit to feeling guilty about adding it to the landfill trash problem, but that's what makes hoarders out of us these days.)
I'm trying to convince myself to get up super early tomorrow and hit the gym at 6 am but in my heart, I know that's not going to happen. I'm meeting up with a friend at 9:15 for a work project. I'll just push my Pull Workout off until Wednesday and do another HIIT cardio session. Nothing offers more stress relief than intense cardio! But nothing helps you age better and live longer than pushing weights to increase your muscle power. (Click on the links to read the original articles.)
Spring Break Monday Push
Norwegian 4x4 5 min w/u (4 min on / 3 min off) x 4 5, 9, 12, 16, 19, 23, 26, 30, 33 Calories 286 Miles 264 HR 140-192 (87)
Cage Stretch HGPU 22
Push Ups 50 (34 sec) Crunches 30/50 Scissors 50 Bicycles 50 Side Planks 2 x 60s Bird Dogs 2 x 60s
Smith Inclined Press (60degree) Bar (30) x 15 50 x 12 70 x 12 90 x 12, 12, 12 65 x 25
DB Laterals s/s Rev Incl Flyes 20 lbs x 12/15 reps 22.5 x 12/15 x 3 sets
I wasn't expecting it to be even colder this morning, but it was. The thermometer read 13 F but at least the car started up right away. It did take a while before I could see through the windshield though. It's almost 15 F when I drop my son off, but then the temps drop back down to 13 F as I circle the big lake on the way to the gym. It's going to be cold inside. That's as good an excuse as any to do HIIT cardio first thing. Nothing else gets you warm and sweaty as quick as that.
I read a few articles over the weekend pertaining to health and fitness. One even mentioned the Norwegian 4 x 4, but I'm not sure about the author's math... If the warm up is 10 minutes instead of 5, then total minutes should be 38, not 40. Maybe she was rounding up? Seems spectacularly vague for someone reporting on a fairly specific program. I'm a tiny bit relieved when she reports that the idea is to keep your heart rate at or perhaps slightly above your maximum for the 3-5 minutes of each high intensity cycle. (BTW, it should be 4 minutes. Research says 4 minutes.) Then drop to a walk or jog for the resting phase. With a minute of all-out effort and 3 more minutes going fast enough to keep my HR around maximum (sometimes above and sometimes below), I feel confident that I'm getting a proper cardio workout.
What I'm really amused by is a 2011 blog post by a group of Norwegian fitness researchers, Cardiac Exercise Research Group (CERN), who don't rely on formulas to determine maximum heart rate, because let's face it, we're all different even if we're the same age. No, they tell you how to figure out your actual maximum heart rate by doing actual intervals as hard as you can. That makes mine somewhere in the low 200s. Hmmm. Is that right? If I wait until the 3rd set of high intensity pedaling, my heart rate drops to its lowest point in the entire duration, 105 today. That doesn't seem right either, but I'm an odd duck. Click here to read their blog posts.
At least I'm not cold anymore. The one lone set of pull ups seems easy, and it's reassuring to know I could've done more. When I slide back into the free weight area (after doing core in the classroom), I see that the Smith is vacant and the big adjustable bench is inside. Great! I actually like the big bench better for Inclined Presses because there's a support bar to put my feet on. My pants are a bit too short even for someone like me and my striped socks peek out like the Wicked Witch. I think hers were green though.
The pants also poof out at the hips in a weird way, but I'm not really concerned. At least it has a waistband I can clip my iPod too, unlike some of my other gym pants. These were my son's pants but he's several inches taller than I am. I bought a pair of sport pants the exact same size and they were noticeably longer than this pair, so I swapped mine for his. His new pants are still a little too short for him, not that he cares because he doesn't, but they're not floodwaters.
The replacement Bluetooth earbuds arrived in the mail today, but I need to charge and pair them before I can use them. The sellers are anxiously awaiting my response because they'd like me to revise my review of their product. Being an Amazon seller is very competitive. I'd like truly wireless earbuds but those are too expensive and appear somewhat unreliable for me to even consider. Meanwhile, I'm perpetually untangling myself from the corded earbuds during my workout.
Today is a standard Push Day routine: Inclined Presses, DB super sets, Rip Skulls. Done. The fact that HIIT cardio was my warm up doesn't seem to affect my workout. That's good! It might mean that I'm adapting, or it's the fact that it's been 2 days since I was last at the gym.
Cottage pie with sauteed shrooms
I'm trying to look at things differently, even mundane tasks like cooking. I made a cottage pie over the weekend and it turned out great. Cottage pies are usually made with ground beef -- I used turkey, and stewed tomatoes. (Shepherd's pies are made with lamb but my son won't eat lamb.) I guess I'll be making this more often. I also decided to cook the boneless pork rib ends differently. Usually I'm not very happy with just pan frying them. I bought my hubs an Instant Pot for Christmas, but I'm a bit put off by the required 18 oz of liquid in order to use the pressure cooker function. It's too much fluid and dilutes the flavor of the food.
Foil pork, noodles and kale
Online, I read about enclosing the meat in an aluminum foil packet, to bake at 350 F for an hour. Several recipes suggest using BBQ sauce. I have an opened bottle of Stubbs Hawaiian style sauce and pour it liberally on the meat before sealing the foil. The meat is moist and flavorful when done, and the foil makes clean-up super easy. I've only ever seen foil packet meals suggested for cooking chicken during Scouting campfires. I'll be doing this more often, playing with seasoning and adding more ingredients.
Tomorrow I'll be late to the gym. I put off my annual physical from September because of my glaucoma surgery. Now I have a 9:45 appointment to draw fasting blood. Ugh. No coffee for me in the morning, and that is going to suck. And the venipuncture is going to mess up my Pull Day routine. But here is a random clip of Spike from the Buffyverse (actually from Season 5 of Angel). It's one of my favorites...
13F Monday
Norwegian 4x4 5 min w/u (4 min on / 3 min off) x 4 5, 9, 12, 16, 19, 23, 26, 30, 33 Calories 278 Miles 2.60 HR 138-180 (105)
Cage Stretch HGPU 20
Push Ups 50 Crunches 30/30 Bicycles 50 Side Planks 2 x 60s Bird Dogs 2 x 60s
Smith Inclined Press (big bench) Bar (30) x 15 50 x 12 70 x 13 90 x 12, 12, 12 60 x 25
DB Laterals s/s Rev Incl Flyes 20lbs x 12/15 reps x 3 sets
My hubs showed me a new app he installed on his phone. It's a sleep tracker that's suppose to help you get better, more restful sleep. Because just taking ZMA isn't enough. And not drinking any caffeine at all also isn't an option. The app is called Sleep Cycle, and comes with an alarm that's programmed to wake you at the optimal time, after your deep sleep, and hopefully, just as you're starting to rouse. I got the free version. The deluxe version is only $1.99 per year, but I'm not entirely convinced of it's worthiness to make an actual purchase yet. I tried the sleep app last night and it showed me two periods of deep sleep, and an odd period of being awake at 2 am that I can't actually recall. Maybe it got me confused with the dog, because he snores pretty loudly. I'll have to give it a week before the app can finalize an analysis of my sleep. Okay, I can do that.
Because I'm hunting for all sorts of paperwork this morning, I'm late to the gym, arriving around 10:45 and not actually working out until after 11 am. Which makes leaving the gym at 1:30 pm not quite so bad. Most people leave because they have to go back to work, or because they'd rather be doing something else. I could actually stay at the gym for several hours keeping myself busy and amused, and not really feeling tired until I get home. By then I'm famished. I drink the absolute last bottle of Ensure High Protein shake I find in the fridge. It has a Best By Date of mid September, but I don't put much stock in those numbers. It tastes fine, and I use it to wash down the fish oil, vitamin D, and calcium citrate that I try to take daily.
Before I left the gym, a young woman came in to fix her hair, and then re-tie her sneakers. But instead of sitting down and crossing her leg, or putting her foot on the bench, she plops her foot on the counter in front of the mirror. This is the counter that contains hair dryers, tissue boxes and hair brushes. It is most assuredly NOT for clod feet. My grandmother would've said, "Where you raised in a barn?!" but I have a different approach. I asked, "Do you wear those shoes outside?", and the girl said a bit sheepishly, "Yes." Whereupon I said, "Then take them off the counter." Good grief, do people really need to be told these things?
I had a decent workout today, but not great. I didn't make 7 miles but I did over 6. I managed two sets of Hammer Grip Pull Ups without hurting myself, or my gall bladder. Yaaaay! Doing pull ups makes me tired enough that I decide to start with Regular Push Ups, and I can only get to rep 75. I did all my sets of Push Ups and Planks, and then DB Lateral Raises superset with DB Reverse Flyes and upped the weight for the last sets. Upped the reps for the very last set. Did a full Mat Stretch, and Pistol Squats. And apparently, put on 3 lbs over the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. The gym scale reads 110 lbs. Okay, probably not a good idea to put on weight before you go on vacation, but since that's not happening until next Saturday, I have a few days to work on this. Of course, I'm working Wednesday and Thursday this week as well. And having lunch with a friend on Friday. But it'll all sort itself out.
It wasn't that I ate a lot of bad food, but more that I drank a lot of apple ale and sangria. And snacked on those puffed wasabi-flavored snap peas. Those are addictive. And salty. And I'm pretty sure I'm holding a bit of water since my rings feel tight. It's really hot and humid today. After I drop my son at camp, I go to the gym and actually feel a bit of dread. Mondays are always like that for me because two days of inactivity makes cardio so much harder. I don't feel rested, I feel sluggish. I'm not in the mood to see if my knee is better so I don't set the incline past level 6 for either cardio session.
The gym is crowded as usual with seniors, shift workers and SAH (Stay At Home) moms. I get on the bench that is wedged between another flat bench and an incline bench. It's my least favorite because it's hard to get in and out of. Its bench also seems a tad skewed to the upright stays. They must've tightened the breakers because they barely move when I grab the bar. Just as well. I get all my sets done with minor irritation to my right shoulder. Island Jerk is chatting up all the guys, but at least he seems to be using just one piece of equipment at a time. What's annoying is how he's planted his backpack, and cups on a stack of all the rubber mats. If anyone wanted to do deads they'd have to move all his crap just to get the mats. One cup is full of brown liquid, coffee or cola. He's doing inclined benches and I hope he finishes quickly so I don't have to interact with him.
After flat bench press, I do a few sets of inclined bench. Then I grab DBs for Lateral Raises. I find the adjustable Inclined Bench and do sets of Reverse Flyes. My right shoulder seems to cramp near the blade and I try to stretch it out between sets. Upping my weight on this exercise was inevitable, but there are always repercussions. Afterwards, I do a few sets of alternating twisting DB curls. I think they help the bicep peaks. The EZ bar curl is next. Near my last set, D comes by to chat. She's finally got her car back and two of her three sons are at the gym: one on the elliptical, and the other in the Child Care room. My husband is in Boston until Thursday, with a loaner 2013 Subaru CrossTrek from the dealership. He thinks they forgot to fix his car because of the holiday weekend, but since this loaner drives a lot like his Forester, he's not concerned.
Before I forget, I do crunches and pulse-ups and then head back to the elliptical for 3 more miles. This time cardio is more enjoyable. I do a full Mat Stretch with plank and splits. The gym scale reads 113.6 lbs and I'm not surprised. In the shower, I slowly tweak the water from hot to cold because I don't want to get all sweaty before I reach my car. I have a lot of errands to run, mostly dropping bags off at the Goodwill and Once Upon A Child. The latter has a good selection of lightly-used books, toys and clothes and I've found myself trading in several of my son's old baby books for a few more age-appropriate tales.
The fawn that spent most of the weekend in our yard was here again this morning, making us believe that something bad happened to mama deer. My dog spooks the little deer, but like a sullen teenager, he only jumps a few feet before nonchalantly ambling off into the woods at his own pace, peering over his shoulder to make sure we aren't following him. Tomorrow is Cardio/Nexersys Day but it'll have to be an abbreviated workout. Tomorrow is $5 Tuesday and my son and I plan to see the new Transformer movie.
