Pump hard……. Pump often

Yesterday was leg day at the gym. When doing leg presses I normally do two 45 plates per side. After looking at my stats from my previous workout two weeks ago I decided it was time to up the weight. So I did three 45 plates per side. 270lbs on the leg press.

Today, I’m sore. REALLY sore. As in I’m walking like my legs are made of jell-o kind of sore. 

I was talking to someone in the office and he noticed how I was walking and asked if I was ok. I explained I went to the gym yesterday and his response was “are you trying to get some muscles?” He had that tone of voice that said to me a simple answer would be the best. So instead of saying “Actually, I went from 180lbs on my leg press to 270lbs” I just said “oh I’m just trying get fit and loose weight”. 

Later I thought about that short conversation. I gave him what I thought was a simple answer but in truth it was a girlie answer. “Ohhhhh no Mr. Manly Man, I’m not trying to grow musclesssss. I’m just trying to loose some weight and get fit”.  That’s exactly how I sounded. In truth I am building stronger muscles and a toned well defined body.

I don’t like having to justify myself when it comes to my gym workout and I tend to give dumb down answers to people when I get the sense that a more complete answer will have me in the middle of a conversation explaining myself.  For example. I’ve already lost 20 lbs and I’m still 190lbs at 5’5”.  Since a LOT of women down south are over 200lbs then I look smaller in comparison. But I know I still need to loose about 30lbs to be toned and well defined. So when I explain to people who have commented how they notice I’ve lost weight that I still have more weight to loose I get the “how much MORE weight you are trying to loose?” When I say 30lbs they look at me like I’m stupid. Therefore I now give the dumb down answer. “Oh just a few more pounds.”

Anybody else answer folks this way?

My fitness goal is to loose weight and gain strength. I want to be fit, strong yet feminine. In other words I want the athletic look. Therefore fat burning is a major component to developing the body I seek. I used to jog many months ago but started having problems with pain in the arch area of my right foot. I stopped wearing heels, got inserts for my gym shoes, wore an ankle wrap for a few weeks and got off the treadmill. After a few weeks my foot was better and there was no pain and I’ve been pain free in my foot ever since. Until this week.

I got a bit full of myself. Since I’ve been pain free for so many months I thought all was well.

So what did I decide to do?

Bought a new pair of gym shoes about a month ago and forgot to get the inserts from my older gym shoes and never bought new inserts, bought a pair of everyday dress shoes with a one inch WOODEN heel, went dancing the other evening in a pair of heels, went jogging over the weekend and on earlier this week and the next day got on the treadmill.

And guess what happened?

Yep, my arch on my right foot is in pain. Simple me. What DID I think would happen?

So I pull out my ankle wrap, put back on my flat work shoes with the cushion heel and insole, bought some inserts and made a vow to never jog again. I’ll walk on the treadmill but I’ll never jog on it again. 

I have not been in the gym since Tuesday and I could kick myself. If only my foot was not hurting.

I decided to try running bleachers the other day. Now that’s a cardio workout.  Since my endurance is pretty good because of my love of the elliptical I thought running up the bleachers should not be a problem. And at first it wasn’t. First let me explain my standards. Running up the bleachers and walking down I counted as a rep. Doing four reps I counted as a set. I did two sets with a five minute rest in between sets. By then my thighs felt like concrete blocks. So after set number two I decided to do “half reps”. This was running halfway up the bleachers and walking back down. I refined my set as two “half reps”. After two sets of these I was done. As a matter of fact jogging around the track seemed like resting.

I like doing the bleachers and would like to do this routine once a week now that the weather is getting nice.

When I typed that my thighs felt like concrete I meant that. I felt like I was pulling up the bleachers two concrete slabs. It was a serious development of endurance.

I watched this documentary last night and it was an eye opener let me tell you!  The documentary is about the fast food industry and how the size and portions of their food is contributing to the overweight and obesity epidemic that is sweeping this country.  Supersize Me was filmed in 2004 but it is still VERY relevant today.

Morgan Spurlock did a 30 day test on himself. He ate only McDonald’s for 30 days to see what impact the Mickey D’s diet would have on his health. So for breakfast, lunch and dinner he ate ONLY the items on the McDonald’s Menu. He had a starting weight of 185.5 pounds and by the end of 30 days he had gained 24.5 pounds. Can you imagine that? That’s insane.  He talked about how he would feel bad but as soon as he ate McDonald’s he would feel much better and not long after that he would “crash” and one of his doctors mentioned it sounded like he was getting addicted. And I know people like that. They eat fast food because it makes them feel better but within 30 minutes of eating they are laid out in a stupor. And to me that’s an addiction. When you KNOW something is bad for you and you do it anyways because of the temporary feel good and then you crash not too long afterwards. It’s an addiction. It’s a rush.

As I watched this documentary I noticed how Morgan went from being an alert and vibrant person to a very lethargic and tired individual. Granted eating fast food three times a day for 30 days is a bit extreme (and expensive) but it just shows the effect fast food can have on the body. Even the three doctors and nutritionist who monitored his trial were astounded at the impact this “diet” had on his health in just a month.

What amazed me though is how the portion sizes at fast foods have increased over the years. It stated that when McDonald’s first opened its doors decades ago they had only one size fry and that size is currently the small. So they added the bigger sizes over the years. And did you know the supersize fry they used to have (I think they discontinued that size) is a half a pound!  A half of a pound of fried potatoes at one meal and THEN you add the burger AND the supersize drink of the day!

So I went to McDonald’s website to check out the nutritional information of a large fry, their biggest burger (whatever that is) and their largest soda. (I’m sure the nutritional information for other fast food joints is very similar.) So their largest soda is a 32 oz and for a Coke that would be 310 calories. A large fry is 570 calories and a double quarter pounder with cheese is 740 calories. That’s a total of 1,620 calories for ONE meal. That’s a lot food. So here are the rest of the numbers for that meal. 1,730 mg of sodium, 196 carbs, 155 mg of cholesterol. That’s amazing. McDonald’s has this neat calculator on their website called “bag a meal” and you put the items on their menu into the “bag” and it gives you the nutritional information of that meal. Pretty neat.

So, if you have not seen this documentary you can watch it on Neflix instant online viewing if you have Netflix or you can watch if for free online at this link http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=98  (the video you see is a preview. Click the watch film now link to see the whole film). No registration required. Just click on the link and the movie starts.

Whew! That’s what happened to me the last few days. First, I came down with a bad sinus cold on Wednesday and by Thursday morning I was too congested and “spaced out” to go to work much less hit the gym. I was out for the count. I was better by Friday and was able to make it to work (barely though) and by Saturday morning all I wanted to do was rest my body. I was feeling pretty good by Saturday afternoon and thought I would go see a movie Saturday night then BAM! My monthly shows up. Hey if that was too much info I’m sorry I need to blog right about now.

So that drags my body back under the radar and all I did Saturday evening was go to the grocery store. So here it is Sunday afternoon and I’m feeling like my body is in recovery mode. I’ll be glad when I feel 100% back to normal and daily routines get back to normal. I’m so far off my routines it’s just a shame. Normally, I’m in the gym Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So that means I missed Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and today in the gym. My body feels like it too. But it’s the mental aspect of not being in the gym that I’m missing right now. Being in the gym gives me clarity and mental discipline. I’m in a slight brain fog right now.

And oh my goodness. My diet went out the window by Friday. It’s just embarrassing. I normally log what I eat and my daily supplements in my exercise journal. I haven’t seen that journal since Friday much less logged a single thing in it. I went out to eat on Friday and ate my cheat meal. Saturday morning and afternoon went pretty good in terms of my eating. But when my monthly kicked in later Saturday afternoon I had no energy to be disciplined with my eating. Here it was late Saturday night and I’m munching on fried tofu. Got up this morning and finished the rest of the fried tofu and then didn’t eat anything until about an hour ago. Spent the whole day sleeping and only woke up to drink a protein shake. Now I’m eating a bowl of veggies and drooling over the idea of more fried foods. Good for me I don’t keep flour in my house so I can’t fry a thing.

The hardest part about the “now” is getting my mind back into a disciplined state. Monday is a rest day in my exercise week but I just might go tomorrow and do cardio. I need a jump start right about now.

My mind is getting a bit back to normal. I’m shaking off that ridiculous idea of fried foods as I realize my body needs some healthy carbs (as I’m sitting here munching on shredded wheat and wondering why I’m feigning for some fried foods).  So I’m making my protein pancakes which is made from oatmeal, a banana, about six blueberries, soymilk, and protein powder. I’m topping it with a strawberry syrup I make by putting strawberries in a bowl with a little water and then heating it up and letting the sugars in the strawberries create a syrup. I then blend it and I have strawberry syrup!

Ever seen those folks? They can be male or female because it don’t matter. I saw one the other day. This guy I kid you not walked around the gym about 30 minutes talking on his cell phone. Didn’t do a single exercise.  Would walk in the most open centered area and just stand there talking. In the way of foot traffic standing there talking. I was on the elliptical and watched him the whole time as he would stand in the middle of the area and talk. Then walk around the gym floor still talking. And I’m thinking why do people bring their cell phones to the gym floor? What is that nonsense about.  For those who are not aware this looks silly. It does not look cool. It does not make a person look important. It does not make a person the center of attention. It makes a person look like today is the second day the have ever stepped foot in the gym.

Then there is the flex prima donna. This is the one who spends more time walking from the weight section to the water fountain on the OTHER side of the gym then actually in the weight area. I see folks do this and I don’t get it. They never sweat so they ain’t working out too hard. And they never go the water fountain near the weight area. Now maybe they need a walk break but when I see the same person over and over and over again as I’m on the elliptical I got to wonder.

Then there is the “skin is in” crowd. These are mostly women. The ones who wear nothing but the sports bra and no other top when it’s 30 degrees COLD outside.  When I see women in nothing but a sports bra in JANUARY then I’m questioning their motives. And forgive me being judgmental but if your body ain’t tight then wearing nothing but the sports bra ain’t pretty.  Reminds me of a woman I saw earlier in the evening. She was wearing this backless dress and a regular bra. Yes her bra strap in the back was just as obvious as a person with three eyes. Some things are just not pretty.

A few weeks ago I decided to add interval training to my workout. I tried it a few times and let that go by the wayside. When watching a dvd about the figure competitor Jenny Lynn I was watching her do interval training on the track and up some bleacher steps. I decided to try something similar in the gym which became last night’s workout.

I started with sprint training on the treadmill. Basically, I up the speed on the treadmill to something I could maintain for no more than about 1 minute and then I slowed the treadmill down to walk for 1 ½ minutes and then repeated the process. The starting and stopping and starting again really gets the heart pumping. I’m told this really helps you develop “explosive speed”. This is the ability to go from stationary to top speed very quickly.

Next, I went to the stair climber. Anybody who has been on a stair climber (and I’m talking the one with the revolving step platform) knows this is the behemoth of cardio equipment. No matter how crowded the gym is and no matter if the wait for cardio equipment is insane you will always find a stair climber available.  This machine will get your heart pumping just by walking up the steps slowly. One day many weeks ago as I was programming the stair climber and it asked me to set the pace I noticed the pace went all the way up to 24. I was setting mine to a 5 and I felt that had the platform revolving a bit fast for me. I could not imagine how anybody could stay on that machine with a 24 setting. To me that would be like walking up an escalator and the thing shifted to supper high gear. You would just fall forward as the machine drove you downward. But I was curious to how fast the stairs on the stair climber would revolve at a faster pace. So last night I set the pace to 17, realized I was not prepared for the speed of the stairs revolving, tripped over the stairs, clung my left hand to the railing for dear life and slammed my right hand on the big red stop button. As I was standing their huffing and puffing catching my breath with my eyes all wide from shock and a few nearby people looking up at me I realized I needed to rethink my strategy. After a few awkward trials I created a system where I set the pace to 17, jogged up the stairs for 20 secs, hit the stop button and rest. I then resumed the program and dropped the speed to 1 for another minute and then put the speed back up 17 for another 20 second jog up the stairs.

I finally got my system to work and I really gave myself a workout. I was breathing HARD trying to catch my breath. But I was proud of myself that I could hold my own on that stair climber at such a higher speed.

I was reading the blog of BodySpace member Tride26 and he created a parody of how people convince themselves they are working out and eating healthy (when they really are not) and then confused when they don’t drop the weight. I like the part after a person punks out *cough cough* I mean works out and then goes to dinner. He writes in his parody “for dinner: i’ll have the kahuna grande platter with a side of sour cream and a dinner salad”.

I was laughing at the kahuna grande platter. That was funny to me. That brings me to a thought I was having this morning. Portion size at restaurants. Now I do believe in getting the most for my money no matter what I spend my money on but when it comes to eating out having much more food on my plate than any human should eat at one sitting does not excite me. When enough food comes on my plate to shock me by its size I have to wonder about the sheer volume of food we get when we eat out. Here are my thoughts.

1. No menu item should have the words grande, super, mega, double, triple, large or grand slam in the title and most definitely not multiple said words together. Example: Super Nachos Grande.  Who needs that much food at one sitting?  Think about it. When was the last time you saw a menu item that said super salad or double grilled chicken breast? Ever been to a grand slam fruit buffet? Me neither.
2. Instead of having the “heart healthy” dishes marked on the menu with some cute symbol how about marking all the UN-healthy menu items with a cute symbol. Yep, just mark up the whole menu. Put at the bottom of the menu that the symbol represents menu items that are not deemed healthy for your heart.
3. When you read a review for a restaurant the words “homestyle” or “blue plate specials” or “finger lickin” should send up red flags. Homestyle is a code word for “floured-n-fried”. Blue plates usually contain heavy sauces. Finger lickin means grease a la grande.

By the way if today is your cheat day disregard this memo and get you a grande homestyle blueplate special but forgo the finger lickin grand slam side items.

Had a great workout last night and for those who are into numbers and stats then check out my workout tracker to read my stats for last night’s workout. I spent the first part of my workout exercising my back. I’m trying to target the upper, middle and lower parts of my back and hope I incorporated exercises to hit all three areas. I’m pretty sure I did though as my back is sore this morning. Feels like I tried lifting up a box that was too heavy for me. Yea, that feeling. Sore.

I read in a magazine (or was it online) that when you are doing exercises with free weights that the fatigue you feel is not really the target muscle giving out but the stabilizer muscles giving out. The stabilizer muscles are smaller than the target muscles and will give out sooner. This cheats you out of a full workout on the target muscle. For example when you bench press your triceps are stabilizer muscles. When the triceps wear out you can forget pushing up that bar no matter how strong your chest muscles may feel.  What happens is the triceps wear out before the chest muscle and your chest muscles do not get the full workout they are capable. Now the selectorized weight machines (the ones you have to stick pins in between the weight plates to select the weight amount) require the lest use of stabilizer muscles as the machine stabilizes the body area being worked. The article mentioned that you should use these machines first to work out a muscle group and then go to barbell exercises (which requires more stabilizer muscles than the selectorized weight machines but less than barbells) and then last do barbell exercises. By the time you hit barbell exercises the muscles you are intending to exercises have been worked on and when the stabilizer muscles do give out then you have already given the target muscle group a through workout.

My silly self was doing my workout in the OPPOSITE order and was wondering why I rarely felt sore in my intended muscles. My stabilizer muscles were giving out and my target muscle groups didn’t get a full workout. So I tried the order recommended. First I did exercises for the back on the selectorized weight machines and then hit the Hammer Strength machines with the plates. I did the same exercises last night as I did last Wednesday but with better results. I’m sore this morning as I did more reps per set.

The logic works. Now I know some people’s ego has them believing that selectorized weight machines are for wimps and all they want to do is barbells and plates. But if your goal is to maximize your workout then try the order I recommended.

I belong to the fitness club LaFitness and once you join you can visit any of the fitness centers you like. Even though I have my favorite one that I workout regularly I like to “gym hop” every now and then just for a change of scenery and to see new faces.  One of the centers is close to my house so I go there on the weekends and decided the other week to check it out on a Monday night. I’ve never been there during the weeknights so I wanted to see what the crowd would be like. Can you say “Club LaFitness” as in “party up in here”?  I walked into that gym and I’ve NEVER been in a gym that crowded. Now crowded I can work with but being crowded by people NOT working out is just insane. People were sitting on the gym equipment like they were benches. Folks leaning on the machines talking to the people sitting on the benches. Folks at the smoothie bar getting their chat on like it’s a REAL bar. Now LaFitness normally plays dance music anyways (which actually has a great tempo for exercising) but when you add that music to the atmosphere that night. You had Club LaFitness.

Now I’ll be the first person to admit I like to look goooood when I hit the gym. I’m usually in a pink and black workout get up with matching pink and black sneakers or maybe my green and white outfit with the matching green and white sneakers. But when I leave the gym I’m sweaty as I work out hard. “Workout hard and look good while doing it” is my motto. That Monday night people were dressed in some serious workout fashions and everybody looked good but few were working out!  Oh wait. Let me rephrase. People were moving the parts of the machine as they were chit chatting but it’s like the folks in the gym who are walking on the treadmill AND on their cell phones. The mouth getting more of a workout than the legs sort of folks. That’s what I was seeing that Monday night. The gym social crowd faded out by 8:00 p.m. and I was able to really get my workout going at that point.  If you like a social hour at the gym then this place on a Monday night is THE spot. If you want to get in a serious workout then you might need to skip this spot on Monday night.

I’ll go back every now and then as Monday’s are my cardio only nights and the social scene is great for the entertainment but on the days I need to hit the weights I’ll will be at another gym.