I’m getting all of my posts in that I’ve not done all week.

I learned this week that my gym offers all members a “Getting Started” hour with a personal trainer for free. I’ve been a member for nearly 4 years and never took my free hour. So I did this past week, with Dan. I wasn’t really getting started, but Dan offered a few new exercises to do as it was obvious I was pretty burned out from my standard push-up/bench press/squats/lat pull downs.

1) Push-Ups with the Medicine Ball. A standard push up, but in one hand you are supporting yourself on a small medicine ball (small enough to mostly fit in your hand). Do one set with the left hand, then one set with the right hand. Another alternative is doing push ups on the Bosu ball, which I used to do quite a bit, and I believe is why regular push ups are pretty easy for me now.

2) Yeats Rows. I’ve been trained well by Kate, and this is becoming a staple of my lifting diet. Dan also suggested these were good to do if my goal was to be able to do pull ups. Advanced move. Support your feet on a medicine ball. It was still doable for me, but definitely more challenging.

3) Split Squat. On a Smith Bar. This was the first exercise he showed me where I really thought I would feel it the next day. Again, it’s just a variation on the standard squat that allows for slightly different muscles to be used.

4) Squat with ball, combined with a shoulder press. This was a good combo move. Perform a squat using a ball against a wall. While you squat down you are also pressing a weight above your head, thus the shoulder press. Good time-saving move.

All in all, it was good that this was free. I learned some, but $60 would have been a lot to spend to find out that the exercises that Kate has been preaching in rowing is more or less what the trainers are preaching in the gym. I plan to go back, though. I have a $35 coupon. I’d like to get some mathy stuff done, figure out my true maximum heart rate and such.

By the way, the pull-ups I thought I was doing aren’t pull-ups. They are chin-ups.
Pull-ups = overhand. Chin-ups = underhand. I thought underhand meant cheating. See? Trainers teach you new things all the time.

October 7, 2007 will go down in history as the day I, Chatty Cha, did a pull-up. Unassisted, no help from anyone. Just me. My parents were in town and I was showing off. We have a pull up bar in the door jamb of one of our rooms, and my dad was observing it, not quite sure what it was, maybe. So it was one of those “Dad, look what I can do! Lookit me!” kinds of scenes. Apparently that doesn’t end when you’re 8. Anyway, there I was, doing a pull up. Kind of shocked me so I ran over to the husband to tell him. Later on when we broke it down I admitted to a few cheats (no, my trainer did not give me “the clear“). First, I used an underhand grip, i.e. my palms are facing towards me. That’s an easier grip. Two, my legs are usually behind me, but on this particular day they were sort of in front of me and the husband acknowledged that this is another cheating technique. So? Fine.

The next day, I showed off to the husband (“Honey! Look at me! Look what I can do! Are you watching? Look Look Look). And I did another one. Woohoo. But the husband looked at me and asked, “Did you jump a little bit? Give yourself some momentum?” So what? Ok. So one more cheating tactic on my sole pull-up of the day.

I’m still pretty excited. I credit this summer’s workouts, including the summer-long gym membership, the changes in the plan as I began to incorporate Kate’s circuit-like schedule, and plus, well, the cheating. But just a little bit. I’m working on some improvements. Call it Pull Ups v1.1

Workout at the gym today:

Warm-up on the erg, 6 or so minutes. Then:

Squats
Bench Press
Bent-over row
Overhead press
Chin-ups (assisted, of course)

I did these in a circuit, 4 sets, 60 – 90 seconds rest in between. The first set I was doing 12 reps each exercise (with the exception of the chin-ups, which I did 6). By the end I was just doing till exhaustion (for bench, row and press). This workout came courtesy of Kate & JB, which appears up in the monthly newsletter that I edit for the rowing club.

I walked home and rather than greet the husband upstairs, I yelled at him to come downstairs. Exhaustion. A good sign.

So, after determining what my true steady state split on an erg should be (if you must, you can read the boring post about it here), today Kate advised me not to put too much emphasis on steady state in my workout schedule. (This stemmed from my question, ‘How do I get rid of that old-lady flab I’m seeing on my arms?’ Kate’s answer: Lift more. Yay). Actually, Kate advised that other cardio and aerobic workouts were better for me than steady state. The AT workouts I did (for example, 2 x 20′ at around a 2:15 spm) are far more efficient than an hour (or 2) of power. So, here I was all excited to begin doing some real steady state, and instead I’m just supposed to do what I’ve been doing.

Which is good and bad. Good, because I’ve been doing it. Arduously getting through it. Bad because I was looking forward to that comfortable rate. It’s not surprising, of course. You do the stuff you don’t necessarily like because it’s good for you. That’s what long AT pieces are. Hard to do, but good for you.

So there. I think I’ll head to the gym in a few.