In the Weight Room
Interval training is a lot harder in practice than what it appears on paper!
Until I get back health insurance (despite my knees feeling better, it still feels like there is stuff floating around in my left knee), I will not run on a tread mill. Instead I use either an elliptical or the stair stepper elliptical thing for my cardio. Low impact does not mean easier.
Last night I did my first interval session (on the elliptical). It consisted of a four minute warm up (4 mph), four minutes of hard (7 mph), two minutes easy (4 mph), two minutes of even harder (7.5 mph), two minutes easy (4 mph), two minutes balls to the wall (8 mph), and cooling down for five minutes (3.5 mph). I almost puked. What made matters worse was the fact that my iPod was dead, meaning that not only I felt like crap, but I was bored.
Nevertheless, this was still a really good workout. I walked around for about five minutes to get my heart rate back under 140 bpm and hit the weights. Speaking of weights, I am beginning to see a possible benefit of being way overweight. Certain parts of my body are disproportionately strong. Take my back, for example. On the back extension machine I am up to two 15 rep sets of 180 pounds with 99% form accuracy (form accuracy is the grade assigned to full reps, not letting the weights touch, and a full second up and down on each rep). Any exercise involving my chest, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Maybe I should have walked around on my hands more often.
On the Bicycle
Today I am going to take a trip on my bike around the National Mall. It is part boredom, part getting me out of the apartment, and part fitness. Of all the dumb excuses not to do this sooner, it is the fact that my drums have been sitting my Xterra for the past week and a half. I suppose it is time to work on my upper body and haul those drums inside.
Anyways, this should be cool seeing the cherry blossoms for the first time in my third season that I have been out here.
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