[The Basics] Basic Training
May 8th, 2012
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by Jodi · Filed Under: General Health · Ramblings
I go to the gym Monday through Friday right after I drop my kids off at school. (For those of you who are wondering, I finally started coming to a stop for my kids to get out of the car. No more pushing them out as I drive by. It’s been working well for us. Thanks for your concern.;) It’s a basic gym, nothing extraordinary about it and I go at that odd time of the morning where it’s the end of the early morning rush but before the mommy time starts so it’s never crowded. Every day that I am at the gym there is a woman on the Arc Trainer—her special Arc Trainer—covered in about 2 gallons of sweat and I used to always think, ‘Work it girl!’ when I saw her doing cardio. Then one day I got on next to her and she was covered in sweat while the display of her machine said 7 minutes. I immediately thought, “Holy crap. What setting could you possibly have that on if you are that sweaty after 7 minutes?! I need to get a hook up from sister-girl on how to juice the Arc Trainer for everything it has.” Then I got on again about a week or two later when her display read about 50 min or so (I know I wrote about this before on some post but I can’t find it right now) and while I was doing my cardio it looped at 60 min and started counting from 1 again. What the…? What is THAT about? Who in this day and age has that much time to do that much cardio all week long? Holy ticking time, Batman!
So today I just happen to be there before she was and she came in and put her stuff on the machine before going to the lockers to put her stuff away. What she used to “hold her spot” was 7 pieces of gum neatly lined up on the machine—meanwhile she was chewing away on some already before setting up shop. Holy intestinal fortitude! I got the runs just knowing she was going to chew all that in that short of time. Well short time for 7 pieces of gum, long time for useless cardio. Thankfully I was done 5 minutes after she came back so I had enough time to stock up on Cank-Aid and warm salty water. This brings me to some more of the basics…
I am going to start running, I need to lose some weight.
Good luck with that. Using running to lose weight is like using a spoon to empty bathwater out of your tub; you will eventually get it done. If you insist on running as a form of weight loss, do it the right way by incorporating speed drills and sprints into your runs and you’ll really achieve what you’re hoping for.
Can I do the weight lifting class at my gym instead of lifting? It’s so boring and I hate it.
You mean the class that does more reps in one hour than I would ever do in one week? I would say no simply because you cannot lift heavy enough. And I can’t say this enough: group fitness has its place in life but not as a primary if your desire is to look good naked.
What do you think about…{insert diet concept/book/workout technique/DVD/latest fad here}?
Who cares? You know you don’t. I could tell you that it causes a new arm to grow out of your neck and if you are hell bent on it enough, you’ll bring an extra sleeve for your shirt just in case. Seriously. And honestly, if it is going to energize you, challenge you, inspire you and so on and it is safe, I say go for it. I hope that most of us have been around long enough to know that change matters more than the actual diet or workout itself. Not to mention, are you new to dieting or not? If you are new, you’ll lose weight running to the shower in the morning. If you’re a veteran, you could scale Mount Kilimanjaro eating only a bean and a half of pear and maybe, just maybe, you’ll lose a half pound by the end of the week.
I started doing bootcamp 5 days a week. Is that ok?
Only if they mix it up. If you are doing 5 days of jumping/plyometrics, that is not ok. And if it is really a glorified run club, see #1.
It is cool to see people in their “stages of readiness”. When we first start out we just want to lose some weight. But then we lose a few pounds and realize we look the same as before, just smaller. Then we go to a beach and put on a bathing suit and realize we’re so crinkly that we look like we wrapped ourselves in cellophane before we left the house. That sets us on a mission to be smaller and tighter. The rest is history but it’s wild to watch it go down in slow motion. This wraps up all the questions asked to me in April. May is proving to be a slow month which is nice because I need to regenerate in my hole office after all that. Woop woop!



