Thursday, September 8, 2011, Check-In

[muck_a_luck]

Hey, EED community!

Here is your daily check-in post! Hope everyone is having a great day!

If you are posting for the first time, or new to the community, please review the community's standards, below.


1. Mod (that's me!) will post a Daily Check In post, for those who prefer to note their daily activities in response to a prompt. Please only place exercise comments here.

2. All members are encouraged to post daily independent posts about their activities, if they prefer that to a prompt.

3. Please place any NON-EXERCISE comments in independent update posts and behind a cut. Some people are sensitive to discussion of diet and nutrition. That is integral to many people's exercise activities, so I want members to be able to discuss that, but for those who are here strictly to log exercise, I would like them to be able to avert their eyes.

4. Everyone is encouraged to introduce themselves, discuss their exercise goals, and post updates on their activities. "I finally made it to running a mile!" or "I kicked up into handstand today!" are updates that we all want to hear about and share! Please put long posts and entries involving diet and nutrition behind a cut, though.

5. Aside from intro posts and injury announcements, please try to include an exercise update in every post.

Comments

[devilc]

Uber-PMS is kicking my butt.

Arms and Abdominals, but I'm too sore and for anything else. :/

[vass]

Weights: so much DNW today. DNW to go exercise, DNW to walk around the gym looking for the dumbbells I need that some other idiot didn't put away after he used them.

Bench press: 15kg dumbbells, 10 reps then 6 reps. I've been at 30kg for a long time now, but my workout compliance has been very inconsistent. I'm hoping that when I get more compliant, I'll bust through to 35.
Dumbbell row: 25kg, 2x10. I think it's time to move up, but I'm unsure about my technique. I think what I'm doing is more like a deadlift.
Standing shoulder press: 10kg dumbbells, 2x10. This one's weird: it feels too easy for the first 6 or 7 reps, then suddenly I'm clean and jerking them instead of just pressing for the last 3 reps. I should keep at 20kg until I can do all the reps with good form, right?
Stability ball plank: 2x30sec. Still working on keeping my form right so that even 30 seconds feels like I've been punched in the abs.

[weirdquark]

I should keep at 20kg until I can do all the reps with good form, right?

Actually, I'd try upping the weight and lowering the reps for a couple of workouts. Heavier weights builds more strength, right? Then if you want, you can lower it back to what you were doing before and see if you can do all ten reps with good form.

[weirdquark]

Some yoga-like stretching. And even though I did weights yesterday, it was a short weight day, so I figured I'd throw in some weights for arms doing isolation things for forearms and biceps.

[rydra_wong]

Morning yoga, two and a half hours climbing, and then I walked up all 193 emergency steps* at Covent Garden Tube station just because.

{*"This is the equivalent of a fifteen-storey building," says the recorded announcement intended to deter you from doing this, but I'm fairly sure that's a lie.}

[ex_sunne737]

30 minutes on the elliptical

[weirdquark]

There are only three floors where I work, but we have tall ceilings and I think there are 28 steps in between floors.

But for reference, Notre Dame has 387 steps, so walking up all of the emergency steps at Covent Garden the equivalent of walking halfway up that.

When I lived in a city with a subway, my home station was the deepest in the area and I'd use the stairs when the escalator was annoyingly crowded or had a long line. (Because apparently for me, being lazy means wasting time rather than energy and I'd rather kill my legs than have to wait.) I looked it up and it had 199 steps from the lowest platform to the ground. The main section was 117 steps, which means even walking up the escalator would probably net you 50. I kind of miss it.

[resolute]

30 minutes recumbent bike, then some shovelglove. I have an 8 lb sledge, about 3.5 kg, but I think I need a second, heavier, sledge for some things.

Or I could invest in some dumbbells, possibly with adjustable plates. But where would I put them? And, besides, shovelglove is fun and makes me deeply amused.

[weirdquark]

I have two sets of adjustable dumbbells that have thirty pounds of plates each and go up to forty pounds if you carry everything in the box. The box is pretty compact -- I'd have to measure it, but I'd guess it's about 18" x 8" x 8" or thereabouts. (Amazon says 20 x 9 x 8 inches, so my guess was pretty close.) So they don't take up much room. It has 2.5 and 5lb plates, so you can add weight in pretty small increments. I got to the point where I wanted to get a barbell (I keep it under the bed) and some ten pound plates; the ten pound plates are still a smallish stack that don't take up much room, but I'm going to want to get 25 pound plates and/or more ten pound ones eventually and I figure when I do this I'll have to invest in a storage rack of some kind.

[resolute]

oooh, those look nice!

[weirdquark]

Yeah, I like them. The threading on the collars occasionally catch and don't spin all the way down, there are little rubber rings on said collars to keep them from rubbing the plates, and the rings sometimes fall off, but are easily put back, so it's annoying but not actually a problem. I had been hoping to find adjustable dumbbells that went up to 50 pounds each, but those seem to go up in 10 pound increments, which I thought was less useful. Thirty pounds is a decent amount of weight to have on a dumbbell bar though. In conclusion, it's a good starter set.

As a bonus, I discovered that my proportions are such that if I put a pillow on a box, I can put my head on it and use it to support myself to kick into a handstand with arms slightly bent and some weight on my head. And then I can push up to transfer more weight to my hands.

[smackshack]

Some days CrossFit makes me feel macho; some days CrossFit makes me feel like a broken old man. This was the latter kind of day.

Warm up: Run 400m or so. Bear walk with a medicine ball; do 60 Russian twists with said medicine ball. 20 push-ups, 20 squats, 20 standing rotations.

Main workout. Three increasing sets of 9, 15, and 21 reps of: Thrusters with 2 16kg kettlebells, then pull-ups. (I sort of waddled my way through the thrusters and used a big rubber band to assist with the pull-ups.)

A minute of pushups and jumping squats to see how many we could do in a minute.

Some burpees.

Then a bunch of short-distance, rapid-direction-changing wind-sprint thingies.

I think my asthma kicked in at some point, or maybe I just inhaled a piece of dust or chalk, because the coughing post-workout was almost as tough as the workout itself.

(Whine whine whine, bitch moan whine. Lather, rinse, repeat.)

But at least I'm alive. :-)

[dorothean]

I walked one mile (to and from a sandwich shop) which is not much, but much more than I usually manage on a work day.