Hole Leigh

BALLS. Ho-kay so, I told my trainer today that I had no soreness after Saturdays workout and that was apparently code for do-work-son. We upped the reps and weight of just about everything we did. I gather he was waiting for me to acclimate to a normal workout schedule before he started pushing me. I think that process is underway. I found myself moving weight around that I didn't think I would have been able to. I exercised a few muscle groups to complete failure. Thats a weird sensation, when your muscles just say "nope, not doin it." The failure was due to lots of reps designed to push the muscle to failure and not excessive weight (as I understand that can be dangerous). My next meeting is Thursday, so I have 2 days of rest/recovery. I feel like I will probably need it.

After my workout I felt totally drained. I had to swing by the store to get some cottage cheese, and before doing that I had to get home and shower. My trainer gave me a more detailed meal plan, although its pretty much what/how I normally eat, so he said that was good. He also told me that we are going to start pushing the weight limit and the reps, though we will usually always push the reps before pushing the weight limit.

I bounced exercise to exercise with not a lot of rest in between. It was intense. My trainer (I hate using that term over and over, but I don't wanna use his actual name online) told me that this was probably the most difficult workout yet. I feel tired and worked out, but good.

I can tell I'm gonna sleep good tonight. So I'm gonna go do that.

Today went better

So I had my workout today with my trainer. I think it went really well. I seemed to not get as tired as quickly as last week. I was still pretty sore from Saturdays workout, but I think the overall time I take to recover from the excessive soreness is also getting shorter. We seemed to do slightly more exercises today than in previous sessions. I started working on "dips" and "the plank" both of which are a killer for me. I was unable to handle my own weight on the dips and had to switch to a machine which worked a similar movement only without my own weight added. I tried to eat a little more today as my trainer thought maybe I hadn't eaten enough on Saturday. I could definitely notice the difference! I could feel myself getting tired, but not necessarily running out of energy half way through the workout. For some reason I started cramping up on the dead lifts today. I was asked how much I drank today and I said something close to 2 liters throughout the day (two nalgene bottles worth). My trainer said that muscle dehydration probably wasnt the source of the cramping, but perhaps the particular muscle that was cramping was simply getting too much work and hadnt adapted to storing glycogen in the amount to match the demand I was placing on it. I stretched out that particular muscle group and we moved on to more upper body stuff.

So ya, all in all, I feel a lot better after my workout tonight. I'm not as completely obliterated as I previously was. Dont get me wrong, I'm definitely tired, but not crash hard tired.

So I hope that's a sign of improvement...

I think theres a muscle in my toe that doesn't hurt

But I'm sure I'll stub it tomorrow. OK! So, I went to my first workout today with my trainer. I expected to get right to exercising, but we actually talked for a bit. He had quite a few questions for me, wanting to know my eating habits, various health related things, expectations and goals. Since I have absolutely no clue when it comes to this stuff, I told him I didn't really know what goals to set. I told him that ideally I would want to look good and be in great shape. We set an initial goal of getting my %bodyfat down to 12% (I don't really know what that means), and to improve my overall strength.

We then left and went onto the gym floor. My trainer told me that we were going to initially work on core body strength. He explained that core strength is very important because without a strong core, you cannot safely perform many other types of exercise. We started working something called supersets, which (as I was explained) are basically just different exercises which work completely different muscle groups performed one right after the other with little rest in between. I did them in pairs.

After the work on the open floor area, we went to a few of the machines. I pressed weights in many different directions and really worked just about every muscle I can think of in my upper body. I am pretty sore, but I was told that is to be expected. Eventually I will switch to free weights, but not right away. My trainer told me that I will probably be really sore tomorrow and the next, so he wants to wait until Saturday to meet again.

So anyway, I'm exhausted and am going to bed.

Until Saturday, cheers!