Simplification on Day 12

I had a long meeting after work and almost didn’t get to the gym.  Luckily a co-worker of mine got on my case and I ended up going.  Sometimes I need a swift kick in the ass to quit the demotivational rationalizing I get into.  External stimulus wins!

Friday’s lower body workout was really good.  This was my third round of lower body workouts since I got this ball rolling and I still haven’t found the right weight-range for my quads.  I must have superhuman meaty quads, but very well hidden.  My hamstrings, on the other hand (leg?), took a beating which I could definitely feel the next day on my explorational stroll.

I finally found a way to do my calf-muscle exercises well with the stripped weight room at the YMCA.  Before they started renovating the building and hid the weight room in Narnia, they had a machine for calf raises.  Seems to me like a bit of a waste of a machine for just calf raises, but hell, I used it.  Now it’s nowhere to be found and I’ve had to use other things to get the job done.  First I used the leg press machine, but the angle was all wrong and I just ended up cramping my feet.  Next I used a squat machine which worked well but I had to manually add the weights.  I’d rather not go searching for the right weights when I can just turn a dial or change the notch on a machine.  Finally I remember that some people do exercises without machines!  I did my calf raises like this but with my heels halfway off of a mat so I could stretch the muscles a little further the other direction without putting my weight back on my heels.  It worked well and got a good workout from that.

I’ve stuck to doing crunches for my ab workouts, but one day I’ll get around to using the ab machine at the gym.  But I think I should wait until I actually have some abs.