<p>What kind of stuff do you do in these classes?"</p>
<p>Well in the regular classes we do things with bars and weights, squatting, lunges, biceps curls etc. In those classes what I find hard is the coordination of several activities in one step. I guess women are more suited for those things. In the old people class we mostly work on the different body muscles that are not used that often. We also work on how to balance (old people fall down a lot). For example, I find it very hard to keep one foot in front of the other (one toe touching the heel of other foot) and then move head left to right. Stand on one foot and let the other foot swing or do a knee lift and make the opposite elbow touch the thigh or the opposite hand touch the ankle (you alternate rapidly). We also do hand and leg exercises with resistance bands.</p>
<p>Our instructor in this class might be in late thirties or early forties and she is big, but her body is extremely flexible. I guess I will never be that flexible.</p>
<p>If you like dancing try Zumba…that is the latest thing in group exercise. I know several women in my gym who look much leaner only after few months of Zumba.</p>
<p>Fantastic! That’s the sort of stuff I do in my workouts. These are generally called “bodyweight” exercises, because they involve using the weight of your body as the resistance, although many of them can be done with light dumbbells.</p>
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<p>I hear ya. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost fallen over doing a lunge. It’s a flexibilty issue, a balance issue, and a strength issue. I’ve been learning the lunge with a twist for the last couple of weeks. That’s been a new challenge from a balance standpoint.</p>
<p>This is why these types of exercises translate so well into real-life fitness as well as being killer fat-burning exercises.</p>
<p>toneranger…Congratulations and Good Luck with the new job!! I know you’ll figure out the workout schedule. H has a 30-40 minute commute and what works for him is to have his clothes/shoes packed and in the car at all times. He usually stops on his way home from work and we just have a late dinner. That’s easier for him to do now that we are empty nesters.</p>
<p>I felt it in my shoulders this morning. There’s nothing like barbell exercises above the shoulders. The problem is that I don’t have my son around during the week so that I can’t get it above the shoulders. So this morning I remembered that we have a Smith machine in the office. This is a barbell on two tracks that goes up and down. Along the tracks are slots. The barbell has hooks that can lock on the track with a turn of the barbell.</p>
<p>So it’s just a matter of setting it to the right height, setting the desired number of weight plates, positioning under the barbell and doing the exercise, locking the barbell when done. I’m going to give it a try later today. I used it many years ago for the chest press just to give it a try. It’s not used very much - most people use the dumb bells which go up to about 50 pounds in 2.5 pound increments.</p>
<p>Thanks Northminn! Yes empty nester here too. Haven’t figured out if I’m going to do the early morning or after work routine or some mix. But I will do something!!</p>
<p>MOWC…good luck with your PT and doc appointments. And make sure you have some alternative poses ready to go for hot yoga - I imagine there are some moves that could really aggravate things. I don’t do the hot version but I find my regular yoga helps enormously with balance, strength and stress relief. It will be something I do for a lifetime…</p>
<p>I really liked the kickboxing classes at my gym, but I can’t make them anymore because of my psychotic work schedule. I always felt like I got a whole body workout, plus cardio. Very efficient use of time, plus fun. It’s kind of like doing a dance routine.</p>
<p>You da man! I don’t know how comfortable I would be lifting a weight that I couldn’t pick up or put down. I’ll just stick with my little wimpy weights until I eat some more spinach.</p>
<p>bceagle…unfortunately, not. But apparently they do offer discounts at the local clubs. We’ll see. I have never worked out at a corporate fitness center…not sure I’d be comfortable anyway, sweating and huffing and puffing in an old tshirt with a bunch of my colleagues.<br>
I HAVE found a Whole Foods 5 minutes away…yay!</p>
<p>Congrats on the job, toneranger. Once you get there a solution will present itself. Corporate fitness centers can range from “you’ll be the only one in there” to a real resource. In Dallas, Texas Instruments was one of the early pioneers of corporate fitness (back in the early 70s- along with Bonnie Bell Cosmetics) and had amazing fitness centers at all facilities. They were well-used and employees of all levels used them constantly (rank was discarded at the door). I work at a company HQ downtown and we don’t even have showers. Some folks go to the Y, but it’s about a 6 block walk and I belong to another club near my home so I don’t want to join the Y. That cuts me out of lunchtime workouts, unless I drive to Hot Yoga… </p>
<p>An aside- Last time I went to hot yoga was Sept 2008 and on my way back to the office I hit a pedestrian with my car. It totally ruined my karma! Seriously- it was his fault (he was a mentally challenged young man) but it was very traumatic for me. He was hurt and taken to Vanderbilt by ambulance, but the injuries were pretty minor (ribs, broken teeth). So-I hope it goes better if I attempt this again.</p>
<p>We have two fitness rooms and a ping-pong room. The main fitness room has cardio equipment (four treadmills, two ellipticals, a bunch of regular steppers, a few cycling machines, one rowing machine, the Smith machine, a multipurpose weight machine, a few racks of freeweights, basketball (hoop outside), balls, half-balls and some miscellaneous pieces of equipment. The other fitness room is for classes. It has plastic-covered weights, body bars, audio setup, mirrors, and a bunch of other little things for classes. I never go into that room. If you don’t like working out while others are working out, then you can experiment to find out when the place is fairly empty. Our place is busiest at lunchtime. It is probably next-busiest at 5:00. During normal work hours, it’s pretty quiet with one or two people using it. It’s also open 24-hours so one could workout at night, early morning or on the weekends - the odds are that you’d be alone.</p>
<p>If I didn’t have the work fitness center, I might use a second club. The Y is close to home but having something near work would be more convenient. The Y is building a new facility near where I work and I will have free access to it so I plan to use that place to supplement work.</p>
<p>There are people in the office that belong to outside fitness clubs because they have far more equipment and variety of classes and because they are chains and have facilities near their homes. The advantage of a chain is that you may be able to use their facilities while traveling.</p>
<p>Our nearest Whole Foods is about forty minutes away. We have a new mall coming into town and I am hoping that they will have a WF.</p>
<p>Slow day for me since I am fighting a stomach virus. Still went to the gym and biked/walked. Should have been a weight day but I am too tired and had a headache. I know…whiner! The only good thing about not feeling well is that I didn’t gain any water weight over the weekend like I usually do.</p>
<p>I know you are looking for dumbbells. WalMart has the plain gray metal hexagonal dumbells (I know you are familiar with them), in a wide range of sizes. </p>
<p>I didn’t check the price on anything I can’t pick up! No tax in NH, no shipping. I don’t think anyone can touch those prices. They have the rubber coated hex dumbells in sizes up to 10 pounds.</p>
<p>Anything under a buck a pound is a good deal. I think that a 20 would be useful for my son. I have it on my list of things to check for next time I’m at WalMart. There’s one about three miles from my office but it’s a small one and I don’t know if they carry these. We make a trip to WalMart about once every six weeks.</p>
<p>I’m buried at work today. Deadline for a project coming up next week and I’d like to finish it tonight because I may have a deadline for another project that I haven’t started yet - but that deadline might be really sloppy. I was thinking of running at the track near my house but I’d need to figure out what to wear in the current conditions. It’s 61 degrees, very cloudy and moderately windy. I have one long-sleeve shirt that’s probably more suited to 40 degree weather and it appears that I don’t have any long-sleeve t-shirts, tech or otherwise right now. I think that I threw most of them out because they had too many holes.</p>
<p>Perhaps a discussion of cooler outdoor workout gear would be in order.</p>
<p>The Adidas long sleeve tech shirts look interesting but I don’t think that they would be warm enough in the current conditions. I have no clue on how to do jackets, pants, etc.</p>
<p>BC: WalMart also sells a nice “Gold’s Gym” brand dumbbell bar with a rubber grip that takes standard 1" barbell plates. The bar weighs 3.6 pounds, plus the plates. They sell 2.5, 5, and 10 pound plates. That’s bascially the ala carte version of the set I bought (which I now have configured as two 18.6 pound dumbbells.</p>
<p>On shirts, I found some Fila long-sleeve tech shirts at Kohl’s for $15 in solid colors: black, gray, red, or white. I took back an Adiddas I had bought at Marshalls because I really didn’t like the stripes down the shoulders and arms. The long sleeve shirt was perfect for walking yesterday (55 degrees). Got a little warm towards the end of the walk when I had worked up a sweat on the hills, but pushing the sleeves up basically made it just like a short sleeve. I wore one today in the cool house (64 degrees) for my workout and it was fine. I’d say that, for running or walking hard, just a long sleeve shirt is fine down to 50-ish unless it’s really windy. I really enjoyed walking in the cooler temperatures.</p>
<p>Back to iPod nazi today. I had left off, before being so rudely interrupted by Spartacus, with the final week of Phase II. This is a bit lighter workout – very quick set of eight exercises 30 seconds of each, 15 seconds in between (basically no rest by the time you get set up).</p>
<p>Lunge Walks with Shoulder Press
Side Plank (1st side)
Side Plank (2nd side)
Reverse Flys
Squat with Biceps Curl + Press
Back Extensions
Push-ups
Plank on stability ball</p>
<p>*Then 4 intervals on the Airdyne, 60 seconds hard, 120 seconds easy.</p>
<p>Then repeat the exercise circuit.*</p>
<p>With a 5 minute warmup and cool down, right at 44 minutes. Short and sweet. Non-stop. Felt good to be aggressive on all the execises, knowing I could do 30 seconds.</p>
<p>I got in six miles. Didn’t get a chance on the Smith machine though. A guy was working out for an hour from about 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM. The best bench is in-between the Smith machine and he was doing heavy weights on the machine and light weights on the bench. So I need to cross off that time slot.</p>
<p>I like Adidas from their tennis clothes and I like the three stripes though I wouldn’t like them going all the way down the arm. They have them at Sports Authority but they aren’t on deep discount yet. Basically I had to toss all of my long-sleeve stuff - just too many holes. All I have are dress shirts. I may try the track tomorrow if I don’t get home too late. The earlier sunsets are going to be a problem with running outside.</p>
<p>I have to decide on pants/tights/shorts for outside too. I should go looking around Runners World for articles - not the store site that suggests you buy everything.</p>
<p>Hopped on the scale and I’m in plateau-land. Between 204 and 205. I was surprised that I hadn’t gained a few pounds from last week. I’m hopefully back on track and on my regular schedule to get down to 200 - I guess that I should shoot for the end of October.</p>
<p>ugh…I am stiff and sore from scrubbing and cleaning! I really tore the two upstairs bathrooms apart and I was reaching and bending like crazy! I was pleased that the bending/reaching/kneeling didn’t hurt THAT much while I was doing it! Seems like my shoulders/neck bother me the most.Guess I better find some exercises for those areas! </p>
<p>Hade a tasty dinner of grilled chicken with garlic and herb rub and a nice tossed salad. Ahhh…feels good to have some food in my stomach!</p>
The only good thing about not feeling well is that I didn’t gain any water weight over the weekend like I usually do.</p>
Seems like my shoulders/neck bother me the most.Guess I better find some exercises for those areas! </p>