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<p>Have you looked at Target, which sells inexpensive workout clothes under its C9 by Champion brand?</p>
<p>Wal Mart also has some stuff under its Starter brand at even lower prices, but its selection tends to favor the oversized basketball shorts that you don’t like.</p>
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<p>You are an animal, Hops! I thought the idea for supersets was to alternate between two non-competing exercises – like a lower body and an upper body – so that the muscles you work in one exercise get rested during the next exercise. By alternating back and forth, you can work at a quicker pace. Doing two squats back to back like that is brutal.</p>
<p>I only do front squats with dumbbells and they are really tough. I like the Bulgarian Split squats. Haven’t done them in a while because NROL4A progresses from front-foot elevated split squat to split squat to rear-foot elevated split squat.</p>
<p>I have several C9 Champion shirts ($5.99 at Marshalls) that I really like. Haven’t looked at their shorts. Starter doesn’t have anything in shorts that fits what I’m looking for. Everything is below the knee on me and I just can’t stand that look. Plus, the whole point of wearing shorts is because it’s hot.</p>
<p>Anyway, not an issue around here. It was in the mid-20s last night. We still have snow on the ground.</p>
<p>Any type of exercise that has “Bulgarian” or “Russian” it’s name = :eek:</p>
<p>I’m taking today off. No running, just weights. My achy breaky butt needs some rest. :)</p>
<p>I don’t recall Starter making any tech gear.</p>
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<p>Hardest part was actually getting the weight up for the front squat. I think I might have done a little bit too much weight for the first time 
Hopefully my knee doesn’t act up tomorrow…</p>
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<p>LOL. Well not all of the kettlebell stuff has it in the name, but I think a lot of that stuff came from Russia. </p>
<p>I think tomorrow may be a good day for some more kettlebell work. Time to break in the new toys! )</p>
<p>I swear, someday I’m going to smash my illiterate iPhone! :)</p>
<p>The countdown has officially started: it is 5 weeks until our Hawaiian mini-vacation. My crystal ball reveals planks, planks, and more planks in my nearest future. :)</p>
<p>I woke up late this morning and missed an appointment but was able to do it later on. I had a fantastic night’s sleep (didn’t wake up at all) and felt physically very good this morning. No tiredness, aches, pains, etc. Not sure why but maybe it was the rain (more humidity after a dry winter). Son wanted me to go to the Y and he did his run while I did my weight machines. He told me that he tried out the chest press machine and was surprised that he could do 140 without too much difficulty. He also tried it at 185 and found that very difficult. I’ve asked him if he wanted to try 65 at home and he said that he thought it was too heavy. So his comment was that it was easier than he thought it would be. I don’t see him doing the bench though - he usually only runs at the YMCA and only does weights at home. We’re not setup for the bench press at home and I have no plans to get a setup as we have the office and the Y.</p>
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<p>He can do pushups. If those are too easy, there are similar harder exercises like dips, pushups or dips with extra weights, dive bomber pushups, one hand pushups.</p>
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<p>I told him that last night.</p>
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<p>He already spends a fair amount of time with weights but just the ones we have at home. He will come down to the basement where I’m working and do ten minutes of weights several times a day. He’s only playing around with 22.5 pound dumbbells and the 65 pound barbell but he seems to have much more upper-body strength than I do. The magic of youth I guess. Some of that strength is probably due to running around campus (spring break this week) with a fully-loaded backpack.</p>
<p>I just got my workout in for the day. Ten minutes on the elliptical and then I tried doing some interval work. I bumped it up to 40 seconds work and 20 seconds rest. The first time I did 6 minutes of it and the second time I was only able to do 4 minutes. My average heart rate was over 180BPM and I peaked at 198BPM. </p>
<p>I did kettlebell swings with a 30 pound KB and I did burpees. The kettlebell is much easier to swing than a dumbbell!</p>
<p>I had a look around at some of the online retailers looking for running shorts and couldn’t really find anything that could remotely be considered a deal. I was a bit surprised at how high prices go for running shorts. I think that the highest that I’ve seen at the local store is $35. Prices do go quite a bit higher at the online places. They sometimes have sales where they will list one item at a price much lower than average but there’s usually a restriction on sizes available. It seems that there is some kind of multiopoly when it comes to shorts.</p>
<p>The situation in shirts isn’t comparable - it seems to be far easier to get good deals on shirts compared to shorts. For now it may be better to just checkout a few local discount places like Kohls and Marshalls - might get lucky.</p>
<p>Fendergirl has reached her target weight of 120. Hopefully I can keep it there. I sit at a desk all day and it’s so easy to give in and snack the day away. I’m trying to keep up with this routine.</p>
<p>Get you one of these fendergirl! Then you can workout and work at the same time ;)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Trek-TD-01-TrekDesk-Treadmill-Desk/dp/B002IYRBI0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300300372&sr=8-1[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/Trek-TD-01-TrekDesk-Treadmill-Desk/dp/B002IYRBI0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300300372&sr=8-1</a></p>
<p>Congrats, fendergirl! Way to go.</p>
<p>Could NOT pry myself out of bed this morning for the planned 6 mile run. Too dark. Too early. Too cold. BUT- got out at noon in 60 sunny degrees and it was AWESOME. It was actually spring! My “from work” course is not great (and a little sketchy), and there are other logistical issues, but it was worth it today. Fastest 6 miler in over a year except for my Labor Day 10K.</p>
<p>Thank you!!</p>
<p>We are going to the beach in May and July so hopefully I can knock 'em dead! ;)</p>
<p>hops, that’s too funny!! I don’t think that would fly in my office. Now, if I ever decide to work at home… haha!</p>
<p>hops scout – re PE requirements being decreased as a contributor to obesity:</p>
<p>Colorado is, AFAIK, the only state in the US that does not have a statewide requirement that public schools offer PE. It is also the leanest state in the country, and has been for a while. John Cawley, in Health Economics Research, reported on a study analyzing PE requirements and obesity, and the summary conclusion was “PE time has no detectable impact on youth BMI or the probability that a student is overweight. We conclude that while raising PE requirements may make students more active by some (but not all) measures, there is not yet the scientific base to declare raising PE requirements an anti-obesity initiative.”</p>
<p>I wish youth obesity were that easy to solve, but that does not appear to be the solution. (I do work in ed policy and I’m wary of statewide mandates, having already been through the debacles of D.A.R.E. and abstinence programs, neither of which accomplished much against their goals despite taking time away from other classroom activities.)</p>
<p>My guess is that the issue is not nearly as much what kids do during school hours as it is what they do all the hours they are not in school. Colorado kids are very, very active. (One of our challenges is adjusting PE requirements in school for high school students who are spending fifteen to twenty hours a week on club sports on a close to year-round basis.)</p>
<p>Per Wikipedia, the mean elevation of Colorado is 6,800 ft, possibly one of the highest in the nation. I suspect that it might have something to do with the state being the leanest in the US.</p>
<p>InterestedDad – thanks for posting all the information on the Taubes book. I went over to Amazon and looked at some of the detailed reviews there, and one mentioned a lecture by a Stanford professor on youtube. It is called The Battle of the Diets – Is Anyone Winning (at Losing?), and covers the results of his $2 million study of 300 plus obese women who were randomly assigned to follow different popular diets and then followed for a year. A registered dietician trained each group in an eight week course on that particular diet, and they were instructed to treat the diet book they were assigned to as “the bible”. He says that as a 25+ year vegetarian and a nutritionist he was utterly pained to see that the diet with the strongest weight loss at a year was Atkins – even though by six months those on Atkins weren’t nearly as low carb as Atkins says you should be – and the least weight loss was in the groups following the diet that is closest to the federal recommendations. Towards the end of the lecture, he has some breakouts of how people with insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome did, and the contrast there was even more stunning. (In fact, those without insulin resistance do pretty much the same on any of the diets.) Very, very compelling for somebody like me who has classic metabolic syndrome. </p>
<p>It is long (about 1 hour, 16 minutes) but Christopher Gardner is an excellent speaker, and his slides were generally high quality too. I think it was probably one of the most valuable hours I’ve spent on the computer in a long time, and it has really convinced me that I need to look at dietary changes differently than I had been. I’ve also ordered the Taubes book. (For a data junkie, this was pretty much the best thing going.)</p>
<p>I highly recommend the video.<br>
[YouTube</a> - The Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?)](<a href=“The Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?) - YouTube”>The Battle of the Diets: Is Anyone Winning (At Losing?) - YouTube)
Note: the audio quality improves markedly about 2 minutes into the lecture, which I think was given to a bunch of Stanford alums.</p>
<p>fendergirl:</p>
<p>Congratulations. I love when people hit their target weights.</p>
<p>MOWC:</p>
<p>Congratulations on your good spring run. It makes me smile just thinking how happy you must be. I think I’m finally recovering from stiffness/soreness from carrying stuff and will be doing a NROL4A in the basement shortly.</p>
<p>hops:</p>
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<p>You are an animal! Nobody sane tries to do intervals with shorter rest than work. 2:1 ratio with rest twice as long as sprinting is considered kind of the baseline (for a well conditioned person. 1:1 with equal rest and sprint is advanced work for athletes and very, very demanding.</p>
<p>arabrab:</p>
<p>Thanks. I will try to catch the Stanford lecture tonight. It sounds fascinating. I’ve watched a couple of Taubes lectures, including one at Dartmouth and a panel discussion with low-fat jihadist, the Ormes diet guy. I have no idea if Taubes has it right, but I strongly suspect that he’s on to something.</p>