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<p>I have been pleased with LL Bean for a lot of staple clothing items. Sizing is pretty consistent. Especially for shirts or blouses, figuring out your size from a store like Beans makes it easy to shop (and easy to tell people what you want for your birthday!). I don’t generally buy jeans or pants there, but the one pair of khaki pants I bought from a Bean outlet store (for $7.50) put Dockers to shame quality-wise.</p>
<p>The other nice thing about Lands’ End and LLBean is that they have very nice shopping helpers who are quite happy to look up and tell you things like the exact length of a shirt from shoulder to hem in a certain size, and if anything doesn’t suit you, back it goes without the least problem. To minimize returns they’re pretty good about explaining “fit” – I haven’t been surprised too often.</p>
<p>Hit the scale today - first time in a while. It says that I’m down a bit over 8 pounds in the last month which is consistent with caloric in/out. I was doing that last summer too but I was under very little stress last summer. This past month ranged from moderately stressful to very stressful (the last two weeks). Last fall and winter, I couldn’t maintain the will-power to lose weight over high-stress levels. The low carbs have certainly helped in keeping the hunger under control in times of high-stress. Today was a moderate stress day and it’s nice that I managed a very pleasant run (4 miles). Will do some weights and pilates at home tonight.</p>
<p>Fantastic, BC. Eight pounds in month is pretty significant weight loss, especially if you can do it without having to wrestle with hunger. It’s amazing the effect of tracking your food for a while on LiveStrong.com. It was a real eye opener for me and made me pay a lot more attention to portions and choices and ways to cut calories out of the equation without making dieting miserable.</p>
<p>No workout for me today. After my great day in the gym yesterday my knee was swollen, stiff and hurt like the dickens! Darn it! Did have some free time and was in B&N’s so I skimmed through the new Dukan Diet book that was recently released. Another high protein, low carb, low fat diet. Basically it was eating just protein for 3-7 days and then start alternating a day of only protein and then a day of protein with vegetables with no regard to calories. Oh, well…wonder who will jump on this bandwagon.</p>
<p>I don’t really hate shopping…I was just discouraged about what I was finding or not finding for the wedding. I did buy two new pairs of shoes and a dress for Easter! ;)</p>
<p>*New Rules of Lifting for Abs *Phase III again today. These workouts have been kicking my (formerly) fat butt lately, so I scaled it back just a bit. On the two strength supersets, you alternate between six reps of one exercise and six reps of another, as many times back and forth as you can in ten minutes. I had been setting my interval timer to start the next exercise every 60 seconds, so I was trying to do five sets of each. The problem is that the first superset has two exercises (rear foot elevated split squats and plank rows) that require 12 reps, 6 per side. I was getting hopelessly gassed, so I scaled that one back to four sets of each with an extra fifteen seconds to complete each exercise and pant for a bit. I did five sets each on the second superset, which only has one exercise (single leg, single arm deadlifts) that require six reps on two sides.</p>
<p>Much better. Still plenty demanding, but I didn’t feel like I was going to pass out. Sometimes you just have to back the truck up.</p>
<p>Favorite exercise today was the overhead medicine ball slams. Brace the core, with the med ball extended overhead and slam it straight down into the ground as hard as you can. I’m getting a little more confident in where the thing is going to bounce, so I’m starting to put some serious muscle into the slams. Fun.</p>
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<p>I’m afraid I’m just not that organized. I like to mix it up a little, but more as a matter of chance. If I haven’t had seafood in a four or five days, I’ll buy some salmon. Or, whatever. I’m pretty much past the point of paying a lot of attention to calories. What I eat always adds up to somewhere between 1800 and 2000 calories. I’m actually going to have to pay some attentiont to increasing that pretty soon.</p>
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<p>That’s one fancy home gym you have there.</p>
<p>903 calories today: 30% fat, 38% protein, 31% carbs.</p>
<p>Forgot to mention the secret ingredient…oat bran! 1 1/2 TBS daily to start and then it increases to 2 TBS in second phase.</p>
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<p>Yeah, my fancy TJ MAXX 8-pound medicine ball that I slam into the concrete floor (or wall) in the basement!</p>
<p>I figure that what I’ve sunk into fitness gear is money well spent. What’s the price tag on 80 pounds and decent physical fitness? I guess I could have put it into a gym membership, but I’m not sure that I would have been as regular in my workouts. It’s a hard transition to go from ol’ fat guy to where I am now. I think commercial gyms can be a bit of an impediment for some people.</p>
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<p>I can almost guarantee you wouldn’t have these results you’ve posted if you had a gym membership. I say that being a gym employee ;)</p>
<p>Believe it or not, a lot of the equipment you have is not found in your common fitness center. And you wouldn’t have the space to do a lot of your exercises there either…</p>
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<p>We have a converted racquetball court with this kind of equipment at the YMCA and the aerobics room has some interesting equipment like punching bags.</p>
<p>We also have this equipment in the office in one of the three fitness rooms. Our fitness manager is quite enlightened and likes to go through catalogs of equipment.</p>
<p>I think you will start seeing more and more of it. For one thing, “functional exercise” is the big keyword right now. You look at a lot of the major exercise experts and that’s what they’re preaching. You look at CrossFit, etc. It’s a big deal at the moment. The problem is a lot of your fitness centers were not designed for that when they originated. The gym that I workout in has very little free space. We were able to remove 5 pieces of plate-loaded equipment about 15 months ago otherwise that space would not exist. And really there is only enough space for about 2-3 people at a time if that. </p>
<p>Another reason you’ll see more of this is some gyms will start out like this. One reason: weight equipment is EXPENSIVE. Using “functional” equipment, I could start a gym for probably $5-10k. To start a gym with selectorized pieces, I better have $50-60k or more…</p>
<p>I live in a suburban area where there is a lot of empty retail space (vacant strip malls) so a few gyms have popped up. At our YMCA, they’ve converted a few racquetball courts to a fitnessy room and another for spinning. They still have two racquetball and one squash courts remaining.</p>
<p>They’ve converted one of the three tennis courts to a hockey rink by putting a plastic rectangle with rounded corners, and nets, etc. It’s amazing how much adult interest there is in hockey in these parts. During the day, it’s used as a play area for day-care students. The plastic around the court is good for making sure that the little kids don’t wander away.</p>
<p>I can see the fitnessy stuff costing far less and I guess that’s what is encouraging home gyms. I still get by with my barbell, dumbbells and weight bench at home. There are lots of exercises that can be done with little equipment. I was thinking of trying pushups with my feet on the bench.</p>
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<p>Free weights like that can vary in price, but a lot of it is somewhere between $1.10-$2.00 per pound depending on the piece. I was meaning things like a leg press machine, or the wonderful hip adductor and abductor machines 
Those types of things can easily cost $1800-$3,000 apiece! A treadmill or elliptical is easily $5k or more!</p>
<p>I couldn’t imagine buying that kind of equipment new. It’s crazy-expensive to do so. Even us buying refurbished equipment is tough…</p>
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<p>Couldn’t you just get a squat rack or power cage that costs a lot less than a leg press machine, after you have gotten past the point where doing body weight squats and one leg squats holding dumbbells or wearing a weight vest is too easy? For the adductor and abductor muscles, why not do lunges and side lunges instead, needing no equipment unless you want to hold weights while doing them?</p>
<p>Gyms probably like those machines because free weights can get misplaced or stolen, or can cause injury if dropped by people who don’t know what they are doing.</p>
<p>For your upper body, chest exercises like pushups (floor) and dips (between chairs or tables) can be done without additional equipment (unless you want to add more weights to your body weight). For your back, a pullup bar that hangs in the doorway does not cost that much.</p>
<p>Instead of a treadmill, you can run outside. Or you can get an Elliptigo for $2,000 and be able to go places doing the elliptical exercise.</p>
<p>If I lived a little closer, I would seriously consider training at one of Mike Boyle’s two gyms. All he offers is group training. The adult fitness training, two days a week for 9 weeks, is $375. Under $25 a session with no other membership fees. That’s a pretty good deal for “the #1 ranked gym in America”.</p>
<p>On the flip side, I’m doing virtually identical programs at home and the only real compromise is using resistance bands instead of cable columns for some of the chops and stuff. The cable columns are better, but the resistance bands work.</p>
<p>I would get coaching at Boyles and might have seen faster gains, better technique. On the other hand, I can move at exactly my pace and not get frustrated or demoralized when I can’t do something. I can spend a month doing one week of a program if that’s what I need to let my fitness level catch up. I think Boyle’s would have been very difficult for me in the first few months. Admittedly, I’m probably more willing to research the alternatives and progressions to tailor programs to fit my capabilities. </p>
<p>I do think hops_scout is correct. Commercial gyms will have to respond to these functional training group gyms. You can see it even the NY Times. That article on the best exercises was noticeably lacking in recommendations for “which machine should I do” or “what’s the best ab crunch”. At the very least, I think they’ll have to make it easier to do these kinds of workouts. They will probably start incorporating more of it into the fitness class structure.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus,</p>
<p>I agree with you. But most fitness members want nothing to do with those sorts of things. And in two of the gyms that I have worked in, doing squats with free weights are “not allowed.” </p>
<p>Some gyms are starting to catch on, but others are sorely lacking. I work for a small company that operates 4 fitness centers. They are all over the map with regards to equipment…</p>
<p>Most people want a machine with instructions on the machine.</p>
<p>Learning how to do exercises requires an instructor.</p>
<p>BTW, one gym that I was in had a room with a DVD-player, monitor and speakers for groups of people that wanted to do videos. No, I didn’t see anyone doing P90X there.</p>
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<p>Interesting. How did they decide what video would take priority? ;)</p>
<p>My dad brought home a copy of the P90X fitness guide tonight. He got it from a family friend who has seen major results with the program. My dad is afraid he will not be able to do a lot of the exercises, but he’s trying to read a little and maybe give it a shot. It’s better than what he’s doing now!</p>