Tuesday, 30 November:
60 minutes Nautilus elliptical, with a squeaky right pedal that drove me & everyone around me crazy, intervals, resistance at 8 and 5
60 minutes weights

Originally Posted by traveling michele:
Nov. 27: 40 minutes elliptical

Nov. 28: 45 minutes elliptical

Totals: 24 days
1362 minutes

Nov. 29: 60 minutes boxing boot camp

Totals: 25 days
1422 minutes

Originally Posted by saef:
Tuesday, 30 November:
60 minutes Nautilus elliptical, with a squeaky right pedal that drove me & everyone around me crazy, intervals, resistance at 8 and 5
60 minutes weights

Saef-- I hate when the machines are like that!

I have a question about your weights. What do you do for 60 minutes? That seems like a long time to me. When I do weights I usually do them for 20 minutes or so. You go girl!:carrot:

Behind again.

Nov 27: ran 3.5 miles, 42:38, with doggie
Nov 28: rest day
Nov 29: ran 1.65 miles, 18:54, with doggie
Nov 30: various strength stuff not structured enough to catalogue.

I had an entertaining strength workout today. I packed a gym bag but forgot to pack my sneakers. Normally I wear sneakers to work but today I was wearing boots. In any case, not that sneakers protect your feet much, but I didn't want to do any real lifting with bare feet. So instead I did some arm exercises with 3 and 5lb dumbbells, then a bunch of barefoot exercises (some yoga, some ballet exercises, some karate exercises). People probably thought I was nuts.

Jessica, I'm impressed. If I'd forgotten my shoes I probably would have just gone home. :(

November 28 & 29: Rest days
I don't often take two days off in a row, but it felt good. I took a little stroller walk on Monday.

November 30:
3 miles treadmill
36 minutes
1.65 miles stairmaster
24 minutes

Michele, here's my routine, more or less. (And I hope that I'm using the correct terms for some of these, as I know the movements better than the nomenclature.)

I am shy about this, as I know enough to know this is not a particularly good routine. It's been shaped mostly by my fear & loathing of my flapping bat wings. (Which have indeed been reduced considerably by my following this routine 3x a week from summer through fall.) Also by my staying clear of machines as much as possible. And further, by the virus in my inner ear on the left side, back in June, which has seriously compromised my sense of balance & which I am still working on getting back. (If I stand on my toes without a gaze point, I will fall over.)

I warm up by rowing on the Concept II for 15 minutes.

These are what I do standing
1. Swing kettlebell from a squat to standing (don't know what this is called)
2. Standing chest flys with a cable machine.
3. Step up, raise 12-lb ball overhead, alternating sides
4. Bicep press to dumbbell press to French curl (a compound movement)
5. Dumbbell shoulder press
6. Lateral raise behind my back (arms go straight up behind me, when they go down, they stop before my butt; I don't know if that's what this is really called)
7. Hammer curl
8. Lateral raise on the sides
9. Dumbbell extension

Then I get a bench for
10. Triceps kickback
11. One-arm dumbbell row
12. Dumbbell pullover
13. Dumbbell chest fly
14. Incline dumbbell press
15. Skullcrusher
16. Bench press

Then I use a machine for
17. Lat pulldown, underhand and wide grip overhand

18. And finish by using a cage with a bar across it for incline pushups

Lately, I have also been trying out
19. Military press (standing) with a weighted bar.

That's an hour.

Oh, and Wednesday, Dec. 1:

45 minutes spin class
30 minutes Pilates routine on my own.

Probably I should save that for the new maintainers moving in December thread.

Thanks for posting your routine Saef! Why do you stay off the machines? Because of your balance? I truly believe my arms were helped immensely by the elliptical--- I use it on a high resistance and pump my arms!

Michele, I do use the elliptical & the arc trainer. The latter has been a struggle, but the ENT specialist says that my working out on it several days a week has really helped me progress much better than a lot of his patients who've also had their auditory nerves & sense of balance affected by a virus.

What I meant is that I don't use the weight machines, the so-called circuit machines, except for the chest flys & the lat pulldown. For two reasons:

1) I've never been properly oriented on them or fitted to them, and they look like the kind of thing where you ought to figure out what your correct settings are, and that a professional would help with that. I have neglected to make an appointment with a trainer at the gym to do this, & to bring along a little notebook so I can remember to make notations on each of them.

2) Because of all the disdain expressed for these machines in most of the strength training books I've read. Experts writing these books seem to only like certain machines & to prefer that people use free weights & body weight. Heck, I know my own arm & upper body routine outlined above over-relies on dumbbells when I ought to be doing body weight stuff. (But as I mentioned, my poor balance makes some of the body weight moves a little iffy. Lunges, for example.)

For me, I think the elliptical helped my arms, but the reverse seems truer -- I'm much better at very high resistance on the elliptical now that I've been working hard on my arms.

Hey guys, FYI I created a new thread for December!