Mel -- I notice you seem to do two-a-days, with cardio and lifting. How many times a week do you do this? Do you cycle two-a-days so that your body has time to recover? Are you alternating low-intensity cardio/heavy lifting and intense cardio (e.g., intervals)/light lifting?
Fran, hugs & good vibes to you. I hope you'll be OK soon. I found meditation a good thing in times of extreme mind overload, hope it'll all work out well for you.
Lydia - if you have found the balance thingy, could you pass it through my way ? I could use some of that too!
People, i am actually typing this with very sore arms...Just returned from the gym & did my round of machines while DD was taking in a sance class. What can i say ? Weights at power class are lower, because i hit my endurance level, and machines make my arms really hurt! Higher loads, lower reps, and muscles used in a different way... AND I biked to work 3 times this week!. I skipped power class on monday, but I'm still at 4.5 hrs biking + 1 hr weight training, so 5.5 hrs for this week. Tomorrow is yoga, and i hope i'll be able to squeeze in a c25k session over the weekend.
While the good news is that it looks like I'm onto the excercise vibe, the bad news is that it makes me crave sweet things. I'm thinking of looking into SB. That is supposed to get you off carb cravings right ??
And another very good thing..It looks like I am finally getting out of "surviving" mode and into "living" mode. I actually caught myself having some enjoyable me-time, relaxing, before I was too dead tired to enjoy it!. That is probabely a first in like 3 or 4 years...I actually could get used to this!
Rabbit- Glad to hear you are perking up. Living just to exist is no fun at all You've gone through a long grieving period and it sounds like you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And sore is good!
Kim- I do 45 minutes of cardio every weekday morning, usually the elliptical. I never do steady state, but I rarely do HIIT either. About once a week I do a treadmill run, sometimes as an extra session, sometimes instead of the elliptical. The treadmill is in our workout room- good place for it, except that's right off the master bedroom and my dh doesn't like being woken up by my morning obsession. I never do HIIT on a treadmill anymore. Body parts would just fall off, I think. I lift 5 days a week. I do a pretty standard body-builder split, but have one day of just wacko balance, plyometrics, and olympic lifts. The split is standard, but not the exercises that I do. I do my leg workout on Saturdays so I don't go back to work dripping. My gym clients don't mind the look, but my day job clients would! I generally lift heavy- lots of supersets. Exercises that hurt (as in cause injury) if I go heavy, I just don't do any more. Like BB bench presses. There are too many alternatives to risk rotator cuff tears and permanent tendonitis in my elbows as I had a few years ago. My body is just used to it at this point. I don't know if I can still train this way in another 5 years, but the owner of the private training studio where I train is 60 years old next month and still lifts HEAVY 5 days a week, still competes and still wins in NPC Nationals every year.
This all sounds kind of obsessive, but I lost a lot of weight 6 years ago and NEED to maintain the loss. I also like the condition that I'm in and truly believe that I've found the fountain of youth: it's anywhere that good heavy resistance training is possible.
Working out at lunch keeps me sane during the day. My job is very high stress and on the few days that I haven't made it to the gym at lunch time, my face is twitching by 4 pm One of my biggest fears is that my office location will change and I won't be 3 minutes from a fantastic gym!
There...more than anyone ever wanted to know about me! OK, off to get ready for bed so I can get up when it's now DARK and do my hamster imitation.
Mel -- Thanks for all the info (I asked!). I've been contemplating two-a-days on some days, but am a bit worried about overdoing it and inviting a flare-up of a chronic injury in my hip, or just getting burned out. Plus there's the time factor in an unusually busy semester at work. I think for now I'll stick with my far more modest goals of 6 days/week, maybe add a semi-workout (e.g., the climbing wall, which doesn't involve another shower) as the second activity of the day.
Good on ya though, for being able to pull it off. Wow.
Mel - Thnx for the hug. WOW! That is an impressive routine! I hope I'll be in the same good shape when I'm doing this for 6 years! Actually, I went to exercising about 3 years ago, when I got the burn-out, and compared to then, I am in pretty good shape now!
Kaw - your scedule sounds awesome already, I can imagine the fear of a burnout!
Today I'm off fom work ...biked top the gym, medidated, did a yoga session and biked back...a total of 1 hr 45 minutes. This week is going well on exercise! (And my arms are still sore from yesterday, so that must be good!)
Morning all, speaking of all this cardio, I think I'm ready to get back to the 6/wk routine myself instead of when I can fit it. The kids are on wk3 of school and doing well, so we have our morning routine pretty well figured out at this point. I will be rising at 6:30 or a little earlier to get it in before I wake the girls at 7:30 to start their day. I'm not sure I do HIIT - it's probably one of those, you'd know it if you did it things, like labor pains! ha But I do a preformatted program on the treadmill that changes speed and incline about every 90 seconds to 2 minutes. I have it set to go up to an incline of 6 and up to a hi speed of 4.0. Does that qualify as HIIT or just interval training?
I'm just stopping by for a quick hello. It just seems to be constantly busy these days but I'm usually around, lurking, and seeing what's going on with everyone else.
Mel/Kaw - I love reading about your workout schedules. They put me to shame. I try for 5-6 times a week total (cardio and weights) and people think I'm a bit nuts. I don't know how you do it Mel, working out twice most days but I get that if it works for you, it's hard to stop.
I'm still certain that I could kick my routine up a bit but right now I'm focused on my first 5k race at the end of the month. Then, I think I'm going to up the strength training and see what my results are.
I started off about a year ago with much better strenght training focus but somehow I still ended up back on the cardio train! It's like I don't feel like I've really worked out unless I've done some cardio and the sweat is dripping. Silly and it also probably means that I should work harder on my strength training!!
Glad to see some people pop back in and to everyone who needs it. And if you need something a bit sillier how about this or this or this ? Finally, if you need a little cheering on, try this
but even if it isn't were here for you 
or this 
or this 
? Finally, if you need a little cheering on, try this 
