Would you believe I dreamt of pushups last night? Oh that's just so ridiculous. I dreamt I was doing all sorts of versions (military, shoulder taps, angled, high/low plank transfers).
Try pushups on dumbells- the kind that don't roll. about a 10 pound db gives you enough clearance to wrap your fingers around it. This keeps your wrists in in a neutral position. Sports Authority and Dicks are both selling The Perfect Pushup Device, but a set of dumbbells which you probably already own work pretty much the same way. Now you can learn to LOVE pushups!
Elisa- Sounds like a great session I try to NOT cripple my clients, but make them tolerably sore.
I'm nice and sore too- almost everywhere. I crammed my usual lifting into 4 straight days with no day off last week- and December was kind of a write off between being so sick and having so much family around. The first week back felt pretty brutal.
I'm making a big pot of turkey chili today and the house is pretty much rid of goodies- OK, so I hand a big role in getting rid of them...but it's back to the regular game now!
Mel - I'm so glad that you could have a nice chuckle at my expense. I had a feeling there was a secret society for PT where they get together and laugh at the poor, silly clients. We'll really do anything you say, you know?\
I am slightly better today. It still hurts to get moving and forget going down the stairs but I went for a nice walk today and was fine when I loosened up. I can't imagine that I'll be able to do any lower body work tomorrow. I'll either skip the gym or, more likely just do upper body and a little treadmill, if I'm able.
I'm almost finished the New Rules of Lifting. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to follow program exactly but I'm willing to give it a pretty good shot, I think. I'd love to know what anyone else thinks, when they finish it.
Thanks Mel. Knuckles rabbit? That does NOT sound painfree! Mel, I actually have those perfect pushup bars. Mine are cheapy gold's gym ones I got a walmart a year or so ago. Umm, are they supposed to make the pushup HARDER? It was. Maybe that's the point. BUt since I really can't do them yet, going harder is not what I'm looking for yet! I will give them another try & see if I was making them harder than they needed to be.
The weather was so absolutely gorgeously nice, that not only did I do 1/2 cardio on the t-mill this morning (which was slightly less torture than yesterday) but also dd2 asked if we could go for a family walk this afternoon, awww. So we did for about another 1/2 hour or so. As far as her 6 year old little legs could take her. THEN, I did front yard gardening for about an hour and trimmed back all the shrubbery and pulled the dead mums. Used hedge clippers & worked my shoulder caps til their death. My hands shake when I lift anything of any weight & I'm sure my upper arms will be talking to me tomorrow morning. At least I don't have to use them to go to the bathroom tho, huh Elisa? Have the little ones swimming at the Y right now with dh while I do those mounds of laundry from being down with the sinus infection last weekend and skipping laundry.
Gosh, Fran, I hear you on the laundry! I swear the stuff multiplies in the laundry room (I must keep it too warm ) and there's only 2 of us! Great job on the family walk, how can you say no to that? Glad to hear that you and Mel are both feeling better.
Elisa, I finshed New Rules, and I'm going to try to do the program, but with modifications on the squats for my painful knees. I've been doing them with a ball, and slowly gaining more depth, so I'll keep doing that. Once I can go down a reasonable distance, I'll add some weight - db's since I cannot fathom holding a barbell on my back while keeping the ball in place. In fact, the visual of just getting in that position has me chuckling. I wasn't overly impressed with the short nutritional section, but then, there's so much info here that I pretty much know what I should be doing. I did pick up some premade protein shakes - we'll see. I've not liked any I tried before.
Pat - I think those modifications make sense for you. For me, I think I will only do the program twice a week (which works easily enough for the Workouts A & B). I want to keep my once a week yoga and my once a week power class. Even if it goes slightly against some of what the book recommends, I know that I need those things to keep me going. I really enjoy those two classes.
Maybe I have to re-read something because Stage 1 looks almost too simple?? There are only 5 exercises per workout. Maybe it sounds easier than it will be when I try it but it seems so do-able.
What I got out of the nutrition section for me is simply this: I need to eat more and I need to eat more protein. I'm going to try harder to do both. We'll see how it goes.
Fran - everyone's a comedian here today! I know that feeling well with the shaky arms. Makes it hard for me to wash my hair! Sounds like a great day.
OK, the arms are already talking to me and owwwweeeee. Ugh! Who knew trimming hedges could result in such torture. Ah, the beauty of the highly touted "active living" lifestyle!! THAT'S why it's so good for you!!
I will be in total pain. I cleaned up the whole first floor, swept everywhere, cleaned the kids homework/eating table, the family room. Ugh, nowhere near done, but at least I can stand to look at it and not trip. No one will help me with my room tomorrow, of course, that's just me! But whenever I get nuts and try to do it all in a few hours, my body complains the next day. I guess the sweep, bend, scoop, repeat x25 routine is a good fbwo!!! Yep, I'm the comedian tonite. Must have been all the warm, springlike air today. Getting outside in the sun really is good for the soul. We're supposed to have 65 all week so maybe I can find some other things to do before we hunker back down for the rest of January.
Pat & Elisa: I'm going to try to do the NRLW workouts exactly as prescribed. I tinkered with the workouts from NRL mostly because I was timid about trying new exercises, but I think I need to learn some new ones. I did workout A the other day and those pushups found new muscles to torture, lol. I've been doing DB chest presses for my horizontal push, but evidently they don't hit some part of the back that pushups DO hit. (And I failed to observe that you can do push-ups at an angle if you're not strong enough to do 15: I crapped out at 8 on the first set and 5 on the second. Weakling!) Last week I didn't realize that the first couple of days call for 2x15, so I did 3x15 of squats at the weight I usually do 3x10. I almost died. I was grunting, which I don't usually do. Mel would have been proud.
I missed a few days of working out because the power was out for a few days and the gym was closed, so I'm looking forward to doing workout B tomorrow.
baffled - it took me a couple of minutes to also figure out that there were options for the pushups (and for other exercises as well)...which is good because I don't think I could do more than a couple of "regular" pushups! So, did I understand correctly that in Stage 1, there's only 5 different exercises per workout? How long did the workout take you? I'll try my best to stick to the workout as is, but I'm not sure about the food plan. I'm going to do my best though!
Elisa, it took me about 30 minutes. The man-version of the book did a better job of explaining the principles of these kinds of workouts--I'm not sure why he didn't include the same explanation in the woman book. The basic idea is that we should train movement rather than muscles. So the exercises are split into 6 kinds: squat, deadlift, lunge, push, pull and twist. All the exercises are variations of these 6 basic movements, and each of the exercises hits multiple muscles at a time as they work in concert to perform the movement. The way the program (or at least stage 1) works in NRLW seems to be: Day 1. squat, horizontal push, horizontal pull, lunge, twist, and Day 2. deadlift, vertical push, vertical pull, lunge, twist. The reason each day has so few exercises is that these exercises are compound, and work many different muscles all at once. You don't need to do bicep curls and tricep extensions, for example, because your bis and tris get plenty of exercise from the push/pulls. The other thing is that you superset the exercises (that is, do your push--push-ups--and your pull--seated row--in alternating sets) because this allows you to move more weight (because of longer rest periods between sets of the same exercise), because it heightens the cardio element of lifting weights (and basically replicates interval training) and it is very time-efficient (meaning you spend less time in the gym overall).
FWIW, I've been following my own version of the same plan based on the man book for the last few months and I've seen a very respectable growth in muscle and decrease in body fat (about 4%!) over that period. The basic principle here is that you don't need to spend hours and hours working each muscle in isolation in order to make great strength gains and to burn body fat. For this reason, it appeals to my inner lazy-person, who has no desire at all to do very complicated workouts OR tricep extensions.
The food plan seems ok to me IF you basically want to maintain your weight and lose fat/gain muscle. If you have more than a couple of pounds to lose, I think the advice is bad. And actually, I think this could have been better clarified in the book. His whole thing about losing muscle along with losing fat misses the point that if you have 30 or 50 or 100lb to lose, you WANT to lose some muscle along with the fat. The muscles of a 250lb woman would look a bit silly on a woman who weighs 150, it seems to me. I found the food plan part a bit irritating, to be honest. It adds up to: eat maintenance calories, eat clean, eat protein. This is a good plan for a person not trying to shift a bunch of weight, but it really won't do, IMHO, for serious weight loss.
Last edited by baffled111; 01-07-2008 at 06:24 PM.
I had a feeling there was a secret society for PT where they get together and laugh at the poor, silly clients. We'll really do anything you say, you know?\
So we did for about another 1/2 hour or so. As far as her 6 year old little legs could take her. THEN, I did front yard gardening for about an hour and trimmed back all the shrubbery and pulled the dead mums. Used hedge clippers & worked my shoulder caps til their death. My hands shake when I lift anything of any weight & I'm sure my upper arms will be talking to me tomorrow morning. At least I don't have to use them to go to the bathroom tho, huh Elisa? 
) and there's only 2 of us! Great job on the family walk, how can you say no to that? Glad to hear that you and Mel are both feeling better. 
I did pick up some premade protein shakes - we'll see. I've not liked any I tried before.
We're supposed to have 65 all week so maybe I can find some other things to do before we hunker back down for the rest of January.
Great Job JG! 
