Social Workout

Workout

Long Time No Blog

Hey Social Workout!  Sorry it's been so long since I last blogged.  I've been diligently logging my workout minutes, but between my move, my wedding planning, and my other summer responsibilities (such as being captain of our charity kickball team), I haven't had the focus to maintain my exercise journaling.

Not too much to report since I last checked in.  My two latest trends at the gym have been doing a lot of overhead exercises and doing either slow reps or quick sets, depending on how you look at them, near my max.

I've incorporated overhead work in almost every trip to the gym now.  Some of it is for power -- squat presses and behind the neck push-presses.  Some of it is for strength -- strict presses and overhead squats.  And some of it is just for core stability -- doing tree pose with a weighted barbell overhead, or doing light overhead work while balancing on a bosu ball.  I feel that this is giving me a better full body workout and including my abs and lower back for stability in a way that I don't get with a lot of the machine or bench exercises and is more effective than some of the more traditional standing free weight work.   I still have a lot of the other work in the mix, though, but I make sure to do at least a little overhead work each day, even if it's just holding a bar overhead while standing for a minute.

The slow rep work basically consists of finding my max on an exercise and then doing reps with a 20-30 second rest in between.  This saves me some time because I don't lose the weights between sets, but also I feel like it keeps me a little more engaged with what I'm doing (it's easy to get distracted if I'm working different stations).

I'm also trying to get lean for my upcoming wedding, which probably makes the weight lifting a little less effective.  I'm going to try to incorporate more cardiovascular work as well, and at the same time continue my experiments with barefoot walking and running to condition my feet and legs to direct contact with the ground and different gait patterns.