I am actually really liking the “fit it in after work” plan. It is working well. And with Wednesday’s out with Mike, I even have time to hit the steam room before dinner! YAY. But WOW is the new plan with the new set of split workouts harder on the bod.  In a good way. When I was doing it in the morning I was at best making it every other day, so I didn’t worry too much about which exercises I was doing when, i would just do about 1/2-1/3 of the stuff on my list. Knowing that I am going to end up on consecutive days, I have split up the workout into two non-overlapping sets. One set is all upper-body – shoulders, arms and back. The other is lower body and core.

Working all of the same set of stuff at the same time is proving to be much harder to maintain at the weights/rep/set I was doing before. If things don’t even out, I might drop back the weight a bit until i get used to it, so I can complete a full set of sets. If that makes any sense.

• June 7th – The Force is Strong with The Muppets at Disney Parks – Two great tastes in one!
• June 7th – “I’m proposing to make my school a prison” – How sad is that …
• June 7th – A possible link between pollution and crime—and marshmallows – I wonder if this might be related to the world-wide “epidemic” of increasing average weight among people and animals.
• June 7th – Terror in Arizona: Just another ‘isolated incident’? Funny how that list keeps mounting – Makes me think of that lyric from Alice’s Restaurant – how many people need to do it before it becomes a movement?

Still feel like I don’t quite have the right break out of exercises yet for circuits, but I am working on it. I have come to realize that I have to split up the ones I like in with the ones I like less, and then use them as an incentive – hey if you do those push-ups, then you get to do your lat pull-downs!! I like doing the lat pull downs – so far they are kind of easy no matter how high I have moved the weight – so they make me feel like I am strong.

Enough with the kvetching already … on to the update.

So far pretty good with maintaining regularity – in the sense that we are mostly keeping to the schedule of getting to the club 3-4 days per week. I originally started with a ton of classes, yoga, pilates etc. but my schedule got so crazy that I started missing classes and I was getting pouty so hopefully in a few weeks when life slows down again I’ll start making it back to the pilates class.

I have added swimming in, and WOW that is an awesome workout.  Most all of you probably don’t know that in my wee years I swam competitively (not saying I was Olympics bound or anything, but I trained and competed and didn’t completely suck.) So getting back in the pool was a bit humbling in how far my stamina had fallen (duh!) but also fairly rewarding in how fast it is improving.

Last reported I was kind of liking the treadmill – well, my body disagreed, and until i figure out why i am getting hip pain, the swimming gets me a nice cardio workout with much less hip pain and the bonus of a certain amount of muscley workout as well.

Bonus and mini-goal achieved – hurt much less after workouts, less tired after work outs and a check-in on the treadmill Monday showed me that what used to send my heart-rate soaring is now a nice warm up.

For those folks who ask – how is your diet going – I would like to reiterate I am NOT ON A DIET and am trying VERY HARD to not gauge progress by a number on the scale.

A bit more thinky stuff:

I have been doing a lot of reading at Stumptuous.com, and Noël Figart who both have  some very interesting things going on at their blogs; and I have been doing a bit of thinking on goals, long term hoped for results, what I’d like to see when I look in the mirror and how I’d like my body to function. I also did a bit of “hmmm, and what are my genetics like” thinking.

My parents are both VERY fit. They are both differently fit. My Mother is super tiny, she exercises a lot, frequently something that is aerobic/cario and a little fadish, and she is super duper careful about what she eats. My Dad has the bonus of being super tall, and while he used to be a marathon runner he now focuses a lot on weight lifting and while he pays attention to what he eats, it is in a completely different way (and i have to admit seems like it has more yummy).  The thing is, as my parents get older my Mother’s tinyness isn’t doing her a lot of favors, she is losing strength and having some issues that might have had less impact if she had a little more muscle supporting her.

blahblahblah TL;DR

Upshot is … With my parents examples’ in mind, armed with some knowledge from the intertubes, and hopefully with the help of the personal trainer I am seeing for the next two weeks, I hope to start weight training next week.

Yeah. I have talked about how I am taking a fairly casual approach to my “goals” or what I might consider success. But while casual is good. I do think some metrics to help one evaluate progress wouldn’t suck.

Clothing size is totally untenable – it is WAY to variable brand to brand, store to store etc. Although – “how do I fit in my clothes” isn’t a terrible metric.
Weight – actual numerical values have previously mentioned neurotic issues.
Pain – ya know if you work hard enough  - you’ll feel it. Uhm .. yeah, no… Not that i mind the “good” pain that comes with a good work out. But not really a useful metric.

I have chosen to go with something that is deliberately sort of a pain in the butt to do – so I can’t make myself neurotic by checking all the time.

Measurements. I took a basic set about 2 weeks ago, I did it myself, so the accuracy is probably not great. But this is the list of stats I’ll be checking against. If anyone has a suggestion about another place I should be measuring, I’m happy to take suggestions.

Neck: 14.5″
Tits: 49.5″
Back: 37″
Hip: 50.25″
Thigh: 28.75″
Torso at Belly Button: 45.5″
Upper Arm: 15.25″