Sore Muscles!?!?

I moved on to the next variation in phase 1 of my workouts. It's still the same exercises, and I do five different ones each day. Friday included deadlifts, lunges, crunches on the ball, shoulder press, and lat pulldown. Instead of only two sets, this week I did three. The cool thing is that I built my weight up over the previous exercises, so I did three sets at what previously would've seemed like a really heavy weight. I'm up to 95 pounds on the lat pulldowns, which is a big improvement for me! I used 20 pound dumbbells on my lunges, and I can certainly feel that in my muscles today. A good feeling, of course!

The main philosophy in this book is that you should workout major muscles groups and the smaller ones (like biceps and triceps) will be included because of the type of exercise you're doing. So the lat pulldown grabs onto the biceps, and when I do pushups, it hits my triceps too. What I like the most about the workouts is that they're short and focused. It makes it much easier to stick with it.

As for running, I do that on my non-lifting days or really whenever the spirit moves me. I now use 6.5 mph as my warmup speed on the treadmill and go up to 6.8 - 7.2 mph for my workout speed. There is nothing like the accomplishment of improved fitness... I love it! I haven't chosen a race for next year yet, but I think I'll stick with some shorter ones in the winter. I'm up in the air on what else, but I will definitely continue trying to run faster. Fun fun fun!

Enjoy your holiday season!