Tuesday 13/01/09

Another day at the gym and I hooked myself back up to the heart rate monitor.

Warm up on the rowing machine. 5 minutes.

Seated arm curls with the dumbbells. 3 sets of 15 reps. 7.5kgs. A month or so ago I was struggling with this weight but it seemed pretty acceptable last night.

Seated dips. An old exercise, and the one I am blaming for my shoulder injury. I am back up to 36kgs in 3 sets of 15 and am feeling a lot more confident and happy to do this now.

Concentrated curls on the cable machine. Hard exercise this one. The cable is set at ground level and I stand sideways onto it, pulling the cable across my body. My hand starts at my side and ends near my shoulder. This works the biceps and pectoral muscles. 3 sets of 15 at 2kgs for each arm. I think my last set I couldn’t do any more than 12 reps though.

Tricep pull down on the cable machine with the rope. This time the cable is set at high level with the rope handle (instead of the metal one). With my arms at my side I pull the rope down and when my arms are fully extended I twist my wrists out. 3 sets of 15 at 5kgs. Again, pretty tough with the last set I stopped short of the 15 reps.

Cardio. 30 minutes increasing the elevation every 5 minutes. Fitness Stu came in to see how I was getting on while I was sweating my way through this. I think he was thought I was slacking as he was going to increase the speed but seemed happy that I was pushing hard.

We had a bit of a chat about running (my half of the conversation populated with huffs and puffs) and Fitness Stu told me that road running was a better way to prepare for a half marathon and would get me fitter quicker because the treadmill doesn’t use the same muscles. Fitness Stu hasn’t let me down yet, so I’m going to slot in some street running into my exercising as soon as I can.

I finished the 30 minutes with relative ease this time, I think the ten minute chat distracted me so I didn’t end up watching the clock for 30 minutes thinking about the pain.

There was some hurt though, my calves are wrecked again.

I went for a swim for 15 minutes again but was hungry and not in the mood so I called it a day.

My heart rate monitor peaked at 170bpm when I was at full tilt on the treadmill and it averaged 138bpm over the 75 minutes I was in the gym.

I’m going to have a rest day today as I am cream crackered. Though I have a few moments ago been reminded that Nigel will be at the gym today, and will be missing out on a joint training session. Buggerit.