Shoulders!!!!

I'm super pumped this morning because it was shoulders day. I haven't lifted, legitimately-spent-time-doing-a-lifting-program lifted in literally years, and my absolute favorite day is always shoulder day. Today was the first of many of those days, and it was great!

Body Beast loves its shoulder workouts. It's the only muscle group that gets it own day consistently throughout the program. Shoulders separate all of the muscles from each other - chest to arms, chest to back, biceps to triceps....all of it has to pass through the shoulders, and if you have huge shoulders, everything else naturally looks huge too.

So today's workout was pretty great. My numbers were lower than they were a few years ago, but hey, that's expected. But I can say my shoulders are feeling excellent today, and I can't wait to feel those DOMS in the next day or so.

Tomorrow I have Beast Cardio, but I think I'm going to replace it with a different cardio workout. Cardio is not my focus this round, and I don't want to follow DVDs anyways, so instead I think I'm opting for the old Bas Rutten CDs. Might be a game time call though - we'll see. I'm also considering MMX from P90X3, the MMA-style workout. Any readers of this blog know I love martial arts workouts, but I need to still be mindful of my ankle (hence Bas Rutten, which I can do without any legs).

Game time call coming tomorrow - expect to read about it in the blog.

Bring it!

Back, bicepss and broken ankles

First, that title is misleading - I sprained my ankle, but "sprained" loses the alteration. I slipped coming out of a bathroom yesterday, and landed on my bad ankle (I broke it years ago, it didn't heal right). So now I have a limp for a few days.

Despite that development, today was back and biceps day, and I made it happen! I abbreviated the workout a bit. This workout is already longer than most in the Body Beast series, I'm not entirely sure why, but I remember it being the closest to an hour, and I only have 30 minutes. But I also had to take out any of the standing exercises, which eliminated pullups (not that I can do them yet anyways) and a few others. I ended up going through about 75% of the entire workout, mixing and matching some of the exercises to still achieve super sets and giant sets.

Back in general is not my favorite muscle group. I'd place it somewhere slightly above legs on the awesome scale, which means it's pretty far down. Biceps are a different story, but you've gotta get the big muscle group out of the way first.

I put up some decent numbers on rows/single arm rows, and I actually do enjoy overheard pulldowns. These were by no means amazing Herculean weights, but they were a good starting point. I'm looking to build on them more next week.

By the time biceps were up, I had finished an entire TED Talk and was really in need of hurrying. I opted to do the seated bicep curls and the 1,1,2 hammers (also seated, because of ankle) as a super set. This meant lowering weights a bit, but not by much, and in the end I think the biceps got a decent workout as well. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) will determine whether or not that's the case, so I'll try to remember to report in on that in a day or two.

Speaking of DOMS, my chest and tris are finally killing me. That means I had a great workout, but taking two days to get here means I spent a full day wondering if I worked hard enough. My legs hurt from yesterday, but not nearly as much as I thought (ankle aside). This means I'm both worried I didn't work hard enough yesterday, and worried I'm going to be in agony tomorrow. We will see.

Time for work. Tomorrow is shoulders, my absolute favorite muscles! Let's see how things go as I continue to press into week 1.

Bring it!

The start of Body Beast - again

For those who have followed this blog for the last five years, you know my true love in this whole working-out world is lifting weights. I like to lift heavy stuff. I don't know if it's because I hate cardio (most cardio - the martial arts workouts are usually fun) or because I'm a byproduct of a weightlifting-dominated male culture, but bottom line, it's my thing. So after completing a begrudgingly boring week of P90X3, the whole of which I was saying "as soon as I'm done with P90X again I'm going to start lifting", I realized that I should just focus on what I enjoy. If I was more focused on overall getting into shape like I was a few years ago, maybe this would be different, but I have 30 minutes a day to work out and not a sincere ton of motivation (some, but not like I used to), so if I'm going to get up early to work out, it had better be to do something I love.

So once again, I'm doing BodyBeast. I've omitted the DVDs this time, just focusing on going through the full program with an Excel doc that I found online here. I still have the DVDs and am referring to them when I don't remember an exercise, but honestly, I've done this program twice (both times with excellent results) and my only complaint is the occasional downtime. This eliminates that, getting me out of the gym sooner. It's all good.

Yesterday was chest and tris, which is a solid all-around upper body workout. My numbers are way lower than years prior, but I did it and am feeling good today.

This morning I did the dreaded leg workout. This was pretty much pathetic. 99% of my lifts didn't even have weight, and I was drained. Sumo squats, regular squats, lunges, reverse lunges....ya, you don't need weight for all of these if you're just starting out. But I did it and officially had trouble getting up the stairs after so I could shower for work. That's a good workout in my book!

Onward and upward, I'm back at it! I'm determined to be in some form of health by the time I get to meet my little girl, and lifting is the way to do it! I'm looking forward to being that Dad that everyone assumes can beat up your Dad. Weight lifting will get me there (possibly with a sprinkle of jiu jitsu from the school that just opened up down the street too). Follow along on the journey and leave me a comment to keep me motivated!

Talk to you soon!