The Day The Band Broke

It has been no secret to anyone here on Misdirected that I have not been enjoying working out. Whether doing home aerobics, walking, or performing "resistance exercise" with those hideous oversized rubber bands, I have just not been "into it", as they say. Oh, I have been doing it, of course. I just haven't been enjoying it at all.

This is strange, because I used to be a weightlifter, 15 years and 1 disability ago. Not a bodybuilder, mind you - a weightlifter. That was my primary form of exercise. I would spend hours at the gym, several days a week. I carried a spiral notebook to log my progression, worried about form, complained about cardio, challenged myself to perform "just one more rep" when working a muscle group to failure. I really dug it.

Yesterday, Lor wandered into the office and announced that we would be adding a stop to our daily walk. We would walk a mile up to our local community center, work out there, instead of at home, then walk back. I shrugged, and went along with it. At least it meant no time spent with the rubber bands for that day, right?

The gym at the community center (pictured above) was really pretty impressive - 6 or 7 cardio machines, and a whole bunch of multi-function weight machines. I downloaded an app (of course) to get a suggested workout, and then started hitting the machines, beginning with the bench press.

Now, mind you, I am someone who used to be able to bench 250-ish pounds. So, it was a little depressing to spend some time figuring out that my current 3-rep max was a measly 70 pounds. (3-rep max: 3 repetitions of a weight exercise where you can lift for one second, hold for one second, then lower the weight over 3 seconds with perfect form.) Hooray for the strength benefits of resistance band exercise. Dejected, I set my weight at the next lowest setting (55 pounds) and started cranking through my first set of 12.

Somewhere through my second set, I found I was actually enjoying myself.

I went through an entire full-body session, over the course of about an hour. Sure, the numbers were fractions of what I used to see, back in the day. But the challenge of maintaining form, the sheer visceral feel of moving real weights was amazing. Today, I am sore everywhere, in a really good way. Best of all, I can feel that I have been working out in my drooping chest and arms. I can't wait to go back.

At last, I seem to have found my endorphin-releasing exercise. It isn't walking, it isn't running, it certainly isn't resistance band exercise. Just good old-fashioned straining and grunting as I fight the weights. I am already making plans for breaking up my weight training over multiple days, just so I can spend more time at the gym. Makes me wonder why I didn't do this all along.

Other than because Lor hadn't suggested it yet, of course.

Ready To Throw Away The Giant Rubber Bands,

- Hawkwind

My Resistance To Weight Lifting

Photo Credit: drpretty via Compfight cc

Well, now that yesterday's unpleasantness is behind (Ha! "Behind" - see what I did there?) us, we can move on to more important things...

(Crickets chirping.)

Funny, it's the screw-ups that make the best copy, isn't it? There is just not a whole lot of gripping drama to "My stomach seems to have recovered and my blood pressure is a little low." Error makes for better reading than compliance.

So, given that I will probably not be indulging in any humorous diet screw-ups today, I am free to turn my attention to something I should've started last week: resistance exercise.

I had sorta been waiting until I could make it up to the gym at our local community center, but I can see that waiting is not doing me any favors. 70 pounds of weight loss has led to a whole lot of sag. So, rather than waiting until I get out of the house and up to the gym on a regular basis, I am forced to turn my attention back to my fall-back tools for "weight lifting": resistance bands.

I will be the first to tell you, I am not a fan of resistance bands. I feel like they don't provide enough resistance, forcing really high reps to get any kind of significant benefit out of them. I am also not clever/flexible enough to figure out how to use them to target specific muscles, so I end up doing sort of general exercises (like standing rows) instead of muscle-specific ones (like, say, cable pulldowns). Once upon a time, I was a gym rat, and the downshift kinda drives me crazy.

However, doing 50% of something is always preferable to doing 100% of nothing. At least that is what my mother used to say when I would fail to turn in homework assignments back in school. So, I have put together a little resistance band workout that I will try to use 2 or 3 times a week:

• Chest Presses (To target that hideous mass of loose skin on my pecs)
• Standing Rows (To try to get some work on my largely ignored back)
• Shrugs (See if I can develop shoulders again)
• Overhead triceps extensions (The most awkward of all, as it involves putting a heel on one end of the band then reaching up with the other end.)
• Bicep curls (Standing with legs spread holding down the center of the band, grabbing the ends in each hand and curling - another weird one.)
• Forearm curls (Same as before, just engaging only forearms)
• Crunches ('Cause, abdomen fat/skin)

No legs resistance work here - the 3 - 4 times a week on our single speed bikes is about all the leg work I want or can handle.

Hopefully, this will have some positive result, though I am not holding my breath. I honestly feel like I might as well be doing isometrics instead - the bands provide similar resistance, and isometric exercise doesn't involve trying to jury-rig ways to keep the bands in place. Keeping my fingers crossed.

If anyone out there is successfully using resistance bands, let me know - I am just positive I am doing this all wrong.

Just Waiting Until I Smack Myself With These Oversized Rubber Bands,

- Hawkwind