Stronger, Fitter, Faster

Stronger

Twelve years behind a desk does things to your body. For the first time in ten years I've started hitting a gym 3x a week but that doesn't mean I can muster too many pushups just yet.

Fitter

Lose a serious amount of weight. This is definitely key to making everything else work, so I'll be focusing on dropping pounds to get not only into a healthy range of BMI, but to also increase my endurance and fitness.

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Tearing and rebuilding

Getting back into the gym this week after a month long hiatus, I'm reminded of the last time I went to a gym regularly back in the late 90s. After a few months of dutifully lifting weights three times a week, I hit a lull in my enthusiasm for it because I felt like I was merely tearing my muscles up every other day, and recuperating when I wasn't working out. I was always sore and never felt satisfied or good about the work I was doing. I did very monotonous and repetitive routines and simply added weight each week to measure my progress.

Luckily this time around I have a trainer and he changes things up week to week and we barely focus on weight (I don't actually even know how much I'm lifting or pushing most times -- we just talk in relative terms of harder or easier). The difference between having a trainer varying workouts versus following a list exactly every day in the gym is night and day. I'm satisfyingly exhausted at the end of each workout and while I might be a bit sore during the in between days (not so sore I can't get hours of riding in), it's nothing like the robotic routine of tear, rebuild, tear, rebuild.

I never thought I'd say it, but I actually like working out now.

Posted on February 14, 2009 in gym

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