There’s an odor of food coming from the kitchen, yet I’m not in that room and no one else is either. Cooking doesn’t mean slaving away at the stove for hours J in fact, all I did was pick up a boneless veal roast, put it in an oven-proof dish with a little cooking-spray in the bottom, some frozen “summer vegetables” and a glass of white wine. I put the dish in the oven, turned the knob to 400ºF and left it there. It’ll stay for a good hour to an hour and a half.
My muscles are a little sore today. Not all of them of course, I don’t train with full-body workouts these days, but rather one body part at a time 5 days a week. Although I trained my back on Tuesday, today I could feel the tightness in the lats as I moved around doing things. Certain movements reminded me I’d trained shoulders on Wednesday. Admittedly, I skipped leg-day on Thursday! The sorest muscles are still my biceps from yesterday’s workout. The chest muscles were worked on Monday, so they’ve recuperated by now J
Yesterday, I started with biceps and went on to triceps (alternate weeks I start with triceps and go on to biceps). Using the 7MM formula http://tinyurl.com/7MinMuscl , I started with 5 reps and ended up with just 2 reps on the last couple of mini-sets. I totally “died” – which of course is part of the plan and also the most fun. Breezing through the full 5 minutes and still be able to do 5 reps for the last mini-set … I feel cheated out of a good workout! That of course, signals the need to add more weight to the dumbbells next time.
This brings me to my point today – other than the initial one that a meal doesn’t need huge amounts of time to be tasty and elegant – I see too many women dilly-dallying around with puny little weights, or somewhat heavier ones but still obviously too light to offer any resistance for their workout. Asked why they don’t add more weight, I usually hear …
- My trainer told me to use these (and forgot to mention progression?)
- I don’t want to get bulky muscles
It’s true that some people (men included) will see a trainer for an initial few training sessions when they join a gym; get a program, and either not be told to increase the weight/resistance as they progress, or they forget that they were told to. It happened to me too, but luckily I browsed around the Net a bit and also had some great fellow trainees who set me straight.
As for the “I don’t want to get bulky” part … sorry, but just how do you propose to get bulky in the first place? And who told you you’d get bulky from a 20-pound dumbbell?
Answers: certain muscle magazines showing bulky women – those are “juiced” up with some sort of steroid cocktail, they did not get those man-looking muscle bulges naturally, trust me on that one. What else is altered in their bodies is irreversible and not something anyone in their right mind would want to do.
There is also a common misconception in most gyms that women shouldn’t do this exercise or that – I had a trainer tell me to use 5-pound Dbs for lateral raises (shoulders) because “women shouldn’t use the lateral raise machine”. There was no room for discussion, I was not allowed near that contraption, period. Why? The machine’s lowest setting was 10 lbs, lifted by both delts at the same time, ergo a 5-pound load for each, same as the 5 pound Dbs. So what was his reasoning? I’ll never know, but I not only did use the machine, I used it at 25 lbs! The reason I did was in fact mostly because he said I shouldn’t J I much prefer the freee-weight training anyway.
However, no woman has the natural predisposition to get bulky. We can lift and pant and grunt all we want, we lack the male hormone responsible in a large part for the muscle-growing. Sure we have some testosterone, but not nearly enough to get bulky. OK? LIFT SO YOU FEEL IT, have fun in the gym, rather than being bored out of your mind with the little “pink dumbbells”!
I’m wondering if that’s why so many women are sitting around chatting while they move their light weights around – they are bored silly! Try this next time: switch from the soup-can weight of 2-5 pounds to a meat-weight of … say 10-15 pounds, and do the same exercise again! Only this time, concentrate on the muscle you are working and ignore the next person over! Take notes on your performance, and make it a point to beat that the next time!
Sure, you’ll go from 30 reps with the “soup” weight to maybe 10 with the “meat” weight, but that’s fine. Challenge yourself! Compete with yourself. Never mind that the woman next to you manages more reps with the same weight, or more weight than you. You are not her, you are you. And guys, the same goes for you too!
Remember, it’s not about how much weight you can pull or push or throw around, not only. YOU need the right weight to challenge your muscles and mind and to grow; but you need one crucial element: correct form!
When I see inexperienced trainees watching in awe as a seeming expert pulls the whole stack on the lats pull-down … knowing the guy is doing it all wrong: he grabs the bar, throws himself onto the seat and keeps that movement going backwards, barely moving his arms with just a slight bend to the elbow … he’s not training his lats at all, he’s using momentum from the “body-throw” to move those weight-plates! Ridiculous show of stupidity Mr.”know-it-all”. Because of course, you can’t tell him he’s doing it wrong!
I’m more impressed seeing someone using the correct weight load for their strength, using perfect form, and executing a movement that has elegance and will give results. It may be only half the stack (to stay with the lats pull-down) but he’ll pull the bar/handle to his chest with a swift, exploding movement and return it to the start position slowly and deliberately, never allowing his butt to leave the seat (unlike the first guy who was flying all over the place). That my friends, is impressive training.
My plan now for the next 6 weeks – progressing on the 7MM http://tinyurl.com/7MinMuscl program from Level 1 to Level 2. I could have done so months ago, but I guess I just stayed in my comfort zone … enough of that, I want to have a little more challenge, so up I go to 14 minutes per morning, 2 days with the cardio, 2 with abs, and the last … supposedly calves, but without my donkey raise machine … I’ll see.
In combination with my workouts, I’ll stick to the Every Other Day Diet (EODD) http://tinyurl.com/myEODD because frankly, there’s nothing simpler, and it works! Why change a winning team, right? The only change will come from my choice of Plan, I will probably go from the Extreme Plan to one of the Lifestyle Plans or the Ultimate Plan – I have the rest of the weekend to decide which – and you’ll know what I decided next time I have 5 minutes to fill you in J
Incidentally, the veal roast was delicious. Hardly any work preparing it, the cooking took care of itself while I did other things, and all I had to do was set the table, dress the plates and serve with a glass of the same white wine it had cooked in. Simple, delicious, and healthy.
www.sarah@trainwithsarah.com
