A New Goal

The main thing here is that I only gained .2 pounds over Christmas, even though I swear all I did was eat.  I loved seeing all my family, and many of my friends but I think next year we'll stay put or at least leave the dog-who-barks-at-every-noise-in-a-hotel home.

Yes, her.  I didn't have a good night's
sleep the entire week, grrrrr.

Today was my first day back at the gym in just over a week, and I think trainer Tom took it a little easy on me (this could be because I emailed him over Christmas saying that I believed my triceps were permanently damaged from that little reverse push up bar thingy).

So we talked a bit about our respective holiday weeks, and for some reason I blurted out that I've decided to train to compete.  You may recall when I started down this path, I figured I'd train for the body but pass on the competition.  Well, somehow I've decided that if I'm training for a competition with every intent of actually competing, I may stick with it better, especially nutrition-wise.  Because

Or, as Marc would say,

Tom the Trainer took it well (he's already training a younger woman in the gym for a competition in April - he calls it training for "the stage") but stressed that nutrition would be key, and I wouldn't be ready in time for the April show in Bend - no kidding.

There are age groupings and several different categories for competition.

I don't want to do the bikini competition because I would have to wear stripper heels and stick my ass out at the judges, thusly:

I find this sexist and bullshit, even though Tom the Trainer assures me the purpose is so the judges can see muscle definition.  Yeah, right.

I'm thinking more along the lines of the figure or fitness categories, because I don't want to be too built up, a la scary Liudmila

 and I'm not going to do a ridiculous tan that doesn't match my face, like

nor am I going to perform some "talent."

If my talent can't be sitting in a chair reading a book, we may have a problem, Houston.

Tom the Trainer set out some more rigid guidelines, although we were able to compromise downward on the daily cardio quotient - starting at ONE hour a day (the girl he's training for "the stage" is up to THREE hours a day.  Yikes).  On days I miss training, I've agreed to add another hour of cardio.  I have no excuse, no reason I can't do it.  There is nothing more important in my life right now so I need to DO IT.

I had already opened up my My Fitness Pal diary - something I had NEVER done before - so Tom the Trainer can check what I'm eating.  While I logged in many times last week, I didn't actually put anything down, so I need to DO IT to realize this goal.

Yes, I've over fifty, but so are each of these ladies:

I think this one is lying about her age.

The lady in the center is 60 something.  The lady
on the right needs a coach.  Or a mirror.

Clearly, I'll be looking into the rules, etc. more as I progress.  Tom has set a weight loss goal for me that I think is doable, though difficult.  I knocked off 60 pounds in 2012, and while about 30 has settled back on, I think I can manage 1-2 pounds a week.  No, I'll just DO IT.

And because Tom is taking Friday off, I'll be just DOING MORE TRAINING tomorrow and Wednesday.  Yay me!

Pre-Christmas Update

Two days in a row again, because I made a bunch of pre-Christmas appointments for tomorrow when I was just training Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Whew.

We did a lot of things today, as we usually do, including planks on a ball

five sets of one minute each as part of a superset which included kicks and crunches.

We also did something like this

only I had to tap my rear onto the ground and pull completely up into a more straight angled position.  Exhausting.

But I would really like to talk about Friday, especially since I still can't stretch out my triceps as a result.

I searched the internet for a photo  depicting the reverse-triceps-pushup-on-a-bar thing we did, but I came up with nothing.  This makes me think (a) Tom the Trainer made it up and/or (b) no one else in the world can do it.

Regardless, here's the closest thing I found:

First, Tom the Trainer demonstrated, as he usually does, by doing about five repetitions.  Easily.

Imagine instead of hanging on rings, this guy is me, with my feet on the ground, leaning forward on a bar with my hands together.  I then dip down so my head is below the bar and I feel as though I'm going to fall on my face, and then I push back up with my arms to the starting position.  Four sets of ten.  At first I would step forward to catch myself, but Tom the Trainer said I had to catch myself with my arms.  Then it was so hard to push back up, he had to help me by pulling on my shoulders.  I of course complained then, because I felt like I wasn't doing enough work (despite the fact I probably couldn't have made it back up without the help), but Tom said no, he was just keeping me steady.  I didn't believe it until the next day.  And  now, four days later I'm a real believer.  Owie.

I have one more day this week, and then I'll miss all of next week :-(  I'll do my best to at least keep up with my cardio until I can get back to the gym.

Merry Christmas to all.

My New Best Friends

Wow, I trained today instead of tomorrow because Tom the Trainer has a conflict tomorrow, so that's two days in a row.  It's a good thing I drink so much water and decaf green tea, because I don't think I had any fluids left.

We usually do kicks once or twice a week, and I did them yesterday - about 100 total in sets of twelve on each leg.

He holds, I kick.

Today, after some warm up, one of our supersets was kicking this SOB again, only FIFTY times per leg for FOUR rotations, alternating with modified burpees.  Again, I said to him something like, You've once again lost your mind, to which he replied something like, Carolyn - we have goals.  I need to do my part to help you achieve them.  I therefore cursed my goals and kicked the crap out of that bag for a total of FOUR HUNDRED TIMES.  And when my kicks got a little lower because I was so EXHAUSTED, Tom looked at my strikes and pointed out that I needed to be higher, hitting the laces of my shoe hard and pivoting more with my hip so I was working my core and not so much my legs.  Let me tell you, the last five on each leg were kicked with some POWER, so I'm proud of myself.  I pretended that bag was Nikki.  And after 100 kicks, the modified burpees were like a break.  Until the end of the 90 seconds, that is.

Then we did a lot of chest work, and while I didn't note the weight amount, it was a biiiiig plate.  I needed help almost from the get go.

Which leads me to my two new best friends:

I'm loving my foam roller so much I have to leave it in the living room.

I need stock in this company.

And look what I saw during my cardio yesterday:

Just looked down and there it was.  :-D

Measuring Up: A Month's Progress

I took measurements yesterday, as I will on the first of each month, with this very nifty (and cheap) tape measure, which allows me to measure myself far more accurately than with a regular tape.

Here are the numbers:  Down 1 inch in my waist, 2 inches in my hips, half an inch in my arm (not flexed) and a quarter of an inch in my thigh (at thickest part, also not flexed).  Great!

Weight pretty much stayed the same for the month, which bothers me much less than I thought it would, because my jeans are definitely more loose, and it was Thanksgiving with family here for the weekend, after all.

I also figured out how to use this thing

which puts me a little higher than my scale does for body fat percentage (down .3 for the month).  Tom the Trainer recommends taking more than one measurement in more than one body place, then averaging out the total because otherwise I'm just getting lumped into an average for my age and height, which is what my scale does.  I may or may not continue with this particular measurement, since the consensus seems to be I should only take it every eight weeks (!).

The three days a week of training is exhausting, but man, I'm making such great progress!

For example, yesterday one of my last sessions was rows, and when I picked up the dumbbell Tom the Trainer had chosen for me, it looked like this:

EXACTLY like this

I looked at Tom the Trainer and I believe my exact words were, "You must be out of your mind."  He looked back at me and said to do 10 reps each side.  And I did.  Three sets of them.  I.  Was.  Amazed.

My wonderful Megan trained with me on Friday, and she and I were both so sore on Saturday, we could barely get up the stairs to hang with the rest of the family.

Now, areas where I need to improve:  You guessed it, the hour and a half a day of cardio.  I did 45 minutes yesterday just after the training session, but alas, today all I could manage was my massage at 11:30.  We've had freezing fog all day and it didn't get above thirty.  Granted, that's not the case for the interior of my garage, where my treadmill and a space heater are, but nonetheless.  I'm open to ideas.  Maybe do some Zumba CDs or something other than treadmill....