flexagon | Yoga and lifting good. Dreams bad. Wake up.

Aside from doing far too much in the way of dishes/mopping, I had a good weekend. No website updates because my laptop is going all wacked on me again. Did some yoga at Baron Baptiste on Saturday, which I hadn't done for a long time, but Sunday was really the more interesting day.

I know at least one of you will want the details of my workout--hi

rumgirl, I'm talking to you! Basically, Operation Butt Squeeze is working. I've been really focusing on squeezing my butt while I do leg presses, and am now (rather suddenly) up to almost double my body weight on them. I also got up to half my body weight on dumbbell squats, and oddly enough it was pretty easy. I think I could have gone even heavier but decided a 20% increase was enough for one day. It's going to be annoying if it keeps improving beyond the weight I can grip dumbbells, because then I'll be stuck with the Smith machine... but that point has not yet been reached, so I'll worry about it then.

For lats, I tried warming up on the pulldown machine, then doing a set of narrow-grip supinated pullups (10 but need to work on form) and a set of wide-grip pronated chinups (more like 2.5). I did some more wide-grip negatives, but felt kind of weird and out-of-control doing them. I may try trading off next week and doing the wide-grips before narrow-grips--I think that would let me do a bit more.

and I got to see LLF again (although since he's not lost anymore, and prefers lowercase acronyms, I hereby rename him kfb). We had a pretty interesting talk over dinner, not that I succeeded in steering it where I wanted it. Then I took him home, he politely got permission from HLM to keep "dating" me, and... he ended up talking to HLM alone for about an hour because my good college friend V called me from Cali and they seemed to be getting along well anyway. Apparently it was a good talk, because HLM really wants to see him again. :)

After kfb left, I lay in bed thinking again about career-type issues. I'm starting to clarify the next step in my head a little bit, finally, which feels nice. And I refuse to think I've screwed the pooch just because I'm not off on my own trying to revolutionize the software industry. Just because everyone else seems to be doing it... bleh! Must... resist... peer pressure. So that was good. All this thinking did me no good in terms of dreams though; I had this long awful dream about being held against my will in an insane asylum, and another about some weird simulation system that I can't even explain, but it was bad, and I dreamed my kitty S was a software expert, and through every single dream I kept losing and finding my engagement ring, my brass rat and my wedding ring. I was pretty glad to wake up and be in the real world.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

First of all, nice job on the leg presses and squats. Don't you have a free squat cage? Smith machines are very bad, especially the higher in weight you go. Your other option is lifting straps/hooks - that will allow you to increase your weights on db beyond what you can hold. They're good for deadlifts too.

I'm so jealous you can do chin-ups right off! One thing I've heard on the negatives is not to necessarily start off doing steady downward drops - drop a little, hold, drop a bit more, hold, etc....That way your muscles will def. get to failure and towards the end the steady drop will be more natural as they gradually fail. Make sense?

You and horshack both seem to have had weird dreams last night. As a matter of fact, I did too, so I'll post about that to join the club :) Glad we're all in the waking world now.

No free squat cage. This is something I might have talked about more if the post hadn't already gotten so long... I loooooove the atmosphere (friendliness, murals, location) of my current gym, but it really isn't set up for serious lifting. Most of what I do is with DBs, and they have plenty of those, so it's okay right up until you start talking squats. I'll have to figure something out. And maybe go back to the MIT gym next year... evil but less evil than Bally's.

Negatives--thanks for the tip. I kinda tried to do that, but by then I was so tuckered out that I just started dropping right away & could not hold steady. I'm not so good with a wide grip. Like I said... I'll do them in a diff order next time and see if that helps.

Lookin' forward to you joining the pullup club. I bet you're closer than you think. :)

:-D

Seriously, check out the lifting hooks or straps - they're like $10 and though not perfect make a big difference.

Stay away from the evil smith machine...

Deadlifts? I do them with dumbbells, held more or less like a bar. Thought I was fine with that...

I will check out the hooks 'n' straps, in about 50 more pounds :)

But form tends to be a lot better on the heavier weights with a bar, especially on full deads (rather than straight leg) because one technique to ensure your form is correct is to drag the bar up your shins...with DB you have to hold them farther out.

The other bonus to moving away from DB squats is you get a better lower back workout with the bar. In fact, depending on how far you push the DB ones I wouldn't be surprised if you had to drop down in weights when you move to a bar to accomodate your lower back...although you could do hyper extensions and stuff to prepare/offset that.

rumgirl ain't the only one reading! Congrats on the gains and awesome chin ups.

Sorry about the weird dreams, but isn't it a good sign that you kept on finding your rings and not just searching fruitlessly for them?

but then again I kept losing them again. Ugh. last night was so much better. Hope the rest of you slept better, too.

Yoga and lifting good. Dreams bad. Wake up.

Yep, I clicked, I followed your little cheese trail just like you knew I would...

Yup, I know you, girl. :)

I dunno, you're missing deads too....

no subject

DBs are ok

I clicked too

Technically yes...