exercise medley

week: -2.5
total: -69

I am not deliberately making posts only when I lose weight. Rather, this fall I have become a morning exerciser, at least on Tuesday/Thursday, which greatly inhibits my Tuesday weight-loss-saga posts. So, I endeavor to improve in this as in other areas of my life.

Sunday I made a new PR in pullups: 17 with 85 pounds offset (which means I'm lifting a fraction of my own weight, I know). So this morning, I knocked it down to offset 70 pounds and I was able to do about 7 reps (working from memory here, my notebook is in the gym bag still), which is a PR too for that weight level.

I tried a new machine called an Adaptive Motion Trainer. I felt like I was training to walk in a mechanical body armor suit. The machine allows the exerciser to use whatever stride is most comfortable, from vertical stair-climbing, to long horizontal cross-country skiing (I am guessing on that last part). Anyway, my ten-minute interval session plus five-minute cool-down about killed my thighs. My knees were really aching after too, but they were aching before, so I'm not sure how much to blame the AMT. In fact, I was supposed to do sprints on the track for intervals, but after my knees started screaming while climbing the stairs to the indoor track, I changed my mind and went looking for something low-impact. The AMT is quite low-impact, at least on the lowest setting, and I felt like I was springing on a trampoline or in the moonwalk bubble from my childhood. I won't use the AMT every time (because I never use the same interval type twice in a row), but I suppose I will put it into the mix.

Tang Soo Do testing is in four and a half weeks. I think I'll be ready, but I have to prepare myself for my breaks better than I did last time around (e dan ahp cha gi and tollyo chung dan kong kyuk).

up early for me

week: -0
total: -60

Woke up this morning ... and I got myself a beer. No, wait, that was a different morning. This morning, I woke up at 7am and could not fall back asleep. So I decided to go ahead and get up and head to the gym; I figured that working out would maybe make me tired, and I could nap later. I just got home, so no nap just yet.

No post last week, because I had been out of town, and there was not much to report. Suffered some bad headaches on vacation, and they followed me home, so I did not work out Tues night or Wed at all. Sucked it up and went to TSD class on Thurs. Flash flooding from heavy rains on Friday -- driving through that mess always leaves me shaken (and stirred) so we cut class again, but made it out on Saturday and Sunday. So three sessions of exercise, not ideal, but decent.

My mini-project at the gym is to work up to doing pull ups unassisted. There is a machine that offsets through counterbalance (I guess) part of my weight, so I only have to lift a portion of my real weight. When I started this project, I set it on 100, and could only do a few. Today, I did 10 (barely) on 85. I won't be doing unassisted pullups any time soon, but I can definitely see progress, which is good enough for me.