Remember this post when I admitted to feeling self conscious in the weight room? Well yesterday I finally made an effort to change that. Since it was an off day from running, I took my dad with me to the gym. He is not actually a member at my gym so I took him as my guest. As my trainer actually. My dad is a great runner but he is also a heavy lifter 
Anyway, he knows his way around the gym so I asked him to teach me a thing or too. I took him to my gym so he could show me the exact machines and he could teach me how to use them (what they do, how to change the seat, etc.). I didn’t have to worry about feeling stupid or reading the directions. I didn’t even feel self conscious going into the big boy section because I had him with me (although I probably won’t be able to go there alone
I told him I didn’t want to do legs because I do enough legs between running, drills, and fitness classes. My main concern was increasing muscle strength. We also do a lot of upper body in group fitness classes but over the course of an hour we do so many reps that you can’t hold a very heavy weight. While this is great for improving muscular endurance, I also wanted to improve muscle strength. Today he showed me a bunch of exercises for chest, shoulders, back, biceps, triceps and a few ab machines.
It is amazing how much more weight you can lift on a machine versus by lifting free weights. The machine stabilizes your body, meaning you don’t have to use your core and it isolates the muscle you are working. For each body part, we were able to pick an appropriate machine, adjust the machine, choose a starting weight. I feel so much more comfortable in the weight room now. I hope when I go back by myself I feel the same. I guess it will take a few more times to get completely comfortable, but I look forward to going back. I think adding a day or two on the machines will really improve my strength. I still love the group fitness atmosphere but I am a bit frustrated that I have been taking a couple of classes a week since July and while I see an improvement, there is still a lot to work on. I am excited to see some faster improvements and get nice arms and abs in time for summer! Maybe soon I will look like this:
Just kidding.
I will have to juggle my schedule to make all my workouts fit in. I still want to attend group fitness classes and definitely Pilates. I would ideally like to add a morning or two before work to use some machines. We shall see!
Happy Friday everyone!
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