Weekly review and some details

Well, for the second week in a row we have good stuff to report. I was in the gym every day this week, except 7/4, and I'm going for a run in the morning!

My workouts have been typical; 30 to 40 minutes on cardio machine, preferably the stair mill, then either an upper body or legs weight workout. I have recently noticed two things. One, that I can stay at higher levels longer on the stair mill; and two, I'm putting more weights on the machines.

Instead of giving general overviews of each day I thought I'd give a detailed accounting of one workout. It may be interesting for others but I think it will be interesting for me in a few months too. We'll use today, a leg day, as the sample.

I always (I know, never say always or never...) start with Cardio. I think the idea is to get your heart rate up then it stays elevated throughout your workout.

Today's cardio was 40 minutes on the stair mill. I often do a Manual program but from time to time I do the Interval or Fat Burner programs.

Today was Manual, I started with 5 minutes at level 8. At 5 minutes i upped the level to 9 for 3 minutes. Then at 8 minutes i upped the level to 10 for another 2 minutes. So at 10 minutes I moved up to level 11, at that point I can't read anymore and have to regularly change positions with my hands to stay somewhat comfortable (that's a bit of a misnomer...). I held level 11 for 18 minutes at which point I upped the level to 12 for 2 very difficult minutes. At 30 minutes in I dropped the level to 10 then every 3 minutes 20 seconds I drop another level to finish at level 8 again. This is followed up by 2 minutes of warmdown at level 1 (machine default).

So after 42 minutes on this machine it usually tells me I've burned more than 650 calories and climbed more than 200 flights of stairs. I was drenched...

After my cardio session I put the reading material away and get my workout gloves from the locker. This is pretty much to relax and walk slowly a bit, hehe.

Then I started on my Legs session. I started with the Leg Press. This is the machine you sit in and push the sled up on rails with your feet. I did two sets of 20 with three plates each side and two sets of 20 with 4 plates each side. Then I tried to do another set with 4 plates per side and could only push out 10. FYI, these are 45 pound plates.

Next I go to leg extensions. Today I attempted 4 sets of 20 at 150 pounds. I could not finish the last two sets, I think I did 17 and 16.

Then I moved on to Leg Curls for the Hamstrings. I have such weak hamstrings that I'm actually seeing quite a bit of improvement on this exercise. :) I attempted 4 sets of 20 at 80 pounds. I've read that your hamstrings should be about 1/2 as strong as your quads, so this weight is about right for me. I finished the first two sets, only got about 16 on the third set and had to drop down to 65 for the fourth set, however I did pull off 20, barely.

After this I go over to the Calf Raise machine. I like to use the kind you sit in and put your knees under the bar then just lift with your calves. I put two 45 pound plates on this machine and try to do 4 sets of 20. I could not finish the last set, I might have gotten 15.

After the weights I hobble upstairs and do four or five stretches for my legs and lower back.

And that's Ray's legs workout in a nutshell. We'll see where I am in a couple of months...