I returned to the gym on October 18th (the day after my b-day), so I’m now in my 3rd week back.
I’m proud to report that so far, I have met my goal of going 3x/ week for weight room sessions (as I said, currently doing 1. shoulders/triceps 2. legs 3. back/biceps).
IT FEELS SO GOOD TO BE BACK!!!
I feel like I’m back. I hadn’t realized how much of maybe my identity was wrapped up in going to the gym. I feel like ME again.
Even though I like working out alone, there is definitely something to be said for the “community” aspect of a gym. Just saying hi to the person at the back desk when you check in, or waving at the owner walk by, or chit-chatting with a guy I used to see there all the time. It’s nice!!
And I swear I feel stronger and a more “toned” already. Muscle memory is real!
The above pic is a snapshot of my OLD training journal, from I think 2015?? It was one of the first “monthly” training plans I did. I decided to go back to this and start working my way back through. (I ultimately have several years worth of these training programs….so might as well use them.)
I absolutely must have some sort of plan in mind when I go to the gym. I would never, ever just go in and dink around doing random exercises. NOPE! 😉
Unlike in this pic, I’m really trying to work on some progressive overload (doing more over time). You can see that apparently I used 10# dumbbells every week for the DB rear flys, for example, back then. Not ideal.
This time around, I’m making sure to push myself to increase somehow each week!! (either reps or weight). Now, on the DB flys, I think I did week 1= 10# 10 reps. Week 2= 10# 12 reps. Then this week, Week 3, I increased the weight to 15# 10 r.
More over time = improvement = STRONGER. 🙂
(*I am not really built to be a powerhouse, but that’s the nice thing about tracking my own results…an improvement for me is still a win.)
Still also doing Morning Meltdown in between on my non-gym days. I haven’t hit every single day on those (got a little off over the Halloween weekend), but most days I have been!
Thought of the Day:
Everything in life is easier when you don’t concern yourself with what everyone else is doing.
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for my little office space heater (used to be my Grandma’s! And she died YEARS ago now. This thing is eternal!)
GRATEFUL KAE 
Yay!! Good for you!! I’m debating whether to re-join the gym too… conflicted between feeling like it could be some good self-care, and the feeling that it could just be adding another thing to my plate when I should probably be removing things instead!
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Can I just admit anytime I see anyone list their weight routine (or yoga, too, for that matter) I feel completely clueless and overwhelmed. It’s this whole other world (the only time I ever did any weight training OR yoga was in university and I was definitely one of those people that would “dink around doing random exercises” – haha.
I’m envious of people that have this background. Since I’ve been wistful about this for years and years and have done diddly squat about it, clearly it’s not a priority. #lifegoals.
It’s inspirational to see you getting back into a groove, though, and so glad you feel like yourself and it’s all familiar in the best of ways. It’s always nice to find the missing puzzle piece that helps other things fall in to place!
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Hahaha I get it. I feel lucky that I got a solid introduction to weight training during my high school volleyball days. But it definitely took some strong effort/research/trial and error, etc to really learn about it. I got really into it after I sort of gave up running and it definitely had a learning curve. It’s really not difficult, but I completely understand about feeling overwhelmed initially. I feel like that about yoga classes. Like, what do you do?! I think I would feel super out of place with all the real “yogis”. My extent of yoga is usually some quasi yoga video on Beachbody. 😉
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I saw a personal trainer for while when I first joined the Y years ago and then I trained with him a couple of times/week in the months leading up to our wedding. It was so nice for someone to give me a plan of what to do. I’m not great at creating them on my own! I’ve also done other fitness programs where they send you a week of workouts. I printed those all out and have them organized in a binder but then I kind of cherry pick what I ‘feel’ like doing! So I’m enjoying the MM program since someone just tells me what to do and I don’t know what’s coming and would never not do the exercises! I had been doing so well w/ the MM program and then I came down with a bad cold on Sunday afternoon so have done nothing this week – not even walks! I have felt like total crud so am letting my body recover. Hopefully by tomorrow I can do something. I’m up to workout 27 so making some progress but it’s kind of slow going w/ how much I was still running. That is going to really taper off now, though, so once I’m more healthy I should be able to get back on track and start to really crank through the workouts. But I am so over being sick. We had a covid scare, too. I decided to do one of those at home antigen tests since I felt so tired and crappy on Monday and it was positive!! So we all stayed home on Tuesday and got PCR tests in the morning. Thank God they were all negative but I was panicking on Tuesday at the thought of having to quarantine w/ our kids… And Phil was super busy on Tuesday so I tried to manage the boys on my own as much as possible while feeling like crud. No bueno.
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