Return to the Gym

Today, I finally got back to the gym, and I'm glad I did. I was pretty efficient, and knocked out the high spots of the routine in about 50 minutes. Except for the upper body stuff, I hadn't lost any strength, so I took that as a good sign.

For core, I just did the floor exercises (3 different kinds of crunches), and then back raises and oblique raises on the incline rack. Next week, I'll get back to the Roman Chair stuff and planks. These went much better than I had anticipated. Leg stuff was pretty much the whole routine, with quad extensions and hamstring curls (did two sets, increasing the weight on the second set because my old settings seemed way too easy), and then seated calf raises (these were just like normal). After that, it was time for big boy leg presses, two sets of 12 reps at 160 lbs (plus whatever the sled weighs). Those will become a once a week deal in the last two months leading to Freescale, just to stimulate the leg muscles. Finished off leg stuff with standing calf raises, just one set, but three different foot positions. Not bad.

Upper body stuff was where I noticed the layoff the most, and I guess that's to be expected. On bicep curls, I did two sets with the curl bar, one at 50 lbs and one at 60 lbs. Those actually went better than I had thought. Bench press I did two sets, one at 95 lbs and one at 105 lbs, and I think that's a good approach for me to help me improve there. Seated rows were just like last time I did them, but on the final exercise, the tricep pulldowns, I fell off quite a bit in the second set. No worries, though. I know that's because of my absence from such work, and it'll come back pretty quickly.

They've finished the remodel on my gym, and the new locker rooms feature really nice new wooden lockers and a new floor. Everything else is basically the same, but it seems a lot nicer without the dented metal lockers that they had before.

I plan on going out this evening for a really easy hour run, and Friday is a full day off of everything.