(Day 407 / -150 lbs.) Good Quotes Gone Bad

7/3/2008
"You can buy success, rent it, even borrow it for a time but real, lasting success comes when you create it yourself through purposeful massive effort; own it outright and make success your bitch. Yep- then you be pimpin' success." -Raunchy Johnson

Alrighty then. Moving on...

I didn't sleep much last night. We had a whopper of a thunderstorm move through our area and that was all it took to wake me up around 2AM and keep me up most of the night. I'm one of those weirdos who has a hard time getting back to sleep once something wakes me up. I start focusing one all the little noises that go on throughout the night; creaks of the house adjusting to temperature changes, wind moving through the trees, distant sirens, train horns, traffic, the occasional shuffle of zombie feet, or a werewolf sniffing at my toes, you know, just stuff. I think I dozed off around 5AM (15 minutes after my alarm goes off) and woke again at 7AM. I'm feeling it today, fershure.

What this also means is that I didn't go to the gym this morning, so Mother Nature is kicking my butt 2-0. I'm going to focus on intake today and get some exercise in later. I'm also thinking about a comment on my last post from Denis Kanygin. Denis is a fitness trainer and postural therapist (aka expert) and can be found at workoutiq.com. He suggested I stick with "big" exercises (those that involve many muscles at one time) when I'm working out at the gym.

I've been thinking about it and how I've been going about my exercise routine and you know what? It makes a lot of sense.

I typically go through a routine that oftentimes isolates muscle groups. Take for example biceps curl- I do this one at a machine in which I brace my body against a padded frame and bend at the elbow. That's pretty much it. The muscles attached to my arms that control elbow bending get exercised but everything else is stationary.

When I do curls with dumbbells there is a lot more that the rest of my body has to do to not only bend at the elbow but support the arm that is doing the lifting while shifting the rest of my mass to counter-balance the weight I'm lifting. It's only logical that there is much more benefit to doing this exercise using free weights rather than machines.

Thanks, Denis, for gently whacking me upside the head with that realization. I needed it. Tomorrow I'll start a program of replacing many of my machine-based exercises with free weights.