Thursday, January 26, 2012

I'm Not Like Those Gym Rats Anymore

With the injured hamstring there's no running and I'm not going to ride until Saturday, at the soonest.  Ice and rest and so on until then.  I've been vigilant with my diet, which is a big victory for me, something I've not been able to do when injured in the past. 

I did go on a walk this afternoon and threw in 7 minutes of very slow jogging.  It was so slow that the dog didn't change her gait!  A few times I felt a dull twinge, but nothing bad.  All in all, it was good to do.

After that I went to the gym.  Lately, when I've gone to the gym, it's revolved around a run.  Either I'd run before, or after doing a circuit.  I gave up "weight lifting" for the purpose of building pretty muscle in June.  Today, the purpose to the gym was just to lift weights and get my heart pumping a bit.  My "heart" wasn't into it and I had a fairly "ugh" workout.  Everything in my mood said, "I'm here because I'm injured."

But, I went and am glad I did.

On a side note:  Some of the reading I've done lately suggests that I'm not optimizing my weight lifting as an endurance athlete.  I've been reading that endurance athletes benefit most (in race performance) by lifting very heavy weight for very few reps, but only one set and one exercise per muscle group.  That's totally opposite of what seems logical, but that logic, when examined, is very flawed.  More on that, another day.

Each time of day has a different type of lifter.  Here, in the evening, there's a lot of border patrol agents that are very much into bulking up and being big.  I'm predisposed to that, genetically.  I put on bulky muscle super fast and build strength very quickly.  But today I noticed that I was a lot slimmer than those guys!  I'm not talking about body fat, those guys are fit.  But in sheer bulk...I no longer have street credit in the weight room.

Six months ago I weighed what I do now, within, give or take, five pounds.  But then I still wore XL shirts and they were tight around the chest and arms.  I couldn't use the blood pressure machines as my arms didn't fit in them.  I wasn't lifting weights a lot, that's just how I'm built. Mind you, in no way do I look like an endurance athlete, and while tomorrow is weigh-in day, but I'm still going to be over 200 pounds.

Now a large sized shirt is roomy.  I slipped my arm right in a blood pressure machine's cuff this weekend and used it in comfort.  The belt I bought in August is no longer of any use and the smaller belt has two holes left.  This week I wore pants that my legs didn't fit in well before, making me leave them in the closet since early fall. The veins in my arm stick out through my compression shirt. 

So I'm wondering, where is the weight going? 

Well, as my father said, if the number on the scale is your goal, you're going to be going mad!

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