Freakin’ Legs

Saturday was fun. Now I can’t walk.

Michael picked me up around 8 and we planned out our lower body workout at Caribou Coffee before heading to the gym at 8:30. Since we’d been kinda skimpy with lower body on Tuesday, we were determined to get our money’s worth so we worked each major muscle group with at least two, sometimes three exercises. Three sets each. And we pushed ourselves with the weight too. After about an hour and 10 minutes we switched to 20 minutes of cardio and then hit the Farmer’s Market again for more fruit.

The workout was challenging, energizing and exhilerating. It was also murder. My legs are torn up and today my knees feel like they’re going to turn inside out when I walk. We don’t usually over do it like that but we were literally enjoying it so much that we just kept going. I realize that’s probably insane.

Today we did upper body, not nearly as much or as hard. Of all the exercises I hate, and there are several, why is the incline shoulder press so damn hard for me? Is this a girl thing? I swear to God, I cannot deal with that machine, and yet, it makes me so mad that I have to keep doing it.

I’m a fairly strong woman. I can leg press 12 reps at 240 lbs. right now and that’s as a beginner. But that chest/shoulder muscle group has apparently never seen the light of day. 20 lbs. is okay. At 30 lbs. my arms are shaking. At 40 I can’t finish a set of 8. So next time I’m going to start even lower, which bugs me, but apparently I need to finish up at 30 for a few weeks until I’m stronger.

Upper body is the pits. Today though, there were two women in the gym who had arms that just blew me away. So inspiration was really strong this morning. I kept poking Michael and going, “look, look at that shit! Look at her flex!”

The other really motivating thing that happened today was this absolute Mr. Universe guy coming up to us at the lat pull-down and saying, “You go! Ya’ll are doing so well in here–and you just stick with it. You’re gonna see results real soon–you just keep at it.” We see him every morning and he always smiles at us. It was really kinda cool. I felt stupid for not getting his name. I’m going to have to do that tomorrow. Duh.