J: Day012 - Shoulders

Yo. I was planning on putting another video post up, but for the sake of variety and the need to not be late for work this morning, I'm going with straight text...

This morning Big O and I worked out shoulders. Shoulder days are a lot of fun, but the challenge lies in the fact that we only work out one muscle group. We haven't worked out legs in over a week, but even in that workout the upper legs and lower legs seem to have different excersices which allows the resting group to recover. Shoulders might have similar groups, but I feel as though my energy level drops throughout the course of the workout. Hopefully more time in the gym will add endurance so I can continue to do the highest quality sets for the duration of the hour.

The most difficult excercise was a type of shoulder fly movement that I found very challenging (coming near the end also did not help). Rather than standing straight up and flying straight to the side or straight forward, we went into a bent over posture and did shoulder flys straight up... Not sure if it is a different muscle alltogether, the different posture, and/or fatigue, but I was only able to do about 60% of what I use for the other two types of shoulder fly motions.

Another cool machine we get to use on shoulder days is the cable cross machine. It looks like some sort of medieval mechanism, but it is very simple to use. From what I've read and observed in terms of how often people used it, it seems to be much more useful and versatile than the Smith Machine:



It's Day 12 already and I am about due to weigh myself and get my unofficial body fat percentage from my scale. Maybe I'll throw a photo in as well for the next post...

-J

Day002 Recap / Day003 Before Workout

I left my camera at a friend's place, and didn't get it back last night like I planned... so no video for Day 2. My friend/trainer (Big O), and I worked legs yesterday and it went a quite bit better than our Day 1 workout. I was still intimidated by going to the gym and being surrounded by guys who are all substantially stronger than I am. It may be my disdain for being poor at something (I'd rather just avoid the situation) or taking part in an activity outside my comfort zone.

The workout itself was intense as I expected. Before the workout, I was most apprehensive about doing squats. This is something I saw football players doing while I was getting weighed back in my cross-country days and always thought that it would be very difficult. With the encouragement and good advice of Big O, I was able to go through the motions. Although it was difficult and completely new to me, I felt like it was wonderful for working out the legs and I can see myself improving over time. Hopefully I will be able to improve my form for all the exercises we do, but I want to focus most on those which utilize free weights as there is no guide other than muscle memory.

Since I don't have my camera, I feel a need to add some additional form of media other than plain text to this post. Attached here is a photo I took a couple of days ago to show where I was when I started this whole process. As you can tell, I didn't know where to look or whether to smile or not, so I went with a blank stare off into space look:



Perhaps when I begin to notice changes in my general shape I'll add another photo...

Later this afternoon I'll be working out shoulders with Big O. I have no idea what kind of exercises we'll be doing and I assume the workout will be intense. Expect a report after we're through...