weight lifting

Unconventional Ways to Deal With Sore Muscles

May 10, 2012

I am so completely creeped out right now. The ‘stache, the look on his face, the fact that she looks 16. Plus jeans shorts? The mesh tank wasn’t enough of a statement on its own?! Last week found me kicking the laundry basket down the hallway with my foot. No, I’m not making my household chores into sports (although there’s an idea). It’s because my shoulders were too sore to lift the blasted thing. Of course it’s not just me who’s resorted to doing weird workarounds because of soreness. The DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness, also known as the reason [...]

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Swallowing My Pride In the Gym: Going Back to Basics (And Poking Random People in the Back)

May 7, 2012

See this is why my squat form sucked! I forgot my lucite heels! Upon meeting me, the first thing my scary smart Lifetime Fitness trainer, Steve, did was have me stand in front of him facing a gigantic mirror. As he put his hands gently on my shoulders he said, “I want you to see what I see.” Now, lest you think this is going to turn into a touchy-feely after-school special where we talk about how awesome I am, Trainer Steve was actually assessing me for muscular imbalances. So what he saw was slightly flattened arches, a right knee that bends in when [...]

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Does Exercise Order Matter? [P90X Phase III and Final Review]

April 23, 2012

Chest, back, legs, shoulders, biceps, triceps. (Oh and calves. Stupid calves. Always skipped those.) For years whenever I lifted weights my exercises were done in this order. The actual exercises would vary – dumbbell flys one day and flying dumbbells the next (Kidding! Sorta!) – but the workout stayed the same. Why? Well because I was new and I didn’t know any better. But mostly it was because this was what my first trainer taught me. For reasons I cannot now recall she said that it was important to go from large muscles to small muscles and to alternate working [...]

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How To Prevent A Weight-Lifting Injury (And how to recover your pride when you do)

March 6, 2012

Um. Ow. Be afraid, be very afraid: There is a silent killer lurking in your gym. Oh you may think your daily sweat fests are protecting you from injury and disease but in reality those free weights are a ticking time bomb with your number on it. And not just because the last person to use them pooped and didn’t wash their hands before picking up that dumbbell. (Although that does happen too. That’s another downside of having the bathrooms right on the track at my Y. When you’re running by you can totally see if there is no pause [...]

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Are Push-Ups Better Than a Push-Up For Your Chest? (And what are square boobs?)

January 29, 2012

courtesy of lipglossjunkie “I must! I must! I must increase my bust! The bigger the better, the tighter the sweater, the boys depend on…” Not me, that’s for darn sure. (And for any of you that are going to point out how busty I look in that green-skirt pic in the rotating images at the top of my site – push-up bra + pose, for the win!) As a small-chested girl who’s always wanted to be just a smidge bigger I’ll admit that I’ve always read with interest anything that reasonably claims to enhance my bust size. Okay and I might [...]

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“You Sure Are Strong… For a Girl.”

January 24, 2012

Tonight after a marvelously brutal interval class that involved jumping lunges, crouching push-ups and so many skaters that my I’d get an Apollo Ohno tattoo on my butt if it didn’t already hurt so much, a male friend gave me a grin and commented, “You sure are strong. For a girl.” Well, what do you say to that? Five years ago: ”I’m strong, period.” I would have felt insulted and then challenged the guy to a weight-lifting duel. Indeed, one of my very first posts on this blog to ever cause some (minor) controversy was when I bragged I could match [...]

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When Exercise and Health are Not Synonymous: Are boot camp classes bad for you?

January 16, 2012

Our “boot camp” class on Saturday! Yes, my interpretation of boot camp was to wear a frilly pink tennis skirt with a top that made Gym Buddy Jeni ask, “Are those feathers?!” Also, Lindsey (to my right) pointed out that she and I look more like jolly pirates than soldiers. I love us. Boot camps, the real U.S. military kind, frighten me. My first boyfriend was a boy with more piercings than appendages, who liked to punch brick walls until his fists bled, and ran with the cross country team as his warm up for daily double-digit runs. I tell [...]

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From Sex to Sanity: The huge benefits (and one surprising negative) of being active

January 3, 2012

“I like weights. You know where you stand with them. Well, sometimes you’re lying under them, trying not to let them crush you, but you see, you know they’d crush you if they could. There’s honesty.” – One of my all-time favorite quotes about fitness (truly, nothing is more honest than weight lifting!) from my Shape.com slideshow The Smartest Things Ever Said About Fitness. One of the best things about my job, even better than getting to interview celebs like Allison Sweeney and Tony Horton, is getting to talk to all kinds of people and see how fitness has changed [...]

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The #1 Downside to Weight Lifting, Badly Illustrated (All I want for Christmas is laser hair removal)

December 7, 2011

This will be my next option. As I get older I’ll just call it Bride of Frankenstein. Weight lifting builds bone density. Weight lifting increases strength and power. Weight lifting burns fat all day long. Weight lifting makes you look tougher than Chuck Norris at Comic Con. Oh sure, everyone always talks about the benefits of strength training but there is a dark side no one ever talks about. No, literally, a dark side. Namely, in my pits. Because I have very dark hair and very light skin, see. For those of you not similarly cursed (it’s not a bug, it’s [...]

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Muscle Soreness: Busting the “No Pain No Gain” Myth

November 20, 2011

Pretty sure this is about to be “bad sore.” Great news: After about a year of stagnation I broke my deadlift personal record! By a lot! While this was awesome and made me strut around like Ashton Kutcher in a sorority house, two problems became immediately apparent: 1. I did a whole set at my new weight which means, as Gym Buddy Krista put it, “Clearly you haven’t been pushing yourself! If we’d known you had that in you… Never again will we let you get away with a wussy deadlift.” (Side note: for some reason the deadlift has always [...]

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