Well, its only been I don’t know how long since I’ve worked out, so I figure it was about time. I started out with a ten minute warmup on the elliptical machine, then headed for the actual weights, starting with the captains chair lifts. I did two sets of twenty, and I could really tell that I hadn’t been doing these for a while.

I managed to get through my second set - barely - and then started in at the end of my feet by alternating three sets of 20 ankle curls (20 lbs) with three sets of 20 calf raises (70 lbs). I did the first set normally, the second set with my toes pointing in and the third set pointing out.

Next up were my hamstrings, or as the idiotic weight machine put it, my “leg biceps.” I started out higher, but ended up setting it down to 30 lbs for the bulk of the workout. Doing one leg at a time I worked my way up to 50 repetitions of each one, alternating one-left, one-right, until I was damn near ready to drop. You can guess what’s coming next: my quads. I kept this down to 30 as well, and changed things up a little by doing two sets of 25 reps each with each leg.

Next up would be more ab work, but the crunch machines I wanted were all in use so I moved to upper body, starting with the incline press, set to 75 lbs. One thing that I forgot to mention is that I had been doing all of my leg exercises in what I call burst mode: a powerful contraction followed by a 2-3 second release, then immediately repeat. I decided to do the incline press the same way, and its a lot harder than a normal set - my 2 sets of 20 really wiped me out.

The crunch machine was open, so I moved over and went through 50 each of my center, left oblique and right oblique movements. Doing them in burst mode was a whole lot harder than normal - I made sure to do the retraction about 4 times slower than the contraction, and by the end of each one I was dripping with sweat. My last exercise was another upper body, tricep pushdowns, two sets of 15 at 60 lbs. That did it for me, and I called it a day well done. Besides, that lets me take it easy tomorrow morning!

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