Gym. Back & Triceps. - Mark Atwood — LiveJournal

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			Mark Atwood




			02:31 pm May 10th, 2004

fallenpegasus


	Gym. Back & Triceps.
	I was at work yesterday from 9pm until 5am this morning. Went home, set my alarm for 11am, crashed. Woke up at 10am because my cats had started nosing my ears to say "Get up. Feed me. Get up. It's my* turn to be on that pillow. Get up." Who am I to argue? I spent the "extra" hour working on the piano and reading a chapter of Getting Things Done. When checking my calendar, I discovered I had doubleschedule myself tomorrow, with the MRI and the dentist at the same time. Fixed that. Then off to the gym. Machine Pull-Up* & Machine Dip. Machine Row, 100 lb. Low Back Raise & Free Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press. I love what my arms look like in the mirror when I do that, especially the last set, which we again "superweighted" on a back-supporting bench. Hammer Frame Iso-Lateral High Row. A new exercise, Shoulder Cable Standing Side Raise. Just a piddly little 10lb this time, but it's really focused right into the shoulder. Yow. Seated Tricep Dumbbell Overhead Press, with a new weight, 45lb. See above about arms and mirrors. It gives me a perfect few of my brand new tris at their maximum pump and pop. My arms look like someone else's, not the flabby little wet sticks that my self-visualization insists that I have. My trainer tells me that I'm also developing the classic "slot" down my spine, from the rows and raises. I can reach back and feel it, but I can't twist my head around to see it. Finished off with Tricep Cable Pulldown.

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	Comments




			Thread started by Simes

	From: simonb	Date: May 10th, 2004 09:41 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Woke up at 10am because my cats had started nosing my ears

Smokey does something like that. However he tends to do things like attack your feet through the duvet as if they are small furry creatures at 5am.

Good to hear that you're getting there with the gym; sounds like you're doing similar stuff to I was in the last session before I switched to endurance training. Tricep cable pulldowns are fun; although its also quite amusing to watch people cheating at it - makes me wince when I see them using their backs instead of their triceps tho.

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	From: fallenpegasus	Date: May 10th, 2004 09:51 pm (UTC)		(Link)

There is no point in cheating at the weights. I suppose if one was doing it for "bragging about one's numbers", maybe. The weights are just "metrics", and like all metrics, if you confuse the metric for the actual task, you will get into nothing but trouble.

When my trainer and I discovered that I had for my entire life never actually used me pecs for anything, and had used my shoulders instead, we dialed all the chest lift numbers back down to very low weights, and concentrated on form and proper activation instead. If I was concerned about just the numbers, I could have just kept cheating, at the cost of eventaully wrecking my shoulders, never developing my pecs, and plateuing on the numbers.

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	From: simonb	Date: May 11th, 2004 11:56 am (UTC)		(Link)

Oh indeed; however some people seem to get into the mentality that "more is better" without thinking that what they are doing may not be the best for them. Thus I tend to watch what I'm doing and make sure that my form is good (doing martial arts for quite a few years has helped with this - I had the mentality of "basics are the foundations" drummed into me and this translates quite well). I'll also watch the instructors when they show people how to use a machine for the first time to check that I'm doing things correctly as well.

A lovely example I did see once was a guy who'd put the bench used for leg raises (lower abs) et al as high as it would go as it was the only way he found that he could make it hard with the way he was doing... I had to tell him that if he changed how he did the technique (fast up, very slow down, no resting) and did a reasonable number (i.e reps of 30 rather than 5) he'd see better results. The next time I saw him he had the bench almost horizontal! And the same guy also thought that situps should be done by throwing the head forward - this is how I got talking to him as I had to say that if he carried on doing that he'd damage his neck. When he tried keeping his head still as I suggested he found it a lot harder to do stuff.

I think that martial arts has given me a good understanding and feel for how different body positions make use of different muscles; thus I can feel if a technique is hitting the right muscles most of the time.

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			Comment by Elf M. Sternberg

	From: elfs	Date: May 10th, 2004 09:59 pm (UTC)		(Link)

On the one tentacle, Getting Things Done is one of the best methods of organizing your life if you have a zillion projects and don't want to spend inordinate amounts of time chasing your tail trying to figure out what's "really important" in your life the way the Franklin/Covey method does. The GTD method is nice because it doesn't ask you to analyze your life and make moral judgements about putting down "get laid more often" as a project. You know that's a moral good and you don't need to justify it all the way down to first principles. Human beings are inherently rich and contradictory creatures; the F/C method doesn't appreciate that very well.

On the other tentacle, the GTD method can put you into a frenzy of accomplishment. Since the two major parts of GTD are (1) look through your list of tasks to see which ones you can do with your current allotment of time and energy, and do it; if you have no more on that project either switch projects or (2) review your project list for more tasks, you can lose sight of the one thing that the F/C method does have room for: recreation, relaxation, and renewal.

Just be aware that you have to put GTD down once in a while and just go for a walk. Or you'll stress yourself to death.

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