I covered a party last night that featured an M.I.A. performance that began at 11:30 p.m. This was a) pretty good, since I'm totally obsessed with M.I.A. since the blue-eyed boy brought her CD on our Yucatan trip and we logged 1,100 kilometers in the Tsuru listening to it, and since I rocked out to her at Coachella with the girls. But also it was b) pretty lousy because I had an 8:30 a.m. meeting this morning. So today I dragged. And dragged. And...zzz..zzz..z. Wait, what? I'm up.
After work, I went to the gym intending to make my own workout, probably 60 to 65 minutes on the elliptical with three-pound hand weights for light but sustained upper-body work, while watching some trashy reality show along the lines of Tila Tequila: Shot at Love. And then, instead, I guilted myself into taking the super-hard Body Design class. The instructor is great but instead of saying stuff like, "You can modify this one if you need to," he says things like, "You must keep up or you must leave. What's the point if you do it wrong?"
I felt every excruciating moment of that hour, but as I was leaving, I was feeling really smug, really proud of myself for undertaking the challenge when I could have fully justifiably gone easier on myself. I was busily making sweeping proclamations in my head about how important it is to continually take oneself out of one's comfort zone to gain rewards....
...when, as I was putting my weights away after class, my gymfriend said to me, "So, Alice, you staying for Ab Lab?" No. Shoot.
Damn. And the girl thought she had an angle.
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2 comments:
How does the thing with the hand weights on the elliptical work? I tried it today without much success. Do you hold the hand weights and the hand grips on the elliptical at the same time? Or do you do bicep crunches and various other moves?
Good question. It can be a little tricky, because, at least at my gym, the cardio machines are kind of close together, so you can easily smash the person next door if you're not careful.
I use the weights in my hands when I'm not using the machine's hand grips. I do sets of between 60 and 150 seconds or so, alternating different upper-body workouts. So I'll do a couple-minute set of tricep pulses, or shoulder presses, or throwing punches without lowering my arms. Three pounds is a little light to get any reasonable bicep work in (so I usually don't bother with too many bicep curls), but any heavier and they get a little clumsy to use while on the machine.
But the light weights, which feel like not much at first, can be great to use during sustained periods of no rest (like a two-minute set of pulsing with arms straight forward, wrists either up or down--trust me). Great for toning (at least that's what I think).
Try it!
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