blacKandi Fitness

“Finally! It’s happened to me, right in front of my face and I just can’t deny it!” – CeCe Peniston This is a great song to workout to, by the way.

My Garmin Forerunner 305 has entered the building and it arrived right after my last blog post yesterday. Speaking of the devil! I grabbed the box and ripped into it and haven’t stopped trying to learn all the features yet. Here it is on MY arm! Cheeeese!

And here is what it came with…a heart rate monitor and manual. I will have to order the foot pod later and hopefully that will happen before I attend my first Spinning class.

Moving on to more news, I completed my first week of my new strength training program and overall, it’s going GREAT! On my pull day which was on Friday (yesterday) I did have to sub back hyper-extensions for back extension on a ball and I found that to be tough. I had to balance myself on the ball so I had gotten some core work in on that one. I had to also sub pullups with upright rows because I don’t have a pull up bar yet and I used a pair of 15lb dumbbells doing those and they were very tough. I completed my deadlifts even though some guys in one of the communities I chat on said that I’m going overkill on them and the gals over at the Spark said as long as I’m getting rest in between (which I am) then I’m good. Deadlifts are no joke so I take my time with them, make sure I’m holding up good form and that my position is stable.

While pulling, I had a cramp in my right foot that was bugging me and I don’t know what that was about. I also felt light in the head after doing those back extensions on the ball and that’s probably because my breathing was off and I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I also ALMOST injured my left shoulder pulling back too hard while doing rows so I remedied that problem and watched closely to what I was doing.

I will continue my new program because it works well and it’s structured perfectly for me. I don’t feel like I’m over training or not training enough. After each workout I feel good and energized. The workouts are tough and I push myself at each session. Today, my shoulders feel like they have been worked, but they feel pretty good. Sweet!

I wanted to note that I made my own personal book of all the exercises Spark has up on their website. I also did the same with the Stumptuous site as well. I printed all the pages I felt were detrimental to my well-being and I took the two stacks with me to Kinko where I had them bound. So again, I made a book of all common and most used strength exercises and I made a manual of the Iron portion of the Stumptous site which guides me on weight training when I need to go back and reference something. These books of mine will be beneficial to me when I go on vacation and when I’m down there in my home gym needed to get a glimpse at the form of an exercise to make sure I’m doing them correctly OR if I need any substitute and exercise for another depending on how I feel on any given day. Take a look!

You can also make books out of any of your favorite fitness sites if their content is setup in a good format. I paid about 8 bucks and signed a “we are not responsible for damage” waiver over at Kinko to have these printouts bound (wait time was 20 mins. because I had a slow rep). I was thinking about doing the same thing with my Runner’s World and Fitness magazines. After I receive all 12 issues I’ll have them bound so I can keep them as a two more reference books in my fitness library.

Lastly, since I’ve been worrying about myself deadlifting too much I wanted to say this: More women should be doing the Deadlift…it’s not just for men. It works your middle back, lower back, hamstrings, quads and calf muscles. This is the ultimate lower body compound exercise ever, I think. Watch and learn the form from the best…