Back in the gym...

Posted in: Injury Time

Since leaving Leytonstone in Dec 2003, I haven't had a gym membership. Early 2004 I just slacked but then through Karen I discovered kettlebells which pretty much took care of strength, endurance, and fun. And since I could do them at home I actually trained more often and got stronger, fitter, and had more fun.

So my local gym has a pool which was the clincher in signing up - and boy, was it good today. It's 1.2m deep the whole length which is a bit weird but meant I could do little calf raises with most of my weight supported. I think I gave my feet a useful, functional workout. They felt sort of "cleaned out" after the swim and bouncing. Also a sign of progress (in particular how much weight my heels can directly bear) was that I got to the pool barefoot with only a crutch.

A bit disappointingly the gym is one of those "no-one talks to anyone else" jobs. I've been to a couple of gyms where there is a social vibe (e.g. Gold's, Monterey, CA--almost 100% men) and it's 1000x more fun. Bucking the trend I ended up in a long chat with another guy in the pool who'd had a car accident and taught me a rehab move with the floats. I taught him how to make veggie broth, although whether that's a good thing for him, hard to say ;-) Mmm, swamp water.

I did an actual weights work-out too. That was quite odd, I really haven't done that for ages. I'm pretty sure I'm lifting heavier weights than I used to but with those complex, abstracting, space-age machines it's hard to tell. 60% down stack on bench press. Keeping tight logs now so curious to see how it changes... Ah, such a geek.

Posted by Paul Makepeace at August 13, 2005 20:10 | TrackBack