Enjoying the Burn

After a 15+ year break from lifting weights, I’m finally  back.  Adjustable dumbbells in hand and an adjustable  weight bench being shipped as I type this.  Over the years, I have really missed lifting.  But lets face it, when you’re hauling over 400 pounds around each day, the last thing you want to do is pick up anything else heavy.  Now that I’ve begun to start losing weight, I definitely feel an increase of energy and my body wants to be more active.  It’s true what they say, a body in motion tends to stay in motion.  For a long time my body wanted to rest and without changing my diet and my mindset I could never have sustained any type of serious changes when it came to increasing my physical activity.

There are definitely times I falter.   My treadmill has become “the dreadmill”.  Even with built in cable TV, I detest the thing.  So you can imagine how happy I was after weeks of waiting when the dummbells finally arrived.  I then did a very, very stupid thing.  I began lifting with them like I had never taken all of those years off.  I essentially attempted to pick up where I left off.  And for the next 4-5 days, I could not straighten either of my arms.  Before lifting, I had a romantic notion of what muscle burn felt like but it ended up being something much different afterwards.  This was a painful reminder that it takes dedication AND PATIENCE to get where you want to be.

I’ve since dialed the workouts back a little.  Maybe not even back but rather i’ve dialed them “in”.  I’ve learned that lifting can be just as intense if we focus on isolating the muscles we are working on.  Squeezing the muscle before and at the end of the rep and keeping that tension throughout the rep can be as effective as doing multiple sets of less controlled lifting.  In fact, from my experience it is more effective.

Frequency of reps is not more important than quality of reps. I still get an awesome burn.  I’m just not spending the better part of a week recovering.

I’ve also relearned something that I must have forgotten – that when reaching the point of muscle failure, simple tasks like drinking a glass of water can be challenging.  When you cannot bring a glass of water fully to your lips without it pouring out all over you = it is a sign of an intense workout.

 

Tasting the Agony of Defeat

So the local blog awards were held last night and johnnysized.com succumbed to the very stiff competition. With just three months of this page being in existence, I think it went as well as could be expected. The fact that it was nominated in three categories made me proud. But victory is so sweet and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to win. It does motivate me to work harder for next time. Things that we truly want should not come easy so that when we obtain them, we really savor it and appreciate it. I was very glad to see some of my friends win. Both those that did and didn’t are passionate about their craft and are inspirations to me. I made a few new friends as well and I look forward to reading their work.

So I came back home a beaten man. What to do? Bag of potato chips? Pint of ice cream? No!

Curls!

In a suit and tie no less – because one should be professional at all times. I curled until I could curl no more.
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As some of you may know, I dabble in the arts. Being of Italian descent, I thought it would be fun to audition for a local series about “the mob” (more info coming in the next several weeks when I’m allowed to discuss it). Ironically I was offered a part as a Russian Mob enforcer. The problem here is two-fold. I need to figure out a Russian accent pretty quickly. That is doable. The other issue is that the headshot I used to get the part is a bit dated. I weighed at least 60 pounds more at the time. But now, I’m the incredible shrinking man. So hitting the weights hard and regularly is imperative. I need to be lean, mean and hulking!

Da svidaniya comrades!
For now,
Johnny