Iron Experiment Day 1

Today was a hardy day of willpower. Spent Friday night (minus the hour for Doctor Who) entering receipts into Quicken. Spent Saturday reconciling Quicken with bank statements. Until 4:30pm when I ran to the gym and relieved my back setting my rep maxs on my workout exercises.

On everything but the squat. I couldn't figure out how you got the bar out of the cage, much less taking the huge plates off. Yeah, I wussed out, but I need to follow the directions and perfect my technique first without weight. Everything else on the list I have done.

1 RPM

• Squat = body weight
• Leg Press (machine) = 160 lbs.
• Calf raises (machine) = 110 lbs.
• Cable row (machine) = 90 lbs.
• Lat. pulldown (machine) = 75 lbs.
• Bench press = 45 lbs.
• Dumbbell shoulder press = 15 lbs.
• Swissball crunches = 20 (no weight)

I am using machines for leg press and calf raises. The leg press because there's a machine to do it using bars and free weights and way more complicated than I want to deal with. The calf raises because there's nothing in the weight room to stand on to move your heels.

Cable rows and lat. pulldowns must be done on machines, but I found a cable machine, which allows for better all body movement than the isolate-the-muscle-group machines I used before. I think it's a new machine or they rearranged the room.

After gym, I went to Wal-Mart to price their weights. Actually, I was surprised at the selection. They even had Gold's Gym Olympic standards stuff. Hammond is a college town with collegiate football, basketball, baseball, and other sports I don't know about teams. We don't have a true sporting goods store, so I was impressed with Wal-Mart's catering to the athletes.

I'm still going to check the stores in Baton Rouge, but in the standard one inch size, I can invest in a bar set and a dumbbell set and have 130 lbs. of assorted plates to mix and match for $71.80 plus tax. That's a doable price, even if I'm too broke to afford it right now. However, it's looking like my back-to-school splurge for the semester.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

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