Gym

27/03/09

I've been going to the gym for four nights now.

It feels great. "The iron does not lie to you." Before I went there I kept getting positive feedback from Juzie that I had a "macho" body (and like a sucker, I listened). Sigh. When I went to the gym I felt like a huge blob of fat.

I didn't know I could do squats. I jogged a bit and cycled a few weeks before going to the gym but somehow squat exercises just terrified me. I do three sets of twenty now.

I could do twenty pushups before getting bored before I joined the gym so doing bench presses and upper body exercises was comparably easy to do (even though the weights I lift are small compared to what my gym mates lift).

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31/03/09 17:33

Last night was my worst night ever. I rested on Saturday and Sunday, well, partially. I did some manly chores that included the laundry and affixing hinges to a broken cabinet door. I went back to the gym last night. Things were pretty hard. The 10 minutes on the exercise bike was hell; I kept adjusting the difficulty lever lower than last week's difficulty as my thighs were burning with pain. This was just in the first two minutes.

I tried to do three sets of twenty on the bench press with seventy pounds but my shoulder kept complaining. (My shoulder was injured maybe four years ago when in a Judo match my opponent threw me using uchimata and we both landed on my elbow. I was stupid enough to continue another match thinking I could still use my left arm. Needless to say, I injured my right shoulder further.) It was only after a few bad starts and two sets that I was able to finish a full twenty.

I was able to finish the full set of squats. I started by increasing the weights to thirty pounds, a fifty percent increase. I finished the exercise breathing heavily and without much discomfort. The walk back home wasn't as excruciating like last week. It was only when I sat down on my comfy chair in front of my laptop that I felt the full impact of the exercise. I couldn't stand up again for a full five minutes.

No pain, no gain, right?

It's memories like these that keep me terrified of going back to the gym but it's the image I see in the mirror that pushes me to go back.

I've stopped exercising in the office to save up energy for gym time. I've given up playing on my laptop although I can find some small pockets of time in the morning while waiting for my roommate to finish taking a shower where I can play a little bit of Guitar Hero. (I know it's corny but I don't have the time to learn real guitar.)