Re: Muscle Max/

May 11, 2009

Great job, !

Yeah, Cathe's lifting style is totally different from the FIRM, and her strength

stuff is tough - esp with the pulsing! And I know I struggled to finish the leg

work on both her and Amy's workouts last fall, so I hope to see big improvents

in my leg muscle endurance when I re-visit them this fall. Though, I think I

have a couple Cathe weeks thrown in this June?July, too.

And yes, trying to choose weights for Cathe after so many FIRM style can be

tricky. Good job with the notes. I had the same issues last week when I went

back to video free, on what weights to choose. I used my notes fro January to

get me close, but this week will be smoother since I'm repeating last weeks

exercises.

I hope your new breakfast works out for you! I workout at different times of

the day, but when I workout in the morning I usually eat differently based on if

it's weights or cardio day. On longer cardio days, a small yogurt is fine, and

if I'm in a rush, or forget, or am doing a short workout, sometimes I'll workout

on an empty stomach, but don't prefer it. If I'm doing weights, I like

something more substantial, like oatmeal with protien powder, or omage 3

eggs/egg substitute with a bit of lean ham and or light cheese, a small (or

half) bagel/english muffin, and maybe some fruit. But then I like to wait an

hour or so before working out. Or, when I'm too lazy to prepare anything, a

good high fiber, high protein, moderate carb cereal works for me on weight days,

too - like Go Lean Crunch.

Sara

>

> What a way to start the week! I was both looking forward to trying this and

also really afraid to try it. It is 68 minutes of total body weight training

which is longer than I'm used to and, of course, this is Cathe. It went okay. I

liked it a lot and need to do it again now that I know what to expect. I had no

idea what size weights to use since I didn't know how many reps, pulses,

different timing, etc. things she was going to do (just watching ahead of time

doesn't help me with this stuff). I started out heavy and found myself

lightening up considerably quickly. There were a lot more reps than I was

anticipating and it just seemed a lot harder than the weight work I've been

doing with The Firm. From the very beginning with squats and lunges my legs were

burning and wobbling and let's just forget the plie squats when we got there (I

had to keep coming up higher, I was burning so much)! She used a barbell for a

few things but since all I have is my miniature barbell that I have yet to set

up, I just went with dumbbells and that made it even harder to choose weights. I

kept notes on what weights I used for each exercise though and put an arrow up

or down if I want to try something different next time or a star if it seemed

just right.In general, I used half of what Cathe used when she went with

dumbbells. I thought that would be safe and sometimes it was too light but often

it worked well. I wasn't sure if I should go to exhaustion because she stays

with a body area for several different exercises and exhausts the entire muscle

group through them so I went lighter than I could have gone in some cases

because I wasn't sure what was coming up next and what I'd need to be able to

do. I realized at some point that she does 2 sets of everything so I could go

heavier in the first set and lighter in the 2nd next time. She used a resistance

band for some of the work (triceps get worked with dumbbells, I think the

barbell and the band). She says they're using a medium resistance band but I

have no idea what any of mine are so since she was using light green and I had a

light green one, I used that! :-) I figured I could make the resistance heavier

or lighter anyway so it wouldn't matter too much but I think most of mine are

medium resistance. I'm not a huge fan of band work because I don't know how

heavy I am going but I do have to say that whatever I did today was really good

and I sure felt it, especially the triceps work. I have no idea if I worked hard

" enough " overall in this workout but most of it felt pretty good. I'm going to

watch the premixes (I didn't realize it had any until I put the disk in and saw

the menu for them) and see how I can use those too. I got this in a VF trade. I

can't remember what I got rid of, but whatever it was, it was worth it I think.

>

> I also tried a new breakfast. Today was Fiber One Honey Cluster with milk, a

banana and tablespoon of raisins. I'm not sure that was enough or not. I had a

hard time getting going with the workout but I'm not sure if it was because of

breakfast, the intimidation factor or just because it was new to me. Should try

it sometime with a Firm or other workout I already know but for this week I'm

not going to. Will just try it again and see how it works.

>

May 11, 2009