Muscle Max

[Guest guest]

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.