Today’s Start Walking blog:
Saturday, 26 August 2006: Workout
Time at last to get started with the Turbulence Training workout program I’d decided to adopt. As mentioned elsewhere in this blog, this is a workout progam designed by a Canadian trainer named Craig Ballantyne which combines high intensity strength training (lower reps/higher weight) with high intensity interval training. Nothing new or revolutionary, really: just that it’s set up with variations in advance, so that I don’t have to try to figure out how to best design my workouts on my own. (Though I expect I will design them myself eventually, after I’ve gained lost more experience.)
My focus was on the strength training part, & I began — at home — with the “introductory level” workout, which I’ll be following for two weeks before I advance to the “beginner level” for four weeks. The program advises intro level for people who are “sedentary” — which, given my experience since May in the Start Walking program, I wouldn’t say I am any more, but walking is also a heckuva lot different from strength training too, so I figured best to do introductory anyway. And I’m glad I did, because I’m starting by getting myself into good habits like doing proper warmups, & I’m also learning new exercises. The intro level workouts consist primarily of bodyweight exercises, that is, exercises in which the resistance is provided by the weight of your own body instead of by dumbbells or barbells, like pushups. It took me about 30 minutes, or at least that’s what I counted, to go through the warmup & the six additional exercises. Lots of squats.
Normally speaking I should follow that up with an interval training workout, but since I wasn’t at the gym with a machine, & I wasn’t going to have a chance to go today, I just danced instead. For a half hour.
Then walked down to the old place to help Rozz shovel the compost into a couple of containers for transfer to the garden of a friend, then to CompUSA to get her a digital camera, then to our friends to drop off the compost & visit. A bit more walking there too: down to a small lake in their neighborhood & back.
So, I got a fair amount of exercise today.
Not a lot of rain, except the occasional sprinkle. But cool & overcast.
Day total: 11,748 (or equivalent).
