#Janathon Day 11 – Lifting Heavy Stuff

Sunday is a gym day with the Norfolk Brawds fitness partners Style Health & Fitness and it’s the day we focus on strength and I LOVE it.

I woke up feeling mysteriously perky this morning considering I drank quite a bit of beer last night, but also oh so very, very achey and sore from yesterdays fitness test exertions. I briskly walked the 1.8 miles to the gym. Mostly because it was fecking freezing and a casual dawdle would likely have seen me frozen to the spot.

Now, I apologise, because this picture should really have lots of exciting weights in the background. It doesn’t because I was half way home before I remembered to take photos. Duh.

There were 9 of us at todays session, so we split into groups of 3 doing 4 sets of 6 reps. We started with static machines a lat pull down and assisted tricep dips, at which I wasn’t as bad as I expected. And also the most terrifying station of all, laying on your back and throwing a 4kg weighted ball in the air for your partner to catch. Frankly I’m surprised we don’t have broken noses. There is a very good reason I don’t play a game with a ball in it.

Then we moved onto free weights doing weighted squats, Romanian deadlifts and a bench press. I’m not exactly hench, but I gradually increased the weights to a point I felt really tired when doing the final lift in the set. that was 5kg on each side, for the squats and deadlift (so 10kg I guess!) and 3.75kg on each side for the bench press, which is, er 7.5kg. So now I have a lovely start point that I can look back at when I’m bench pressing 100kg and feel all smug about.

I got a lift home, so I didn’t walk that freezing 1.8miles back and this is the point outside my house I remembered to take the obligatory feet shot.

So at the moment my glutes hurt, my thighs hurt my triceps hurt, my shoulders hurt and my chest hurts. I’m not expecting getting out of bed tomorrow morning to be much fun. Thankfully tonight I am staying in a hotel with a pool, so I’m hoping that a nice 30 minutes of swimming will be a little easier on my muscles that the last few days has been!