Thursday Tune Up

Yesterday's workout was pretty inspired. Snow and ice kept me out of work and a workout on Wednesday (Valentine's day) -- but did not keep romance out! Thursday's weather and road conditions pretty much made running outside out of the question so I went for another cross-training workout in the gym.

I wasn't feeling too hot when I headed over to the gym around 2 PM, so I took that as cause to turn it around and leave the gym feeling great! I read more in the one arm chinning guide and hooked myself up to an overhead pulley using a lifting belt as a "swing". This is similar to doing the two arm assisted pullups on the machine that supports you from below by you standing or kneeling on a counter weighted platform because you don't have to lift your whole body weight. However, the pulley is better for one arm chinning because you are free to rotate and you get a better feel for the balance necessary.

Unfortunately, the workout was a little uneven for my right and left arms because the pulley was about 8 inches to the right of the bar's center line. I'll have to play around more with the set-up at the gym to see if I can fix that. I did some additional one arm "come downs" as well as weighted pull ups (holding a twenty pound dumbbell in my legs) to further my training for one arm chinning.

I also found the arm slings necessary to do three sets of "leg-ups" from a free hang. That's the ab exercise where you hold yourself vertical [hanging] while doing repetitions of lifting your legs up as high as you can to your chest and back down to vertical. I'm still sore this morning -- means it was effective!

For my cross-training of the day, I did 25 minutes on the erg machine (rowing) to cover an equivalent distance of 6.15 km. I could feel my glutes the most when I got off which will be good for running. Today I may try to brave the outdoors for a short trek.

This weekend I'll probably do a 2:45 run. If the weather sucks, I'll have to do in on a treadmill at Ft. Meyer which will not be the greatest..

Word