Health Link: Looking to gain muscle? Buy That Old Devil the Cross Trainer
By Groovybabe • Aug 2nd, 2007 • Category: exercise, gymSince missing my mid-week workout last week due to a knee injury I have been feeling like I need to make up for lost time. It wasn’t helped on Monday by not being able to complete my workout (I missed the last 10 minutes) due to babysitting issues. So yesterday when I went I was always going to go a little bit mad.
I really shouldn’t have, as my knee is still playing up a bit, but something got into me. The last few times I have done upper and lower body conditioning every time (I am supposed to alternate it at each visit) because on the lower days all I have to do is the leg press and it feels like I am not doing much. Plus I love the feeling of strength working on my upper body gives me.
This is all well and good but when I jumped on the cross trainer I went a little bit mad I think. I had energy coming out of nowhere. At my last review I was doing about 50-55rpm and my instructor told me to try to up it to 55-60rpm so last week I worked hard to do that but it didn’t come easy. Then today I jump on and I am naturally getting up to 65rpm, even higher on a couple of occassions. I just figured I was getting fitter and went with it. But last night I was absolutely shattered in a way that I haven’t been since I first started working out. I still am this morning, but that might be something to do with having to get up early for an interview.
I now know what people mean when they say to do weight training before cardio. I did cardio first yesterday because my instructor was in there with her beady eye on me and I thought she might tell me off if I did that but as I went ten-to-the-dozen on the cross trainer, I knew I wasn’t putting my all into the weight training. I guess it doesn’t technially matter as it wasn’t a upper body day anyway so anything is extra but I think I will try to stick to weight training first.
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What about breaking weights and cardio into two sessions? The way I understood it was that you shouldn’t do a full cardio workout, just warm up (10 minutes of brisk walking is what my old trainer used to tell me). I don’t think I could do a full cardio work-out and then hit the weights. I’d be too tired, also.
I can only go to the gym 3x a week so I have to do the cardio and weights together. I actually don’t find it too much normally, I always do more weights than I am required to, I think it was just I overdid it on the cross trainer that day.