Kara's Lifting Adventure

[Bytsi]

Kara,

I saw a thread talking about back extension substitutions, and I THINK one of them was to put a ball on a bench (or just find a high bench???) and lie face-down on it with your hips/legs off the back, then... extend. Kinda doing a back extension but with the bottom half of your body moving instead of the top half...

I'm sure someone who's done them could explain better!

[kfisherx]

Also for the hanging leg raises you can just hang off of a pull up bar. Or you can buy hanging leg slings (25 bucks or so at bodybuilder.com) and take them with you. Hook them to a pull up bar. That is how I do leg raises at my home.

You can do back extensions even on the floor. It is the swan movement in pilates or yoga if I am not mistaken. Something better than nothing.

[Littlemermaidklb]

Thanks girls.. I know there are other options, but I was just so dang aggravated. This isn't my normal gym and my gym does have all the stuff I need, so I will feel much happier when I get back there tomorrow

[Littlemermaidklb]

A: Assisted chinups (subbed for neg chins)
1x10 at 13th plate (70lbs assist)

B: UG lat pulldown:
7x2 w/ 90lbs
3x2 w/ 95lbs
*Probably not a PR since the weights on this stack feel way differeent than the ones on the stack I used previously

C1: BB SPlit squats:
1x6(e) with 50lb BB
2x6(e) with 2 25lb DBs (Someone was in the squat rack since I went at a really busy time and when I tried to get the 50lb preset bar back over my head after the first set I realized it wasn't going to happen again, so I switched to DBs)

C2: Pushups:
3x6 with hands on bench
*why in the world do these feel so much harder than doing them with the smith machine bar at the same height??

Overall not a bad workout but I wasn't feelin it today. I'm in a bit of a motivation rut I think... not sure how to get out of it. I also don't think I'm a fan of this stage either (geez I have such workout ADD). I feel like these workouts are UBER short and while I feel like I'm working hard during the workout, ten minutes later I feel like I didn't do anything. And last week I was able to do half of Bri's workout after mine because I didn't feel worked enough! But I feel like if I go heavier on some things that form will suffer, which is obviously really bad... I'm not sure what to do.... do I skip to stage 7? Do I skip NROL4W all together and try NROL the original? Or do I somehow suck it up and find whereever my motivation seems to have walked off to? Decisions decisions....

[nutbar]

Originally Posted by Bytsi

Kara,

I saw a thread talking about back extension substitutions, and I THINK one of them was to put a ball on a bench (or just find a high bench???) and lie face-down on it with your hips/legs off the back, then... extend. Kinda doing a back extension but with the bottom half of your body moving instead of the top half...

I'm sure someone who's done them could explain better!

Yep, Lisa~ explained it somewhere around here and they worked great for me! I'll be darned if I can find it now, though.

Keep up the good work, Kara! I'm really impressed with how much your strength has soared!!

[brianb]

Yup, I'm w/ Diane here on this one... your progress has been so impressive babe, be proud of yourself!

And don't worry... this crappy stage will be over soon-ish

[GinnyLou]

Hang in there, Kara! You are making huge strength gains and are such a motivation!

[Littlemermaidklb]

Originally Posted by nutbar

Keep up the good work, Kara! I'm really impressed with how much your strength has soared!!

Originally Posted by brianb

Yup, I'm w/ Diane here on this one... your progress has been so impressive babe, be proud of yourself!

And don't worry... this crappy stage will be over soon-ish

Originally Posted by GinnyLou

Hang in there, Kara! You are making huge strength gains and are such a motivation!

Thanks everyone! You're all so sweet I guess sometimes I forget that I have come pretty far in the past couple months and just get frustrated with where I'm at now... I also wish my body would show the strength gains that I know I've made... the muscles are in there but there's that darn layer that hides them a bit... especially in my lower half

[Littlemermaidklb]

Well today made up for my past few days of crap, lol. I was going to add stuff to the end of this workout but ended up not feeling up to it, which I think is actually a bit of a good thing. I probably shortened teh rest periods a bit, but it helped me come out of the gym feeling like I did something for once, lol

A1: Rev lunge with 1DB to shoulder:
1x6(e) with 25
2x6(e) with 30

A2: DB 2-pt row:
1x6(e) w/ 25
1x6(e) w/ 30
1x6(e) w/ 25

A3: front squat pushpress:
3x6 w/ 55lbs

B1: Back ext:
3x6 with 25lb plate

B2: Hanging leg raise
1x6 w/ BW (incline reverse crunch since someone was on the chair thing)
2x6 w/ BW (leg raise)

Notes:
-that reverse lunge thing is soo awkward, but I actually kind of like it. I still feel the hardest part is keeping that darn DB up by my shoulder. Even though it's resting on my shoulder it's freakin heavy and my arm feels more worked than my legs. But I also started feeling it in my core today which I think is kind of the point... so that's good!
-Everything else went pretty well, can't complain

And just for fun I posted a pretty funny video from a while back in Brian's log since I had mentioned it. It's him bench-pressing a friend of mine and it's good for a chuckle if you wanna check it out.

[brianb]

I'm lovin' the numbers on those rows babe, awesome job

[Littlemermaidklb]

So I have done absolutely NOTHING al day long that was active. I worked on my take-home midterm for far too long cuz it's way harder than it should be, i bought my bf's b-day present online, I found what to get his brother and future sister-in-law for their wedding, and I cooked myself dinner... but all of that (minus the cooking) was done from my couch. So I decided to go for a walk.... and since it was so nice out and I wanted to test myself I decided to turn it into a jog/run... which I usually HATE doing. The loop of road I live on is almost exactly a quarter of a mile... so I clicked on my stopwatch and did 6 laps.....
For my fitness test, that I'll do in probably a year and a half to two years from now, I need to be able to do a mile and half in under 14minutes. I have been putting off working on it forever since I HATE running and I'm the world's biggest procrastinator. BUT I am thrilled to report that I did my 6 laps, or 1.5miles in... are ya ready for it?.... 13min, 23sec!!!! So I'm very happy... I'm suckin wind BIG TIME!!!! But I'm surprisd and happy.

Now to go chill on the couch for teh rest of the night because I don't know if my lungs can handle anything else right now

[Bytsi]

Good job on the run Kara! I'm not surprised at all

[nutbar]

Great time, Kara! I love running but I love running s.l.o.w. LOL

[stingo]

Originally Posted by nutbar

Great time, Kara! I love running but I love running s.l.o.w. LOL

I think that's called walking in certain circles.

[GinnyLou]

Great job, Kara!

[nutbar]

Originally Posted by stingo

I think that's called walking in certain circles.

I prefer the term "sashay", thank you very much.