Back in the Gym and it Felt Glorious

A couple of weeks back I made a blog post about my wife being pregnant and how I let myself back-slide and put on weight. Since then I’ve started running again – mostly time with my daughter (she rides her bike while I trot along) but today I hit the gym for the first time in quite a while.

My plan was to wait until after my wife delivered our new baby girl to start a gym routine. Things would be a little calmer once the pre-baby panic was over. That was the plan anyway…

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought over the weekend and decided that I just didn’t want to wait anymore. I got up this morning, threw on some workout clothes, and made my way over to Anytime Fitness. With today being Memorial Day, I thought I’d have the place to myself. That was not the case – it was fairly busy when I arrived.

Rather than pick up with the Wendler 5/3/1 Program (where I left off when I stopped going to the gym), I wanted to get back to what worked best for me. No real pre-determined plan, I just showed up and put in work.

I started things off with some time on the Elliptical. I set the workout mode to Vigorous Burn (which sets resistance based on heart rate) and spent thirty minutes chugging along. When I hopped off the machine I had a pretty good sweat going and made my way over to the racks.

Squatting was hard and humbling. I wasn’t going to get anywhere close to the weight I was using 6 months ago so I started from the ground up. I started with an empty bar and warmed up in sets of 5. Empty Bar, 75 Pounds, 95 Pounds, 115 Pounds, then I switched over to working sets of 135 Pounds. I did 3 sets of 12 reps then started pulling off weight for extra volume. I went all the way back down to an empty bar in increments of 10 pounds doing 8 reps per set.

By the time I was done, I was fried. My legs felt wobbly and my back was aching due to my form breaking down as fatigue set in. From there I went on to 135 pound calf raises (with a barbell and 25 pound plates to elevate my toes). 3 Sets of 15 Reps had my calves aching.

I had planned to hop onto the leg press at this time but it was being used. I headed over to the leg machines (curl and extension) and both of those were also being used. Rather than stand around, I went back over to the cardio area and did 50 flights of stairs on the Power Mill.

The gym got even busier while I was on the Power Mill and rather than stand around and wait for the other machines to become available, I called it a workout and headed home. I felt great when I got home and considered going out for a run. I knew my calves wouldn’t hold up so I headed inside and made myself some breakfast (3 Eggs and 2 slices of Turkey Bacon).

It has been so long since I’ve been in the gym that I forgot how good it feels to work out. The running I’ve been doing has been great but it just isn’t the same as moving weights. I haven’t put together a plan for tomorrow but I plan to be back at it again – probably working chest, biceps, and triceps.