Good afternoon!
My arms got a serious workout this morning at my personal training session with Jerome at LA Boxing!
I told Jerome my calf was bothering me, and he agreed to focus on arm workouts this morning, with a bit of quad work thrown in as well.
If you’re a new reader, check out my previous LA Boxing related posts and kick-butt workouts. They will give you some good ideas for ramping up your own workouts!
- LA Boxing gets fANNEtastic!
- Why do you exercise?
- Personal training — week 1: a kick-butt conditioning workout
- Personal training — week 2: boxing and self defense moves
- Personal training — week 3: dripping sweat, but still laughing!
- Personal training — week 4: full body conditioning!
We started with a full body move (this engaged my quads & inner thighs, not my calves) to get warmed up. While holding a 10 lb. ball to my chest, I sat down and stood back up. Harder than it sounds 😉
Then we hit the (5 lb.) weights hard!
For the move pictured above, I had to hold one weight straight out at an angle while doing biceps curls with the other arm. Who knew it was so hard to simply hold a weight out?!
The next variation was holding one weight up in the air while doing shoulder presses with the other arm. Also HARD!
We also did some unpictured tricep presses.
Next up — wall sits! Jerome said these wouldn’t bother my calf, and he was right… It was just the rest of my leg that was screaming for mercy 😉 I had to hold a 90 degree angle with my legs while balancing a 10 lb. ball on my thighs. YIKES!!
Just when I thought it was over… set #2. I held the pose for one minute per set. Gah! My legs were literally shaking by the end of this! Jerome said usually people give up half way through, so I was proud to have stuck it out 🙂
Next up — some elliptical! Jerome put it on a really hard setting and had me focus on pulling/pushing with my arms, just letting my legs come along for the ride. Whew!
We finished up with some ab work combined with a little more arms. Holding myself in the position you see below, I had to press my arms above my head.
And then keep pressing my arms up and down while doing sit ups (keeping my legs up in the air the whole time).
And lastly — I held the weights above me while engaging my core.
Whew! It was a great workout, as always 🙂
Thanks for all the supportive comments on my last post — my calf is feeling a lot better already today after icing and foam rolling yesterday. I’m going to keep up the icing, stretching, and foam rolling, and I’ve decided not to run at all this week to just let it rest. I’ll be doing some elliptical, lots of yoga, and maybe some swimming to stretch it out. Here’s hoping I’ll be ready to rock on Sunday!
Hope you’re all having not too rough first days back from vacation! At least it’s a 4 day week, right?
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p.s. I’m famous!! (kind of) 🙂
I had a bunch of friends tell me that my review of the Sex and the City 2 movie from over the weekend was quoted in this morning’s “Blog Log” section of the Washington Post Express (the free mini-newspaper that everyone grabs and reads on the metro on the way to work)!:
How cool! 🙂 It’s online, too!
