My second ever strength training routine works out the chest, back, lats, delts, biceps, triceps, quads and hamstrings. I will proceed with this set of exercises once per week for the next six to eight weeks. The lack of exercises for the core muscles is compensated by the fact that I finish the strength session with a Core class. Obviously I continue to attend Group Training classes four times per week, which means that I get various degrees of cardio and strength/endurance training in between each strength session. I think this is a good mix for me.

1. Lever Seated Fly	2. Cable Seated Row
3. Assisted Pullup	4. Cable Upright Row
5. Lever Triceps Dip	6. Dumbbell Curl
7. Lever Seated Leg Press	8. Lever Seated Leg Curl

Pictures from the exercise database at ExRx.net.

The images are self-explanatory, but I figure I should make a few comments on why I have chosen some of these exercises.

Note that my chest exercise is actually the Seated Fly and not the Lying Fly as depicted above simply because that is how the Fly-machine at Sats Jakobsberg works and the gif-animation above was the closest match I could find.

My previous back exercise was the Straight Back Seated Row and I am now expanding this into the full range version of the Seated Row. I believe it is wise to opt for exercises with a wider range of motion than more isolated once.

The Assisted Pullup machine quickly became my favorite in Kista because you can work your chest, your triceps and your lats all on the same machine just by varying your grip. Also, I find that there is something inherently masculine about being able to pull your own body weight into a pullup or chin-up. This has stuck with me ever since my days in the army as sort of a benchmark on raw physical fitness (besides Cooper’s test). The Assisted Pullup machine is great because it allows me to gradually work myself up to the point when I will be able to do the unassisted version of the exercise. Something I was unable to do in the army ten years ago, but which I feel much closer to achieving today. The problem I have here is that the machine they have at Sats Jakobsberg is different from the one at my previous gym. The one at Sats is of a type where you stand on your knees, which means more tension is put on the core muscles to keep your back straight compared to the machine at Kista where you stand on your feet.

I’m not sure if I will be able to do the Assisted Triceps Dip on the Pullup/Dip machine they have at Sats since I don’t know if it is possible to adjust the grip width. With a wider grip the Triceps Dip essentially becomes the Chest Dip instead, which is really not what I want. I don’t think they have a dedicated dip-machine either so I may be forced to use one, of, the, many body weight alternatives. I would rather not though, since it’s obviously harder to keep track of weight gains when only using your body weight.

EDIT [2010-03-01] I now know that the dip-handles are not adjustable so that means I won’t be able to do the triceps dip with the Assisted Dip/Pullup machine. However, it seems they do have a Dedicated Dip-machine so I’m going with that instead.

The biggest addition is of course the two exercises for the legs. The Squat is really a no-brainer exercise. The Leg Curl is there to balance things out on the push/pull side of things. I suppose an exercise for the calves would round this out even more, but I figure I get plenty of exercise for my calves from Power Step and Core Pulse class as it is and eight exercises is almost too many exercises for one session anyway.

As the title suggests it has been 6 weeks since I started with my first strength training routine and started eating protein after my workouts. I have completed six sessions of no more than 30 minutes each (including warm-up). That means I have spent less than 3 hours in the gym on the upper floor of Sats Jakobsberg. During this time I have managed to increase the total amount of weights for my six exercises by 48%! While a good chunk of this can be attributed to an initial adjustment of my nervous system to this new form of exercise, I think it is safe to conclude that my first strength training routine has been successful.

As I mentioned earlier on my blog, it seems to be a good strategy to change training routine every 6 to 8 weeks, so starting next week I will start up a new one. The prudent course of action would be to go a longer time with my first routine seeing that I haven’t really hit any kind of plateau yet, but seeing that the new group training classes are released next week I figured the timing was quite nice. I guess I am also itching to design a new routine as well. Half the fun in strength training comes from the planning phase I think. Kinda like engineering.

So what have I learned during this short “experiment”? First of all I have gotten accustomed to the exercise equipment and the “ways of working”. But more importantly I have learned about how to motivate myself to keep up with what is essentially one of the most boring forms of exercise ever conceived. The planning phase, which I mentioned above, is truly at the root of this. The plan gives me a framework towards which I can benchmark and keep track of my progress and it makes my workout more efficient and structured. Seeing that it usually takes months, if not years of work for a person to see any kind of visible results from any form of fitness training, many people will quit their training routine before they even have a chance to reap a single reward for their hard work. But being able to visualize (for instance in a spreadsheet application) the gains in weights lifted gives me a tangible result already after the second session. While I can’t say I have noticed any visible change in muscle mass on my body, I know thanks to the fact that I have disciplined myself to do the same exercises for six weeks in a row that I have gotten stronger. 48% stronger, to be precise.

SATS released the playlists for the new group training classes today. They will start rolling out the new classes in march. Of special interest are of course the playlists for Core Pulse (spotify playlist) and Power Step (spotify playlist). I see many of the usual suspects returning in these playlists but there are also a few interesting additions. As usual it’s quite difficult to draw any conclusions before I have actually experienced the new classes first-hand but the Power Step track-list seem to have the most potential.

I’m getting quite sick of the current classes now to be honest, so I’m really looking forward to the new releases. Thankfully it’s just one more week with the old choreography. I’m hoping for more deep lunges for the Core Pulse and generally more physically challenging exercises but I’ll be happy if only they manage to balance the strength exercises for one set of weights for the Power Step this time.

For the Spotify-handicapped, here are the track lists in old-school low-fidelity text format.

Sats Core Puls track list

1. Warm-up: Stay the night (Alcazar)
2. Warm-up: Morning after dark (Timbaland)
3. Cardio: Turn it up (Bomfunk MC`s & Anna Nordell)
4. Cardio: She bangs (Ricky Martin)
5. Cardio: She works hard for the money (Donna Summer)
6. Balance: Move (Darin)
7. Cardio: Just like a pill (P!nk)
8. Balance: Sweet dreams (Beyonce)
9. Cardio: Hide your heart (Bonnie Tyler)
10. Cardio: In the heat of the night (Star Pilots)
11. Balance: Use somebody (Kings of leon)
12. Strength: The man behind the mask (Alice Cooper)
13. Strength: Love game (Lady Gaga)
14. Stretch: Imagine (John Lennon)

Sats Power Step track list

1. Warm-up: Closer (Ne-yo)
2. Warm-up: Tik tok (Kesha)
3. Cardio: Girls and boys (Good Charlotte)
4. Strength: Sweet dreams (Beyonce)
5. Cardio: Million miles away (Charlotte Perrelli)
6. Strength: Starstruck (Lady Gaga & Space Cowboy)
7. Cardio: Good girls go bad (Cobra Starship)
8. Strength: Heartbreaker (P!nk)
9. Cardio: La la (Ashlee Simpson)
10. Strength: Dude (looks like a lady) (Aerosmith)
11. Cardio: Rockstar (N.E.R.D)
12. Cool-down: Stranger (Hilary Duff)
13. Strength: So excited (Janet Jackson)
14. Stretch: Impatient (Anna Abreu)

The injury from last week seem to have healed up completely now. I played it safe and rested for five full days. I always find it hard to determine when it is safe to try exercising again. Initially the healing proceeds rapidly, but after a couple of days the healing process seem to come to a complete halt where it feels like most of the pain is gone but there is still this awkward stiffness which may or may not indicate that the injury is not fully healed yet. So I figure that all I can do in this situation is hold on for a couple days and then take a chance that the pain will not come back when I try exercising again. This time, last Wednesday, I was happy to find that the last bit of stiffness seemed to float away during the Core Pulse session.

The real test for my bad back came from the strength session I did today. While I felt a bit stiff after the workout, it is a different kind of stiffness, not like the pain I suffered last week. I take it that muscle soreness from strength training feels a bit different from the soreness you get from running or Group Training? In any case, this stiffness seem to be easing off as I type this. I was able to increase my weights again for the third week in a row and it seems I have developed a sort of awareness of how much I can lift for each exercise, which means I can go straight from my warm-up set to the correct weights for the work set.

As a result from not exercising for a few days, that Core Pulse session sure hit my thighs and glutes pretty hard. Haven’t had this much soreness in my leg-muscles in six months. So today I went to the lunch-time Core Pulse session thinking I would take it a bit easier this time. But as usual, anytime I go to Sats Jakobsberg with this mind-set the instructors seem to over-do themselves and inspire me to push myself to my limits. Today’s session got me thinking how different the instructors are in terms of how they create “Focus” for the group. “Focus” in this case, for lack of a better expression, is my term for the “energy” or “fighting spirit” or “atmosphere” created by that feeling that everyone around you, including yourself and the instructor, is really pushing themselves and enjoying their workout. It’s quite obvious to me that most instructors are reflective, in the sense that they seem to reflect the Focus expressed by the group, instructing with more energy if the group is expressing that they are enjoying themselves. And I would assume that most people who enjoy Group Fitness are reflective as well, so one could assume that it would not take much effort to get a good wibe flowing in the classroom. But this is not the case always, and the question I ask myself is why?

The answer I think lies in how perceptive the instructors and the participants are to the reflective signals they are getting from the group and how we perceive this concept of Focus. Some instructors like to keep a two-way verbal communication going during the class, with the usual “Are you with me?” and with everyone expected to answer with a resounding “YES!”, while other instructors communicate true non-vocal, almost empathic, communication. My assumption is that people respond to these different forms of communication differently depending on their personality and other influences. For instance, men tend to respond positively to vocal communication, especially in the presence of attractive women. :-P

While I do also respond to verbal communication, as a typical introvert I sometimes find it awkward. In fact, it sometimes feels forced, as if I am expected to respond to every queue and shout simply because I am a man. I even get the feeling that when I am not responding to the verbal communication, this causes the women to stay silent as well for whatever reason (Cultural norm? Gender-based shyness?). As a man, I obviously don’t know what happens with the communication when the class consist entirely of women so I can’t really know if this feeling I have is true or not. Sometimes I get the feeling that the instructors like seeing me there in their class for the very reason that I am a man but sometimes the feeling is the opposite. I really don’t know what conclusions to build out of this.

What I do know is that during today’s class the verbal communication was minimal. The instructor just sort of radiated energy, and I don’t believe I was the only one to pick up on it. And it’s a good thing the communication wasn’t verbal, I was working way too hard to have been able to shout a single word, even if I wanted to. But I would assume that the veins bursting on my forehead would communicate just plenty about how much I was pushing myself in case the instructor would need some kind of reassurance.

And this is exactly where our perception of the concept of Focus comes into play. Some instructors often say things like: “You all look so angry, where are the smiles?” and while that might be meant to be sarcastic, I sometimes feel that maybe they expect you to sort of look like a show dancer or something. But that just feels so weird. This is not a Dance Aerobics class we are talking about here. If I am truly enjoying a Power Step/Core Pulse/Spinning/Body Pump session, I will have my fighting face on. And that is not a happy face.

Who would have thought sitting down and typing up a post on your blog could be this painful?

I am an idiot. I did a Power Step class today knowing that I had some kind of minor injury in my upper back muscles in the right-side Rhomboids and the lower parts of the Trapezius. And I didn’t even reduce my weights to compensate. I actually hurt my back earlier in the day when I was bending down to wash my face in the bathroom sink. Ironic isn’t it? It’s such a simple movement, not at all unusual as I do it every day. But non the less capable of doing damage. Maybe I already had some kind of injury in my back which I had not noticed before, which was triggered by this random event. Anyway, the mistake I did was to assume the minor discomfort I felt would go over by itself and proceeded with my scheduled Power Step class.

That minor discomfort turned very quickly into bucket-loads of pain. It wasn’t as bad during the workout as it is now. I had to rub a Ketaprofen-lotion (known in Sweden as “Zon salva”) on my back to ease the pain a little. The pain sort of radiates into my arm as far as the right forearm.

Another twist of irony is the fact that I had reduced the number of sessions this week to cope with the feelings of over-training I had last week. It’s Thursday today and I’ve already had two full rest days this week, with the intent of having one more rest day on Saturday. Besides this shoulder/back pain, I was in excellent shape today, rested, well fed and hydrated. Here I was thinking I was back on track again. Now it seems I might not be doing any training for several days until this heals up!

I also almost spit on the instructor today. Thank god it missed. It’s bad enough I sweat like a fountain. Sometimes I feel like that guy from the Axe-commercial. Note to self: check if they also make a deodorant for the mouth. If not, I may have to find a new spot in the corner of the classroom, facing the wall.

It’s been two weeks since I added one strength session to my weekly training schedule and today I did my third strength session. I have been able to increase my weights on all exercises by 10 to 20% each session. This doesn’t necessarily mean I have gotten any stronger, instead I believe my nervous system is still adapting to the exercises and movements involved. I try to really focus on my form but this can be difficult at times when the machines are placed at an odd angle toward the mirrors. I suppose I have become quite addicted to the mirrors from all that group training. I find that the triceps push-downs and biceps curls are especially hard to do with good form when I increase the weights.

It’s interesting how my problem with the overly flexible shoulders, doesn’t seem to cause any problems for me when I do exercises which target the shoulders directly, but does seem to have an indirect effect on other parts of my body. I’ve noticed that due to this extra flexibility I am unable to stretch my triceps properly. I haven’t really thought about that as a problem before but during the last two sessions I seem to have injured myself on the triceps push-down. It pains at the point where the triceps connects to the elbow.

I realized that using the spinning shoes when I do my spinning & strength training combo would not work out too well since walking with the spinning shoes is next to impossible. So I figured I might switch the spinning session for a 30 minute Core class. I tried this today and it worked out quite nicely. Since the core muscles are involved in many (if not all) of the exercises I do during my strength session, I figured it might be wise to finish with the Core session.

I keep loosing weight even though I added a whey protein shake to my diet. It’s probably too early to judge but I haven’t really noticed any change (good or bad) since I started eating whey. Maybe I should add one more shake before the workout as well?