Session #56 - 3x through the machine circuit, focusing on endurance, ergo mostly weight settings a notch or two lower than usual.
I'm not interested in building bulge-y vein-y muscle mass - that's just grotesque. Yet what I've been doing - 6-12 reps at weights where 6-12 is all you can do - is exactly what conventional training wisdom says builds mass. Which is fine for now, really - I'm in no immediate danger of becoming grotesquely overdeveloped. My shoulders and deltoids still look rather bony. I could probably lose another 20 lbs of body fat and still have some love handles to show for it.
I caught myself throwing around the phrase "2 or 3 sets" a few times, when in fact, I don't think I'd *ever* done 3 sets on my machine circuit. Basically I wasn't giving upper-body enough recovery time between sets. Adding the 2 leg stations made it a LOT easier to start a new set without having to back off weight settings as much. If I also back off a plate or two, 3 sets and perhaps 4 sets is do-able.
On my 2 "problem" stations, overhead press and arm curls, I managed 12-16 reps at 30#. For some reason I just wasn't feeling the ab crunch; normally I can do 12x 90#, so you'd think 70# would be significantly easier, but 12x was quite enough. On the second set, I did 20 regular sit-ups instead of the machine, and on the 3rd set I skipped abs altogether.
I've stepped up to 90# on the chest press recently too, but I backed down to 50 for today, for 15-20 reps on the first set and maybe 15-16 on the second and third. Arm extensions have always come easier than curls, and at 30#, even 20 reps was pretty cake.
I said 70# leg curls are hard to do at the full range of motion, but 30# was way too easy, almost passive; so I went with 50#, 15-16 reps. On leg press, I stacked my full challenge weight of 210#, and managed 12-15 reps consistently. I might step up to 230# there on my high-weight/low-rep days.
I ran yesterday and I didn't want to run 2 days in a row, so to finish the session with a little cardio, I fiddled with a stair-stepper machine - good for glutes and lower back, i.e. the "sprinting" mucles, but I couldn't figure out the machine controls. So I fiddled with the stationary bikes instead. It took me a few minutes to figure out the monitors are completely "off the grid"... no power cords, they're muscle-powered :p Maybe I picked a lucky bike but the heart-rate sensor seemed to be functional and sensing in real-time, vs. the treadmill sensors which are all spotty at best. This makes it a great deal easier to target a heart rate. Cycling was quite a change from running; if I alternate between bike and treadmill, I could see myself working out pretty much daily.
Dinner: Subway footlong on whole wheat, tuna with tomato, pickle, black olive, spinach, chipotle dressing. And lots of V8.