(Hopefully by the time you read this, I’m on my way to Cebu!)
It’s been about a month, since I started doing the workouts on The New Rules of Lifting for Women, I have two more workouts left on the Stage One then it’s a “do as many as you can with your original weight” set and I move on to Stage Two. So far, I have used dumbbells for everything since there are no barbells in my gym, and it’s going ok, except for a few setbacks.
I haven’t seen any changes in my body yet, but I also know that it takes a while for muscle changes to show (specially when you’re overweight, and I am still carrying those stupid extra 20lbs around…)
Biggest improvement… It should come at no surprise that I HATE doing lunges. I mean, no one actually likes them, right? So are we all in agreement that lunges suck? Though my quads are strong (I don’t have thunder thighs for any reason – there’s a lot of muscle under that jiggle!), my hips are weak and pretty much every other muscle involved in doing lunges. But I went from being able to use my bodyweight only for the first workout, to holding 20lbs on each hand.
Along with that, the “step ups” are another thing that was a big improvement, from holding 15lb dumbbells to holding 30lbs on each hand. (And I could probably do more if I had a barbell, but sadly I have a weak grip, and 30lbs is the most I can hold.)
The one bad thing about those two? They cause my hip to flare up… I used to think it was just running, and now I found out, nope, not just running makes it hurt… But hopefully keeping it up will make the hip stronger in the long run.
Least improvement… I have pretty weak shoulders, thanks to many volleyball injuries (I’ve had shoulder bursitis and shoulder impingements at different times – my overhand serve is badass and sometimes I get lots of aces in a row, but my shoulder suffers from it). So it’s no surprise that the shoulder press is the one with the least improvement… I started with 10lbs weighs that I bumped to 15lbs on my second workout and I’m still only using 15lb weights… Don’t get me wrong, I have tried to use the 20lbs – at first I couldn’t even lift it individually over my shoulder (I can carry very heavy things, but lifting things over my shoulder is a whole different story). Now I can get into position, but then my shoulder just stays there, paralyzed. In other words… Very weak shoulders with still not much improvement. (Emily is a great example of how weightlifting does not bulk you up – she’s teeny tiny – and she can do shoulder presses with 25lbs in each hand, though it’s lower now that she’s pregnant.)
Most frustrating… Definitely the squats. Why? After some creative maneuvering, I am now able to put a 30lb dumbbell on each shoulder (I have to move the dumbbells to the upper rack, put my foot up there, and put my elbow against my thigh so that I can lift those weights over my shoulder. Fun times). So I’m squatting with a total of 60lbs, but I’m not challenging myself as much as I do with the other workouts… With this, I’m limited to only what I can lift over my shoulders and to my weak grip. Had I had a squat rack and barbells, I could be using a lot more weight!
I’m not looking forward to Stage Two, which includes lots of planks and interval workouts… But I’ve been pretty good at keeping this up 3 times a week (I think only once I ended up with only 2 workouts, and that was after 4 hours diving at the pool).
Has anyone else started on this book and making progress? (I know Tyly was doing it too!)
Hey, I enjoy reading your blog. I actually bought the “New Rules of Lifting for Women” after reading about it here and checking out the preview on Amazon. I’m still in Stage 1 right now having done 4 of the workouts. I’ve never done any weight lifting previously, and as far as equipment goes, I have the opposite problem as you. I have olympic bar with a squat rack and weights (my husband lifts and there is no gym close), but we have no dumbbells. I could get some at the Walmart in town, but I wanted something that takes up less space. I’ve ordered some adjustable weight dumbbells though that should get here next week sometime which I am super excited about. Right now having no dumbbells makes the shoulder press very hard because having not lifted before, I am kind of weak and the lightest thing I can use is the 45 lb bar. So I only do about half the reps on those.
We have an adjustable dumbbell at home that my husband uses for P90X and it works great (and definitely a space saver!).
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