My Journey With Health And Fitness – Building Strength

Ok, today I did my 3rd 8km run this week. I have given up on the 5km runs because they just aren’t doing it for me anymore. Having said that, when I get back to Mexico in 5 weeks I fully intend to use those 5km runs to improve my speed. My goal is to come back with the best pace I have ever done. And Saturday this week I fully intend to get in a 10km which will include for the 1st time in nearly 2 years finishing the run coming up a steep hill. Wish me luck.

As part of my newly rediscovered focus on my fitness, I am putting much more emphasis on strength training. A lot of what I have been reading about tells me that just doing cardio won’t cut it, I need to be doing strength at least 3 times a week in order to build muscle and reduce fat. While it seems a bit counter intuitive i realize that as I am getting older having those muscles to support my joints is becoming more and more important.

This week in particular has been a good week. For several months now my fitness classes have only had 2 instructors, one who does 4 days a week and the other who only does one (of course I am only referring to the 5:30am classes). While both of these instructors are awesome, I did find having the same instructor 4 times a week was not necessarily offering the variety that I am looking for. Don’t get me wrong, the workouts have been excellent, just often times very similar.

Things have changed this week in that a new instructor has been added. That means each of the strength classes has a different instructor. What a difference I found this week. Of course the instructors have a lot of similarities i.e. adding weights to my exercises without my consent (it’s ok, I actually like it) but also a lot of differences. Each of them has a different way of doing the classes and sometimes have different ways of doing exercises which is not a bad thing. What is important is that they are all making me want to push myself to do better.

Yesterday with the new instructor we were doing deadlifts. Now Tuesday the instructor had made me do 50 lb dumbbell deadlifts which I got through. Yesterday I was doing 75 lb barbell deadlifts and yes, they were hard but you know what? I got through them for several sets. It’s all about building strength and challenging yourself to do better each and every week.

And so I am going to keep focusing on building that strength until I get to the point that when I look at myself in the mirror even I am stunned at how buff I am. Trust me, if I keep up what I am doing now it won’t take long.