It really was a weekend of doing good then undoing the good…
Well, sort of, both of the things I did were good, they increased fitness and strength and all of those good things…
But a pilates class, isn’t really meant to be followed up with a lifting heavy things and putting them down again session… It would probably have been better the other way round…

I had better start from the beginning… On Sunday, I went to Pilates.
Pretty normal sunday so far.
I met my friend Jen there.
<—- there she is, jumping about… she wasn’t jumping like this on Sunday, just in case you were confused…
We pilatesed away with the best of them, and I even had to demonstrate an “open legged rocker” I think I explained this before…but it went slightly further this time…
Start sitting with legs bent, hold on to the back of you legs and lean back while taking you feet off the floor and balance there. Then straighten you logs and hold it there. Then rock backwards until your legs are parallel with the floor over your head, then back onto your bum and balance again. Like this:
I looked just like that too, and not in any way like a weebleΒ which wobbles but doesn’t fall down…
(it’s a toy…shaped like an egg, read the link)
As we left the class, all stretched and calm and appropriately exercised in a calm sort of way, Jen says that she is going to go to the gym as she doesn’t know when she will get there this week. So I thought “oh why not” and went a long too π
So we headed into the gym (thwarted only briefly by a seemingly incomprehensible door card swipe arrangement) and warmed up for 10 mins on the treadmill…
yes…you heard it first here…I went on a treadmill…for 10 whole minutes
10 mins, no falling off nothing,
technically only brisk walking, but I was (still) breaking in my vibrams.
It still counts as facing my fears a tiny bit!
Once that was done, I made Jen do free weights…well I didn’t force her but she was going to use the weights machines and I suggested strongly that this wasn’t allowed so we did the following:

3 x 10 Dumbbell chest press (1 2kg each hand) worked in with 3 x 10 (per arm) 1 arm rows (12 kg)
3 x 10 vipr squats (16 kg) worked in with 3 x 8 vipr overhead press (16 kg)
1 x 10 vipr thread the needle 8kg
3 x 30 s each side cable machine core thingies… (core presses see here)
ANd that was just about it π Note these are my weights, not Jen’s weights…she is much tinier than me and new to free weights therefore used different ones π
Day 219 Complete π
Strength training after Pilates does seem a bit counterintuitive, but hey, it’s fun to mix it up sometimes! π
I think it’s awesome that you taught Jen about the benefit of free weights versus those stupid machines. Good on ya!
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It is the wrong way around really…but never mind π
I think she enjoyed it, although at one point couldn’t actually get up from the bench after chest presses…
she was still talking to me at the end though π
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ha! that’s funny! π
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π
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Oh, I used to love weebles – they wibble and they wobble but they won’t fall down. Can you still get them? We had one with a boat and skis. Is it strange that the first thing I want to comment on is the weeble reference?
So, to keep it balanced – I like the vipr too.
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hehehe π I am glad someone got my weebles reference π
I am not sure if you can get them, I don’t think you can get them in the same form that I remember but they may have undergone a modern transformation!
I loved mine when I was little, I hid them from the charity shop pile once by sleeping with them under my pillow…which was odd because all I had to do was tell my parents I wanted to keep them…but I was only little!
viprs are good too…I am also all for balance
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I’m old enough to remember weebles from way back when, in the 70s, so I definitely got the reference π
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Hehehe me too (well late 70s early 80s anyway) π
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