Lifting

                I love lifting weights at the gym with my buddies.  Not only is it a good workout, it creates bonds with the people you work out with.  I’m best friends with most of my workout buddies.  But I’m going to describe some of the workouts I particularly like.

                Now that I’m college, I tend to do 3 different days of lifts: On the first day, I do chest and triceps and abdominals.  On the second day, I lift shoulders and calves.  And on the third day, I do biceps and back.  The reason I’ve cut out my legs is because I do such much walking, that when I squat it becomes nearly impossible for me to walk the next day.   And in college, I walk just about everywhere, so it’s difficult to make it to class on time and get where I need to go.  So, I only squat when I know I’m not doing anything the next day.

                For chest and triceps, I start with a regular bench press.  This is just doing a pushup with a bar and weight instead of the floor.  Normally, after completing all the reps needed, I’ll finish with around 135 on the bar and see how many I can do.  It also pushes the pectoral muscles to the breaking point, along with showing how much one’s improved since last time.  After the regular press, I follow this with both inclined and declined bench press, which just changes the angle of the bench press.  On average, I’ll do about four sets of presses, varying the repetitions, but following a pyramid style lift.  As the weight increases, the repetitions decrease.

                After completing the presses, there are several exercises one can choose from to complete their workout.  Normally, one does some sort of dumbbell press.  This can happen just about anywhere; a bench, a workout ball, or the floors are just some examples.  One can also do offset pushups with a medicine ball under one hand.  A slightly different pushup would be a tricep pushup with dumb bells.   Using two low weight dumb bells (a five or a ten usually), one places them parallel to each other shoulder-width apart.  Using these dumb bells as the push off point, one changes the rotation from the shoulder to the elbows, allowing the triceps muscles to work harder.  For added intensity, after one comes up from the pushup, he or she can rotate at the shoulder and lift one weight above his head.