Help on the DREAD issue of Weight Training?

[Aquajock]

Hello, Brenda - do give CTX a try. It hasn't maintained its immense popularity for nothing. The cardio+single-muscle-group approach might be just the set-up for you.

Also, if you have the Hard Core Series in its entirety, please check out the "Faux CTX Hard Core Rotation" (I think that's the title of it) that I cooked up on . . . well, the Rotations forum (a stroke of genius that!). It's designed to mimic the cardio + muscle-work set up of CTX but with Hard Cores.

I think each individual exerciser has to poke around to figure out which weight-lifting protocol works best for her. I know it took me several years to refine my own personal method. Keep at it, keep practicing and experimenting and I know you'll find what works for you. It's worth the effort, both for the physical AND the emotional / mental benefits.

A-Jock

 

[brendazzzz]

Well, I guess CTX is the plan then. I don't think I'm ready for Hardcore yet!! I haven't previewed it but the name probably speaks for itself. Once I become more experienced I'll give it and that rotation a try. Thanks! Sounds like I have a long term plan... I appreciate all the help and advice all of you ladies have shared.

 

[kathryn]

I think that dread may come from looking forward to all you have to do during the workout, and thinking of it as quite a chore. I usually don't feel like that with weight training (which I LOVE!), but I felt it when I was writing my thesis. A very different field of endeavor, but the dread factor is similar, and I think the approach to dealing with the dread can be similar.

Instead of looking at the entire task at hand (the whole workout, the whole thesis), attack it in parts. For your workout, the first step is laying out the weights you will use (or the weights you'll use in the first segment of it, if there are notable changes in weights). This becomes kind of a ritual, which, after you do it repeatedly, becomes familiar and "friendly."

Then, as you do the workout, just think of it in terms of what you are doing at the moment, rather than how much there remains to be done.

Also, thinking of the benefits of what you are doing can help remove some of the dread: resistance training is the ONLY way to change the shape of your body, to "sculpt" it, in a sense. Cardio can help you lose weight, but it can't change your proportions, just make you a smaller version of what you are.

Someday, you may learn to love the feeling that weight training gives you: that burn, that feeling of strength. I do!

 

[kathryn]

>It's funny - I'm the exact opposite. I would MUCH rather
>spend my time lifting weights than producing mass buckets of
>sweat during cardio (especially in this summer heat)! I like
>feeling specific muscles being worked to exhaustion - and then
>the DOMS . . . . they really let ya know that your body's
>workin'! Once I get started, I like cardios like KPC and BC,
>but it's always nice when they're over!!! }(

Cleo, I feel the same way. (Except with kickboxing: I could also do that all the time!)