New to STS

[Kellyro77]

Whooo whooo! It's always motivating when that happens. Congrats!

That's interesting. I don't usually do this but I've been reading about the benefits of Pre- and Post- supplements.

I love a massage (Swedish-style is my favorite for relaxation - beware of a "sport massage" - that can hurt sore muscles. Nice gift to yourself for Recovery week.

I used to consume a carb-rich "snack" before I did my runs while training for a half-marathon and found it was pretty beneficial then. For those runs I'd have 1/4 cup rolled oats cooked with some added honey and half a banana. All quick energy sources for my body to pull from. And because those runs were pretty intense (for me at least), I'd also follow them up with an electrolyte drink and then have a more normal breakfast after I got home and washed up.

I opted for something similar this time, but I also added 1Tbsp peanut butter for some protein & fat. I only added the PB, though, as I was 60 minutes out from my workout. If I'd been closer to 30 minutes out, I'd keep it to something lighter and probably not include the fat/protein.

Not sure about doing the electrolyte drink after these STS workouts - that's mostly because I usually have my dinner soon after, and TBH, as awesome and challenging as they are, they're no 8- or 10-mile run.

 

[aqua girl]

I'd have 1/4 cup rolled oats cooked with some added honey and half a banana. All quick energy sources for my body to pull from. And because those runs were pretty intense (for me at least), I'd also follow them up with an electrolyte drink and then have a more normal breakfast after I got home and washed up.

I opted for something similar this time, but I also added 1Tbsp peanut butter

My breakfast every morning is a bowl of plain oatmeal, with a spoon of peanut butter and a bit of honey
mixed into it, and a banana. Sometimes I slice the banana & put into the oatmeal or just eat it as a "side"
with my oatmeal.

 

[Kellyro77]

Just finished week 1 of Meso 2 - good grief! At least with the first two workouts - Chest, Shoulders & Tris, and Legs, I felt absolutely wrecked.

Not quite so much with today's Back & Biceps, thankfully - though I did hit failure pretty consistently. Even couldn't squeeze out all of the scheduled reps when it got down to the preacher curls. (So we'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow where DOMS are concerned.) I am going to have to significantly lighten barbell curls - ever since I ended up with tennis elbow, my right elbow just clicks like crazy with traditional curls. I don't want to risk re-injuring it, so going to keep it on the lighter side. I fried my bi's pretty good with the sweepers and preachers.

I went back through the old comments from when STS first came out and was grateful to see that feeling wiped out was the same experience many others had when hitting the first week of Meso 2.

Kind of interesting considering that at the end of Meso 1, you're hitting 70% of your 1RM and that's where you start with Meso 2 - pretty sure it's the shift in focus to completely working just one body part before moving on to the next, whereas with Meso 1, she has you jumping around from one body part to another through the entire workout.

I made the mistake of doing IMAX 4 the day after leg day. Had to cut it short because although my heart rate was feeling pretty okay, my legs were like "WHAT are you doing to me, lady???". Will have to go back through the rest of my rotation and make sure I don't have a step workout planned for cardio after the leg days - or rather, nothing that's HiiT, really, since those all primarily fry the legs for the heart rate.

Was concerned about how I'd feel doing more deadlifts in today's workout. It wasn't so bad, though I'm glad she kept it to only 3 sets instead of 4. Still have DOMS in my legs and glutes today, two days after doing legs. Whew. And that's with doing a lot of extra stretching the last couple days.

After this experience, I went back and read through some of the comments from people when they hit the first week of Meso 3 to better prepare myself. Seems like that one isn't quite the shocker as Meso 2. I find that interesting - and also a relief!

 

[Kellyro77]

Confession: So, I do not like the pace Cathe keeps in the Meso 2 leg workouts. Considering I'm challenging myself with pretty heavy weights, I feel like she reps everything out a bit too fast - especially when she sometimes actually chooses to do some exercises faster - for the "Shock" factor, ya know…

I've been feeling sorely tempted to sub in any one of the three LB workouts from STS 2.0 or even the bonus LB heavy weight workout from LMRE.

I won't.

Because I want to see STS through in its original form in its entirety (with the Plyo legs version since that's what I got.)

But, yeah. I was feeling kinda testy by the end of yesterday's Disc 17 Legs workout after she decided towards the very end to hurry through the last set of squats, 1-leg elevated lunges and deadlifts.

EDIT: Also, another vent - was feeling a bit "cheated" when I was hefting a 45# weight with the pile squats and looked up briefly and glanced that someone was using a 25# weight. No wonder they have the energy to whip through tri-sets if they're going that light! (Vent over - I get that there's probably about 100+ reasons to explain seeing that 25# weight being used.)

 

[Kellyro77]

Ha! You had me chuckling. We've noticed Cathe 'n crew will hurry through sets, using momentum, in a number of workouts. We think it's a trick to make you breathless, so you feel as though you had a harder workout. And you did, cardio-wise. But if you want those muscles to really feel worked, you gotta slow it down some. In many of Cathe's earlier LB workouts, her pacing wasn't as fast. I'm so accustomed to her faster pace now that I sometimes zoom through the first set in STS2, finishing the set well ahead of her - then I have to remind myself to s.l.o.w. down! I laugh in many LIVEs when Cathe says " whoops, let's slow these down", but then she doesn't, so I just laugh. I think she's the energizer bunny in disguise

She does that with the last set of calf raises, too! She says "let's do 10 slow ones" when, to me, her pace isn't "slow", it's just standard. Yes, she does some quicker pulse ones after, but those ones that she said were supposed to be "slow" certainly were NOT.

Remembering this series came out almost 20 years ago - so she was a lot younger then and it's probably not great to compare her slower, more methodical pace in her current content to something she did when she was most definitely more peppy.