Fridays Training

Woo Hoo! I love Fridays!


Monday, Wednesday and Friday are almost like "two a days" for me, but they aren't brutal like the "two a days" I do during competition prep, that will start soon enough.


In the a.m. it's "calves and conditioning" or it could be "calfs and conditioning", I have looked it up since I see them used interchangeably and when I did, I found this hilarious site called "Legs of Steel" and this is what they had to say:

Women's legs with muscular calves come from working out regularly. Often times they are found on women body builders. Some people prefer the saying "Legs of steel" and if this is what interests you then you can go to:www.legsofsteel.com to see lots of women in this category. The women are listed in alphabetic order so if you find one you like you can find them again easily. There are over 75 different woman listed here.

Ha ha, you know you can find just about anything on the Internet!

I am not promoting the site, and no, I am not listed on the site, It was just a silly thing I wanted to share.

So my Friday morning starts with a 5 minute walk on the treadmill then I go down to the back weight room to hit the calves. I prefer to start with the donkey calf raise, but I need the incline bench and just as I have my schedule, so does another guy and he bench presses (thats ALL he does) and he does it three times a weak. Now I am not the one that will tell him this is not effective nor is it a good idea, especially when I heard him telling someone about his sore shoulders that same morning!

So he does the flat bench then the incline, so I let him do his thing and I hit the seated calf raise first. Two plates, 4 sets of 20. It is easy to throw your shoulders backwards to give yourself a little help, don't do this, keep your back straight and work your CALVES only.

Then the incline bench fellow is done so I take the Olympic bar off the rack and set it up for Donkey Calf raises. I am up to three plates now, that's 135 pounds hanging from my lower hips on a dip belt. I am doing 4 sets of 20, slowly up, slowly down. I need more weight soon, but getting up into position is the hard part with that much weight, I have to push up with one leg and I won't be able to with much more weight. I may need to ask one of the guys to sit on my back soon, and I need to be careful who I ask. Bobbie would don a Cowboy hat and scream "eeh haw" and try to kick me with spurs, I best try to find a smaller, more docile fellow... ha ha ha

Then it's off for conditioning in the Basketball court. I warm up by jogging around the perimeter four times, then I practice on the heavy bag a bit. My boxing has gotten better, but its hard to kick this bag, it's way too hard and there is some velcro at the bottom, so when I practice "knees" I scrape them on the velcro. It's not that I am a wimp, but gyms are really dirty places, and not the place you want to get a scrape.

Then I throw the gloves onto the floor and start in with my conditioning. Pushups, high knee jumps, running, burpee/sprawls, squats holding weight overhead. They have these big heavy tubes with hand holds in them, I am not sure what they are called but they are like a more stable form of sandbag training, and they have a huge stack of them in the basketball court, just waiting for me.

Sweat is dripping down my face, I have done many rounds and now a couple guys come in to play basketball, I run around them. I am then down on the floor, doing crunches, frog crunches, side crunches, then shadow boxing and high knees, down to the floor for mountain climbers.

I finish off with more boxing, my hair is plastered to my neck and face. Off I go, I have to go into work.

At 11:45 I am waiting for Roy at his place, I am early and I have a new book "The Metabolic Typing Diet" by William Wolcott and Trish Fahey, and I sit in the sun reading and waiting, actually enjoying myself.

He arrives and it's shoulder day, I love shoulders. I change into my workout clothes and stretch, then we start in with behind the neck shoulder press. I warm up, then we get up to 75 pounds, all the way down until the bar hits my rhomboids, then power up. My left is so much weaker, it struggles. I think we did 4 sets maybe? I did 10, 8, 6, then 5 if I recall. We then did a drop set, 65 pounds, 55 pounds, 45 pounds.

Roy says my stomach is looking better, that means flatter. It is, I have lost some body fat. My weight is down to 126 pounds yet my muscles still look full. This is good, I do have to start the diet soon, so it helps me "mentally" to see  some improvement when not really trying yet.

Then seated dumbbell press, bringing them slowly all the way down to stretch the muscle, and power up. This, I believe we did 5 sets of with 32.5 pounds in each hand.

Last we did dumbbell front raises, with 12.5  pounds. Several sets, my left arm is almost a joke now, it is so weak compared to the right!

No time for boxing or ropes, damn! Stacy comes in, it's her turn, I have to leave, just when I was getting warmed up.


Funny, I love doing this and could do it all day. Some people complain and whine the entire time they are in the gym- what, do you suppose makes us feel so differently about this?


Saturday will be quads, my poor legs have been beat up so much lately, but I win the battle. They might complain and moan, but I keep them in line, pushing harder and harder everyday.