I woke up a little sore today. I only did one set of curls, one set of butterflys, and one set of bench press, but it has been a long time since I lifted weights. If you are not familiar with weight lifting you want to be careful when starting out. If you over do it, you might not be able to get out of bed the next morning. You also need to know how to approach it. There is strength training, which I always called power lifting, and then there is endurance training.

When you power lift, the goal is to increase overall strength. It is what we did to workout for football. We were not concerned with how it made us look, it was all about being stronger than your opponent. In power lifting you would take around 85-90% of what your maximum weight and do sets of 10 reps each. When you got to where you could do 15 -20 reps, it was time to add some more weight.

Endurance training involves lighter weights and more repetitions. This is the ideal kind of training for weight loss. Take about 75% of your maximum weight and do sets of 20 reps each. If the most you can bench press is 200 pounds, you would want to start with 150 pounds and do 20 reps. Now if you can't do it 20 times then don't sweat it. Keep taking off weight until you can do it at least 15 times. I think you will be amazed at how you will be able to do a little bit more everytime you work out.

I do not recommend lifting weights everyday unless you target different muscle groups. When you lift weights, you actually tear the muscle tissue. Your body needs a day to recover and rebuild the tissue. The rebuilding process results in denser, and stronger tissue. If you want to lift everyday, work your upper body one day and your legs the next. The rebuilding process is another reason why it is important to get 6-8 hours of sleep everynight. Sleeping is when your body rebuilds and does most of it's maintenance.

I also did my usual 300 crunches for the day but didn't get on the bike. I had cereal for breakfast but didn't eat til 10am so I skipped the mid morning snack. For lunch I had a turkey sausage dog. Later in the afternoon I had an apple and for dinner I had a can of clam chowder. I didn't lose any weight yesterday, I actually gained .2 lbs. Remember don't let little set backs get you down. Losing weight is as much a mental game as it is a physical thing. If things like this get you down, then I would only weigh yourself once or twice a week. I am doing it every day for the benefit of my blog readers.

I still didn't have a cool down last night before I went to bed. I stayed up til 1.00am teaching myself how to use Joomla, which is an open source content management system for websites. I start working on the computer and completely lose track of time. Tonight I will make sure I take at least 15 minutes and do some stretching. I ran across a "Yoga For Weight Loss" dvd that I am thinking about giving a try. I will keep you posted.