Run to Win

In a continuing collaboration with Scott over at Straight to the Bar, we will be writing about taking advantage of your location for the month of December. This week, Scott discusses the advantages of having a home gym.

I have some equipment in my home, but I rarely use it. I usually just go to a commercial gym to get my weight workouts in. There are definitely some advantages to working out at home, as Scott mentions. Your home equipment is always available, you don’t have to wait for equipment, you can do whatever sort of workout you want, and you don’t have to listen to bad music.

For the other side of the coin, I wrote about working out at a commercial gym last December.

This week last year was full of topical information, so it was a light week when looking at what is worth looking back on.

• I went in depth about working out at a commercial gym and the 3 principal reasons that somebody might have for joining:
  1. Equipment
  2. Training
  3. Motivation
• The USATF Club Cross Country Championships were last year, where Dirigo placed 5^th. This year the masters team improved their position by moving up to 2^nd! (Read Pete’s excellent race report from this year’s race.)
• This week two years ago, I began my animated how-to for cross training. The first one was how to do dumbbell shrugs. I also reviewed the McMillan Running Calculator, which is a very useful tool for runners.

This week last year was pretty slow. Just about everything had something to do with weight lifting or football, although the football news was more on the humorous side than the serious side.

• I demonstrated how to do a seated leg extension in my animated series.
• In other weight lifting news, I had to learn how to navigate a new gym after the local Planet Fitness opened. I am not a big fan of their layout.
• It turns out that exercising before bed is not so bad after all.
• A fan tried to blackmail the New England Patriots by selling the football that Doug Flutie drop kicked. His demands were fairly humorous, and Bob Kraft just ignored him. In other ridiculous football news, the Seattle Seahawks and Texas A&M went to federal court to decide who had the rights to refer to their home team crowd as the 12^th man on the field.

In a collaborative effort with Scott over at Straight to the Bar, we will wrote about exercise equipment throughout the month of January.

This week, Scott provides an excellent overview of how to set up your home gym. He starts out describing the benefits of a home gym over a commercial gym, and the basic equipment that you will want to get your gym started. As well as more advanced equipment or equipment alternatives, he also talks about features of your gym such as what music to play (and how to listen to it) and to consider setting up your gym outdoors.

If you have ever thought of starting a home gym, you should check out the article. My own home gym is pretty neglected right now, since I go to a commercial gym. I have a weight bench, swiss ball, bars, dumbbells and plates. Very basic, but it suits my needs when I do not want to go out. I have a pull up bar somewhere, as well, but I haven’t thought of where to mount it quite yet.

In a collaborative effort with Scott over at Straight to the Bar, we will be writing about workout locations for the month of December. You can expect a new article on the matter every week.

This week I would like to discuss working out a commercial gym. There are basically 3 reasons why you would want to work out at a commercial gym rather than at home:

1. Equipment
2. Training
3. Motivation

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Some advice you will hear frequently is to pack your bags before a race. That way you will be sure that you do not forget anything, and you will be ready to go without having to waste a lot of time in the morning. This advice applies equally well to any morning workout, especially if you are not working out at home. If you are working out at home, laying out your clothes will keep you from fumbling around in the dark or waking anybody up unnecessarily.

The important thing, however, is to not trust that you packed your bags correctly. Before you leave in the morning, look through the bag to make sure that it has everything that you are expecting to see. For example, make sure that you have more than one shoe packed in your gym bag.
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I remember now why it is that I normally lift weights at six o’clock in the morning. At 6 o’clock in the evening, the gym is a zoo. There are people everywhere! It is fit to make you claustrophobic. All of the cardiovascular machines have heaving, sweaty people on them. The tanning booth desk has a line of people loitering and waiting. The hallways are full of people meandering by. The benches by the dumbbells are all being used. The locker room is crowded.

Oh well, I set a PR in the squat today. I managed to lift about 15 pounds more than my body weight 12 times on my fourth set. Not that I was expecting anything different. If it weren’t so busy and I had gotten a better warm up, I probably would have done that in the second set and then added another 10 or 20 pounds for a third and final set. I was switching off with a guy doing the military press in the squat rack.

Have I mentioned that I am not a fan of my gym’s layout? Oh well. I think next Monday night they have free food. That might be worth another quick 20-30 minute workout.

Most gyms have a fairly standard layout. Some treadmills and elliptical machines along the outside, weight lifting machines in the center, and free weights along one wall where all the mirrors are. There are of course some variations, such as seperate rooms for cardio and weights, or having yoga and spin rooms, and the like. Navigating most gyms, however, is fairly straight forward. I just started going to a new gym last week, which is a converted office building. The layout is distinctly odd.
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