(no subject)

[gwenbasil]

Hi everyone,

I'm new! I used to work in a grocery store, where the job was awful, but some of the physical work made me happy - I did several sets of "rotisserie chickens" a day, and was proud of my "box of five watermelons" deadlift.

Now I work at a desk, and the pay and treatment are better but I'm getting restless. So I'm shopping for a gym membership - help, what am I looking for?

Also, I don't have the monies to pay a TRAINER - where do I start with the exercises? I can get over-enthusiastic in step 1 of anything I do, so even though I intellectually know I need a sort of limited program to stick with, my instinct is DO ALL THE EXERCISES and I don't think that's right.

My goals are to get stronger, especially in the top half - and not gonna lie, LOOKING stronger, with poke-outey arm muscles eventually is a motivation too. I'm 5'9 and 150 pounds-ish, eat what I want, turn a big stink-eye on beauty-standards-for-women, and am completely uninterested in weight loss (though I know I am probably going to have people talk to me about it at every gym I go to) I FEEL skinny, as in skinny-with-the-negative-connotations. I'm accepting diet-to-go-along-with-sudden-interest-in-gaining-strength suggestions, cos I think y'all probably get where I'm coming from.

Right now I can't do a pull up, I can do about one push up, but I can walk pretty much infinitely.

The idea of running for a reason that isn't fleeing danger makes me go ugh and roll my eyes, but I'll do it if it's in service of some other goal.

I've lurked on this blog for ages, being impressed by you all, so I've suddenly decided to jump in! I know a lot of the things I've mentioned are repeated in your archives, but 80% of the motivation of this post is "State your plans in public, so you aren't tempted to weasel out" ;)

Comments

[coffeetime]

I'll add what I think about gyms: I belong to the YMCA, which has a decent sized free weight area, plenty of cable-type machines, and an infinite number of helpful dudes willing to spot me, give me pointers on form, etc. I stick to a few basic exercises most of the time, though I don't do the same ones every workout. I lift 3x a week (or more if I have time to split sets, which usually I don't) and I either take a long walk or do some machine cardio (faves are arc trainer on high resistance and rowing machine, where I can do sprints without hurting my knees). My Y offers this and there is very little posing, pickup action or BS...the other gyms around here are more expensive and offer plenty of places for ladies to do 2 pointless hours of elliptical per day.

I did take a basic weight training class in college and I would recommend having someone knowledgeable help you get started lifting. At my Y (may be different at others) you can buy a single training session pretty cheaply; I would do that if I were a complete newbie.

I always have a goal. Last year it was healing an injury; this year it's doing 10 pull-ups (currently I'm stuck at 6).