How Fancy Is Too Fancy?

This morning I met Laura again at the fancy gymnasium, although I got there first because Laura wanted to meet to ride bikes but I also needed to finish up Week 7 of my Weight Lifting book. Since we hadn't checked out any of the cardio or weight lifting equipment yesterday while we were there, I wasn't really sure what we were in for, but I figured that it was such a fancy gym that they'd at least have what my regular gym had.

After checking in and getting all my stuff settled into a locker I headed to the weight lifting/cardio area to check out the equipment. And I honestly wasn't that impressed. For as big as the gym is, I thought that they really crammed a bunch of weight lifting machines into a fairly small area. And while there were a lot of dumbbells (plus over my regular gym), there were not a lot of free weight machines (minus).

This was today's workout, which is still Drop Sets:

Leg Press: 1 set of 12 reps @ 120 lbs / 1 set of 12 reps @ 100 lbs / 1 set of 12 reps @ 80 lbs
Leg Curls: 1 set of 10 reps @ 65 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 50 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 40 lbs
Leg Extensions: 1 set of 1 reps @ 60 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 50 lbs / 1 set of 8 reps @ 50 lbs
Dumbbell Squats: 1 set of 15 reps @ 25 lbs (per arm) / 1 set of 15 reps @ 20 lbs (per arm) / 1 set of 15 reps @ 15 lbs (per arm)
Calf Raises: 1 set of 10 reps @ 105 lbs / 1 set of 10 reps @ 80 lbs / 1 set of 12 reps @ 60 lbs

The leg press machine I had to do on a not-plate loaded machine, instead it was one where you move the pin up and down on the stacked weights. I didn't really love it because the weight increments weren't exactly what I wanted and it's not something you can customize. On the leg extensions, I realized that I forgot to move the pin for the third set of lifting. No wonder my legs were so tired! The dumbbell squats were a lot nicer here than at my regular gym because there were so many dumbbells available, which was a big bonus in my mind.

I normally do calf raises on the leg press machine, but that wasn't an option today since it wasn't the normal leg press machine. Instead, I did them on the plate loaded calf press machine, which I normally don't use. The last time that I did calf raises with Drew, he was using the machine I used today and was lifting 150 pounds. However, he can apparently lift over 300 pounds doing calf raises using the leg press machine. I think he's somehow cheating. I don't know how you can double your weight like that with the different machines. We're going to have a "Pepsi Challenge" soon to see if he can in fact do what he claims to be able to do as I think there is something a little bit fishy about the whole situation.

After doing my weight lifting, I looked around and tried to find the cardio or spin bikes. I didn't see any spin bikes out in the cardio area, which is unlike my gym (minus). Then it was time to meet Laura. We met up and went in search of spin bikes that weren't in the spinning classroom as there was a class going on at that time. We asked a rather unhelpful woman who was working at a information-type desk in the cardio area and she wasn't able to answer any questions about whether or not they had spin bikes not in the spinning classroom or really anything at all.

My gym has one regular and two fancy computerized spin bikes out in the regular area and I guess I just assumed that this fancy gym would have something similar. Wrong. We did find one spin bike that Laura tried out but the seat wouldn't move up or down, so we both hit the cardio bikes instead. I thought that their cardio bike was a lot fancier than the one at my regular gymnasium, but I'll be honest, I mostly concentrated on watching the E! Kardashian Wedding special instead of anything else.

I think also that because my legs were tired from the weight lifting and I was really hoping for better equipment in the cardio area, my heart just wasn't in it. I did a random setting on the bike and switched around between levels 8 and 15 (the highest level was 25). It actually was pretty tough and I do appreciate how cardio bikes automatically adjust the resistance for you, but it wasn't exactly the workout I was looking for.

However, what I was looking for was the hot tub at the end of our workout! It was just such a nice end to the workout and a really nice way to start my Friday before heading to work.

Weight Lifting
Time: 18:40
Calories: 160
Maximum HR: 158
Average HR: 136

Cardio Bike
Time: 40:00
Distance: 8.94 miles
Pace: 13.41 MPH (average)
Calories: 374
Maximum HR: 158
Average HR: 143