Redheaded Jill

Something I have tried and stopped and failed and restarted 87 times in my life is exercise. The longest stint I ever did of consistent exercise was running one summer, with my sister, every day. I even lost a little weight. Then I got to college and told my roommate and she said, “Are you sure you lost weight?” And that… was the end of my running journey. (I should have kept at it, but I was easily defeated in those days.)

Yesterday I was talking to my sil (who is quite health conscious) and she told me about a free program she was doing. It is “how to do a pull up”. I asked for the info and last night I actually worked out. Properly. With weights. It was great!

I am already super sore today. My arms are used to lifting babies and bags of chicken feed, not myself.

My brother has a great home gym set up. He showed me how to do the first steps in the pull up program. (Essentially you start doing feet assisted pull ups so you can get your body used to the movement itself.) And you can’t move on to the next phase of training until you can hold yourself hanging from a bar for 10 seconds. (I can’t do that.) The instructions say don’t do this set of exercises more than 3 times a week, and I started with the lowest number of reps/sets.

I have so much to learn about gym lingo. My brother taught me what a super set is. So I would do the assisted pull up movements, and then I would do lateral arm raises, kettle bell swings and push ups. Honestly the push ups were the hardest part.

I hope I will stick with it. I think it will take me many years (literally) before I can achieve a pull up, but I will enjoy learning. And for the first time in my life working out in a gym was fun.

Thursday I plan to try again, but tonight I might go back and find a good leg workout to follow. I am not a fan of cardio, so I think I’ll stick with walking and will utilize weights. I am excited to see where it leads. And now I have something new to look forward to while my niece takes her afternoon nap.