I hate exercise bikes!

I meant to put this up yesterday - I wasn't slacking on the exercises I promise, just the blog entry!!! Despite being exhausted on Tuesday I made it to they gym with a plan in mind of what I’d like to do. I reckoned I should try and mix things up a bit so I wouldn’t get bored with doing the same old thing but I think just being so tired made doing anything a bit more difficult than it should. Anyway, Tuesday’s workout consisted of:

• My usual 3 minute warm up on the cross trainer followed by all the stretches I could think of. I’m holding the stretches for about a minute on the big muscles and about 40 seconds on the smaller muscles.
• 5 minutes on the rowing machine. I could really feel this working my abdominals so I’m going to keep trying it in small bursts to start with.
• 4 minutes on the exercise bike. I friggin’ hate exercise bikes – the seats on the bikes in my gym are adjustable but they don’t go down far enough for me, a confirmed short-ass, to be comfortable. I now have an incredibly sore bum from where the seat was digging in to me so I’ll not be doing that again. I had planned to do more than 4 minutes but it was so painful I gave up!
• 2 sets of 12 reps on the chest press machine at 7.5kg with pec & deltoid stretches in between sets.
• Some inner thigh stretches followed by 2 sets of 12 reps on the thigh adductor at 30kg.
• 12 minutes on the treadmill at varying speeds – anything between 3mph and 6.5mph
• 2 sets of 12 reps doing bicep curls on the incline bench with 3kg weights. I did deltoid and tricep stretches between sets.
• 2 sets of 12 reps doing tricep kick backs with 2kg weights.
• A 4 minute cool down on the cross trainer followed by yet more stretches for hamstrings, calves, soleus, front of thigh and inner thigh, deltoid, biceps, pecs and triceps.

All the stretching seems to be helping keep the after workout pain away. Part of me keeps thinking that if I’m not sore the next day I’ve not been working hard enough but given how hard I found my workout last night I’m not sure if that’s quite true or not.

One thing I have noticed though is that the day after my workout my scar and the surrounding area is tender to touch and it feels a bit sore. It might be my imagination but I think it might also be a bit swollen but not much. I’m not doing any exercise specific to my abdominals but I know the rowing machine, cross trainer and treadmill all involve some kind of abdominal work. I’m hoping that it won’t be too long before I can go in and have a good workout without worrying too much about my stomach so keep your fingers crossed for me!!