Too Light?

It's easy to get caught up in lifting heavy, swinging heavy, lifting more, swinging longer, etc. But there are so many variables to consider when you train for "fitness" not so much for competition. I think that's why the "cross training" style workouts have become so popular.

I am not a competitve athlete, although I am competitve, I'm not training for a specific competition against other athletes at a certain time (a "meet"). I do have some goals for myself, against myself and that affords me the luxury of changing my workouts and tryng different combination of exercises to a certain degree. Ultimately my goals right now are to gain and mantain a certain amount of strength and muscle while keeping my bodyweight and BF at a certain level. But more about my specific goals at another time. Fawn left me a comment about my last workout usig the 8kg's seeming too light. So let me address that.

I pointed out that I since I used 2 8kg's that was the weight equivilent of a 36. Pressing one 36 is, of course, harder than double pressing 2 18's, but lunging with the same weight, is lunging with the same weight...holding two 18's (lbs) is "easier" on the arms than holding one 36 in one arm, but you still have to lunge forward and get back up with the weight. I chose to do 15 double clean/presses in between lunge sets with only 30 sec rest periods, that made the press done with in the lunge set very challenging! And let's not forget that I alternated these sets for over 1/2 hour continuously and after a 90 minute, 104 degree yoga class.

I hadn't done lunges in a long time and didn't want to cripple myself for the next day, even though I have a good fitness base, you never know what a new movement will cause your body to experience especially at my age. We've all overdone new exercises to the point of soreness the following day! And I don't really need to squat every week, in fact squatting is making me thicker around the middle, exactly what I don't want, but the trade off is bigger hamstrings and booty which I like. So I thought alternating lunges with squats every other week would be a good compromise.

In the past two weeks some of my workouts have included, 1600 swings w/16kg (in 1 hour), 2127 swings w/12kg (in 1 hour), two heavy snatch (16kg) workouts, one of which also included a Max Vo2 cycle (320 snatches) and then two days later another Max Vo2 based workout (another 320 snatches), in addition to all of my other training. I think it was time to lighten up!

You shouldn't be afraid of using the lighter bells. Lighter bells move faster, higher, longer and give you yet another variable in your training. Lighter bells give you an opportunity to try new exercises that you might not be able to do yet with the heavier weights, especially "double" work....double swings, double presses, double snatches. And because they're lighter, therefore easier (lol), it's a good time to swing longer to build endurance. Using lighter weights between regular heavy workout days affords you to get in an "extra" workout without killing yourself!

So, bottom line, it's all good!