Love to run, hate to strength train

My strength training routine is…hardly routine.

I am pretty committed to one day a week in the home gym, lol. I tell myself I’ll do it 2x per week, but that usually doesn’t happen.

One of the reasons is the strength work happens on my days off from running, which is only twice a week…one of those days being Saturday and there are donuts to eat and places to go!

The other reason I don’t do it more, is I don’t love it. It is a chore to get through 30 minutes. I can run for a few hours (although that can also be a slog if it’s not a good day), but hitting those muscles with weights is not something that motivates me.

What I do, when I do it

Lately on the one day a week I’ve been training, I’ve been using my Garmin Connect online profile to find workouts. If you have a Garmin, you can find the training workouts in the app or on the web.

If you go to the Garmin connect app (this is for iPhone, the Android version may be different), and hit “More” in the lower right hand corner, you will see a list of random things.

Choose, of all things, “Training”. There you will find “Workouts”, and then click “Find a Workout”.

There is a whole list of different kinds of workouts, for different results. The picture below just shows the first section, you can scroll down quite a bit.

Currently, I’m doing the “Hollywood Body Plan”, which is a total body workout. I’m concentrating on my arms and abs at the moment.

The plan says it should take you 60 minutes, but it doesn’t take me nearly as long (thank goodness)!

What I like, what I don’t

The workouts tell you how many rounds to do, how long to recover between sets and also shows you how to do the exercise if you need it, with animation.

I am much more a visual learner than a listener, so I appreciate the animations. I usually listen to music as I’m working out, so one of the downsides is the music cuts out and I have to restart it if I choose to watch one of the exercises.

I get around that now by going to the workout on the internet with my ipad, instead of looking at it on my phone, but if you are going to a gym that isn’t very helpful.

Now that being said, there may be a way around that in my settings on the phone, but I haven’t discovered how. I also don’t think about it until I’m working out and I get too impatient to try and figure that out, lol.

I like that there is a good variety of workouts on the app. I like variety and get bored very easily…especially with things that I am not very fond of doing.

I have been switching to a different plan every month, and with 56 workouts I have a long way to go if I want to do them all (which I don’t).

You can build your own workouts in the app, and I’ll probably play around with that for my running, but I wish they gave you the ability to grab a specific exercise from one of the plan strength workouts and push it to the custom one. Then pick a different exercise from another workout and build your own from that.

There are exercises that I like from a bunch of the workouts that would be cool to be able to have in one place as “my” workout.

Legwork??

So, I’m primarily a runner and I’ve talked about cross training and strength training and its importance in the past.

Most coaches will tell you to do legwork, like squats and lunges and they are right. Working out those muscles will help you in your running.

I don’t really do much in the way of legs for myself. I know if I did it my body would adjust and get used to it, but I never feel like dealing with the aches and fatigue.

It’s hard enough when I run and my chest hurts from doing arms!

So if a particular workout set is using a lot of leg, I just skip it. Maybe it’s bad to tell you that, but it’s honest!

Abs and Arms

Abs and arms are what I focus on.

I’ve had 5 children, all C-Sections, so my abs are toast (I don’t think sewing up the ab muscles was a “thing” 30 plus years ago)…but for my core’s sake I do work on abs 5 days a week.

I usually find a 10-minute workout either on YouTube or Amazon Prime or whatever and just follow that most of the time. Wednesday in my running rest day, so I spend about 45 minutes in my home gym doing weights and the machine thingy we have.

I only do arms once a week (on Wednesday). Thursdays are my long run days, so sometimes as I’m pumping my arms as I run it really hurts!

Month of April

It’s the end of the month, and I started this update in the beginning.

I’m happy to say I have stuck to strength training on Wednesdays for the whole month! Doing abs everyday Monday-Friday has been mostly successful, with a few days where even a 10 minute routine wasn’t possible before having to get ready for the day.

I’m going to try and a keep forging ahead, with strength training update posts scheduled on the calendar to keep my accountable!