Bulk Barn, and extreme cycling

[misslynx]

The new(-ish) Bulk Barn store at Yonge and Carlton is DANGEROUS. I went in there yesterday thinking I'd just check it out, maybe get one or two things I'm out of. Walked out with 19 different things, having spent about 6x as much money as I'd intended to. Too much awesomeness in one place

Comments

[curgoth]

I do a spreadsheet of my weights. I used to keep it on paper, but have recently moved to google docs. I'm probably going to move to a non-google spreadsheet soon, since google docs sucks, even on android.

I track weight, and number of reps for each weight exercise. That way, I know when I hit 3 sets of 12 reps - the sign to increase weight. I have my exercises organized with the largest muscles first, and where possible a couple possible exercises for each muscle group I want to hit to decrease waiting and increase variety.

Right now, I'm doing weights once a week, hitting pretty much my entire body. It takes three hours. It's largely free weights with a bit of machines. The biggest factor is the rest between sets I need on the heavy stuff (squats, back). I don't find the setup on free weights takes up that much time.

[curgoth]

Added point; in some cases I found that it was harder to maintain good form with machines; free weights forced me to keep good form since I had to think about things that machines hid from me.

[50_ft_queenie]

The Bulk Barn is open?

*and there was much rejoicing*

[thewronghands]

I've never had a workout of free weights take more than an hour. If I go to the gym and I'm there for two hours, it's because I decided to do an endurance cardio thing. (Generally 5+ miles running, but occasionally a long row.)

What I do is pick a workout (I mine the Crossfit workout of the day, often), write it down on a little piece of paper, bring that and a pen to the gym, and then note the weights I used for each thing after I've done it. So all I have to remember is what good form for each exercise looks like, and Krista (stumptuous.com) is great for that. After a couple of times doing it, I generally remember.

If I'm local to you at any point I would be happy to go with you (most gyms allow one day guest passes) and demonstrate.