That Feeling The Morning After

After yesterday's workout, I woke up with the beloved "morning after" feeling.  No this is not when I search out a pill.  After letting your muscles relax, recover, and remain relatively stationary for up to 8 hours, your body feels sore, tense, and in some cases like you've been hit by a car.  It's a great feeling!

This morning I felt sore in my pecs and a bit in my triceps.  I had expected a little soreness since I haven't been to the gym in awhile, but I hadn't worked myself hard yet so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  Today I headed back to the gym for a second workout and even added a bit of core work to it.

New Exercise(s):
1.  Pectoral Fly:  This can be done a number of ways.  Using free weights, you can start in much the same position as an extended dumbbell press, but instead of going down, let your arms fall out like you're following a half circle arc.  Many times you feel a need to bend the elbow during this exercise to maintain strength; that's ok.  You will gain strength in time and be able to keep your arms straighter later on.  There are also machines that do this exercise and I personally use those.  I feel the machines more efficiently target the pectoral muscle at my given level.  If I were to do the free weights, I would need to do a much lighter weight in order to keep balance and control.  There are pluses and minuses either way.

Reps & Weights:
Warm up: 1 mile forward and 0.5 mile backwards on an elliptical
1.  Dumbbell Press (10 reps with 50lbs/arm)
2.  Bicep Curls (10 reps with 25lbs)
.....** Repeat 1 & 2 for a full three sets

3.  Gravity Rower (10 reps with 45lbs)
4.  Horizontal Overhead Lat (10 reps with 40lbs)
5.  Trecip Bench Dips (20 reps)
.....** Repeat 3-5 for a full three sets

6.  Pull-Down Triceps (10 reps with 40lbs)
7.  Vertical Overhead Lats (5 reps with 40lbs)
.....** Repeat 6 & 7 for a full three sets

8.  Crunch Ups (3 sets of 5 situps & 10 crunches)
9.  Side Turns (10 reps)
10. Pectoral Fly (3 sets of 10 reps with increasing weight [70, 90, and 110 lbs])

I expect to have more soreness in the pectoral muscles tomorrow morning since I worked those more today with that last set, the pectoral flies.  I like to do that exercise last for some reason; I just mentally prefer to leave with that soreness in my muscles (call me tortorous!). 

Toe Update:  During the workout today, my right foot felt perfectly fine.  I'm happy with how my pinky has turned out after a couple days left bandaged up to heal the new skin.  The big toe is still slightly painful with pressure, but is coming along nicely.  My left big toe is still a pain.  I'm going to look tomorrow for a way to compress the toenail to the toe continuously (maybe just tape it down) to see if that helps at all.  There are bubbles underneath that toenail that I can see moving around when I press on different spots of it.  Those are from the space underneath the toenail which was the blister causing the black look.  I'm hopeful that the nail stays on, but I'm weary that the continued pain and obvious space underneath the nail means the nail hasn't been able to stick back down.  We shall see in time.

Ciao!