Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that Ray got us a Bowflex this summer, and ever since it arrived, I’ve been struggling with the idea that although I do want to get fit, I’m inherently lazy. So far, we’ve been good at keeping each other on track, but it’s only been a few weeks, and I’m worried about what might happen in another couple weeks when I start getting busy again.
I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to lose weight and tone up a little; it’s just that I really dislike exercise, and there’s honestly not a single sport (other than horseback riding, which is an expensive prospect, to say the least) that I enjoy enough to do every day or so. I’ve joined gyms before, but, like many people, have ended up canceling my membership because I simply didn’t go often enough and was wasting money.
Anyway, now we have this Bowflex, and I’ve been exercising on it every other day, but I feel like I might not be working out all the right muscles (the Bowflex Classic doesn’t have a whole lot of leg exercises) and the instruction manual that came with this contraption has pictures of some of the exercises, but not all of them. How am I supposed to do the right exercises if I don’t know how to set up the machine or how to do it “right?”
I figured there would be plenty of videos on YouTube about different Bowflex exercises — and there are some, just not a whole lot — but again, most of them are for the arms, and most of them are beefy guys trying to show off how much weight they can press.
I’m also concerned about the fact that I have no cardio training in my exercise regimen at the moment, and while strength training is good, I’m likely to burn calories more quickly through cardio. I don’t really walk anywhere (remember I live in NJ, where the car is king), and I’m not a very good biker (I get freaked out in traffic), so most likely what I would need is something I could do in the house in conjunction with the Bowflex training.
I think I need a plan for myself, and some sort of goal to motivate me. There are thousands of online fitness challenges out there, from the President’s Challenge (seems a little vague to me) to the Couch to 5K plan (I’m not really that interested in running unless chased, honestly), so I did some research and narrowed it down to several contenders. I’ll need your help to decide which one to try, though…more details to come in the next post.