Everyday Systems: shovelglove: message 592 of 649

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Welcome, Renee!

Hope your first workout went well? Let us know.

Congratulations on your weight loss so far.
Maintenance can be very tough, as I'm sure you know,
and a totally different kind of problem from rapid
loss. Most of all, for your diet/exercise program to
be sustainable, you actually have to more or less
enjoy it (at least not loathe it) and it can't take
too much time. Shovelglove is designed with this in
mind, and you, with your fondness for physical work,
sound like the kind of person who will get a
particular kick out of it.

Some advice for the first week (nothing new, but it
can't hurt to reiterate):

1) Go slow. Really slow. Slow motion, even. It's
harder than it may feel at the moment. You don't want
to go to sleep thinking "wow, that wasn't so bad" and
wake up unable to fully extend your arm. Your muscles
will like these moves, but they've got to learn them
first, and that will take a week or two. There's no
rush. 

2) Short term, overdoing it is a bigger danger than
underdoing it. Don't go the whole 14 minutes if you
can't. Stop immediately and skip the next day if
anything hurts. If you want to religiously inculcate
the 14 minute habit, great, but remember that just
standing around jiggling the thing technically counts
on that score, you don't have to kill yourself in the
process.

3) Long term, the most important thing is the habit of
daily exercise, not the particulars of the routine.
And as far as particulars are concerned, the best
thing about those of shovelglove is that they are fun
and therefore habit encouraging, not that they are the
most efficient way of building biceps or any other
specific muscle. They're not bad in the latter
respect, they give you a workout, sure, but more
importantly, they encourage you to workout. So do it
every N day (or whatever similarly unambiguous
schedule you decide), no exceptions. Exceptions will
happen occasionally, but do your utmost to keep them
very occasional.

Reinhard