I’ve had quite the week thanks to the appearance of this little guy:
On Tuesday, my sister gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and I became a first-time auntie. His name is David and I am totally smitten!
They brought him home from the hospital yesterday and I can’t wait to see him again tonight.
Obviously, the baby has monopolized most of my attention this week, but I was still able to get in a few quality strength training sessions – Body Pump on Monday and free weights yesterday. I don’t know what’s up with me but I’ve been loving free weights lately. It began out of necessity – I couldn’t make my regular Body Pump class one day so I did a quick free weights work out instead – and suddenly I was obsessed. It’s all I want to do at the gym these days and while I can’t say how long this phase will last, I’m running with it for now.
Yesterday morning, I did a 45-minute weights workout that I adapted from The New Rules of Lifting for Women, Stage 3, Workout A. Here’s what it looked like:
| Exercise | Sets x Reps / Time | Weight |
| Squats | 3×6 | 70 lbs |
| Dead rows | 3×6 | 40 lbs |
| Lat pulldowns | 3×6 | 50 lbs |
| YTWL | 3×6 | 3 lb dumbbells |
| Prone cobra | 1 minute | N/A |
| Weighted stability ball crunch | 3×10 | 10 lbs |
| Reverse crunches | 3×10 | N/A |
| Oblique crunches | 3×10 per side | N/A |
I attempted to do the YTWL exercises (where you make the shape of those letters with your arms) with heavier weights and it was a disaster. The book instructs you to use a light set of dumbbells but I didn’t realize just how light you have to go to complete all of the moves with good form. I haven’t used 3 pound dumbbells since back in the days I believed heavy lifting would make me bulky (let’s refer to that period as the Dark Ages) but they were totally necessary here. Other than that, I’ve been slowly increasing my weights (my goal is to get back up to 80 lbs for squats). Hey, I have a 9.5 lb nephew to carry around now and he’ll only get heavier! 
For my cardio, I did a condensed Body Attack class that was only 30 minutes instead of an hour and only had 1 cardio peak instead of the usual 2. It was definitely a lot less exhausting than the full hour format and a nice option for a quick and not too strenuous cardio workout to pair with strength training.
I’m taking tonight off to chill with the nephew and will get back to the weight room tomorrow morning before work. Told you I was on a free weights kick!
![IMG_0110[1]](http://burningitoff.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/img_01101.jpg?w=150)
What a cuite pie!!!!!
Nothing wrong with free weights
Congrats on being a first-time auntie!!
I was always surprised on YTWL’s when I had to drop to such low weight dumbbells. I believe by the time I finished NROL4W, I was still only about to use 8 lbs. each for the exercise (started with the smallest weight I could find in the gym which was 5 lbs.).
I couldn’t even do one full rep with the 5 lb dumbbells, it was pretty pitiful lol… I’m hoping to get there in a couple of weeks. 8 lbs is very impressive, nice job!