New Rules of Lifting for Women: The Beginning

If you read my last post, you'll know that one of my aims for this year is to get stronger emotionally, mentally and physically - the impact of spending the best part of a year having a lot of my life dictated by seizures is that I'm feeling a lot weaker than I want to in all of those areas, especially physically. I miss the feeling of my body being strong and fierce, so I decided to take action.

For various reasons, cardio based activity isn't really my best option at the moment so long runs and bike rides are out of the question. And if I'm honest, I've always been more of a fan of strength training than cardio anyway... give me weights and yoga over running any day!

NROLFW Love

I've ummed and ahhed over the New Rules of Lifting for Women for ages, but took the plunge and bought it some time before Christmas. My review? I fell in love and devoured the whole book in a couple of days - it's very down to earth and easy to read, with lots of excellent advice, information and myth busting. I've always been a firm believer that the weight room isn't just for male-bodied muscle-bound grunters, so it wasn't the revelatory experience that I'm sure it might be for some people, but it's definitely been a push towards using weights I'd been scared of before (barbells) and having the confidence to really feel like it's ok to be in the weight room.

I adore the workouts too - there's 7 stages, all of varying lengths and intensities, with the aim being to increase your weights as you move through the stages and to really challenge yourself to lift "like a man" (a phrase which, of course, I hate but I completely understand - this is the first time I've seen female-bodied people encouraged to lift in the same way as male-bodied and to not stick to low weights). There's no suggestion of what weight you start with, which is both frustrating and entirely the right thing. I've had to start out very, very low - lower than I've wanted to - because I'm in the process of helping my body to heal, and every person using these workouts will be different.

The Before Pictures

And now, as is obligatory in all "starting a new workout regime" posts, here's some moderately embarrassing pictures of me in my underwear. This is actually a couple of weeks ago, before I started the programme. I didn't take measurements then, but I'll pop in my current measurements as of today as I've been working out sporadically and with low weights, so I don't think they'll be that different yet. Ignore the dodgy lighting/odd (miserable) facial expression/mess.

Beginning measurements:   10/01/13

Chest:                  35.5in  

Left Bicep:          10in

Right Bicep:       10in

Waist:                 29in

Hips:                   35.5in

Left Thigh:         21in

Right Thigh:      21in

(For reference, I'm 5'7"/170cm and weight 60kg)

I feel it's important to point out one final thing here as well - my goal for following the NROLFW isn't to lose weight. It's to be as strong and badass as I possibly can be and to have a more toned, more powerful body. A friend sent me this yesterday, which sums up my thoughts exactly:

(Source)

Questions:

Have any of you tried the New Rules of Lifting for Women? How did you find it?

What's your current work out routine? Are you trying anything new in 2013?