New STS'ers - Week of 8/3-8/9

workoutaholic

workoutaholic

Cathlete
Hi, I am starting this check-in for those of us just starting out with STS. I know of one other person starting today with me, but anyone is welcome whether you're starting today or just started recently. Please join us!

So, I did disc 1 today. I really have to say it was not as scary as I thought, except for the push-ups. They were wicked. I can do about 10 on my toes, so needless to say I was on my knees for most of this workout, and doing table-top, too! he he! My 1RM's were pretty good for some, but a bit too heavy on the shoulder exercises sometimes. Glad I did them, though. That helped a ton. I am going to try to cut these workouts to 45 minutes, and so I shaved off the last set of pushups and the last biceps exercise today. I just finished and I have jello arms, so I think I got a good workout without those. : )

And about me - 31 yrs. old, have a 2-year old son, work a little from home as an environmental consultant, mostly a stay-at-home mom. I'm going to try to get these workouts in while my son is taking a nap every day. :cool:
 
STS Disc 1

I couldn't agree with you more about the push-ups! I did the entire workout except for quite a few of the push-ups. I didn't want to fall flat on my face with my jello arms. At this point, I'm all knee push ups. I had surgery for a rotator cuff tear two years ago and have really struggled to regain upper body strength. When I got to the 'boot camp' push ups I actually laughed out loud! Maybe someday...

I have to confess that I did not do the 1RMs. I just never got the time...or never made the time I guess. I really don't feel like I suffered for it though...given how I felt during and at the end of the workout. I didn't want to hold off starting the series any longer. I'm writing down the weights I use as I go.

A little about me...I'm 41, married, with three furry children (dogs). I work a lot of hours as the Accounting Manager for a local hospital.

Oh yeah -one add'l note- I didn't use my barbell this AM, only my dumbells...I just didn't have the extra time to mess with loading and re-loading it.
 
Hello!

I am starting STS as well. Great to see this thread. I am actually doing the 6 months rotation so you will move more quickly through the disks. As for now, I am about to go to the basement, turn the fan on and do disk 1 for the second time.......and I had forgotten about all the push ups but (I know it's only been one week). Maybe I will do a few more on my toes this morning, but thankfully the basement is carpeted so my knees won't suffer too much. Can't say as much about my arms of course.

I did all the 1RM tests and found them to be great. I didn't know I could lift this heavy. I do them by disk and it seems to go well and be very helpful.

About me now .... I'm 36, married with two children (4 and 2) and I work as a research chemist. So workouts have to be early morning or they don't happen.

OK, Off I go!
 
helened said:
Hello!

I am starting STS as well. Great to see this thread. I am actually doing the 6 months rotation so you will move more quickly through the disks. As for now, I am about to go to the basement, turn the fan on and do disk 1 for the second time.......and I had forgotten about all the push ups but (I know it's only been one week). Maybe I will do a few more on my toes this morning, but thankfully the basement is carpeted so my knees won't suffer too much. Can't say as much about my arms of course.

I did all the 1RM tests and found them to be great. I didn't know I could lift this heavy. I do them by disk and it seems to go well and be very helpful.

About me now .... I'm 36, married with two children (4 and 2) and I work as a research chemist. So workouts have to be early morning or they don't happen.

OK, Off I go!
Click to expand...
Welcome Helene (or is it Helen?)! Good for you doing all the 1RM tests! I know I should have but I feel like I generally know my maxes already on quite a few of the exercises. I tried to do a little cardio this morning but was really tired. We have kind of a mini-gym here where I work and a trainer who teaches classes 2x/week (on Tuesday & Thursday evenings). I'm planning on going to the class tonight and maybe lifting light weights or just doing some cardio. I'll see what I feel like then. Good luck with your push-ups!
 
Hi all,
I did do disk1 again this morning. It went overall quite well. I think I did a few more push ups on my toes before moving to my knees compared to last week ( 2 sets of 1.5s). I think Cathe was somehow in my basement and thought I might not have been giving it my all because with one exercise left to go the disk skipped back to barbell 21s from earlier in the disk (sneaky the next exercise was barbell with wide grip so close enough). I noticed when I went to do incline chest fly that I shouldn't be doing these a second time. So I had a couple extra exercises!:D
The result was predictable, I could barely lift my daughter into her car seat this morning. :( Ouchie! But I feel much better now. Those 1RM were almost all spot on for me. I think I was not pushing myself enough before, and I preferred DVDs with compounds exercises so I didn't use heavier weights.
So tomorrow morning I am planning to do Low Max (my favorite) and I have yoga in the evening. Another full day ahead.
I hope you had a great evening and maybe a nice workout!
Helene
 
Hi Kelly and welcome Helene!

Kelly, I didn't do every single one of the 1RM's, and I think we're going to be fine, too. I really think that once you get through the first week of each Mes., then you'll know what to do for the other 3 weeks since they're so similar. I agree about the barbell, sometimes I won't use it if I can do the same thing with dumbells. And good for you for being careful with that injury...smart!

Helene, congrats on your extra pushups. And I know what you mean about it being hard to lift your kiddo...my arms were about to give out sometimes holding my little guy after disc 1!

I finished the first 1/2 of Imax2 a while ago. I forgot how fun that one is. I also remember how it almost killed me the first time I tried it, because I had never really done anyting but the Firm, and it was way harder! : )

Good night, hope you guys had good workouts today!
 
Workout today was disc 3. I think I will do an upper body, lower body, then upper each week. Let's see...to make the workout around 45 minutes, I did not do the side lunge w/knee raise, fan kicks, or the pulse exercises. Did everything else though. My form was not good on the lunge-into-front-kick move...I could not get down very low on the lunge and come back up very well. Hopefully that will improve. And man, sometimes I had to take longer breaks b/c my heartrate was up so high.

I think I am going to take before and after pictures, and that will really help me to improve my eating. It's not terrible, but I'm going to have to do better if I want to get where I want to be.

How are you guys doing?
 
I worked out last evening after work. My arms were killing me after some of the weight work the trainer had us doing. This morning was disc 2 but I ran out of time about 3/4 of the way through...actually it was probably a little less than that because I didn't end up doing the chin-ups. I ordered the tower during pre-order so hopefully it will ship soon.

I was thinking I should take before and after photos too and probably take measurements but all I did was weigh myself to have an official starting weight. Maybe I'll bust out the measuring tape this weekend.

It's our fiscal year end at work and we've had auditors camped out for three weeks so things have been crazy. Tonight we went to happy hour and I'm absolutely dead. I'll try to finish up disc 2 in the morning and may work out at work again in the evening-depending how tired I am. My rotation has disc 3 on Friday so I'll tackle the legs then.

Have a good day tomorrow!
 
Well done on working out though I can't believe you are adding more weight work than STS :eek:!
It sounds like everybody has busy days. Fitting in the workouts can be challenging for me as well. But I did manage to get up early enough one more day, yeah! Today is Disk2 for me. I am not looking forward to the chin ups (I actually use my treadmill for this). I really am going to have to order a rack as well which will be much better. I saw a few posts with recommendations.
I did manage to take all my measurements and get them in the workout manager, but I haven't taken a before picture. I guess I should probably do that too. Wonder if some of the weight that still hasn't come off after baby number two will finally come off :eek:
Now that the coffee is running through my veins, it is time to go to Disk 2. I'll have to get the abs sections in though. I realize I only did abs once last week but am doing OK with the schedule otherwise. Are you both adding the abs sections as well?
All right, I really need to get going is I want to get Disk2 done and still get to work on time. Have a great day to both of you!
 
Helene, I'm terrible about adding in ab workouts. Most of the time, I don't do them. :eek:

Kelly, hope things aren't too crazy at work!

Yesterday was Kelly Coffey Meyer Step-boxing 2, and today will be disc 2. My son should start his nap in about an hour, and off I go!
 
Hi guys! I'm bad about doing the ab work too. Work was really crazy...I probably picked the worst time I could have to start this rotation...but when is it ever a good time?! Since I was up so late this week I ended up running out of time on both disc 2 & 3 on Wed. and Friday so I completed both of them this morning (along with the 'bonus' section of disc 3). I also did about 20 min. of a Christi Taylor step workout. I know what you're talking about with lunge/kick move! I did them okay but had to use light weights in order to maintain half way decent form. I had the most difficulty with the ball against the wall, rolling down to the floor to pick up the weights. Yeah right! I thought I was going to fall on my arse and bruise my tail bone...so I didn't go all the way down for those.

Now I'm trying to get the motivation to clean, do laundry, etc (the usual weekend stuff). I need to sweep the patio too but it's an oven outside right now. Not sure if I'm going to work out tomorrrow yet or not...I haven't even looked at my rotation to see what's next. I'll check it out in a bit. I'm thinking that disc 4 is scheduled for Monday though.

Have a nice weekend!
 
Hi! Glad to see there are others just starting! I'm 45, married with a 15 yr old girl and 13 yr old boy. Work full time as an IT mgr. I usually workout in the AM before work. I started doing that when the kids were little as that was the only time I could be sure to get my workout in and now it is an ingrained habit. I'm thinking of trying to do at least 1 STS w/o in the PM so I don't have to get up earlier as I think I'll need all the sleep I can get.

I missed the first wave of STS starters as I was in the middle of Chalene Extreme rotation (which I really enjoyed) when STS was shipped. After CLX I decided to get serious about dieting because my results weren't as great as I'd hoped. I was using the principles from Leigh Peele's Fat Loss Troubleshooting manual. I quickly found out I don't do well with extreme deficits and ended up pretty burned out. I'd actually done 1 week of STS but decided to defer it. Anyway, after a couple of months of dieting down and low to moderate exercise, I'm ready to kick it up a notch again and will bump my calories up a little to compensate.

I'd used my final weights from CLX and loaded them for my 1RM in May. I've lost a little strength so will start out a little lower and have given myself permission to not finish the entire workout.

Today I did a 10m warmup with Ab Jam - standing work and then did 4/5ths of Disk 1 and extended stretch. It was during the bootcamp pushups that I felt like I'd done enough and called it a day ;) I feel great about that though because I'd only planned to do 1/2. It was fun to hang out with Cathe and the gang!

I look forward to getting to know you all! ~Sharon
 
Last edited:
Hi Sharon!

Nice to 'meet' you! I also bought Chalean Extreme while I was waiting for STS to ship. But I can't really give it a fair review since I didn't finish it! As far as the workouts I did try, I thought it was okay. I really should have stuck with it though because I'm sure then I would have been better prepared for STS! I used to be religious about working out 5 days a week and really made it a habit. I even kept working out very shortly after surgery for a torn rotator cuff (the most painful "healing" process I've ever endured!). Then, about yr & 1/2 after that I had to have surger for emergency gall bladder removal (good times) and for some reason have found it difficult getting my exercise momentum back. I'm hoping that the structure of the STS rotation will get me back into the groove.

Have a nice night!
-Kelly
 
Not much for me other than some yoga this AM. My lower back is tender so figured I'd take it easy and just concentrate on laundry today. Hope you are enjoying your weekend!
 
Hi Sharon, Kelly and workoutaholic!

What a weekend it has been. Husband sick so I had to take care of the kids. And I took my day off on Friday workout wise so I couldn't quite slack this weekend now could I? ;) So add a visiting father in law and lot's of laundry for perfect mayhem :eek:

I did manage to get my second round of disc 3 in on Saturday. Kelly, I saw posted (but can't remember where, maybe the check in thread for disc 3) but when you roll the ball and try to go get your dumbbells, a trick is to use your step underneath and put your dumbbells on it. That way you don't have to reach as far. I think I had my step at 10" the first time around and 8" yesterday. The 8 inch actually felt better because I had to give it a little more to get back to right angle and it seemed to be the right challenge for me. Hopefully this modification can come in handy again.

Sharon: nice to meet you. I also like to workout in the morning. Schedules can go down the tubes really quickly and if I get it done in the morning before work, nobody can take that away from me! I also work full time and I have two little ones (2 and 4).

Kelly: Even after posting about it, I still haven't gotten an ab workout in. :mad: I wan't to though. I did do KickMax today though so that does have a bit of an ab component to it. I am sorry to hear that you had these surgeries to deal with. I had a rotator cuff injury as well (though not as serious) and it is only healed now (9 months later). And Yikes with the gall bladder. It's great you are so motivated to get back into it though.

workoutaholic: Does your son take regular naps still that allow you to get it done at that time? My daughter is so irregular (30 minutes to 2 hours). So I can't even thing about it on the weekends. But I'm in the morning grove right now so I want to try to keep it going on the weekends.

Tomorrow I have disc 4 and my yoga class. I hope my arms will hold. I love my yoga though, I used to have frequent back pain but it has taught me how to strengthen it and take care of it better so I'm not gonna skip out on it. I love the group too.

Everybody have a great week!

Helene
 
Hi ladies and welcome Sharon (that's my mom's name)!

Kelly, I didn't use weights on that ball move at all - that was hard! And way to go on working out even though work is busy. Good job.

Sharon, I also skipped STS when I got it because I got CLX first! I loved CLX - when I was done with it, I temporarily swapped it with a friend for P90X (which I did only a week of). I also don't do well with very low calories. Hope your lower back feels better!

Helene, well, for a month now he's been taking ~2 hour naps or longer, but I think I jinxed myself! : ) The other day when I posted I was about to workout, I got busy doing other stuff after he went to sleep, and he woke up after an hour, right when I was going to start! So I hope that nice stretch of long naps isn't over. But before this stretch it was usually at least an hour, but kinda all over the place, too. He likes to keep me on my toes.

I wish I could make myself work out in the morning - I always feel groggy for a while and am worried I wouldn't put my all into it. And my son wakes up anywhere from 6 am - 6:45 am (usually closer to 6), so I'd probably have to start at least by 5 am. What time do your kids wake up?

Ok, so I finally did week 1 back/biceps tonight. I liked that workout. I shaved off two exercises, and then did Stephanie Huckabee's Powerfit cardio.

See you guys in next week's check-in, and good job!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Our Newsletter

Get awesome content delivered straight to your inbox.

Top