leo_zodiac

i_hope_that
For many of us, the holidays can be kind of rough. If you're searching for a network of understanding friends, this ultra-nurturing community encourages you to express your heartfelt wishes and offer other members encouragement and acceptance. Not for the terminally snarky or emotionally-challenged, this is a good-spirited place to lend comfort and support.

diygifts
Feeling crafty? If you've got a few last folks on your holiday gift list, this is a great place to seed your creativity and generosity. You'll also discover wonderful DIY tips to decorate your home and entertain guests. Offering a no-frills-no-skills attitude that welcomes the cash-challenged and arts-phobic, you're sure to get ideas and make friends in the process.

cooking_club
A fun and friendly community dedicated to those who love to cook, whether you're a meat-and-potatoes type, an aspiring gourmand, and/or a vegan. In search of a brilliant dish to use up those weekly leftovers? Post your ingredients and you'll be whipping up a feast by dinner. You can also share favorite recipes. For Type A chefs, you can spice up your culinary repertoire with exciting cooking challenges.

I should have included this information back when I posted that progress picture a few days ago, but I was running short on time then and only now does it feel like things are settling down.

I'm happy to report that I appear to be making some pretty steady progress. If I'm guessing the weight of the bar right, *it's a lever machine press, but the bar feels like it weighs the same as an Olympic Bar,* then my Incline Presses are up to 355lbs and my declines are up to 235lbs. I feel I must point out that I always do my inclines first, so that probably accounts for some of the disparity between the two presses.

In addition I've recently taken up free weight flys in order to hit stabilizer muscles that I would've missed on the weight machines. I would simply use a free weight press, but until my home gym is usable again, or I join a different gym, free weight presses simply aren't available to me. Although I still don't like the feel of a smith machine I feel like I'm getting the hang of squats pretty well. I'm also currently working on dead lifts, but right now I'm still mainly practicing form.

The free weight hammer curls that I picked up a few months back are going well, initially they just killed my forearm but I seem to have adjusted and soon I think I'll be moving up to higher weights. I'm also throwing overhand curls and chin ups into the mix for my biceps, but at this point I'm inclined to focus any additional new arm exercises at my triceps, as I suspect they need a little more attention.

As always, the abs are the muscle group I'm struggling with the most. It's not so much that I'm not exercising them, so much as no exercise I try ever feels, "right." Usually it just feels like I'm pulling other muscle groups into the exercise, but even when I'm not I rarely feel like I have the endurance that I should have. So I think I'm going to start looking for ab exercises that are designed more for building endurance than anything else. Oddly enough I don't have nearly as much difficulty with exercises for my sides, but I attribute that largely to a steady routine of planks.

Finally I'm considering ordering myself a head harness so I can hang weights off my head and develop my neck muscles. I know that this typically isn't a priority to most people but at the same time it rather nags at me that there's a muscle group out there that I'm totally ignoring. I'll probably weight until after Christmas though, and do some research to make certain I'm getting a good one.

Just a simple progress picture, a rare shirtless one that I'm throwing behind a cut. I don't do many progress pictures like that because I'm a very modest man. Still, kinda hard for people to gage actual progress when you're wearing a t-shirt that covers up what people are trying to inspect. Just this once I figured I'd bite the bullet, it'll probably be a long while before I do so again.

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The NEW Six...revealed!

stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

A new chapter begins! But where have we seen that page before, hm?