The BeWOW Breakdown: “Do Humans Need Shoulders? Because Ours Might Fall Off”
Rebecca, getting her tricep kick-back on like a boss.
This Week’s Workout: Shred Your Arms in 7 Moves
The Breakdown
Total time commitment: 30 to 35 minutes
Difficulty (out of five): 3.5
Soreness factor: Do humans need shoulders? Because ours might fall off.
Overall grade (out of 5): 4.5 This was a really great workout. It was hard to stick to one set of weights, though, so we changed things up.
Initial impressions:
We’re back! With Alon in Israel for two weeks and Rebecca having a 100-miler mid-January, we took the month off from testing BeWow workouts. We missed it for sure! Alon’s body clock wasn’t in Philly, so Rebecca did the workout without him, recruiting our gym and running buddy Emma to join. The workout seemed simple enough and like it would be fun!
How we felt afterward:
This was a great workout but, man, our shoulders are going to be sore! A month off from lifting weights meant Rebecca’s arms felt like limp noodles at the end. Note to self: while taking a month off from lifting weights for the 100-miler was probably smart, it means your body is weak when you get back into it. Emma had done an arm workout the day before, but still powered through it. #BAMF
The trainer’s instructions were to pick a weight we could do all of the workouts with. The issue is that we felt we could go heavier with things like the overhead press, bicep curls, and the deadlifts, but we had to go lighter with the lateral raises and tricep kick-backs. We worried about going light for everything and not getting the most of the workout, so we used heavier weights for some and lighter weights for others. Sorry for not listening — let’s just blame it on the fact we haven’t these workouts for a month.
Overall, this was a great workout that was quick and only required a little bit of space and some weights!
About our testers:
Rebecca Barber is the founder of the Rocky 50K Fat Ass Run, a just-for-fun 50K run that follows Rocky Balboa’s footsteps in Rocky II. She’s a 16x marathoner and 14x ultra marathoner, having started running when she was a kid. She’s an active volunteer with Back on My Feet Philadelphia, where she works to help the homeless community use running as a means to better their lives and find stable employment and housing. When not running all the miles, she is the social media coordinator for The Wharton School.
Alon Abramson is the founder of the West Philly Runners, the creator of RunPhil.ly – a web resource for running in Philadelphia – and the organizer of a number of running events in Philly, including the annual 26×1 Mile Team Marathon Relay, Beat the Bus, and Beat the Commute. Running since high school, Alon is an on-again, off-again runner with ebbs and flows to his mileage and commitment. More recently however, he’s taken a new approach to training, emphasizing cross-training and speed work as much as building up mileage and this has dramatically improved his running performance. When he’s not organizing and running, Alon works as a research project manager at Penn’s Institute for Urban Research, studying energy efficiency best practices. He’s on a number of non-profit boards and works on his whole-home retrofit project whenever there’s free time.
Like what you’re reading? Stay in touch with Be Well Philly — here’s how:
- Like Be Well Philly on Facebook
- Follow Be Well Philly on Twitter
- Follow Be Well Philly on Pinterest
- Get the Be Well Philly Newsletter
