Arm toner phase begins

As I've been mentioning, we've now commenced a new phase in our fitness regime--the arm toner phase. I had actually intended to begin this phase a couple of weeks from now, but we decided to start a little early.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we found a new Tony Horton routine that we want to work into our regimen, a routine called "arm toner." We just did it for the first time tonight. We'll be using this one twice a week on our strength-training days probably until April or May.

Preliminarily I can say we both liked it. It's a bit shorter than what we've been doing--just a little over a half hour. It doesn't contain any lower-body exercises, which is what we want for most of the year, focusing instead on the upper body. And it's pretty intense.

I'll give a fuller report later, but I'll just observe for now that it's a fast-paced routine that mixes one-minute exercise periods with 30-second stretch periods. A fuller breakdown and itemization of the routine will be forthcoming.

By the way, why am I naming the phases of our exercise regimen after mostly upper-body exercise routines? Because these are the variable part of our regimen. Bicycling is the constant part, so it makes sense to name the phases after the varying parts of the regimen.