Want to feel like a wuss while lifting 3 pounds?

Hi, I'm Sara, and I'm a magazine junkie. If it's geared towards women, chances are good that I'll read it. Well, that's not entirely true. I don't like the fashion magazines, and I can do without the pseudo-fashion/how-to-be-a-sex-object ones, and I stay away from the ones that loudly profess on their covers things like "Lose 40 Pounds by Blinking!" So I guess to make that a more accurate statement I should say, "Hi, I'm Sara, and I'm a magazines-that-I-like junkie."

It just so happens that most of the magazines that I like are diet/health/fitness related. Big surprise I know. I'll give you a minute to recover from the shock. Feel better now? Good.

In this month's Self magazine, there is an arms workout that hurts me. It's by Madonna's and Gwyneth's trainer, Tracy Anderson. We don't get real TV here, so I didn't see Gwyneth on Oprah, but I did read some blog analyses of the interview, more specifically her trainer's assertion that no woman should lift a weight heavier than 3 pounds. Like most of the discussions of it that I read, I basically thought the woman was, er, wrong. But then I saw this workout in Self and decided to give it a try (think what you will about Madonna, Gwyneth, and/or their trainer, you can't deny they all have great arms).

Here it is:

Sculpt A-list Arms Fast!

It says to use 3-pound weights, but all I have at home are 2.5 (they're weight plates for dh's barbells; the smallest hand weights I have are 8-pounders)(yes, I am just that tough)(no, really)(stop laughing, Holly) and the gym's weights are in kilograms, so I can either go with 1 kg (which is 2.20462262 pounds) or 2 kg (which is 4.40924524 pounds). I've used the 2.5 lbs at home and the 2 kgs at the gym and the take on both is this: Ow.

This is a good workout, especially for your shoulders. I don't think it works my triceps all that well, so I've been doing extra sets of tricep exercises as well, and by the end of both, my arms are spent. If I were more concerned with building my biceps more, I might add in some exercises specifically targeting those, too, but right now I'm not.

I'm interested to see what the rest of her workout would be like, considering I was, er, wrong about the arms portion of it. Too bad I'm cheap. I can't bring myself to pay $30 for her DVD.

Go try the workout, and tell me what you think. Be sure to watch the accompanying video, because a couple of the exercises made no sense at all to me until I did.