Arriving at the gym later than normal, I had a plan. I started out by running as hard as I could on the treadmill for 3 minutes. Not long at all, but wanted to get started on the next part. After this little warm up, I started one a circuit. I did 100 steps on the stair climber. After this, I went over to the hanging crunch support and did 10 of those as well. I then walked over to the chin up bar, but it was a pretty special machine. I had never really used this before, but the machine is weight assisted. For example, I weigh 205. If I set the weight pin on 100 pounds, it adds that much weight against the weight of my body. By doing this, my body weight actually lifts that much weight by pulleys, and when I pull up, the 100 pounds pushes me upwards, allowing me to use the chin up motion to work my arms and back when it is still difficult for me to lift my full weight. This is what I decided was enough, so I started back on the stair climber. After 45 minutes of shoving myself as hard into this circuit as possible, I was almost finished. A few minutes later, I completed my last chin up. Total, I had finished 1000 steps, 100 hanging crunches, and 100 pull ups with assistance. As I walked into the house, I commented to my wife that I couldn't feel my shoulders. She responded with, "well, you look like hell..."

I'm still taking that as a compliment.

-brad