And it begins!

I have been approved by the YMCA to join the gym under their assisted membership. Being a charitable organization they take monetary donations as well as a portion of paid memberships aside to help others who can't afford a full membership. Seeing as I am a poor, unemployed student I fit nicely into that category.

Now I have to decide how I want to do this. Do I want to jump right in with full routines? Or start off with a week of cardio?

Here is what I do know, I play a lot of darts. My arm gets sore and tired after playing for a couple of hours, so one of my goals is to strengthen the muscles I use for darts. However I have had a previous shoulder injury (as well as elbow/hip/knee/ankle after falling off of a horse.) So I do need to  take it slowly in those areas. So basically my whole body. This is where I am thinking I need to start with resistance training right away to see results sooner (Seeing results keeps me motivated). To do so I would try lots of cardio but focus on strength exercises, starting with lighter weights. I'm just afraid that after not being in a gym for a year (more or less) that I am more liable to injure something if I don't take it easy. I will see if I can talk to a trainer and get some advise on how I should go about it. I know my shoulder and knee require a lot of rehabilitating. Even when I was going to the gym on a daily basis in the past I was taking it very easy on those areas. I'm off to the gym sometime this afternoon to start my plan so hopefully there is a trainer around that won't mind a few questions.

I am so excited to do this! I can not wait to feel stronger. I am going to so another weigh-in and take new measurements for my true starting numbers. I've been eating horribly the last week so any progress I had made from my first entry may have been a crap shoot. We'll see. I was down 6lbs but I think I have gained most of that back. (I'll make an edit to this post when I do the measurements)

*Measurements
121.1 lbs
Thigh: 21 inches  Old: 22 in
Butt: 37 inches
Love handles: 33  Old: 34
Waist: 26

So there was some minor changes since Jan 2, so that's good!