I want shoulders. I need shoulders.
....and arms. My arms and shoulders are my new focus for some reason. I have no muscles. My thighs are looking and feeling great from the running, but the upper body is needing some attention.

I realize that I take better care of things that are valuable than I take of things that are worthless or things I don't like.
I've decided to love my arms...
...just as they are...
...floppy skin and all...

My arms are taking me closer and closer to doing that chin up of which I dream.
My grip is pretty strong.
Using my arms correctly improves my running.
Even though there is a lot of skin and fat in the way, I can feel those muscles underneath. I can feel their shape and their strength.
My arms are not overly or underly hairy - just a happy macho medium.
These are good arms. They deserve some appreciation and love.

My old way was to either think that my arms were too far gone and not worth the time to work on them, or to work on them because they were awful and I needed to make them into something worthwhile. Neither of those ways have been working.

The new approach is to appreciate them, value them, and see my time spent on them as my way of expressing that appreciation. I've said it for years - attitude is everything.

I replaced my attitude of, "I gotta clean this damn house!" with an attitude of "I'm going to bless this house." That made a world of difference. Now, I'm going to replace my strength training "Arm Loathing Time" with "Arm Loving Time".

A little update - I recently blogged about a helpful training tool, the MITT or Mobile Interval Training Timer. I've been using it for a bit now and it is just what I needed. I've used it for running, TRX work, HIIT, and weight lifting. I tried jumping rope with it and it was great for that, but I'm not a rope jumper so I won't be doing that again (my knees can't handle it right now). I used it for static stretching and it was great. It made me slow down and stretch better.
I used up the free trial and went ahead and bought the full version (about 15 bucks) and it's the best money I've spent on gear in quite a while.

My program is now undergoing the largest change ever. I thought my goal was going to be long distance running, but I found out I'm quite happy with 2 or 3 miles at a time. I really don't have the desire to go farther. Since I do have the desire to build bigger muscles, it wouldn't be a good idea for me to run long distances anyway. It's time for me to turn some attention toward strength training.