Greetings From South Florida!

I have been interested in weight training for over 30 years. At times I was more serious than others, but it has been something I feel very strongly about.

I became a vegetarian in 1981. I became a raw food vegan in 2003; however, after being 100% raw for 1 year exactly, I started eating cooked food again. I did remain vegan because for years I felt compelled to quit eating eggs & dairy.

In March of 2008, I went 100% raw vegan again. At this point, I decided to really push it with the weight training schedule because I didn't want to lose muscle. So this time around, instead of being scrawny and sickly-looking, I look healthy. Last time people (especially family) expressed concern--this time not only has no one showed concern--they have actually said how great I look.

I switched gyms during the summer and because I moved to a much nicer gym (and closer to home), I got more motivated to build some muscle.

I now do the push/pull/legs routine. Sometimes I will go to the gym on off days for some cardio. I also finish almost every workout (I've missed a couple of times this past year) with 20-30 minutes of stretching.

I love to exercise and live (and enjoy) a healthy lifestyle!

I have a friend who likes to go to the gym together, but she has some physical problems and doesn't work out with me. I am really trying to push it now, and my goal would be to find a workout buddy, at my level or higher, to work out with.

I pretty much plan my life around my workouts, although I don't know if I would be able to consider myself a gym rat. Maybe a gym rat want-to-be!

Wow, 30 years! You're going to have us all asking you stuff. Those kinds of years training means you've got real insights into training. I think you're 100% right weight training is a vital ingredient that seems especially lacking in the raw food arena. I've done some stalls at raw fayres around the UK & the amount of people who actually got quite annoyed I suggested they needed to weight train (not pointing at them personally & saying "You there! You need to weight train!", but saying people who eat raw foods need to weight train), they absolutely insisted that a raw food diet alone was all they needed to do, exercise wasn't necessary!?! - to be honest all the annoyed one's looked under 100 pounds & anyone on this board could have reached over & snapped them like twigs they were that skinny. When asked I said, 1/ you aren't eating enough, you need more mass & 2/ You need to hit the weight & hit them hard. In fact I think hitting the weights themselves would have stimulated the appetite enough so the weight would have gone on. It's great to see raw food eaters taking the idea of training seriously as they need to as much as anyone else, as, in the UK at least, there has been a tendency to believe the diet was all you needed & that other factors like training etc didn't matter as long as you ate raw.
Yea, recently I've actually included a few simple mobilisation to my warm-up, then the training, then either stretching or soft tissue (myofascial release) type work at the end. I think doing the extra stuff like stretching & myofascial release stuff will add 'miles to your clock' in the gym & so everyone should do other work as well as just weights, especially as they get older when injuries mount up & imbalances can develop.
I'd love it if you had time to have some of your workouts in the training logs section, see how your training after being under the iron for so long, if not, no worries, but I'd love to see the kind of ideas you've developed after 3 decades of training.
Welcome to the group & I expect we'll all be asking you stuff in no time

Pete, even though I weight trained, I wasn't always pushing it, and I wasn't necessarily bodybuilding throughout the years. In my early 30s I got into it when women's bodybuilding was just starting and they really didn't have the criteria for a woman bodybuilder. I had the books and the bench and some equipment, but life got me away from it.

A few years ago, I had a personal trainer for quite a while. Even though I'm not an advanced bodybuilder, I do know my way around in the gym.

It has been an on and off type thing along with the yo-yo weight cycle. But thank goodness I discovered the miracle of eating a raw vegan diet. I no longer ever have to worry about weight gain. I'm more likely to have to worry about keeping the weight on. At this point, I am 110 pounds and 5'4" inches high.

I almost always start out my gym workout with cardio like the treadmill or eliptical, but if I go to the gym several days that week, I might skip it on a weight training day because I don't want to burn the extra calories. And I agree with you that stretching is important. I, for one, don't want to bulk up too much and want my muscles to be more lengthy.

I'm so glad I found this forum because no one around me in the raw food movement is into the weight training like I am. That isn't to say that I'm all that great either--I'm just pushing it a little each time I go to the gym.

I started writing down my exercises I did on notebook paper on a clipboard before Christmas, but since then I got a workout journal. It doesn't sound like much, but just writing it down and seeing how much weight and how many reps I did the previous time working that body part, I can push it a little more the next time.

I went to the gym this afternoon and feel like a million bucks! I sure wish more people found the excitement of weight training & fitness and that they could know how great it makes you feel.

Thanks for starting this website and forum. I still have a lot to see on both. I also appreciate you adding me as your friend on Facebook.

Now I have to figure out how to add my picture to my forum profile.

That's what people don't understand about a simple training log! It's AMAZING how you can transform you're gym experience simply by writing down what you've done & just spend a minute seeing how much you've done last time & trying to do just a rep or a Kg or so more. It's one of the best kept secrets in training I think.
I've actually started writing down my yearly highs as well, like if I spend some time doing barbell bent over rows for example, I write down where I peaked in 2009 for example & in 2010 when I go back to it I know that at the end of my cycle I want to be lifting a little bit more then that (either in reps or in the top weight lifted), so I can go back to most exercises & say how much I did - I personally also like to note what I weighed as I'm interested in keeping my strength to weigh ratio increasing, so as my weight goes up (which is a goal I'm on at the moment adding muscle mass) I still want my strength to weight ratio to increase as well as total weight lifted.
Anyway welcome to the forum & I expect we'll speak quite soon
Happy new year & hope you have a great 2010

Hi and welcome to the forum. I am new to vegan-ism (6 months or so) and now trying to experiment with vegan raw while working-out hard. Your example will motivate me as well.