The verdict is in: I do best, at this point, with a four-day workout cycle. Since the April 17 workout, which came after ten days off, I have improved on everything or all but one exercise every time -- either by adding reps or leveling up. Furthermore, while I always do feel sore the next day, I've been recovering fairly quickly, and feel very much ready for the next time when it comes around. This is a good routine. I'll go again on this Thursday, then use the gym on the ship the following Monday.

I added reps or leveled up on everything today. It looks like a four-day cycle is a good thing for me. Dana, meanwhile, has been working hard on her book, with a deadline of May 1, so she has not been able to join me. So I have had to be particularly careful about "spotting myself" so as not to go too fast and to make sure to maintain form.

Just think if I were to keep up a four-day schedule consistently! I'm especially happy to be making some great progress on the upper body stuff. The plan is to go every four days between now and the cruise, which will leave me in the perfect spot to work out twice on the ship -- Monday (5/7), and again on Friday (5/11) -- with no days missed for travel, since it looks like we're going to end up flying to Houston.

Bad, because I went ten days without a workout! But good, because I held steady on most things, leveled up on two, and increased Ham Curls by three!!! I'm really not sure how I managed that, or how I'm going to manage walking tomorrow!

I did drop by one rep on Squats, but I was moving very slowly. I'm trying to do that, rather than increase reps, since I can't add more weight for fear of breaking the new TotalGym like I did the last one.

Nothing as spectacular as last time, today, but I held fairly steady and added a bit on Dips.