Category: weightlifting

On getting strong

Karl Elvis1 Comment

So let’s talk about something other than writing for a moment, just because i’m almost repeating myself in the last few entries  (plus i’m really distracted by a poet i’ve been reading and need to not think about eroticism for a bit).

For the maybe one of you reading who hasn’t known me for years, I have an uneven history with physical fitness.

I grew up your quintessential fat kid. That’s not to say I wasn’t strong – I was, I was more or less born strong. But I wasn’t particularly athletic by inclination; I was a book nerd and always preferred reading to most anything else (well, until I was a teenager and discovered rock music, drugs and sex, at which time I was a book, music, drugs, and sex nerd, and I sorted that in the wrong order so assume it should be in reverse).

When I participated in sports that required brute strength I did well, but fast and agile, I wasn’t. I stayed fit, though, because any time I could get away from class and hike, that’s what I was doing (I went to school in what we used to call a ‘free school’ in the 70’s and would probably be called child-led-learning now, ie, everyone thought if you let kids choose, they’d keep wanting to learn. In reality of you let them choose, they’d rather play, so we did a lot of play.)

When I got out of school and started to work, though (and started to drink beer), the tendency to stay fit ended, and (apart from periods where cocaine tended to make me skinnier), I started to loose some of the strength and fitness.

It took me a long time to get fed up with that; I was strong enough, fit enough, to do what I needed. It wasn’t until my 30’s when I had my first child that I started to feel like I wasn’t gonna be able to keep up with a child (a child who turned out to be the energizer bunny).

So for the first time I got fed up enough to join a gym.

An aside here, the single biggest motivation in my life has always been being fed up. Most engineering projects, home improvement projects, self improvement projects, surgeries, etc, all start with goddamnit, i’ve had enough of this shit.

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Rubber Legs and Cemeteries

elvis4 Comments

Wow, are my legs sore. I realize now how long it’s been since I’ve been on a bike. Where’s my fuckin’ advil? Wait, actually, where’s my darvocet? Not that I need it, but if I’m takin’ pills, it might as well be ones with side benefits. It’s been a long time, and yet, I find, […]

Wow, are my legs sore.

I realize now how long it’s been since I’ve been on a bike. Where’s my fuckin’ advil?

Wait, actually, where’s my darvocet? Not that I need it, but if I’m takin’ pills, it might as well be ones with side benefits.

It’s been a long time, and yet, I find, even though I’m outta shape (it’s been that kind of year), that I’m a better bike rider than I was. When I bought myself a mountain bike twelve, thirteen years ago, I remember thinking, this used to be easier when I was a kid. Now though, even with the quads tight and the breath not coming as easy as I’d like, with the hills feeling oh-so-much steeper than they look, I’m finding my riding skills better, ten years away from my last bike ride.

I realize, though in many ways it’s different, that riding a motorcycle almost every day for much of the last decade has made me a better bicycle rider. Not that that’s a surprise; not like the realization I had after my first long dive-every-day trip that diving makes me a better motorcyclist (who knew?) yet, it’s a pleasure to find that I’m more, rather than less, comfortable after the intervening years.

But damn, my legs are rubber today. A ride up the hill to the local cemetery (which wasn’t so much because it’s memorial day as just because my kids like cemeteries; they’re morbid little monsters, but that’s no surprise) was pretty much an uphill slog the entire way. And I haven’t seen a squat or a leg press or a lunge or even a treadmill in six months.

I’ve a goal though, for both me and the young’un, of getting up that hill to the cemetery without a break. No bike walking, no stopping. By mid june. That, and a return to the gym sometime in the next week or two, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be back to feeling like me again by the end of the summer.

I think I can I think I can…

Gym Manners

elvis17 Comments

It’s been a while since I was working out regularly. And you know other than in highschool, I’ve only ever worked out in one gym, the 24 hour joint near my house. I’ve tried a few other places, the Y, a work gym, other fitness chains. But my local 24 is very close to me, […]

It’s been a while since I was working out regularly. And you know other than in highschool, I’ve only ever worked out in one gym, the 24 hour joint near my house. I’ve tried a few other places, the Y, a work gym, other fitness chains. But my local 24 is very close to me, never crowded, and has what I really care about, a decent free weight room, with a smith press, a power rack, a real plate/sled style leg press, and enough press benches that you can always find one free. I’ve had a membership there off and on for about twelve years. The place just works for me. But it’s been a year since I was last in a serious training phase.

Today, I was staring around the gym and thinking, what the fuck has happened to people’s gym manners since I was last here?

You know, there aren’t many rules. Wipe your sweat off, don’t leave trash around. Don’t hog a machine if you’re not really using it(Toning? get away from the free weights. Calf exercises? Go use the calf machine, get off the fucking leg press). Don’t ask to ‘work in’ when I’m in the middle of a set (in fact, don’t ever fucking talk to me, I’m in the zone and you don’t exist).

But that’s all trivial.

There is one thing that makes me absolutely bugfuck at the gym, and that’s not putting the plates away. Fuck, you put them on, take them off. Don’t walk away from a machine and leaves plates on it. Ever. Don’t walk away from a barbell and leave plates on it. Ever. Put the fuckin’ 45s with teh 45s and the 10s with teh 10s. Don’t fucking mix them. Have trouble lifting the 45s? Ask for help.

How hard is this?

Today, every machine in the room had plates on it, and every plate rack had 25s or 35s sandwiched between 45s. I stood behind some joker on the iso-lat pulldown, who’s loaded a double fistfull of 25s on the thing. I watched him use the machine wrong (working his torso back and forth instead of driving with the elbows), and then he fucking walks away, right past me. No attempt to re-rack his fucking weights. I kept eye contact with him the entire time I was putting his plates away and putting my 45s on the machine, and not one fucking hint of contrition.

Is this just me? Am I being unreasonable to expect people to do a little fuckin’ housekeeping? Sure, gym staff need to take care of this, but a once-a-day tidy should be enough. They shouldn’t have to babysit.

Ok. Fine. Luggin’ plates is good for my forearms. I’ll just get that for you. No, no, it’s ok. Go take a sauna, it’s what I’m here for.

The Burn

elvis13 Comments

I always forget how much better I feel when I’m working out. I used to work from home a lot of the time, so I had a gym routine down, week in week out. For several years. But then that changed a few years back, and ever since, it’s been hard to hit a workout […]

I always forget how much better I feel when I’m working out. I used to work from home a lot of the time, so I had a gym routine down, week in week out. For several years. But then that changed a few years back, and ever since, it’s been hard to hit a workout routine I can manage long term.

It’s been way too fucking long. Last year, I got a good routine going early in the year; working with a trainer to get started, and then a two or three times a week routine of mostly free weights and just enough cardio to keep me in shape (I fucking hate cardio, but I can lift weights all day once I hit stride).

I managed to blow that out last fall. Right up to my Fiji trip, I was going, hell or high water, nothing stopping me. But when I got back, I just seemed to never find time. I was busy – morning meetings, too much work, and the gym seemed to fall off my priority list. I managed to find ways to keep active, some walking, general stuff like sit ups and push ups that I could do around the house. So I was keeping in shape, if not getting better.

Then somehow, after christmas, sometime late last winter, a lot of my life sort of hit a wall and I quit taking care of myself.

I’ve felt like shit for most of the last six months. And finally got to the point where I needed to do something about it.

When I walk into my local gym after a hiatus, I always have this moment of oh yeah, why haven’t I been back? It feels like home. The same geezers are still there every day, some of the same trainers who’ve worked there for years. The machines are all where they belong. And I wonder why I don’t get back more easily?

I’m a creature of habit. I make my coffee the same way every morning. I go on down a well worn path, same things every friday, same thing every sunday, whatever, until I hit an obstacle, and only then do I change. Yet I quickly wear a new path to the water hole. My gym routine, once broken, is suddenly so much harder than not going.

Today, finally, I got up without thinking, pulled my dusty gym shoes out of the closet, and went to work out.

God, I love that feeling. My thighs are rubbery from leg-press. My biceps are burning. I’ll be sore tomorrow, because as always, I started to hard and worked ’til it hurt, because I don’t mind that it hurts. I like that it hurts. It’s good hurt.

Gym hurt is like sex hurt. Like bites and scratches. Like sore from hours of hard fucking. Tired, and broken, and wanting more, and having to stop because the body fails.

There are two roadblocks. The first is going. The second is, building a routine. The first one’s easy if I can only remember; it’s that second one that gets me two times out of three.

If I can just get in there tomorrow – start a new friday routine. If I just keep equating gym hurt with sex hurt…