Here's a guest column from the always welcome Pam.
“Good thing I work from home as any hope of putting on deodorant this week has faded as I can no longer lift my arms past my hips. I wonder if they taught the torturer in school to say, “You can do it” to everyone he meets. And when are we going to get those t-shirts so the 100+ fit, svelte, tone YMCA members surrounding us in the gym and class understand our motivation rather than thinking we are in the wrong place and should be in the pool wearing bathing caps and skorts.” Pam
Yet another victim of the torturer. As I went through the workout Monday night, I thought about how working out can be a humbling prospect when you are out of shape and heavy like I am. At 19, I was never the biggest guy in the gym, but was always one of the strongest. Now at 38, I'm definitely the biggest guy in the gym! But, I'm nowhere near the strongest.
There's too much that goes wrong when I hit the weights. Today we used the infamous Smith machine, which is a cage with different resting points for the weights that you'll be lifting. I used to love the Smith machine, but Monday was a bad night for me and Smith.
When I tried to squat, I felt a pain in my knee and was relegated to doing squats that consisted of sitting down on a big box wooden and getting back up again. It felt like the equivalent of getting up out of my lazy boy at home, except without beer.
When I did a bench press in the Smith machine, my back ended up seizing up, which limited me to the lightest of weights- maybe a full third of what I could lift before.
The worst part of the workout though is probably looking at the mirrors that are spread throughout the gym.
"Look at that jelly belly trying to lift a tiny weight over his head," I say before realizing that the jelly belly is me!
No comments:
Post a Comment