When little things go wrong

Marmot and I have been quiet posting here because we've been off our normal schedule. Last week Mr Marmot was ill; Saturday we tried to work an upper body day and met with dramatic failure; then the gym was closed for the holiday weekend; then we had company in town; and Wednesday we went for a leg-day and I was met with, again, dramatic failure.

"Dramatic failure" doesn't mean injury or anything permanent. It was just little things.

Saturday I was in a rare, completely consuming foul mood. Nothing was going right, nothing could ever go right, and everything was horrible. Sunshine that otherwise would have made me lift my chin in pleasant appreciation? Just glare in my eyes. Congenial conversations in the gym? Gratingly loud!  We started as we often do with pull ups. I barely pulled 3, when usually I can do 5 or 6 on my first set; the next two sets were even worse, barely pulling one. Naturally, these failures didn't help my attitude. We tried dumb bell bench press; I was so distracted by feeling angry that I couldn't concentrate on my form, and my shoulder clicked every time I pressed. I decided to call the day a wash and spot Mr Marmot, but my bad mood was contagious, poor guy: he tried to kick up his weights and failed to keep control, dropping them to the side. We left at that, our hands in the air.

Wednesday the problem was more subtle: my form was just off. I tried to squat, but couldn't control my body in the way I usually can. I felt inflexible and struggled going to full depth even with just the unweighted bar. My starting weight felt unmanageable, and I consistently felt off balance and unstable. We decided to strike the squats and try them after dead lifts. Again, my "off in my body" feeling kept me from lifting well: I only lifted 135lbs x 4, and it just didn't feel right in my back or shoulders. I cheered on Marmot as he broke his DL personal record (285lbs, which bent the bar!), and he cheered me on as I did 3 sets of 1-minute plank / 30 sec side plank per side. (He wisely suggested that I do something, so I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time, and plank is as full-body as body-weight exercises go.)

I've noticed that these off-phases go in cycles; when one little thing goes wrong, it can cascade off into a week or even two of feeling bad. You haven't gone up in weight, you haven't even gotten full lifts in, and it builds its own momentum. As frustrating as these phases can be, it's important to recognize that it will pass soon and the only way to help it pass is to keep trying. I knew on that Saturday morning that I wasn't really feeling up to lifting, but I went anyway. Sometimes the pleasure of moving helps the bad mood, and if not, at least I tried.

We'll try again this afternoon. Wish us luck getting past the little things.

Video tour: Leg Day

The Marmot and I brought our wee little digital video recorder to the gym yesterday, for not-one-rep-max leg-day form-checking. It's helpful to review the video afterward; even though we watch each others' form carefully, some lifts, especially full-body lifts like dead lift and squat, are so complex it's hard to see everything. For instance, I noticed that my knees tend to cave inward just a teeny bit when doing dead lifts. Marmot mostly watches from the side, to be sure my back doesn't curve, so having the recording from different angles is super helpful. You can see that Mr. Marmot is much more agile than I am; I'm still learning to jump quickly, it's so much harder than it would seem!

The videos are none too attractive, especially since the temporary summer gym has no air conditioning and it was a muggy 80 degrees yesterday, but if you're ever curious what we mean when we say "one-handed farmer carry," you've got video examples. More below the jump!

Upper body day: Saturday, May 21

A routine but pleasant upper body day today. We're both making solid, steady progress with our bench presses and standing presses, but I feel like I'm stalling a bit with my pull ups. The summer gym we're attending is delightfully bare-bones, so there is no assisted pull-up machine. I think having some assistance at high reps was helping me build, so I'm trying to figure out how to work up from here.

Through the lifts, we were a tiny bit distracted: there was a meet at our gym this morning! Gigantic dudes in power-lifting suits were walking around everywhere, lifting warm-up weights that were more than I could ever dream of lifting and it was super inspiring...but it made me feel a little silly struggling as hard as I was to just press the bar when practicing my standing press. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Warm ups:
20 arm swings
20 scapular push ups
20 wall arm-raises

Pull ups:
Marmot: 16; 9; 6
Pancho: 5; 4; 3


Dumb bell bench press:
Marmot: 60lbs (per hand) x 15; 65lbs x 15; 65lbs x 8
Pancho: 35lbs (per hand) x 15; 35lbs x 12; 35lbs x 8


Cable row, with 6lb medicine ball Russian twists x 20 during rest:
Marmot: 100lbs x 15; 110lbs x 12; 110lbs x 8
Pancho: 60lbs x 15; 60lbs x 10; 60lbs x 10

Standing Press:
Marmot: 65lbs x 5; 75lbs x 5; 85lbs x 5 
Pancho: 45lbs x 5 (10 sec hold); 45lbs x 5 (10 sec hold); 45lbs x 4 (10 sec hold)

Leg Day Record-Breaking Bonanza!

Holy cow, y'all: something happened yesterday. Maybe we had rested enough; maybe watching this video of this dude's Ridiculously Diverse Athleticism inspired us to greatness; maybe we just happened to both be in upbeat enough moods that anything felt possible. Whatever helped the stars align in our favor, we had a killer leg routine at the gym last night.

Something to keep in mind when reading these numbers is that our 1 rep maxes were, of course, not tested at the end of a vigorous work-out; they were tested as stand-alone single lifts, so we were not at all fatigued. That we both came close to our 1RMs at the end of a challenging lift, and repped the weights, is a big deal. Also, The Marmot and I have been struggling with increasing our dead lifts for lack of grip strength. We both have felt like we can lift more with the strength we have in our hips and legs, but our hands fail--gravity wins, and the bar gets ripped out of our grip. This time, we both broke through our grip limits. I had never lifted 135lbs more than 5 times, and by the 5th I'm usually holding on with my fingertips and pure will power. We completely exploded our previous records when you consider the total number of reps.

I dead lifted more than I have ever lifted in my life. As I said: holy cow, y'all.

For comparison, I'll post our stats from one month ago, April 15, along side in gray, and our previous one-rep maxes in blue. Our lifts from yesterday will be in red.

How to Start

Last month I flew home to visit my mom, which is always a pleasure: she's a smart, thoughtful and funny lady, so our visits inevitably feel too short. We were both expecting a regular visit--some walks, some cooking, some Lady Gaga and/or Spice Girls blissing-out: standard stuff. What ended up happening surprised us both. After an afternoon running errands, she expressed frustration at her level of fatigue carrying bags while I was still springy, and that frustration was tied up in some bigger concerns about her body. I suggested (as I had fruitlessly in the past) that if she were interested I could put together a little home work-out routine for her. She said yes, and has been super enthusiastic ever since. I couldn't be more proud of her dedication! She went from a healthy but not terribly active 52 year old to someone who drops down in a clothing store to show off to her husband that she can hold plank position for a (very impressive) 30 seconds.

I know a lot of people have plans for bodily transformation, either losing weight, or gaining muscle, or improving in their sport. (A lot of folks don't, and are content in their lives and their bodies--right on! This is not aimed to make people feel like they should change, only to help if they already want to change.) I also know that those folks who have plans for bodily transformation struggle with starting. Starting taking care of your body takes hearing the right thing at the right point in your life. I happened to say something that struck a chord with my mom last month. I've tried to recall what I said, so that if someone stumbles upon this blog at that moment where they want to start, maybe my tiny bit of experience can be helpful.

Cooking Casualty & Upper Body Day

Pancho here, badly burned but unfazed! Sunday night the Marmot and I were doing our weekly Mega Food Prep, cooking a big pot of stew, boiling eggs, baking chicken breasts and roasting a nice acorn squash. I was, admittedly, a little frazzled when I opened the oven 3/4 to check on the squash; I pulled the rack out which pushed the oven door down all the way, the top of the super-hot oven door landing flat against my shin. Damn.

The Marmot thinks it looks like a flying eagle. I think it looks like, well, the top of the oven door. It's healing pretty well, but yesterday during our pull-ups the burned part of my shin kept hitting the front of the dip-bar and hurt so bad I cut my pull ups a bit short. Oh well; all's fair in love and lifting.

We lifted yesterday at the Great Equipment But Bad Air gym and oh my goodness I'd forgotten how great it is to be in a place where everyone takes lifting seriously. One large gentleman was dead-lifting 405lbs (that's four 45lb plates on each side)! It was inspiring, and we had a great lift.

Functionally Fit

Marmot here, I've decided to take some time to write about my workout ideals as a chance to more clearly articulate them to myself and to put them down as something to work toward or against as Pancho and I continue lifting.  I've already discussed specific weight lifting goals, but with some time to reflect and new information I thought I would elaborate on my goals a bit more. 

I have three major goals for working out: functional fitness; general physical strength; and bodily transformation.  These goals are obviously not mutually exclusive. Rather, the work involved in attaining them, and the presence of any one of them, implies the others. To be functionally fit necessitates being strong and vice versa.  To accomplish my intended bodily transformation must include working on general physical strength and provides functional fitness.  Lacking any one element makes the others harder to accomplish if not impossible.  Today I’m going to write about just one of these goals and in subsequent days I’ll post on the other two.