Saturdays & stuff
I've been working out with the same workout partner for going on a year now (wow, it's been that long?). He's a big guy that I sometimes refer to as 'horse' and sometimes as 'BamBam". There are things that I like about having a workout partner and things that I don't. I like having someone handy to spot me on bench presses and squats because I work them harder if I don't worry about failure on the last rep on the way up then I know I can do it, and I do.
But over time, I feel like there's a lot that doesn't work well for me with a partner, or at least this partner but I think mostly it's just a partner in general. My schedule is so irregular these days that it is difficult for me to workout at his time, which is either 5am or 6pm. 5am I am usually awake, but I don't want to exercise that early. I like to have some *me* time first, quiet, do some reading, maybe some writing, have a cup of coffee and some toast with peanut butter. 
Also, he never does any cardio and just wants to pump iron. It's also hard to get him to do ab work. That's cool for him because he has a physical job and fills and hauls boxes of bottled water all day. But I'm a girl, and I need to do cardio regularly.
A lot of times what he wants to do exercise-wise I have a different idea in mind. One thing that I'm critical of him for is doing too much weight just to be doing the weight, and he uses bad form a lot of the time just so he can lift the whole stack on a machine. 
He easily gets goaded into overdoing past his physical limits by other guys in the gym, so one day he was trying to deadlift more weight that he could handle (because a guy smaller than him boasted that he could lift more), used terrible form and screwed up a disk in his back--some accomplishment! NOT! 
Half the time lately he doesn't show up when we're supposed to work out. It's become an almost weekly Saturday event that he oversleeps and shows up hours later or calls me later to tell me he overslept. I realized yesterday when I was at the gym and he didn't show up that I was *relieved* that he wasn't there, and that made me think that it's time to move on my own in the gym again. 
I totally smashed my finger between two 45-lb plates Thursday night when I had finished my last set of benches and was putting up the plates. I was really tired and was in a hurry to get done with my workout and go home because the guys were jammin' at our house that night (blues band) and I wanted to hang out and unwind listening to them play in our livingroom (now called the "band room"). I've never smashed my fingers with the plates that bad before--the underneath side of my finger is purple, too, not just the nail . Of course I've smashed my fingers before, and I hate that way more than any amount of burning muscles and even worse that a lot of flares--it's a wicked painful feeling! But this was the worst one I ever did! 
I've been busting it on the cardio at the gym lately, trying to get more interval work done and get some body fat down and some retained fluids out of my system. But I'm not getting enough sleep, and that's making it a bit difficult. Schedule has been so erratic that I find myself hitting the gym in the morning one day and at night the next--I've opened the place twice in the last two weeks and closed the place twice last week! My finger has been hurting so much that I didn't do any weights Friday or yesterday, just extra cardio. It starts throbbing again every time it touches something!
I'm going to go in and do legs this afternoon, though. Last time I went up on my weights again and my balance was much much better. After being so crippled for so many years before WLS, walked with a cane, sometimes two canes because I was falling constantly if I didn't, I still tend to be nervous around things that make me feel like I might fall, or I would have fallen back when I was really obese. Then when my feet got messed up late last year and I had to have surgery, I found myself losing balance and almost falling when I was trying to do squats because I couldn't feel the front halves of my feet from nerve impingement, and the feelings of instability were back. 
Still tends to be my fear that I have to work through again in the first couple of sets of squats each time. So I have been doing some of the squats on the Smith at first so I could drop down all the way to the bottom not just 90 degree angle, to feel the bottom of the squat without worrying about falling and just feel the movement all the way down and up again. Just getting used to the movement helped me a lot with my confidence. I don't know about everyone else, but I used to be pretty afraid of the bottom of the squat and worrying about balance when I was coming back up, not strength but balance (though maybe they go together?).
I did discover something last week about how I was doing squats that for some reason I never noticed before, and that was that I was coming all the way to the top again and nearly locking out my knees, stopping at the top, and then doing the next one, but last time I did them without doing that, so I pushed up just short of lockout and didn't stop at all and slowly came back down on the squat to the bottom and tried to keep it fluid at the very top and the very bottom but not fast. I could really feel it in my legs--constantly engaging the muscles, rather than start/stop. But I also got through the squat better with better form. It took away from me that time I used to take at the top to think about and sometimes become afraid again of the next squat. The continuous engagement helped me to complete more sets with good form (and give me buns and quads of steel--
!). I remember in the last set I had to stop at the 10th rep and catch a few breaths before I did the last 10 reps but that was ok; I still finished it. 
Workouts are still kind of funny to me--I find that I work against myself a lot of the time, pushing myself past what my body *wants* to do in this constant struggle to push past my own personal best or get back to my last best effort! I'm still working on getting back the tone and body fat level from before the foot surgeries, though the scale says I'm there, but I can look in the mirror and know there is pudge where there wasn't before the foot surgeries, and I'm determined to push that body fat down again and get back the muscle that briefly went south on me (a mass prison break from my body! 
). 
It's working, but it's a helluva fight somedays when I am so friggin' tired I just want to go home and fall on my face! Once I actually get going, I'm fine, but I swear some days I have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other in a tug-of-war in my head to see if I go to the gym or not!
Later...Donna E. 
Also, he never does any cardio and just wants to pump iron. It's also hard to get him to do ab work. That's cool for him because he has a physical job and fills and hauls boxes of bottled water all day. But I'm a girl, and I need to do cardio regularly.
A lot of times what he wants to do exercise-wise I have a different idea in mind. One thing that I'm critical of him for is doing too much weight just to be doing the weight, and he uses bad form a lot of the time just so he can lift the whole stack on a machine. He easily gets goaded into overdoing past his physical limits by other guys in the gym, so one day he was trying to deadlift more weight that he could handle (because a guy smaller than him boasted that he could lift more), used terrible form and screwed up a disk in his back--some accomplishment! NOT!
Half the time lately he doesn't show up when we're supposed to work out. It's become an almost weekly Saturday event that he oversleeps and shows up hours later or calls me later to tell me he overslept. I realized yesterday when I was at the gym and he didn't show up that I was *relieved* that he wasn't there, and that made me think that it's time to move on my own in the gym again.
I totally smashed my finger between two 45-lb plates Thursday night when I had finished my last set of benches and was putting up the plates. I was really tired and was in a hurry to get done with my workout and go home because the guys were jammin' at our house that night (blues band) and I wanted to hang out and unwind listening to them play in our livingroom (now called the "band room"). I've never smashed my fingers with the plates that bad before--the underneath side of my finger is purple, too, not just the nail . Of course I've smashed my fingers before, and I hate that way more than any amount of burning muscles and even worse that a lot of flares--it's a wicked painful feeling! But this was the worst one I ever did!
I've been busting it on the cardio at the gym lately, trying to get more interval work done and get some body fat down and some retained fluids out of my system. But I'm not getting enough sleep, and that's making it a bit difficult. Schedule has been so erratic that I find myself hitting the gym in the morning one day and at night the next--I've opened the place twice in the last two weeks and closed the place twice last week! My finger has been hurting so much that I didn't do any weights Friday or yesterday, just extra cardio. It starts throbbing again every time it touches something!
I'm going to go in and do legs this afternoon, though. Last time I went up on my weights again and my balance was much much better. After being so crippled for so many years before WLS, walked with a cane, sometimes two canes because I was falling constantly if I didn't, I still tend to be nervous around things that make me feel like I might fall, or I would have fallen back when I was really obese. Then when my feet got messed up late last year and I had to have surgery, I found myself losing balance and almost falling when I was trying to do squats because I couldn't feel the front halves of my feet from nerve impingement, and the feelings of instability were back.
Still tends to be my fear that I have to work through again in the first couple of sets of squats each time. So I have been doing some of the squats on the Smith at first so I could drop down all the way to the bottom not just 90 degree angle, to feel the bottom of the squat without worrying about falling and just feel the movement all the way down and up again. Just getting used to the movement helped me a lot with my confidence. I don't know about everyone else, but I used to be pretty afraid of the bottom of the squat and worrying about balance when I was coming back up, not strength but balance (though maybe they go together?).
I did discover something last week about how I was doing squats that for some reason I never noticed before, and that was that I was coming all the way to the top again and nearly locking out my knees, stopping at the top, and then doing the next one, but last time I did them without doing that, so I pushed up just short of lockout and didn't stop at all and slowly came back down on the squat to the bottom and tried to keep it fluid at the very top and the very bottom but not fast. I could really feel it in my legs--constantly engaging the muscles, rather than start/stop. But I also got through the squat better with better form. It took away from me that time I used to take at the top to think about and sometimes become afraid again of the next squat. The continuous engagement helped me to complete more sets with good form (and give me buns and quads of steel-- !). I remember in the last set I had to stop at the 10th rep and catch a few breaths before I did the last 10 reps but that was ok; I still finished it.
Workouts are still kind of funny to me--I find that I work against myself a lot of the time, pushing myself past what my body *wants* to do in this constant struggle to push past my own personal best or get back to my last best effort! I'm still working on getting back the tone and body fat level from before the foot surgeries, though the scale says I'm there, but I can look in the mirror and know there is pudge where there wasn't before the foot surgeries, and I'm determined to push that body fat down again and get back the muscle that briefly went south on me (a mass prison break from my body! ).
It's working, but it's a helluva fight somedays when I am so friggin' tired I just want to go home and fall on my face! Once I actually get going, I'm fine, but I swear some days I have a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other in a tug-of-war in my head to see if I go to the gym or not!
Later...Donna E. 
I just wonder how old is "Horse" sounds like a young dude to me. They have that mentalilty. One day when he is old and crippled he will realize it. Naw, he probably won't.
I broke my finger in November by smashing it while racking a 35# dumbbell. It slipped and my finger got caught between the weight and the rack. OMG 
Talk about PAIN!!!! It turned all kinds of pretty colors. Thank GOD for my artificial nails, because if it had landed on my real nail, that would have been split it in two. Maybe you should have yours checked. I made a really clean break.... that crap hurts. I have smashed my fingers so many times....owwww...but it's like...ok suck it up, can't cry in front of the boys...
I know about the knee thing! The ONLY time I dare push past and go for max amounts is when Earl is there to spot me. I have a terrible fear of my knees blowing or fear of getting trapped under the bar. I trust him. I know there are guys at the gym that would spot me, but I don't know them well enough yet to get them to spot. If he's there, I can go all out. NO FEAR!! But the thought of someone not spotting correctly takes all the concentration out of it!
Hey, it's ok to have a slug day you know! I had one thursday and just pushed my work out to Friday. I had a good one friday! Better to have an optimum workout than to go and not get your full potential.
Take it easy!
Hugs,
Val
I broke my finger in November by smashing it while racking a 35# dumbbell. It slipped and my finger got caught between the weight and the rack. OMG Talk about PAIN!!!! It turned all kinds of pretty colors. Thank GOD for my artificial nails, because if it had landed on my real nail, that would have been split it in two. Maybe you should have yours checked. I made a really clean break.... that crap hurts. I have smashed my fingers so many times....owwww...but it's like...ok suck it up, can't cry in front of the boys...
I know about the knee thing! The ONLY time I dare push past and go for max amounts is when Earl is there to spot me. I have a terrible fear of my knees blowing or fear of getting trapped under the bar. I trust him. I know there are guys at the gym that would spot me, but I don't know them well enough yet to get them to spot. If he's there, I can go all out. NO FEAR!! But the thought of someone not spotting correctly takes all the concentration out of it!
Hey, it's ok to have a slug day you know! I had one thursday and just pushed my work out to Friday. I had a good one friday! Better to have an optimum workout than to go and not get your full potential.
Take it easy!
Hugs,
Val Oh yeah, *Horse* is not chronologically young, but mentally a bit immature. He's actually 40 years old, but many years ago he burned out a few too many brain cells as a hard-core drug addict, though he's cleaned up his life a number of years ago, but what he's got left is pretty much what he's got now. He has a good heart--a really good heart, but not exactly a rocket scientist. I don't know how bright he was before the drug abuse, and maybe not much better, but the limitations on his ability to process information suggest brain damage to me. I like him because he would never think of hitting on me, and our relationship is purely workout-related. But he's pig-headed at times and it wears on my patience when he is like that, kind of like I feel more like a parent than a workout partner, even though I'm only 5 years older than him. He's very childlike, which is also why I call him "BamBam"!
Actually, I think I may have crushed some of the first joint in my finger, because I still can't move it at all, though the swelling has gone down at the joint somewhat. Oh yeah about sucking it up: while I was in the weight room when that happened, they heard one f*** from me and looked at my finger (of course), and I'm like, "hey I'm cool; I'm sure it's nothing" while sticking my finger in my ice water bottle, acting like it was no big deal! Then I casually sauntered over to the women's locker room and I'm holding onto my hand and jumping up and down and going, "ow, ow, owee, ow that hurts!" for about, oh, 10 minutes, then I thought, ok, I'm going back in the weight room and finish my workout, but the thought of touching *anything* was unbearable, so I though I would do some cardio and call it a day but then I realized I'd have to touch something there, and my finger was throbbing like crazy, so I just went home.
That fear thing on the squats was the most distracting after I stopped working out with a trainer, and was making it impossible for me to squat in the rack by myself, and my form deteriorated rapidly and I felt overwhelmed. My trainer suggested that I get some music to listen to, to help me focus, since I didn't have his drill sergeant voice behind telling me to stop slacking and keep moving! I did it, uploaded some real head banger music onto my iPod and that did the trick! As far as the distraction is concerned, but when I know that I'm close to my limit, I feel like I need the spot just to keep me from caving into the fear. But I've noticed that every time I have done legs with Mark, he'd be off at his rack working his squats, and in between, he didn't even get behind me or up close to me to spot me on the squats, though he stood at a distance and tried to be encouraging with words.
But like you said, I don't find most people know how to spot correctly on squats anyway, but my old trainer was great. He would have his hands close on the bottom of the squat, and would give me just enough of a contact on the push that I felt like he was lifting me a little, though he swears he only had to touch me and I responded like he was lifting. Probably all psychological.
I used to think I couldn't spot the heavy weights on the bench and whatnot with guys, but I've learned to do that well. Judging when to actually assist is really important, or rather when *not* to assist and how much to assist to get the bar back on the rack and to get past that break point in between on the push but not too much. The guys just need a light touch and maybe a little pull if they hit failure early in the rep but not a whole lot.
I find it harder to spot on the standing preacher curls with the heavy weights because I have to take the whole bar and not just give a little help. When they get much past 120 lbs, that's pretty high for me to take the whole barbell when I'm a shorty, so I use a step up so I'm higher up to take it, and that works better.
Hugs, Donna E.
Donna, sounds painful. I squished my pinky between 2 25lb plates and had tears in my eyes. My partner....well he just eggs me on!!!! LOL
calling me a wimp, wussy, etc. (jokingly of course)....It took it about 1 1/2 weeks before I could put pressure on it. After I said something to someone at the gym they told me to wrap it in surgical tape....I thought too little too late.......I would think it would make it hurt even more. But who am I?
Stacy, thanks for the info on the websites! You are a great help for someone who is computer illiterate!!!
Have a good day all! Tammy
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