wshaffer

I've had any number of things derail my workout plans over the years, but this was a new one. On Thursday afternoons, I usually go for a long walk along the pedestrian footpath that runs along Arastradero Road, near where I work. This week, I was actually thinking of trying out a nice easy jog along that route. But on Wednesday, a jogger was assaulted at gunpoint right on a section of the path that I regularly travel, and the suspect hasn't been apprehended. So, I'm feeling a bit weird about my lovely solitary walks and jogs.

I brought my running gear to work yesterday, and was just going to go run sprints by myself on the soccer field, but then I remembered that my personal trainer teaches a bootcamp class on Thursday afternoons. I figured I would give something new a try.

The class setup was really fun - in honor of Easter, my trainer had written a bunch of different exercises on slips of paper, placed them in plastic Easter eggs, and hidden the eggs around the area outside the gym. We were divided into teams - each team had to find 5 eggs. Then we had a set period of time to do the exercises from all the eggs, and then the teams swapped exercises. (So we ended up doing 3 or 4 rounds.)

In general, the experience reminded me of all the things I hate and all the things I love about group fitness classes.

The things I hate:
1. Gratuitous appeals to weight loss/aesthetic goals. My trainer is actually really good about not doing this, but that doesn't stop the other particpants from shouting out things like, "We're doing this for our beach bodies!"
2. Random and haphazard exercise selection. I'm used to training with specific goals and progression in mind, and bootcamp classes don't really do that. You'll get exercises that you don't know how to do properly (Hello, box jumps!), exercises that you don't want to do (Crunches, for real? In 2018? Haven't you all read Stuart McGill?), exercises that are too hard, and exercises that are too easy.
3. Lifting weights and running are both almost forms of meditation for me. When I finish a session, I don't just get the physical benefits, but I usually feel mentally refreshed, calmer, and more focused. Doing burpees like a lunatic with 20 other people doesn't really have the same effect.

Things I love:
1. I like the novelty. It's fun to try new things.
2. It does get your heart rate up like whoah.
3. The cameraderie. There was lots of encouragement, high-fiving, and lots of commiseration in the locker room afterwards about how much burpees suck. (Yes, I hate other people and I love other people. Did you expect me to be consistent?)

Also, I managed to teach one of my teammates how to do a kettlebell swing without referencing anything NSFW, which is an achievement since a kettlebell swing basically consists of humping the air while holding a cannonball on a handle.

Group fitness classes also offer an interesting opportunity to measure up your fitness levels against a bunch of other people. I used to be able to confidently assume that I would stand out as the least fit person in any group fitness class. (Which isn't so bad - if you don't let it hit your self-esteem, you can serve a socially useful function.) Now, not so much. I'm still a noticeably slow runner, although my endurance isn't bad. I'm terrible at burpees and other similar exercises that involve flinging yourself up and down a lot. I'm reasonably good at anything requiring core strength. I'm unsurprisingly pretty darn good at anything that requires leg strength.

I don't think I'll do the bootcamp class on a regular basis, but I might join it now and again for a change of pace.

I hit 220 lbs on the deadlift today. I may make that 225 goal my trainer and I set faster than we thought.

Possibly even more exciting: I am now capable of doing a 20 to 30 lb goblet squat to below parallel. Like hamstrings and calves touching below parallel. I can't get that low in a bodyweight squat, and I can't get that low in a back squat, but the fact that I can do it in a goblet squat means that there's nothing biomechanical preventing me from getting that low.

Last week, I offhandedly mentioned to Tim, my personal trainer, that if the reaction on Twitter/Facebook was anything to go by, the Wonder Woman movie was going to bring in a lot of women interested in strength training. Tim hasn't seen a movie in the theater in about 5 years, but went to see Wonder Woman and loved it.

Now I really have to go see it, because he keep dropping Wonder Woman references while training me.

A scoop of Optimum Nutrition vanilla flavor whey powder plus a teaspoon of matcha powder actually makes a tasty enough protein shake that I might be tempted to drink it even if I didn't think that it would help my lifting performance and recovery.

My push ups progress has kind of plateaued for a while, so I'm changing things up a bit - trying things like more reps with my hands elevated higher, more negatives, etc. It's too early to tell if it will actually increase the number of push ups I can do, but my triceps are growing, which is kind of nice during tank top season.

Deadlift continues to come along nicely. I got really close to lifting 210lbs last week - I got the bar about 2 inches off the ground and then couldn't pull it any higher. Soon!

So, I had my first session with a new personal trainer today. I was pretty sure that this guy would be good for me to work with, since my previous trainer had referred me to him. I think we're going to get along great. I mean, he's clearly not used to middle-aged obese women whose goal is to lift things that weigh more than they do, but he's more than happy to train for that. And he did a nice thorough assessment during our first session, asked smart questions about my injury history, clearly keeps up with new developments in the strength and conditioning field by reading and going to conferences, and has a nice laid-back style.

One of the nice thing about going through an assessment with a new trainer is that you get a nice set of benchmarks of how far you've come. I can now hold a plank for 30 seconds easily. I may need to stop making jokes about how I have a set of old rubber bands where my abs should be.

I can do 14 push ups with my hands elevated on a weight bench.

I also tried some TRX pushups just for giggles. Giggles as in "Ha ha ha...no." I managed a few, but my left elbow kinda hated me. I try not to do things that make my elbow hate me.

Thirteen pushups in a row with my hands elevated on the weight bench. I creep ever closer to the elusive push up from the floor.

I also did some messing around with power cleans for the first time in a while. I think I probably need to ask my trainer for some pointers on technique. I can clean 65lbs. fairly easily, but I'm not comfortable putting more weight on the bar until I'm more confident of my form.

As I was leaving the gym, I overheard this conversation between my trainer and another client.

Client: Trainer, I have to confess! I had half a bagel this morning.
Trainer: That's good. That means you had some carbs.

This is part of the reason why I train with this trainer, and not the dude who goes around telling people not to eat carrots because they have "too much sugar".

I can now do 10 pushups in a row with my hands elevated on a weight bench.

I'm now interspersing sets of 4 hands-elevated pushups between my other sets during my workout. I completed a total of 74 hands-elevated pushups today.

I also accidentally did an asymmetrical farmer's walk today, when I picked up a 40lb dumbbell and a 45lb dumbbell instead of two 40s, and then didn't notice until I'd walked across the gym and back. Duh.

I can now do 7 push-ups in a row with my hands elevated on a weight bench. Did a total of 49 hands-elevated push ups in today's workout. Did not go over and correct the form of the dude doing push ups (from the floor) next to me, though I was sorely tempted. "Excuse me, sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Range of Motion?"

I'm slowly improving my goblet squat as well. Even if my range of motion in the squat is not what I would like it to be.

The International World Weightlifting Championships have been going on all this past week in Houston, and many of the sessions have been streaming on espn.com, so I've gotten to be a total sports nut this week. I think I've now watched more Olympic weightlifting in the past week than I had previously in my entire life.

There have been some pretty dramatic moments in the competition, but I don't think anything will beat what happened in the women's under-75kg weight class competition yesterday. Just to give a little bit of context for those not familiar with weightlifting: Each lifter has to perform two lifts - the snatch (lifting the bar from the ground to overhead in essentially a single movement) and the clean and jerk (lifting the bar from the ground to the shoulders, and then overhead). They get three attempts at each lift, and the highest weight they manage on each lift is added together to form their total score.

In the video, you'll see North Korea's Rim Jong Sim perform two successful lifts in the snatch. Her third lift goes wrong, and she lands pretty hard on her left knee and has to be helped off the platform. At that point, I thought she was probably out of the competition. But she comes back for the clean and jerk, successfully lifts 150kg, and then falls over. And then manages to limp back onto the platform a few minutes later to lift 155kg. And then falls over. And then has an unsuccessful try at 157kg. She ended up with silver medals in the snatch, the clean and jerk, and the overall total. And if there were a gold medal in sheer guts, she'd have that.

By the end there, I was in agreement with the ESPN commentators, who were asking, "Is it possible for a doctor to stop this, the way they can stop a fight in boxing?" (Apparently not.) The news articles I've read make it sound like it was Rim's decision to keep lifting, and not her coaches', but, wow, it was both inspiring and painful to watch. I really hope she recovers quickly, because, damn, she's earned herself another shot at the Olympics next year.

(This video doesn't show the medal ceremony, in which Rim was helped to the podium by the gold and bronze medal winners and then had someone standing behind her the entire time holding her upright. I don't think the IWF deals with injured medalists very often - I'd have brought the poor woman a chair.)