Thursday, October 25, 2007

meat head

i am not biking this week and i have been particularly restless, so today i decided i'd go to the gym to pump some iron.

i went at lunch at work when a couple of my friends were going to some yoga class. this was good for me because it gave me an hour limit. i don't know what it is, but the weight room can be like a black hole, in the sense that i want to do every single possible lift when i get there.

this began sometime in high school, when, after track or xc practice, i'd always be there 30 minutes later than everyone else. (i just don't know how people did all their exercises on their list so quickly.)

my fondest memory of the weight room was in 10th grade. our teachers were on a prolonged strike, for a couple of months. (this kinda ruled.) my electives were canceled, so in the afternoon i didn't have cooking, gym, or band. one day, my friend loren and i went to the weight room. i hadn't lifted in about 8 months (since last years track season, and this was before we started our season that year). i think we were pumping iron for over two hours. the next day, my arms wouldn't stop pulsating. in fact, i couldn't straighten my arms for over a week; they were stuck at 145 degrees.

in college i was probably just as dumb. my track coach my freshman year was an idiot and had us lift four days a week before our running workouts. (i feel okay calling him an idiot because he got fired mid-season for embezzling money from the team....) anyway, mondays we'd do about 15 lower body lifts/exercises. then we'd go upstairs to the indoor track and do sprint drills. then we'd do a bunch of crazy plyometric box jumping. then we'd strap weighted vests on and we'd do 200m repeats until we fell over. then, to top it off, he'd put us in these harnesses attached to dog sleds with weights on them and we'd have to do 55m sprints pulling the sleds. we'd get out of practice so late, we'd quickly shower, put on our street clothes and have to run to the cafeteria before the doors closed so we could eat dinner. my hair used to freeze in little icicles.

today i went in the weight room with no plan, other than to not do lower body. a couple months ago i met this really cool guy paul who used to be a body builder. in fact, he used to be mr. california and mr. usa! (cool huh?) i had asked him about weight lifting when i met him and he gave me some cool advice. i guess he used to weight lift with arnold schwartzenegger (pre governor biz) and he said that they'd just go in the weight room, look around at the machines, do what they felt they needed to do on that day. he told me to take this approach with lifting and biking generally: doing what i feel my body needs to do that and being done when it feels like it. that sounds great to me, because i don't really plan anything too well. so today i walked in the weight room with that attitude- just looked around and started doing lifts. whatever lifts i wanted. some i did more reps than others. some more sets than others. some i did lower weight higher reps, some i tried to use a bit more weight. i think i made pretty good decisions: thinking about riding a bike, what muscles are weak, etc.

that made it sound like the weight room is a peaceful place. it can be. but it is also a weird place. i mean....this, for example. why? nothing is grosser than a thick neck. dudes really need to lay off this thing. it is totally ruining their game. i often want to tell guys this, but i haven't quite found the right words. ("thick necks are fucking disgusting" isn't quite it.)

now, there are lots of meat heads in the weight room who grunt a lot. oh yeah muscle man, you gonna really do that power clean with all that weight on there? well, i'm gonna totally school your shit and do these lat raises with 10lbs. what? what? eat it. (that is my internal monologue, or something along those lines, as i do not always do lat raises.)

i only had an hour to get jacked, so that was good to have a limit of time. if i was there any longer, seeing all those muscle men doing the power lifts would have made me want to do them, and i shouldn't be doing them. but, shit, i love power lifts. it is sweet to be a chick doing power lifts really good in the gym with a bunch of meat heads. my form got pretty sweet when i was in college cause my work study job was the "towel girl" at the athletic center. my boss was the equipment manager and when i wasn't folding towels, organizing football butt pads, or folding wrestling uniforms, he'd take me to the weight room to do power lifts. (how sweet was that, on the clock!) he used to be a football coach, so he'd make me do the cleans, good mornings, dead lifts, squats, and that wacko one where you'd squat and then lift the bar over your head. then sometimes i would go back at peak lifting hours to show off my skillz....right when all the wrestlers were in there. it was especially fun to do power lifts in front of all those lame-o ass girls on the elliptical machine....gag me. but i digress.....

anyway, i came back to work after being very sensible today in the weight room. while walking back, i ran into the IT guy at my office and he asked where i was. i told him i was "gettin' jaaaaacked" and then showed him my arm muscle. he pulled out some IT-guy gadget and took this picture.

yeah, pretty puny i know. :(

oh, my quads are puny too: 58.75cm.

6 comments:

~ lauren said...

that about looks like my arm too.

maybe you should start posting arm measurements too - but in a flexed state.

and you know what they say about thick necks, right?

place_holder said...

i hope back-n-arm expert peter is going to chime in on this entry.

i wonder if your quads will get puny enough for your head size, like mine.

Itinerant Rick said...

You are so badass. Cutting locks with hacksaws, pumping iron. What's next? I will catch you in quad measurements, probably by Christmas. Mine are increasing and you and Chatterbox are slimmin' down.

shawn hatfield said...

looks like my arms too... and ever since we stopped racing at hellyer, i've had some quad shrinkage. boo hoo. i just can't stand sitting inside a gym pumping iron.. how do people do that and stay sane?

place_holder said...

quads thursday!!!

Auffderbach said...

You play alto sax? Cool!
You know what they call two alto sax players playing in unison?
A minor 2nd.

Therefore, you know that in order for two alto players to play in unison you have to take away one of
the saxes.

And I bet you know that the range of an alto sax is at least 35-40 feet if you have any kind of an arm!

Just couldn't resist.

This is probably the first time you've heard these jokes, today.