Just as I was about to write piece about this, Vox Day weighed in on Sigma Game about this very subject. Although my take on it is little bit different. His is about calculating your max, say for a bench press. He issued a challenge to his readers to test the method.
Love to do it, but I’m mortified by my numbers.
I got, or rather shall I say glommed, the senior citizen discount to join Plano parks. Plano’s recreation centers are fantastic. The bigger ones sport Olympic pools where you can do laps until you puke. The exercise centers rival any commercial gym. My thought was it was back to get into the iron in the place where I became mighty, which is literally a mile away from me. This was the week to head back for my punishment.
I subscribed online and got a nice email but really nothing else. I knew that I had the scan a pass to enter the place. Well, I ain’t got no pass. So I swung by there the other day to see what the deal was, figuring they just have to print one out for me which is exactly what they did.
There were two women at the desk when I walked up. A younger one and a, shall we say, very senior citizen. The older lady was the first one to pipe up so she’s one that helped me out. All I needed was a pass to be registered to my account, which she did while reminding me that you can go to any of the Plano parks which I already knew having been here before. She also told me that there was a very nice senior center down the street on 16th St. that had bridge, poker, and all sorts of [geezer] activities, and including exercise facilities, for a senior gentlemen such as myself.
Say what?
I’m grabbing the discount. I’m not part of that crowd yet. That said, it may be worth checking out and see if they have some sort of free weights so I don’t have to put up with the gym rat crowd.
My thought was that I would run Tuesday and Thursday late afternoon, hop in the truck, and go pump some iron to finish off my workout. What I want in the afternoons is to lessen the chance of running into the puppies. These are the high schoolers to get out of school and head to the fitness area to socialize. I also am trying to avoid the gym kings and queens that show up later.
So five o’clock in the afternoon was not a bad time. There was one old lady who was working with a thot trainer, a young couple, and a bunch of people that look like they stopped there on the way home from work and just wanted to get’er done.
There was one little high school kid, who looked like a bantam rooster, monopolizing the bench/squat rack. Weighing in at probably 98 lbs. soaking wet, he looked like Anthony Michael Hall in the movie 16 Candles, only skinnier, with that short on the sides rooster comb top that you see amongst the cool kids these days. He had earbuds in and was reclining on the bar that he was supposed to be bench pressing as he clocked everybody else in the gym. Really sad case. After he left that station I watched him a bit and he was utterly clueless. I wanted to go up and say “boy! I say boy, looky here. Yer doing it all wrong. Yer gonna hurt yersef. Stop eyeballing whatsapp and study ‘starting strength’.”
Meh…he’ll find out soon enough. Mean old silverbacks like me want nothing to do with puppies.
So back to the cruel iron mistress.
For the most part I’d been keeping up trying to work some muscle back into the shoulder that I had the rotator cuff repaired. I worked my way up to doing full push-ups, which I would do until feeling some pain, which was like ten before the dagger was inserted in it. All that got put on hold when had my hernia repaired.
For the most part I’m pretty pleased with myself. I kept everything very light, and worked on form. So when I did squats I simply did them with the [Olympic] bar. I did curls, bench press, squats, dead lifts, military press, as well as the mobility exercises for my shoulder (rows, reverse row, that sort of thing)
But what I found out was that I should’ve followed up with a lot more PT after my shoulder surgery. My right arm worked, and could lift a decent amount of weight. My left could not. Matter fact I was struggling with 70 pounds on the bench press. More of a control thing than a strength thing, since my left arm was missing a ton of muscles that you would use to control. What a shitshow. Not as bad as after cancer therapy, but close.
It’ll come back. It came back quickly after therapy.
The other funny thing was deadlifts. Now those I was still somewhat respectable, at about 120 pounds. It felt really good. Punishing, but good. But I was huffing and puffing like a champion after each set. On set three, my left hamstring pretty much hit the warning buzzer telling me to stop. And being the sensible older gentleman that I am, I did.
After getting home, as the night wore on I felt pain and stiffness rolling in like a thunderstorm. But it wasn’t so bad. I woke up at about 1:30 in the morning, ate some Tylenol, and went immediately back to sleep. When I woke up, I was a little stiff, but nothing really too bad. It felt good walking the dogs, working out the stiffness in my hips and my legs.
So that tells me I’m on the right track. Enough punishment to feel that I’m doing the work, but not so much that I can’t recover quickly. Definitely going to keep this up with my schedule. Like running, it appears to be something my body craves.
On my monthly weigh-in this week, I clocked in at an empty weight of 188 pounds. That’s astonishing. But like I’ve said before, with the diet and exercise routine that I have I will probably level off between 170 and 180.
Feeling fit. Ready put some meat back on the bones.
Inspected By Pat 