Take Solace Where You Find It

It took me a while to get out of the house this morning because I was dreading an over-crowded gym. Maybe people are taking leave early for Spring break but the gym was half empty when I got there. Yay! I'm not quite sure why people are such idiots though. There's one Precor elliptical available but someone's jacket is draped over the back of it. I motion to the woman pedaling on the adjacent machine and she points to Flirty Girl on the Jacob's Ladder. I pull out an earpiece and ask her if the hoodie's hers. She's embarrassed and unhooks herself from the machine to retrieve it. As soon as she jumps off, a dude jumps onto it. It's apparently very popular lately due to the "climbing competition". My gym likes to give away T-shirts for participants of various cardio challenges. I've never signed up for any of them, and never will. It's just not what I do.

Then I move to the Bench and knock out some high rep sets. I feel pretty good, but I have to wait for a young dude dead lifting in front of the mirrored wall. He's got a pair of 45s on each side and a few smaller plates. I don't want to stare so I don't count how much weight he's pulling. When he starts to strip the bar, I ask him if he's done and then if he can just leave the last plate on. Yay! It means I don't warm up with the bar or 95 lbs, but not having to wrestle the plates saves me a lot of energy. I move from 135 to 155 to 175 lbs fairly quickly. Then I add two tiny plates. 180 lbs. I even remember to video it, but I don't like how I've positioned my cell. I'm flanked by The Mayor and Big Eyeglass Dude, both on Inclined Benches angled behind me. Eventually I pull off the 2.25 lb plates and replace them with 5s. That's 185 lbs. This is damn heavy. Again, I can only manage a weird shrug-like rowing motion. But I remember to video it as well. Then I strip the bar down to 135 and knock out a 20-repper, just for fun.

My hands are tired. The VGs don't prevent callouses from forming at the top of my palms directly beneath my knuckles. I only do some Rip Crushes for triceps today because I don't think I can do anything else. But I take that EZ bar and knock out BB curls, even upping the weight a bit. I check my form in the mirror because my elbows tend to move back as I curl. Then I swap the EZ bar for a solid bar and do a few Reverse Grip BB Curls. In the back of my mind I know I should do some abs as well, but instead, I clamber up the Step Mill for 20 minutes. When I'm done, I drop onto the Mat, put my hoodie back on and proceed to grit my teeth through crunches and knee-to-elbow-crunches. If I do a full Mat Stretch with my hoodie on, it tends to flip over my back and head so I have to take it off now that I've stopped dripping all over the place. The Dive Bomber Push Ups are easy. The plank is hard. Everything else is cake.

The gym scale reads 114.2 lbs. I'm definitely heavier and bigger. When I get home, I check my own scale and it tells me that I'm 112.2 lbs and again, 20.8% Body Fat. Well, at least I'm not fatter. I already knew I was bigger. I don't know if the BF is correct or not because I see photos of so many people who look fatter than I am and claim to be 10-15% BF. I look at them and tell myself Whoa, there's no way they're leaner than me. I do appreciate photos of people who compete, showing how they look in the off-season. Now I don't feel so bad about not being as lean as I'd like to be. But with summer coming, I'm feeling the need to strip off a bit of this smoothness.

Friday Workout

20 min Precor = 2.05 miles

Flat BB Bench Press
12x45 lbs (bar)
3x20x95 lbs
5x95 lbs (done right after last set)

RG BB Row
12x135 lbs (use VGs all rows)
12x155 lbs
12x175 lbs
10x180 lbs (+5 lbs Yay!) video
8x185 lbs +10 lbs Yay! PB video
20x135 lbs (for fun)

RIP Crushers (with 15 lb EZ bar & 2.5 lb Rogue ProLoc collars)
12x37.5 lbs
3x12x47.5 lbs

BB Curls (with 15 lb EZ bar & 2.5 lb Rogue ProLoc collars)
3x12x47.5 lbs
2x12x52.5 lbs
12x57.5 lbs

RG BB Curls (solid straight BB)
20x40 lbs
3x20x50 lbs

20 min Matrix Step Mill = 1202 steps

50 Crunches / 50 Knee to Elbow Crunches / 100 Crunches / 50 Knee to Elbow Crunches

Mat Stretch with 2x12 DBPUs, 60-second plank, splits, upper & lower back stretches