Need some help?

I'd just finished up my leg press work and had taken one of the six 45lb plates off.  It is not something I enjoy but it must be done; not everyone uses the same weight so I need to take them off, etiquette.  One off and five to go and a tall guy approaches, saying something to me.  I can't hear him because I'm in my zone; my music is blasting away so I pull a plug out of my ear to hear what he has to say.  "Need some help?"  I was sort of dumbfounded for a moment and paused; but it didn't take me long to blurt out "NO."  "Oh, I was just going to help you," he says; placing the plate back on the machine and walks away.  Really?  I was a little taken back; what had just happened?  Was this a guy just trying to be polite and chivalrous?   Or was it a macho moment of "stand back little lady, I'll lift that?"  I wasn't sure.

I pondered the interaction on the way home.  Was I just being silly by feeling like he had insulted me?  Should I have felt appreciative for his offer of assistance?  Hmmmmm?  Much to think about.  I had about fifteen minutes before I got home; and that was all the time that I was giving this.  I mulled it around; looked at it from many different directions and came to a conclusion.  It was most definitely not the thing to do.  Anywhere else and it would have been fine; but in the gym where we are all lifting?   No.  I didn't want help; I'm was there lifting weights, you moron.  Did I look like a little frail thing trying to get a weight off the machine that was far out of my range of ability?  Doubtful.  Can you imagine walking up to a guy who is setting up his weights and asking him "need help?"  Pretty big insult.  I had just finished lifting six; I didn't need help lifting one off at a time.
  Okay, let's just say I was at Home Depot struggling to get a large pumpkin into my cart; then it would be appropriate to ask if I'd like some help.  I would have thanked the gentleman for assisting me.  But in the gym lifting, is not the time when a woman wants assistance; unless of course they ask for it.  I have actually asked a guy to get a pully down for me that was waaay out of my reach.  At only 5' 1" there is a lot out of my reach and I am accustom to asking for help then. 

Today at the gym was weird and I still think that it was really weird.  Imagine if I had taken him up on his offer; just standing there watching him lift all the weights off.  I could have painted my nails while I waited.  JK.  It is just very strange to have someone ask if you want them to assist you with lifting weights; when you are in the weight room...lifting weights.  Right? 

If I am going to drop a weight on my head; then yes, please assist me or anyone else in danger.  But as far as asking if a woman needs help lifting when she is in the gym lifting?  Not so much.  Save the chivalry for when I want the machine you are hogging while chatting with your friend.  ;)

Waiting,.........for your machine

Today was upper body day for me; which means when I get to the gym I have a great deal of light weight work to do before I head to the heavy stuff.  I don't stretch until I've lifted some light weights and warmed up my muscles either so I typically head over to the cables.  I can cover just about everything on them; a rubber band would also work for a light lifting warm up.  As I rounded the corner I spotted a guy who was going in the same direction; I hadn't seen him earlier or I would have picked up my pace.  He got to the machine a fraction of a second before me, so he got it.  My rule is whoever gets there first wins.  I have beaten guys before to a machine when they declared "I was going to use that."  Really?  Me too and I'm am right here using it now.  I just shrug and say "sorry," obviously without really meaning sorry.  Ya snooze ya lose dude.  :)

So I lost this morning and altered my destination; making a right turn and heading over to the lat pull down bar.  I can get quite a bit done on that as well before I start my real workout.  I then hit the rope tricep cable and warmed them up.   (Triceps, the muscle all ladies should be working on)  Once I'd done my light lifting I wanted to use the cable machine but 'he' was still on it.  I waited on the pull up machine doing several reps until I got to the my heavy stuff.  I pulled myself up for one last grunting rep just as he picked up his stuff and vacated MY MACHINE, just kidding, actually not really.  ;)

On the cable machine I can warm up all of my muscles by giving them a quick light lift.  If I want to do that with separate weights it takes a while and although I am dedicated to my workouts; I don't like to waste time, I'm in and out as fast as I can accomplish what I want to.  Chest, biceps, triceps, lats, upper back, shoulders and traps; all warmed up and ready to roll.  Having injured myself before by pushing too heavy, too soon; I've learned my lesson and am very careful now when lifting and stretching.  DO NOT STRETCH BEFORE WARMING UP.

All done on the cables; I was ready to hit the heavy stuff and headed over in that direction just as a guy a head of me grabs my weights.  I scan up and down the weight rack and realize that he has the last 25lb.  So, I have to wait again; but I don't wait and waste time; I go one dumbell down and get in a good workout before I can have my weight.  This of course will mean that I cannot pump out the same number of sets or reps with the heavier weight but that is perfectly fine.  More reps with a lighter weight is a good change once in a while.

Finally I head to the seated cable rowing machine to work out my upper back.  A nice gentleman and I arrive at the same time; he says something to me and motions toward the machine.  Being that my music is blasting in my ears; drowning out the mundane sounds of gym chatter, I pull one earbud out.  He says again "do you want to use this machine?" Nice.  I thank him, set my weight and motor through my exercises.  There are considerate and polite people in the gym; there are also people who think that they own the equipment.  I wish everyone understood the etiquette in the gym; but unfortunately that is not the case.  What I have found is that the more serious folks are the ones who share nicely; the ones who are there to strut their stuff?  Not so much.  

A pain in the neck

                               http://www.preventdisease.com/home/muscleatlas/shtraplat.shtml


I've been up now for almost a half hour; I'm waiting for my headache to go away.  Headaches suck, they make working out very difficult and are sadly all too common for me.  I have been involved in a total of four rear end collisions in my life.  This has left me with a bum neck; it bothers me often and can definitely put a kink (pardon the pun) in my working out.  My first rear end impact was when I was only 16 years old and I guess that got the ball rolling as far as my neck goes.  The next three have been since living in California and I really hope that I don't keep counting.  None of the accidents have been a fault of mine; but I have suffered the repercussions.

The second hit but first one in California was due to a new sixteen year old driver who says he didn't see me in the left turning lane.  As a result he hit me at full speed as I was stopped waiting for a green light to turn.  That sent me into the van in front of me and her into the car in front of her.  It was quite a mess and my neck suffered.  A couple years later I was in the car with my husband and we were stopped at a light.  A woman in an Escalade smashed into us as she "apparently" reached down to stop a water bottle from rolling around her feet.  She never saw us but we sure felt her when she hit.  The last and hopefully final impact was caused by a little dog running around the street.  A woman decided that she should stop in the middle of the street so that other cars would stop and the dog would be safe.  Well, I stopped easily when I saw her but the woman driving the van that hit me did not.  I truly believe that she was texting but it was apparently never looked into.  I heard her coming, her tires locked up and the screeching was something that you never want to hear and see behind you.  I looked into my rear view mirror and braced for impact; hoping with everything in me that she would stop before getting to me, nope. 

So I have a very bad neck which I have to deal with.   There is no other choice but to deal with it.  Sure it makes me very angry that I have to deal with it and as I sit here waiting for me Advil to kick in; I have time to write.  I have headaches, neck pain that goes down into my shoulders and impacts my trapezius dorsi.   I do a great deal of stretching for it and if you happen to see me at the gym you will often see me hanging around trying to stretch the kinks out.  The accumulative effect has caused issues all down my back which really benefit from the heavy stretching. I hang on the pull down bar and use the cables to stretch out my entire back, neck and traps. 

No matter what you are dealing with; and almost everyone is dealing with some sort of health or physical issue, there are ways around it.  It is all about what you want to do; how much you want it and how you go after it.  For me, I'm now ready to hit the gym; headache gone for now so I'll take advantage of the moment.  Have a great day. 

My lifting nephew - All in the family part #1

Part #1 of my All in the family series.  A huge thank you to my amazing nephew for this blog.   

My name is Davis Forman and I am Sherri Regalbuto’s nephew. Home for me is Toronto, Canada, but I am currently working on my master’s degree in neuromuscular physiology out on the East coast. I’m 24 years old and have been thoroughly obsessed with weight lifting/bodybuilding for more than ten years. This addiction started out as just a hobby/something to do in my first year of high school, but has since evolved into a lifestyle. The high school that I went to was actually brand new the year I started, with its official grand opening occurring seven months after classes began. It had the absolute best facilities available, including a state of the art weight room that was used for the ‘Weight Club.’ The Weight Club was an after school program that ran for two hours following the final bell, and was offered to all students for just $50 (I have yet to find a membership anywhere that can beat that price). Any student who joined could workout for two hours after school, Monday to Friday under the supervision and guidance of qualified coaches. Ironically, I had no intention of ever joining. I was a scrawny kid with toothpick limbs and was as shy as shy came; the whole ‘gym’ idea was a little intimidating. But my parents were concerned that I wasn’t committing myself to enough school activities and so ‘gently asserted’ that I join. I can’t thank them enough for pushing me, for it changed my life.

Almost no one in the school participated in the Weight Club in the first year, and while I remained small, my strength quickly surpassed my peers. In my second year, I was breaking school records and it was a trend that would continue until I graduated. Those feats single-handedly changed my identity; that of a tiny book nerd who the jocks could cheat off of to one of the strongest kids in the school. My confidence exploded! I walked taller, spoke up more often and was simply more comfortable in pretty much any situation. But as great as those changes were, and they were great, the most important thing I took away from the Weight Club was a new love. Not a hobby, but a love. I absolutely loved working out. The gym wasn't just how other’s identified me, but it was also how I identified myself. I had discovered a new way of life that I was whole-heartedly committed to, and that devotion has since led me to unexpected, but certainly welcomed, success. It was because of weight lifting that I not only enrolled, but excelled in an undergraduate program in Kinesiology, for I was driven to learn more about the human body and how I could improve it.

To complete an exhaustive list of all the positives that the gym and weight lifting have had upon my life would be an impossible task, but there are several important ones that stand out to me. Of course there are the obvious points, such as the fact that they are virtually the sole reasons for my current career path (hopefully that of a neuromuscular physiology researcher), and essentially limitless health benefits, such as the decreased risk of developing chronic diseases, improvements in body composition, increases in bone density, heightened cognitive functioning and reduced risk of injury. Many benefits are not so clear, but I believe they are no less important than the ones I have listed above. I have come to find that the gym is an effective teacher; simple and at times unforgiving, but effective nonetheless. There are lessons that I have learned in the gym that I may have never learned anywhere else. Self-discipline is the first of these that comes to mind. We all face obstacles in our lives, but there appears to be an increasing trend in society for people to search for the easy way out of their problems instead of persevering. There is no easy way out in the gym. If you want to lift 200lbs, it is up to you and you alone. You cannot buy your way to 200lbs or get your friends to do it for you. Excuses will get you nowhere and praying for strength will not get you there faster. If you want to reach your goal, you have to put in the time; you have to work for it! It must become a commitment, the likes of which you have never committed to before. It can take months, even years of hard, grueling, consistent effort to reach one of your goals in the gym. But when you finally get there, it’s all worth it! The sense of achievement you get from finally lifting a target weight is something that can’t be described; you have to experience it to understand. And it is in that moment of success, following a seemingly unbelievable amount of work, sweat, and time that you begin to learn the value of self-discipline. Despite all of those challenges, all of those setbacks, you did it! And I believe that this lesson, the idea that success is not achieved by wishing for it, but by rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty can be applied to all aspects of your life, as I am beginning to do with mine.

I love working out and I will continue to do so until the day I die.

Vacationing, I did pretty good

Well, I'm back and I did pretty good.  I was in Kauai for a week vacation and I kept up the eating clean and moving the best that I could.  Of course when you travel, there can be days that are tough to eat well.  With locating a good source for great food and snacking here and there you always have to factor in a bit of not so great eating.  But as far as moving goes; I worked out almost every morning, swam and/or snorkeled every day.  We walked a lot and I'm sure that I sweat a few lbs. off just from humidity alone. 

I always enjoy working out at new gyms so I take advantage of resort or hotel gyms when I can.  The gym at the hotel we stayed at was pretty good for a hotel gym.  They had almost every machine that I needed and a few new ones that I gave a go.  I swam a ton, did pull ups in the pool, ran stairs, snorkeled and fought waves to fill any gaps in my work outs and I have to say that it feels great.  I am so happy that I don't have a ton of splurging and indulging to undo.  Having worked out so often; I will not suffer any extra aches and pains from missing workouts. 

Of course there was more cocktail consumption and foods that I don't eat on a regular basis but all in all I did really well.  The whole thing is really thinking about it before you go.  I was determined to not over indulge on this trip; I tried to focus on health and fun, not just fun, over eating and under moving.  I challenged myself with pull ups at the hotel gym and was happy to discover that I am almost there.  A few more workouts with a bit heavier weight and I may just get a pull up or two accomplished. 

I hit the gym yesterday and had a really great workout.  Its back at it, business as usual, time to get to the gym.