MacFhearchair's off-season anti-slack

[MacFhearchair]

I've pulled all the other cabers off, but "your" caber is still out at the field. It may be joined in a few weeks by the VERY cut-down, Cardinal Caber. That thing will feel very much like the caber you had at Ventura...short but very heavy. It used to be 16 feet, it's now 11 feet, as I cut off the cracked part. I'll get some fiberglass tape around the big end and leave it out there this winter for you to bust a gut with.

Yeah, if I randomly go missing, check the field. If you find me lifeless under a caber, know that I died doing something I loved.

[Alan H]

I actually have another present for you, which I need to remember to bring, soon....

[MacFhearchair]

Oooh a present? I'm looking forward to seeing that plaid you mentioned.


Tonight was pretty good! I did squats at 135 - like six of them. I did 40 lb dumbbell bench presses (so 80 lb total) and I did some landmines with an unloaded 45 lb bar. I don't know anything about form so I just kinda messed with it for a while. It's surprisingly challenging.

...but I reached a new milestone on deadlifts.

Two hundred.
...and five pounds.

Then I went and did two challenging climbs (a particularly nasty 5.10a and a normal-ish 10b) and another one that wasn't so challenging (5.9) except that I had worn myself out on the weights. I hung out in a sauna, much to the pleasure of my muscles, for about 15 min after, and then got on my bike and rode 3 mi home.

And now I'm about to pass the heck out! I was going to stay up and watch a movie or something but I think I might just fall over instead.

[MacFhearchair]

An update, but first a story (copied over from a post I put on my FB wall yesterday night):

Tonight I (while working out with a female friend) finished up a set of 185# deadlifts (after several 135# squats and other such nonsense) and was doing a set of landmines when a fellow comes up and asks if we have anymore sets to do.

Of course I offered to hand over control of the rack right away and started picking up the plate on the floor and arranging to put the bar back on the rack. The guy starts telling us that we really ought to use a different set of weights next time because the solid weights are less ideal than the rubber ones for deadlifts, and also there's no reason we need to do them in the rack (he said this without noting that a crossfit class was in full swing making the rubber plates unavailable to us anyway). Then he takes the bar away from me while I'm lifting it to re-rack it and says "I've got it".

I walked around for a while feeling really bad about this, and I wasn't sure why. Then I asked a member of the staff if the facility particularly cared whether or not I used rubber or solid plates for deadlifts. When they confirmed they did not, I thought about the situation for a while, and then I went back to the guy at the rack, and here's what I said:

"Thanks anyway, but just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I need weightlifting advice. I do this a lot, and I'm pretty comfortable with how I do it, and I didn't ask you for help."

He immediately began stumbling over himself apologizing and explaining that's not what he meant etc. etc. I sort of waved goodbye with a half-smile and walked off, and I felt pretty bad - maybe he wasn't being sexist, maybe he really thought he was being helpful?

...and then it occurred to me that the likelihood of him telling a pair of dudes to go deadlift some other weights next time was pretty minimal, and my intuition that I'd just gotten mansplained was probably pretty accurate, and anyway, I felt better for having stood up for myself when the way someone treated me made me feel bad, instead of just sucking it up like I often do.

Tl; dr : gym-time can be kinda unpleasant for women sometimes. Asserting oneself can help.


...so as you can see, I got to the gym last night and I did some lifting. I also did some ab torture and already I'm noticing results. Woot.

Last week was a bit of a bust. I tried to lift on Wednesday after a good lifting session on monday, but the muscles in my hips would NOT have it. I did some other stuff and on Friday I had a medical procedure and no exercise happened at all.

Today I went out and did some throwing. I can pick the candy caber so easily now it's almost a joke. Seriously, I lost grip on it at one point and caught it with my fingertips and controlled it. It's stupidly easy for me to manage now, but my technique in pulling is still assy because I can only turn it a small subset of the time. Granted, I was racing against sundown and giving myself NO TIME between picks and pulls, but I'm strong enough that my ratio should be better even still. ...dammit.

I really want to measure my LWD - I have a sneaking suspicion it's over 45 feet on some of these throws.

Stones can bite my ****. ...but I did a few practice tosses. That rock I found is heavy enough, but the shape is pretty bad. I'll keep looking.

I really miss 2x weekly practice. I miss it hard.

[RogerWS76]

The early darkness is killing our Wednesday night practices until the Government decides it's time to change the time again. Very much missing them AND the guys too!

[Alan H]

Soon there will be a big mo caber out there that will challenge you to pick it, even though it's only 11 feet long.

[o1d_dude]

Mansplaining maybe, hitting on you maybe, or just being helpful? Nah. Just being a dillwick/gym nazi if you ask me.

One of the reasons why I'm thankful for my garage gym is that I don't have to put with silliness from anyone but myself.

As far as using the rubber bumper plates for deadlifts, they're great if you have them but people have been doing deads with iron plates since day one. If you're lifting on rubber gym floor mats, it really makes no difference. Bumper plates are pretty much mandatory if you're going to drop the weights like from cleans or other Olympic style lifts.

Next time someone gives your grief like that, tell them you compete in the highland games and throw bigger pieces of crap than them.

[MacFhearchair]

Yeah, I'd like to get one of them garage gyms. For now I'll have to settle with my climbing gym membership, which isn't the worst deal I've ever gotten. If anything, I get to practice not taking crap from people like that.


Tonight I lifted lighter weights than my max. I started out squatting the unloaded bar and found my hips were super tight and random things were just *hurting*, so I put myself on a treadmill and did 5 minutes of jog, run, run fast, run, jog in that order for a minute each, which limbered me up some. I went back to the squat rack and did sets of 5: 95, 115, 115 (I can do 135 but something was telling me not to try it tonight and I listened).

overhead presses - 2 sets of 5 @ 65#
bench press - did 2 @ 115, and 2 sets at 95.
dead lift - 1 set @ 135, 1 set @ 155
landmines - a whole bunch with an unloaded bar
ab stuff - a whole bunch of cross crunches, jackknife situps, transition planks, toe-to-bar, and head-stand leg lift things *shrug* I hardly keep count, but it's good to know I'm doing it.

I would probably yammer a lot more but after all that plus a large dinner, I'm about to fall over dead. Zzz.

[Alan H]

3-4 months of this, 2-3 times a week and I think you are going to be surprised what you can do, come March. Seriously.

There's much talk about "active warmup" and "active stretching" and "dynamic stretching" as things to do before lifting, amongst the cognoscenti at NASGA. I think they tend to get the terms mixed up, but the basic idea is to save the static stretching....what we usually think of as stretching... for *After* the lifting workout. Before lifting, do stuff like your treadmill thing, or maybe 5 minutes on a stationary bicycle, or a few minutes on the rowing machine. Donna the Trainer suggested this nasty combination warmup routine which I both hate and like and should probably do before my lifting workouts. Basically it goes like this...

get an appropriately sized dumbell, and the lowest pylo box... grad the dumbell in one hand and stand about 3 feet away from the box.

Now drop to a crouch and put your hands on the box. One has the dumbell, right? Shoot your legs out behind you so you can do a pushup. Now do a pushup. Basically you just did the first half of a burpee, only on the pylo box. Now lift the dumbell in the air above and behind you, which means balancing on the other hand/arm. Bring your legs in. Stand up. Hoist the dumbell over your head. Then back to starting position.

Repeat until breathing hard.

Rest.

Switch hands, so the dumbell is in the other hand. Repeat until breathing hard.

[MacFhearchair]

I might give that a whirl Alan. There's really no end to the goofy exercises one can do with the blunt objects they provide you at the gym, is there?

I didn't make it out last night - it was a really rough week at work and my workday ended at 8pm, at which point I was just not feeling it at all. Fail.