- A story about lifting
- A story to continue lifting
- Books about lifting I read
- A program outline of sorts
- Women and lifting
A story to continue lifting
Today is August 24, 2006. I am working with an older woman. She is much shorter than I am but very spunky and bright-eyed. She is also eighty-eight years old.
We talk about a lot of things and she mentions that her husband who died a few months back. This casual mention is indeed casual and doesn’t carry the despondency I’m unwilling to hear. In fact, she is quite kind.
We discuss a lot of topics mainly pertinent to the very old or the very sentimental - urban sprawl, the disappearance of farmlands in the area, and other topics about “the old days.” I help her with her jacket and she smiles at me.
“When you get as old as I am,” she says to me, “Sometimes your muscles don’t work as well as they did.”
Books about lifting I read
This summer I started to lift weights again. However, I do want to lift with a purpose: to build strength and maintain it. One book that I’ve been using as a reference is Lou Schuler and Alwyn Cosgrove’s book, The New Rules of Lifting. It’s very good and I recommend it because the “rules” are very simple and straightforward. More on it later, but a good review can be found here.
A program outline of sorts
I typically do three sets of ten repetitions of:
Generally I don’t use the circuit machines. Machines, for the most part, are easy because they are straightforward. However, while being limiting, it also results in poor form and uneven muscle workouts. Uneven muscle workouts are caused by the machines’ isolation of some muscles over the use of muscles. In real life, you use all of your body to perform everyday tasks; why exercise a select few?
However, machines aren’t all bad. I use the assisted pull-up/dip machine since I’m not able to pull-up my own body weight. It reduces the amount I pull - currently half my body weight - but I’m still using my entire body in these exercises.
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