March 29, 2012 Lower

• Squats: 315*1 335*1 355*1 365*1 375*1 385*X 385*1

This went well, record is 400 @ 231, I was 205.5 here still for the 385, the former was a 1.73x BW squat, this one is 1.87.  Working towards 2x still.  No extra exercises here.  Saturday I'm doing O-Lift PR attempts.   And now for the best story I'll probably ever get out of the gym:

So I had 365 on the bar and I went to go get a drink from the fountain before doing the set.  I come back not 30 seconds later and some dude is unloading the bar.  I say "hey dude, still using that".  Unfortunately he has headphones on and can't hear me.  Even more unfortunately he's decided to unload the 3 45s and the 25 from one side of the bar without taking any plates off the other.  He takes the last 45 off and the bar flies up narrowly missing his face, and dumping the weight off the other side.  Loud noise, people staring, etc.   He looks at me finally and I say "you can't take all the plates off one side.  Also I'm still in here.  I need you to rerack the bar and load the weight back up for me".   

Then I walk away and start talking to one of my friends there, we're kind of laughing, didn't want to be too mean.  So we're looking at this guy, and he puts the empty bar back on the rack and starts loading weight back on it.   On one side.  I say to my friend "There's no fucking way....no. fucking. way".  Yup.  one 45.....two 45s....3 45s.  At this point my friend and I are both shouting, but again dude's wearing headphones.  He starts to slide the 25 onto the bar and me and my friend are screaming at him and the dude looks over to us, as he pushes the 25 on...and the bar dumps and pegs him in the chest.   Fortunately a trainer was there and she jumps on the unweighted side and throws some weight on to counterbalance it.   To the dude's credit he stuck around in another corner of the weight room working out for a while.    In retrospect I kind of feel bad for being blunt with him after he dumped the bar the first time.  If I had known he would've done it a second time I probably would've cut him a break. Poor dude's not having a good day. 

December 26, 2011 How I started lifting

I was 17 years old, it was February 1999.  I had left high school after my sophomore year to attend college via a dual-enrollment program in Massachusetts.  Basically the state paid for me to go to college and take courses which would obviously count for college credit, but also high school credit as well.  Most people took one or two courses at the local college per semester.  Not me; as soon as I heard about this program I knew I was doing it full time.  Not only that, but I had amassed enough credit that I could graduate from high school after spending that junior year of it taking classes at the local college.  I think I took 5 my first semester, 2 over winter break, and 6 second semester.  But I digress.  The only requirement I couldn't fill was my gym requirement at my high school.  I looked at a few classes on volleyball, swimming, and the like, but none fit with my schedule.  I actually enjoyed both of those activities, but never did them extnsively, and was basically Austchwitz-mode at this point. After talking it over with the administration they decided that if I worked out at the colleges gym a few times per week and had a trainer sign off on it they would consider the gym requirement fulfilled.

I'll never forget the fitness assessment they do.   The trainer took me into the room and weighed me , I think I was 130 lbs @ 5' 10".  Then he put like 95 lbs. on a bar and had me attempt to bench it.  I basically dropped the thing on my chest, I could barely even unrack it.  He tried 75 or 65, same thing.  If /fit/ existed back then spaghetti would've started pouring out of my pockets (note: 90% of the people reading this won't get that).  They set me up on a program, pretty much only machines.  I liked the leg press the best.   Oddly, despite being weak as dirt I enjoyed going there.  It just felt natural.  Granted I barely gained any weight (by September of 1999 I was only up to 138 lbs.), but I was enjoying myself. Maybe it's because my dad had lifted and I grew up around it, I dunno.  Anyway, I started to get somewhat stronger, and eventually after graduating early I joined a local gym.    The rest is a story for another time.  Looking back though it's hard to believe that after my bulk this year I was 231 lbs., over 100 lbs. heavier than when I started