Joe's Personal Training Tips

I just finished my fifth week of weight workouts with Joe, and it's been pretty fun. He's always been a kid who dives deeply into whatever his current interest might be, and he's been focused intensely on learning about weight-training for a couple of years now. He has been extraordinarily patient and encouraging as I've been figuring out a beginner routine, and in this post I am going to share some of his thoughts with you.

If you were to google "weight training women over 50," you would get a lot of articles dotted with pictures of gray-haired ladies smiling as they heft 5-pound dumbbells. Joe rolls his eyes at those articles. He says 5-pound dumbbells are going to get you exactly nowhere. He says it's more fun to move heavy things, and more valuable to lead with compound movements rather than emphasizing work on isolated muscles. And he also says you haven't really worked out if you haven't made some gruesome faces while trying to do something that feels a little too hard. If you're smiling, he would say, you need a bigger dumbbell.

Here is my current split, designed especially for a somewhat fearful and injury-prone middle-aged lady:

Day 1
Assisted pull-ups, 4 sets of 6
Bench press, 3 sets of 6-12
Squats, 3 sets of 6-12
Bicep curl/French press superset, 3 sets of 10-15

I want to be able to do a pull-up. I was pretty close to hitting this goal last summer when a repetitive strain injury intervened, but I have mostly stopped knitting this summer and it seems to be working fine. So far. Joe has me doing the highest volume on assisted pull-ups because that's the outcome I'm focused on. I am throwing in a little extra volume with 50 pounds offset (sets of 7, not 6), and adding a few panting ugly pull-ups with 30 pounds offset. This was the week when something clicked, and my arms and back were like, "Oh, you want us to move like this? Can do." It felt pretty cool.

Day 2
Romanian deadlifts, 3 sets of 6-12
Lat pulldowns, 3 sets of 6-12
Shoulder press, 3 sets of 6-12
Pteranodon swoops, 3 sets of 10-15

Lat pulldowns also target the pull-up goal. Romanian deadlifts have been the hardest exercise in terms of form, but I am persevering. Joe is telling me I should also try conventional deadlifts, but I keep telling him I'll try them later. At the student fitness center, the staff will complain about deadlifts that are too loud, and I feel a little too uncertain about lifting weights to take a rebuke in stride.

Most people say "lateral raises" instead of "pteranodon swoops." But I need something to amuse myself by that point in the workout, so I imagine myself coasting through a primordial forest instead of wilting on the gym floor.

Day 3
Assisted pull-ups, 4 sets of 6
Bench press, 3 sets of 6-12
Calf raises, 3 sets of 10-15
Rear delt flies, 3 sets of 10-15

Joe encourages me to alternate between barbell and dumbbell bench press, but dumbbell bench press feels scary to me. "You are not going to drop the weights on your face," Joe says in a deliberately patient voice. But...I am not convinced about this.

Things I did not know a month ago:

1. The order matters. Lead with the compound movements so you can get the most out of them.
2. Encouragement matters. Yesterday I went by myself because Joe was playing board games. I benched 65 pounds for 6, and I knew, I absolutely knew, that if Joe were there saying, "C'mon, drive!" I could have squeaked out another one or maybe even 2. But the Joe-in-my-head voice is not as powerful as the Joe-at-my-elbow voice.
3. Newbie gains are a thing -- a fun and motivating thing. When I started, I could do two sets of pull-ups with 70 pounds offset before I had to switch to offsetting 90 pounds. There's a sign near the assisted pull-up machine that says "One day the thing that feels hard for you today will be your warmup." And who knows, it might even be true.