Light and Momentary

Crispy crispy toast

I gave a new lecture today to my grad students: 75 minutes of content I'd never taught before. It couldn't have gone better, really. The timing worked out perfectly, which is always a little uncertain with a first pass through new material. I checked in with them about the level of the material (it should be new enough to be challenging, familiar enough for them to link it to their previous experiences) and they said it was just right. They were so engaged, you guys-- leaning forward in their chairs, sharing their own experiences, asking good questions, laughing at my jokes.

I am wrung out, like a lemon half that has been through a particularly vigorous juicing. Picture me slumped sadly on the countertop, awaiting my trip to the compost pile.

The thing I forget in between prepping new classes is that it's not just about the time commitment, substantial as that might be. It's also about the regular outlay of creative energy, and the constant planning and adjustment. I find that the uncertainty is still an ongoing stressor, even here in my second decade of teaching. 

I am doing my best to focus on the fact that I'm having a lot of fun in the classroom and the students are really responding. In the half-hour before bedtime, though, the upsides seem a little more remote.

 

Swole for Science

I am doing something this fall that I am really excited about: I am getting stronger for SCIENCE. A professor on campus recruited faculty and staff to participate in 20 sessions of personal training focused on building strength, and I said SIGN ME UP.

My trainer is a pleasant undergrad who wants to become an athletic trainer someday, and yesterday he was testing my current abilities. The message to the students must have been very explicit: do not let your participant get hurt before they even get started. At first he was treating me like the most delicate of delicate flowers.

He brought me a 10-pound dumbbell for goblet squats, and asked me if I thought I could go heavier. I suggested that he grab the 50, and he couldn't bring himself to do it. "Let's try the 40," he said.

Happily, he realized pretty quickly that I do have a decent sense of how much weight I can move for a specified number of reps with adequate form. He was encouraging in a way that felt genuine, and even though I had told him that I'd been lifting pretty regularly for two years, he seemed pleasantly surprised by my starting abilities. He was complimentary about my bench and deadlift form, which also made me happy, and I left feeling enthusiastic about the program.

Today, though, my quads are screaming. He had me do a bunch of sub-maximal reps on both squat and deadlift, and I kept going until he told me to stop. My upper body is a mild and familiar kind of sore, but my quads feel like someone drove an excavator across them and stopped in the middle to dig for a while. I really don't think I'd be this sore if I'd moved the same total tonnage with fewer reps of heavier lifts. I'm not sure that makes sense, though.

Anyway: it is much less lonely to lift with company. I am optimistic that I can connect with other participants who might be interested in lifting together after the program ends. I'm especially excited to have a regular spotter for bench, and I am hopeful that the Gains Fairy will bestow some new PRs on me this fall.