Light and Momentary

20%

This is day 9 of my 45 / 45 / 4.5 plan, and it's going all right.

I've gone to three hourlong dance-based fitness classes. On four days I combined brisk walking or elliptical time with yoga. One day I did a 45-minute yoga video. I lifted once.

The fruit is easy to fit in but the vegetable serving sizes are kind of dumb and frustrating. I am sympathetic as to the difficulties of writing usable public health content. You have to speak to a broad audience; you have to be reasonably specific and reasonably flexible. If you're writing for US-based readers, you're writing for people who mostly think kitchen scales are arcane appurtenances. But COME ON, what is a cup of broccoli spears, exactly? I keep thinking about using the Archimedes method -- filling a pint measure halfway with water and then adding broccoli spears until it's full. But that seems ridiculous as well as messy. 

ALSO why does a 2-cup portion of salad greens count as 1 cup of vegetables? I mean, I sort of know but also I find it irritating. If you're going to switch from counting servings of varying sizes to counting allegedly consistent measures of volume, then why are you being inconsistent about the measures of volume? 

I looked at the British guidelines, thinking they would be measured in grams, and in places they are even more annoying. "Three heaped tablespoons" -- pfft, I say. 

There's some utility in measuring because it does highlight for me that my default level of vegetable consumption is lower than the recommended level of vegetable consumption. The recommended level isn't unmanageable, but I do have to pay attention. I've been starting at breakfast, adding a half-cup of spinach to a smoothie or a half-cup of pumpkin puree to a cottage cheese or yogurt bowl. Then it's just a cup of veggies at lunch and another at dinner, which is doable but not my default setting.

And how is working? I am not exactly a wellspring of good cheer and impressive equilibrium, but I'm hanging in there in the face of a substantial grading load, a bunch of lingering around-the-house tasks to catch up on, and an impending holiday dinner for 16. I'll take it, I guess. Onward we go.

Feel the fear and lift it anyway

Today at the gym something happened that had frightened me for a long time, and I am okay with it.

When I first started lifting, bench press felt scary. I did not like having heavy things over my face. "What if I drop the dumbbells ON MY FACE?" I wailed to Joe in my first month of lifting. 

"Mom," he said patiently, "you're not going to drop the dumbbells on your face. If you can't do the rep, you'll drop the dumbbells to the side of the bench."

I've posted before about how I don't make a ton of progress on bench when I don't have easy access to a spotter, because I push myself harder when someone is spotting me. I've accepted that I probably won't drop a barbell on my face, but I don't want to have to wriggle out from underneath a barbell that made an unplanned landing on my belly.

Today, though, I had a near miss.

The good bench was open, and I snagged it and moved the brackets down. The person who had used it last must have been, like, 6'5" or perhaps part octopus, because the brackets were way up high. Under ordinary circumstances I might have moved the brackets one spot lower, but it already felt like I was moving them a preposterous distance. 

I did a warmup set and a couple of working sets. At the end of my second working set the bar slid into the bracket with a satisfying thunk and I thought to myself, "That bracket is just a little too high, but it will be all right." [DUN DUN DUUUUUUN, we got your foreshadowing right here, folks.]

I was feeling strong and happy, so I added more weight to the bar. I did another set, being careful to keep it "in the pocket," meaning I was almost but not quite out of gas. And then I misgrooved the last rep, so the right end of the bar wound up in the slightly-too-high bracket and the left end did not.

I did not have enough oomph left in my pecs to get it where it needed to be. A too-heavy thing was suspended over my face in a way I couldn't figure out how to resolve. I said "help!" because I didn't know what else to do.

There was a father-son duo on the next bench and the dad came over. "Do you need help?" he asked. "Yes, please," I said, and he scooted the wayward end of the barbell up into the bracket. I thanked him and took a deep breath.

I said to myself, "ACK!" I said to myself, "YIKES!" I said to myself, "This feels embarrassing but I am sure I am not the first person to need help after a misgrooved bench rep." But I was not feeling philosophical enough to do my planned back-off set, so instead I stepped over to the water fountain to have a calming drink of cold water and text Joe.

I thought about flight but I did not flee. Instead I went back to the weight room, where I stood up tall and put on my game face and finished my accessories. I said to myself, "It is all right for me to be the only woman in this space. I can still belong here." I said to myself, "I'm not going to feel embarrassed about needing help to finish a hard thing," and it mostly worked.

Here's the thing: I need to get back on the horse. I need to go back soon and bench that same weight for that same number of reps, so that I don't psych myself out about doing heavy sets on bench. (Next time, though, I will make sure the bracket is at the optimal height and not at a height that mostly works.) Elwood says he'll go with me on Wednesday. I'm telling you guys so that I actually do get back on the horse instead of just thinking to myself that it would be a good idea.

A harder one, an easier one

Andrea asked, "What is the one weightlifting exercise that has given you the results you like the most?"

If for some reason I could only ever do one exercise for the rest of my life, it would probably be deadlifting. It is such a fabulous full-body exercise: traps, lats, abs, glutes, hamstrings, quads (and erector spinae, but most us are not saying, "Yeah, I really want my spinal erectors to POP.")

HOWEVER, deadlift form is (a) hard to learn and (b) important to get right. If you're not familiar with the form, I would say it's worth working with a trainer for a few sessions in which you specifically focus on that particular skill. You can figure out the nuances of a bicep curl on your own, but it's much harder to evaluate your own deadlift.

So if I were making one recommendation to a pal who was only willing to do a little bit of lifting, I would recommend assisted pull-ups. They are extremely accessible and will probably offer you an opportunity to progress rapidly. You can do them at home with bands if you hate going to the gym, or you can do them at the gym with a machine if you don't love working out at home.

Pull-ups are fantastic core exercises. I did not imagine that pull-ups could strengthen my abs, but it turns out they are a great ab exercise. I didn't know how much I needed lats and traps until I worked on my lats and traps, but lifting has eliminated all of the weird aches and twinges that used to cause me back pain at regular intervals. (Also, if you need somebody to move something heavy, I'm your girl.) Obviously, they're terrific for delts and biceps as well.

One caution: don't start assisted pull-ups expecting them to become unassisted pull-ups on a short timeline. Three months was not enough time for 13 out of 17 female participants to get an unassisted pull-up in a study described by the New York Times. It was not enough time for me; it took me a little over four months of consistent 3x/week workouts prioritizing chin-ups and related movements before I could do an unassisted chin-up. (I've still never done an unassisted pull-up, because I don't care about the pull-up/chin-up distinction.) But there is so much benefit just waiting to be gleaned from assisted pull-up workouts, no matter what your trajectory looks like.

So there you go: two choices, pick your fave!

Same song, different verse

It is better to finish the race at the back of the pack than to sit on the couch and wish you were faster. I have been telling myself this for years. But wow, do I struggle to believe it's really true.

I have been dithering about this August triathlon idea. The one near Joe's new city has a lake swim, and my feelings about lake swims are well documented. There's also an August sprint triathlon about an hour from me with a pool swim, but neither Joe nor my college roommate will be at that one.

Despite the dithering, I've completed (or approximated) the first two workouts in Matt Fitzgerald's basic triathlon training plan. Today was the first time I'd gone for a swim since my June 2021 triathlon, and I would rate the workout as a solid Not Dreadful. Pete asked me to climb with him this evening, and I agreed. I am recording a few modest accomplishments from the climbing session:

1. I finished my first outdoor route of the year, even though topping out is so scary that I always think about climbing down instead. (Topping out = climbing over the edge of the big artificial boulder to the pathway in the middle, so you can walk back down to your starting point.) 
2. I fell off the overhang-y part of the outdoor boulder while attempting a move that was too hard for me. My tendency is to announce that I can't do the move, which is only sometimes true. I don't like falling backwards to the ground, but I lived to tell the tale.
3. I climbed a top-rope slab route for the first time in years. Slab routes are the opposite of overhang -- they tilt a little bit away from the climber. They tend to be reachy and balance-y, and I used to say emphatically that I didn't even want to try them. But I saw one tonight that looked like it might be fun, and Pete offered to belay me. And what do you know? It was totally fun.

There is a friendly little group of middle-aged-lady back-of-the-packers here in town, and I know that if I start showing up to events again they will be welcoming. Telling myself that I need to be in better shape before I can go back is unnecessary and unproductive. And yet-- I keep telling myself that I need to be in better shape before I go back.

Undecided

One of my college roommates is doing an August triathlon not far from Joe's new city, and I am thinking about registering for it. I am still undecided, though.

Triathlon training is a non-trivial commitment, and I am way out of that groove. Since I started lifting in 2021, I have struggled to be consistent with endurance training. It's one of those self-perpetuating cycles: I don't run very much because I'm in bad running shape, which means I remain in bad running shape. I am discontented with my level of aerobic fitness, and also daunted by the prospect of addressing it in a consistent and systematic way.

This is objectively silly. I think I will be much happier in August if I commit to doing the thing -- showing up for the workouts and rebuilding the fitness -- than if I flail around in anticipatory distress. It is true that the runs will be hot and sweaty; it is true that I will need to adjust my priorities to fit in triathlon training.

I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger. You can probably see me standing on the edge of the pool, worried that it will be too cold if I jump in.

More about muscles

I am following up on my post about pushups, which made at least two readers say "huh???" Let's see if I can be a little clearer this time around.

You already know that you can accomplish very similar actions using different combinations of muscles. Maybe you've taken voice lessons, and learned that inhalation is much more complicated than you ever suspected. If you use your diaphragm, you can inhale a larger volume of air with less neck tension. This is great for vocal quality and long-term vocal health. But lots of us have to practice for a long time if we want to move our diaphragms and keep our shoulders still when we inhale.

One of the reasons that training programs for runners include recovery runs is that we use our muscles in different ways on different days, even if we're completing the same action. When you run on fatigued legs, you engage different groups of muscle fibers. This process of learning to recruit a wider array of muscle fibers makes you a stronger, more fatigue-resistant runner over time.

When you do a pushup, you can engage different muscles to different extents. You can't do a pushup with zero trunk engagement; you can't do a pushup with zero arm engagement. But your pecs can do more or less of the work, depending on the signals they get from your brain. I don't have EMG results to show that I'm getting more pec activation when I think deliberately about using my pecs, but I know I can do a whole lot more reps with a whole lot less effort when I consciously call on the patterns of movement I learned while bench-pressing.

The next time you're sitting at a desk, try this: hold your arms close to your body, and push yourself away from the desk. Next, imagine that you are a smuggler, and you have a valuable golden orb tucked into each armpit. Squeeze your chest and your arms together tightly so that your hidden cargo doesn't go crashing to the floor, and hold that position while you push yourself away from the desk again. For me, there's a huge difference in the amount of oomph I can generate. Option A is mostly arms, option B is mostly pecs, and pecs exist precisely so you can push heavy things effectively.

Tell me if that makes more sense, please.

Use your trunk, not just your arms

At the end of last semester I realized that I had been doing pushups wrong for my entire life. It dawned on me that a person who could bench-press 110 pounds shouldn't have so much trouble with pushups, and I closed my eyes and tried to envision a pushup as an upside-down bench-press. It was a total aha moment as I zoomed up to the top of that rep.

It's the opposite of automatic. I have to think about it every single time I do a set of pushups: engage the pecs. Remember, I tell myself, it's a chest exercise more than an arm exercise. If you ignore your pecs and rely on your arms, you'll get needlessly tired out.

Something similar is true of pull-ups. When Joe first told me I needed to train my back to get a pull-up, I scoffed. But he was absolutely right: executing a pull-up is more about strong lats and traps than it is about strong arms. In the spring of 2020 I had no idea how to engage my lats, but these days I use my lats for all kinds of things.

I think this problem is probably widespread among women. People tell us early on to do knee pushups because they expect us to have trouble doing standard pushups. We absorb the idea that standard pushups are too hard for us instead of learning how to use the bigger muscles that are made for pushing heavier loads. I can't say for sure that the reason women (including me!) take a while to get a pull-up is that they have to learn to use their lats and traps more effectively, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least. 

We live in a world where Kim Kardashian keeps erasing her traps instead of saying, "Hey, I worked hard for those and it's good to be strong," so I am not optimistic that this blog post will make much of a difference. But if you've always wanted to be able to be better at pushups and pull-ups, the trick is in your torso, not your arms.

Finished

Finished Thing #1: Today I finished the file transfer process AT LAST. I don't want this to be a whiny post, but it was so painfully slow and cumbersome. So many clicks and pauses and silly avoidable steps. But HUZZAH it is DONE. I might have to award myself a prize.

Finished Thing #2: Today I also finished the fall semester session of Swole for Science. Back in the pretest week, my trainer took me pretty close to my ceiling on the compound lifts and plugged those results into an online calculator so it could estimate (with variable accuracy, I'd say) a starting one-rep max. Today he asked me to see how many reps I could do in a single set at my original (approximate) one-rep max, and used the new results to estimate an updated one-rep max. For Future Jamie, here are the numbers:

Squats: 115 x 24 
Bench: 85 x 14 (could have squeezed out another one)
Bent-over rows: 95 x 10
Deadlift: 145 x 6
Push-ups: 18
Pull-ups (with 50 pounds offset): 9 (so much arm fatigue by this point-- lats were okay but arms were shot)

I am not accustomed to that kind of repeated max effort on compound movements. I am sure I could have doubled the deadlift reps if it had been the first exercise, but my quads and glutes were fatigued from the squats. And I can definitely do more push-ups than that, but not right after a max effort on bench.

When I said goodbye to my trainer I kinda wanted to give him a hug but I also did not want to make it weird. "You worked really hard this semester," he told me, and he spoke the truth. It was a fantastic experience. 

Finished Thing #3: Today I also also finished NaBloPoMo: thirty days, thirty posts. My brain is tired from #1 and my body is tired from #2, and I think I shall now wobble off to bed. 

Thanks for reading, friends!

In which science does indeed make me stronger

This is week 9 of the 10-week Strong for Science program, and today I was bench-pressing: 3 sets, 3 reps each, at 105 pounds. It felt perfect. I was definitely ready to be done by that ninth rep, but I was never in doubt that I was going to finish the set.

My previous PR was a single rep of 100 pounds. Joe was spotting me that day and he had me try one rep at 105, but I just couldn't do it. You'll notice that was two years ago now -- I just don't like to push myself on bench without a spotter, and you don't get better if you don't push yourself. Probably I wouldn't drop the barbell on my face if I failed a rep? But probably doesn't seem quite good enough, and I don't feel comfortable asking a random gym bro for a spot.

Anyway: I am feeling pretty pleased about the progress I've made this semester. The PI of the study is hoping to continue it next semester. I'd be thrilled.

In which we summon the Gains Fairy

If you want to get stronger, you might benefit from eating more protein. People argue about the exact amount you need, but the recommendation has been pretty well studied and the findings seem to be fairly consistent: protein intake makes a difference in a person's response to resistance training. I aim for about 120 grams per day. 

To make this feasible, I supplement with whey protein powder. Yes, the person who used to grow her own lentil sprouts has turned into a person with a subscribe-and-save order set up for 5-pound tubs of artificially sweetened protein powder (affiliate link). I keep thinking I'll investigate a less processed option, but no dice so far.

Usually I include a scoop of whey in my breakfast, which might be a smoothie with Greek yogurt and frozen bananas, or maybe some steel-cut oats with walnuts or chia seeds or a spoonful of flax meal. I am the queen of unfinished cups of coffee, and in recent weeks I have been pouring my leftover tepid coffee into my shaker cup and mixing it up with whey and creatine and ice. These combinations get me 30-40 grams of protein at breakfast, depending on the details. 

I aim for 40g at lunch, which is usually a sandwich or a salad. If I'm making the lunch, I will pile on more protein-rich toppings or fillings than I used to: cubed leftover meat, garbanzos, hard-boiled egg, walnuts, feta, etc. I used to think a can of tuna yielded enough tuna salad for two sandwiches, but these days I stuff it into one (not very often, though, because mercury, PCBs, etc.). 

Our dinners usually include some meat, which makes it easier to get to 30-40 grams of protein. Tonight, for instance, was leftover night, and I chose leftover ham and beans (a Gladly family standby for more than 20 years now) in part because of its protein content. 

Somewhere in there I will probably eat a snack, which could be yogurt or cheese cubes if my meals have included less protein, or apple slices with nut butter if I'm already pretty close to the target number. Or if I want something sweet after dinner, I might have a little yogurt with some frozen fruit and protein powder and maybe a little drizzle of peanut butter.

I feel intermittent uneasiness about relying so heavily on animal products, but this is where I am right now. Casey Johnston has some helpful posts on protein, including this one on protein targets and this one on protein choices.

This post was prompted by a comment from NGS, who is also doing NaBloPoMo. If you miss blogs and blogging, check out the NaBloPoMo links!

Eight weeks in

I haven't been blogging much this fall because my new grad class is sucking up about 325% of the creative energy I have on offer, so it was only a few posts ago that I was telling you about getting strong for science. We're in week 8 now, and it's been fantastic. For the most part, it's been exactly the right degree of hard, and I've seen a bunch of encouraging progress.

One of the forms my progress has taken is this: I rarely get sore. I work out until I am about to fall over, but then I eat my protein and get enough rest and I'm pretty much good to go. Rarely, however, is different from never.

Usually during our workouts I'm the last participant finished. (I have been telling myself that it's because I'm dedicated and persevering and my trainer Steven wants to keep pushing me closer to my ceiling, but I suppose it's possible that I'm just slow.) There were a few weeks in a row that Steven had originally planned for us to use the adductor machine and we wound up doing extra sets of squats or Romanian deadlifts or leg press instead. He kept scratching that last exercise from the plan because we were bumping up against our time limit.

Yesterday he had me work my adductors closer to the beginning of the workout. "Haven't done this in a while," I commented. Three sets, 12 reps each, 95 pounds: it felt heavier than the last time we'd used that machine, but no big deal. Today, though, those muscles are aflame. "Huh," I keep thinking as I move through the day, "what do you know? A person needs adductors for that too!" 

Did you cross your legs today? Thank your adductors! Did you sit cross-legged without grimacing? This also requires happy adductors. Even when I am just walking around I can feel them grumbling at me.

Let's hope I am doing a little less limping tomorrow.

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.

Looking swole, ma'am

Joe and I went to the gym together this morning to lift and I saw the most amazing pair of arms in the locker room. They were attached to a woman 10 or 12 years older than me, who was washing her hands at the same time I was. I mean, if I had a picture of these arms, the only possible caption for it would be "GOALS." 

I wanted to say something along the lines of "you have clearly put in a lot of work in the weight room over a long time," but I was tongue-tied. I have pretty much given up commenting on people's bodies-- I'm not going to mention weight loss approvingly any more and I was never one to comment on weight gain. But this felt a little different, because I wanted to compliment the dedication and not the aesthetics, and I didn't know how to do it.

If we were both guys I could just say "lookin' big, bro," and it wouldn't even be weird. Women do not, however, tell each other that they are lookin' big. Casey Johnston is in the NYT today (in an article that defines "swole," as if to say "Yes! We are your grandma's newspaper!") and I bet she would have a better response. Do female lifters tell each other "lookin' swole, ma'am"? I would like a phrase that conveys warm good wishes on the continued enhancement of those killer delts, which is not a flavor of girl talk I have needed heretofore.

The Zumba Update

It was totally fun. Pleasant instructor, small group of students, nice mix of ages. There were a couple of spots where they all knew what was going on and I did not (we were supposed to get in a line for one song and a ring for another), but no big deal. I like exercising with other people more than exercising alone.

Another thing I haven't done since 2019

I think I'm going to go to a Zumba class tonight.

I used to be a pretty regular fitness class attendee. Mostly I opted for the Pilates/yoga/strength-building kinds of classes, but I would hit a Zumba class or one of its cousins every few months.

If you go every week or two, rather than every few months, you learn the combinations. People had favorite songs; they would come to class with the sequences of movements already mastered. The downside to being an occasional Zumba-er was that I was always starting from scratch. And I could hang in there for a while, but always -- ALWAYS -- I would get about 45 minutes into a 60-minute class and I would just be done. My brain was maxed out on learning how to put new movements in a row.

Once I went to a kickboxing class, you guys, and it was hilariously bad. Part of the issue was that I didn't have much practice with the things I was supposed to be sequencing -- my jab looked suspiciously like my hook, for instance. Part of the issue was that the teacher was not a good fit for me. I think she was trying to sound tough and imposing, but it felt like she was just screaming at us the whole time. The music was thumping, the instructor was shrieking, and then my brain, as usual, hit its shutoff point.

I was okay with this situation. I was just going to stay in my spot unobtrusively, with the goals of keeping my heartrate up and neither clobbering nor being clobbered by my neighbors. But then the teacher decided that I needed extra assistance and came over next to me. "CROSS," she bellowed, and I attempted to comply. "NO," she howled in response to my uppercut or jab or -- let's be honest here -- some maneuver that looked less like a punch and more like Jamie-wearily-fending-off-a-wayward-grocery-cart, "LEFT CROSS." I could sort of imitate her when she was right next to me, but I did not really want the one-on-one tutelage and I absolutely did not want to be the center of attention.

It made for a long 15 minutes, during which I determined that I would probably not be attending any future kickboxing classes.

Let us hope that tonight's Zumba instructor is a mellower sort.

How's your mobility?

Last month I read Outlive, which I highly recommend. When I read Peter Attia's interview in the NYT, I found his message intriguing and his ego off-putting in almost equal measure. Not quite equal, though, because I decided to read the book. It is fascinating. He has quite the ego, to be sure, but he might almost deserve it.

The number one thing I don't like (besides (did I mention?) the ego that might require its own seat for airline travel), is the way he talks about men as the norm and women almost as an afterthought. But EVEN SO, I'm telling you: you should read this book.

Nutshell version: he talks about reducing your odds of developing what he calls the four horsemen (atherosclerotic disease, metabolic dysfunction, neurodegenerative disease, and cancer) with the goal of extending your healthspan-- the period of time in which you are healthy enough to enjoy your life and live it independently. He proposes a multi-pronged approach for keeping the four horsemen at bay, and its outlines will be familiar to you. (Again, though, he writes about them in a compelling way with a boatload of information that was new to me.) The thing that was most surprising to me was his emphasis on stability, on protecting your body's capacity to interact safely with the world around it.

I have been exploring some of the ideas in that chapter over the last month. For instance: he writes about how our toes should function, and mine are falling down on the job. I hypothesize that the years I spent wearing Patriarchy Shoes in the 1980s/1990s caused me to disregard enough sensory input from my sad squashed pinky toes that I'm having a hard time using them as intended here in middle age. Maybe it wasn't the shoes, but something caused me to need a month of consistent practice to make firm contact between my right pinky toe and the floor when I stand up. I'm still working on the left one.

Recently my Kindle suggested that I might like a book called Built To Move, and I've been working my way through that one. I'm doing their 21-day mobility challenge, and finding it a bite-sized way to address some of the effects of the passage of time. Each chapter has a simple test followed by practices for improving your performance on the test. It's fun, if a little humbling, and you might like it too.

In the balance chapter, for instance, there are two tests. Test #1: Stand on one foot. Close your eyes. Count the number of times you put your foot down in a 20-second period. I did so badly on this test, you guys! My balance is fine when my eyes are open. I can hold tree pose comfortably for a long time. But I am relying more heavily than I realized on visual feedback to keep myself in the pose. 

Test #2 is the Old Man Balance Test, a name that gave me hope initially. "I have better balance than an old man," said I to myself. I do not, however, have better balance than an old man who could pass this test. They tell you to stand on one foot with a pair of socks and lace-up shoes on the floor in front of you. Without touching your foot to the ground, bend down and pick up the sock. Put it on. Keeping your foot in the air, bend down again and pick up your shoe. Put it on and tie it, keeping your foot up the whole time. Switch feet and do it again.

I can do this task in segments. I can get a sock on without falling over, but then I need to touch my foot to the ground before I can lift it up again and put my shoe on. I might or might not be able to tie it without tapping my foot on the ground again. I'm having fun with the trying, though, after many years of reflexively sitting down to put on my socks and shoes.

Give it a whirl and tell me what you think!

Nice guys at the gym

I have a pretty consistent Sunday afternoon routine: I go to the gym around 2:30, when it's usually fairly empty. I deadlift, I bench, I do a superset of upper-body accessories, and I'm done. But today I got to step 2 and all the flat benches were occupied.

I stood nearby and waited for a few minutes to see if anybody seemed to be wrapping up. One of the guys walked up to me while I was resting and asked politely if I was using the machine next to me -- he wanted to snag one of the weights. "Go right ahead," I told him. Politely, oh so politely, he said, "Do you need any help with anything?"

You guys, this man was jacked. Like, his name could be Yoked McSwolerson and it still would not convey the massiveness of his mighty muscles. Also he was, like, 6'5". "Oh, no," I told him, "just waiting for one of the benches to open up."

He asked me if I'd ever tried decline bench. I never had, because it looks a little scary. You have to put your knees over one thingummy and your shins under another thingummy and uncurl yourself backward without thwacking your head on the barbell. If you fail a rep on flat bench, you can roll the barbell down to your middle and escape that way. But if you fail a rep on decline bench I feel like you're kind of stuck, with a barbell that's well-positioned to roll right onto your neck. 

While he was resting between sets, he showed me which thingummies went where. After his next set I asked him a form question and he was friendly and helpful again. There was no skeeviness at any point.

I don't know how often I'll do decline bench, but it was fun to try something new. I was expecting it to be hard, because incline bench is significantly harder than flat bench, but it was not hard. I am mostly blogging about it because I want to remember the unexpected friendliness: I would not have expected Mr. McSwolerson to reach out and offer to help me out of the blue like that. "People at the gym are friendly," Joe assured me back when I first started lifting. I still think his gym experience as a muscular 20-year-old is different from mine. But what do you know-- sometimes people at the gym are friendly.

Climbing then and now

In January 2020 I posted about finishing a painfully long route at the climbing gym, graded 5.10a; the next month I finished an equally long 5.10b. The month after that, the world shut down, and I haven't climbed consistently since then.

In the interim, the climbing gym personnel completely changed over: new manager, new route-setters. Somewhere in there they decided collectively that their old grades had been too soft, so a route that used to get a 5.8 rating would now be a 5.7 or perhaps a 5.6. A 5.6 rating is supposed to mean it's beginner-friendly, but it got a lot harder to find easy routes.

Also in the interim, I started lifting weights and added a fair amount of bulk to my frame. (Seriously, you guys: I tried on Marie's blazer after she said, "But my shoulders are much bigger than yours," and I couldn't move my arms AT ALL. I needed, like, a sausage-stuffing machine to pour myself into those sleeves. Her shoulders are not actually bigger than mine, even though she is 8 inches taller than I am.) The muscle is an advantage, but at the same time it's harder to move a heavier body up the wall. This is a tension Joe has often talked about: wanting to build muscle for lifting, wanting to stay light for climbing. 

The result of all this was that my sense of what I could and couldn't do at the climbing gym came unmoored. Was I struggling on a route labeled 5.7 because it corresponded to a 2019 5.9 route? Or because it was set by a new employee with no clue what it's like to be a middle-aged climber with a 66-inch wingspan? Or because [self-critical thoughts redacted here, though they remain very loud in my brain] and I should just give up?

In January 2023 I decided to buy an annual membership, and I've been climbing every week with Pete. I would put the humbling:pleasant ratio at about 65:35, because he keeps nudging me to do hard things. But I think I am beginning to see some progress.

We have been doing more bouldering than we used to, climbing shorter routes with no ropes. I do not love the idea of jumping down from holds 15 feet in the air, even though there are mats on the floor, so part of the issue for me is mental. Also, though, the boulder problems are hard. 

Before the pandemic I could often but not always climb V2 boulders (I don't know why they have two different systems for rating difficulty) and I was just starting to do V3s. But when I started climbing again this year, the V2s felt entirely out of reach.

Pete has been super-patient with me, giving me both encouragement and beta (climber-speak for step-by-step explanations of how to get from Point A to Point B). He can propel his body across the wall with a combination of control and grace that seems impossible for this 52-year-old body to imitate. "Put your left foot there," he told me today. "My LEFT foot?" I asked him skeptically. "Your left foot," he said again, with more patience than I deserve. And do you know, after a few false starts I sent my first post-COVID V2 route.

"Now try the green one," he urged me. The green one felt ridiculous two weeks ago. Imagine putting one foot on a surface that's at hip height, and then standing up on that foot with minimal upper-body support. Like, say you have a light switch you can hold with one hand, but mostly you have to push with your bent leg without losing your balance. Hard, right? Pete and I have this recurring conversation at the climbing gym: he says, "now stand up on your foot," and I say, "I can't," because my legs don't really work like that here in my sixth decade. (There's a similar maneuver in this video (0:57-1:01), but I have two solid handholds there.)

"Hm," he said, looking again at the route. "You could also put get both hands on the next hold and pull up instead of pushing up." This is not a move that 2020 Jamie could have managed, because she did not have the upper-body strength for it, but it worked well for 2023 Jamie. And it felt really satisfying to finish a second tough boulder problem in one session after weeks of frustration.

Hm, now that I have written all this out I am thinking it is unlikely to be as interesting to anyone else as it is to me. But I want to remember the sensation of pulling myself up to that fat green hold: effortful but doable. I spent a lot of the session thinking tailspinny thoughts. I told myself I was too tired, inadequately fueled. I was a little shaky when I tackled the green route for the last time, and the voice in my head said, "What if you FALL and HIT YOUR HEAD?" 

The voice in my head is not very likely to say "what if you finish the route and feel really pleased with yourself?" But that's what actually happened.

One of these days it will stop surprising me

Today was a long full day at work (they're all feeling like long full days right now), and I walked home under spitting gray skies feeling tired and sick. I walked in the door and took a COVID test. But I had told Pete that we could climb today, so when my test was negative I changed into workout clothes and headed off, a little reluctantly, to the climbing gym. 

After 45 minutes at the gym I felt seven million times better -- perky, upbeat, singing happy songs about dinner. This always seems a little weird to me. I can read about the mood-boosting effects of exercise, but when my own personal mood is boosted by exercise I'm always like, "Wait, this is not fair. Why can't I get my mood boosted by lying on the couch with a bag of Lindor truffles?"

I am shifting my focus back toward endurance training for the first time in a while. It feels pretty terrible right now, but bodies are adaptable and so I am just going to lean into the terrible. My plan is to dial back my lower-body weight-training to about once a week. I'm not willing to give up deadlifting, because nothing else makes me feel quite as mighty, but I find it very tricky to combine tough lifting sessions and tough running sessions. So: for a while I am going to run more and lift less, with the goal of maintaining my current level of strength while also getting enough rest to absorb the benefits of my running workouts.

Pete and I have been climbing more lately, which I am counting as a strength + cardio + flexibility cross-training session. I am trying not to focus on the ground I lost over the pandemic; I'm just going to try to keep nudging it forward from where I am.

A review of the Strong Strong Friends program

I decided to subscribe to Meg Gallagher's Strong Strong Friends training program back in September, feeling mildly uncertain about spending money on a strength-training program. Short version of this post: it has been money well spent and I am going to buy the next installment too.

Could I just tell myself what to do in the gym instead? I mean, sure, that is a thing I could do. I tend to get in ruts where I just keep doing the same things over and over, and I tend to go around and around inside my brain about how much weight to lift on a given day. Meg tells me what to do and gives me short videos to show me how to do it. If I look at her short video and I am like, "No, Meg, I decline," she will give me a list of substitutions that target the same muscles. Usually there's something on the list that will quiet down my inner Bartleby-the-scrivener-who-would-prefer-not-to.

I also really like being told how much weight to lift and how many times to lift it. I am not a person who objects to math, but 77.5% of 97.5 would require some face-scrunching. Meg's app does the face-scrunching number-crunching, and it keeps track of what I've been doing across time. I had no clue where to put the pin for lat pulldowns today, because I haven't done a lot of them this fall. But the app said, "Here you go, Jamie, I've got you." 

(Do you anthropomorphize your apps like this? I do know that this app has no literal face to scrunch and no actual kindness to offer me, but that last paragraph reads as if I have made a new friend and not just paid a subscription fee.)

This most recent installment of the plan has been a bro split, where you focus on one major movement in each lifting session. It has shown me that I much prefer lifting sessions with two compound movements, so I've been adjusting accordingly. You can sub in whatever you'd like, and the app will plop the results right in with the rest of your data. The next session is apparently going to focus on deadlifts, and I am here for it. I love deadlifting. I've made a bunch of deadlift progress this fall and I'm excited to make more.

I do find the workouts long and exhausting, so I trim them down to a length that works for me. I might make faster progress if I did all the exercises every time, but I might also persuade myself that going to the gym was too hard and painful so maybe I should go tomorrow, or maybe the day after.

Meg is not paying me any money to write this post; it is an unsolicited review from a happy first-time subscriber. If you feel comfortable with the big three compound lifts and have been looking for a nudge to get back to lifting or progress more systematically, I highly recommend it. If you don't yet feel comfortable with the big three, I suggest Casey Johnston's LIFTOFF program. 

Barbells for all, osteoporosis for none, deadlifts forever! And on that cheery note, good night, my friends.