I am a weakling.

No, scratch that.  Let's say it differently:

I am weak.

I know, those two statements may not sound that different, or else the difference may seem semantic or picky.  But there really is a difference.  Consider the two following statements:

Jennie is snarky.

Jennie is being snarky.

The difference is an implication of permanence.  The Spanish language differentiates between these ideas by using "ser" to describe a permanent or set state of being and "estar" to describe a state of being in the moment.  But in English, we have to solve that problem by using precise language.  So the difference between "I am a weakling" and "I am weak" is that I view this as a temporary state of being, not a permanent one.

In other words, this is my starting point, but I'm working on it.  Or, in the rhetoric of Nerd Fitness, I just need to level up.

After all, in Kingdom Hearts, I stuck around the island until I was Big Powerful Leveled-Up Sora... but I didn't start the game that way.  I had to lose to Riku a bunch of times before I could beat him.  #geektangent

Until today, my exercise has been predominantly cardio training.  I've been running, doing water aerobics, which has some muscle-building benefits but is also largely cardio-based, and some Zumba.  All that stuff gets my heart pumping, which is great.  Cardio has great cardiovascular effects (hence the name) and increases stamina and has been linked to great stuff like not getting Alzheimer's later in life.  (Side note: decreasing the risk of Alzheimer's and cognitive decline is a HUGE motivator for me, because I'm a pretty cerebral person and the idea of losing my cognitive capacities as I age is basically the most terrifying thing I can imagine.)

But the thing is - everything I've read talks about how for real weight loss and long-term fitness-based health, strength training is a really important core piece.  Plus, I'm sick of being weak.  I'm sick of offering moving help for friends and then being the girl carrying a stack of pillows while the guys lift the heavy stuff.  And if I never had to ask someone to open another jar for me again (barring wet or greasy hands), I'd be pretty thrilled.  So yep, strength training.

Well, ok, so I'm not being totally fair to myself.  When I joined the Y about a month and a half ago, someone helped me get set up on the weight machine circuit.  I went three times a week, but with the weight levels we had set, I saw no gains.  I felt no DOMS and I didn't feel any more competent with the weights than I had when I started.  I increased the weights to try to get at that day-after hurts-so-good feeling, but all that did was make me unable to do the number of reps I was trying for and I *still* didn't have much soreness the next day.

And then I read this article about the problems with machines.  Basically, they isolate a specific set of muscles and move them up and down or side to side... which means they have no real life application, because that's not how people actually move in real life.  If the goal of strength training is to be able to bend down, use my legs while wielding a heavy box of books with my arms, and lift it up a flight of stairs, those machines don't really prepare me for all the different ways my body moves at once while doing that. 

So better than machines - bodyweight strength building, barbells, and dumbells.

So today I decided to try the first set of barbell training in the Nerd Fitness Academy for Women. 

I started with a dynamic warm-up, which included jumping rope for 3 minutes, 50 jumping jacks, 10 pushups (I did incline pushups since I can't actually do a normal pushup), swinging my legs back and forth a lot, squats, and a few other things.  When I finished the warmup, I felt pooped.  "Ok," I thought, "Time to call it a day.  Good workout.  Go team."

Except that wasn't really true, because all I'd done was warm up.  Oops. 

So ok, now time for the actual workout.  First was 5 sets of 5 reps on the bench press machine.  This was the scariest thing for me to try, because I've never bench pressed so much as a pillow.  (I know, second mention of pillows.  It might be approaching bedtime.)  But I used just the bar, and honestly it was totally manageable.  I felt my arms getting a little weaker towards the end of the 4th set, but it was pretty doable.  I still think I'll stick with just the bar for awhile, but I was surprised that the motion itself wasn't all that challenging.

Then, 5 sets of 5 squats with a barbell.  For this, I ditched the heavy duty metal stuff and used an 18 pound weighted bar.  Hey - I'm just a beginner here, and until yesterday, I don't think I'd ever done even an unweighted squat... so this was a big step for me.  Around set 3, my legs started protesting pretty strongly, but I made it through ok.

I won't walk you through the whole workout, partially because a lot of it wasn't that eventful and partially because Nerd Fitness Academy is a paid service and I don't want Steve Kamb, who I admire and respect greatly, to think I'm trying to make his labor of love available for free.  So I'll skip the middle of the workout and jump to the last two exercises.

Ok, now we come to an exercise that should be pretty simple, especially for someone who lives in a second-third floor walkup and works on the third floor of a building and therefore does lots and lots of stairs every day.  Literally, this exercise consists of step up onto a thing, step down from the thing.  So I picked a thing to use that was about halfway up my calf.  And I stepped onto it - or tried to - and my legs, still sore from squats went NOPE!  So I picked a smaller thing, about ankle high, and did the exercise on that.  Much wimpier, but at least I didn't throw in the towel.

And then the last exercise was this thing where you hang from a bar and do crunches by bending your knees up towards yourself.  I know, the hard part of this is supposed to be how it works your legs and abs... but for me, the hard part was hanging from the bar!  I used to do monkey bars like they were nothing when I was a kid, but I got through about two not-otherwise-difficult knee lifts and I think my arms started to come out of my sockets. 

When I left, I thought, "maybe I'm not barbell ready.  I'll start with bodyweight-based exercises."  But actually, very few of the exercises in this barbell rotation actually used a barbell, and the ones that did weren't the hard part.  So I think I'll stick with it, and just replace the hanging leg lifts with simply hanging for as long as I can, and doing 3 sets of just... hanging and counting to 5 or 10 or 30.  Gotta start somewhere, yeah?

So... here we go.  Time to get rid of weakling status.  Onwards.