Monday, December 27, 2010

Relative


Wife and I went to the gym yesterday to work off some of the holiday turkey and dressing. Got there when it opened -- not until ten a.m. on Sundays. 


Place was relatively crowded, some serious jocks there. As we worked out, we watched one little blonde girl who was maybe twenty, alternate between pull-ups and front squats, doing sets of three each for at least four sets, then doing walking lunges with a pair of big-for-her dumbbells. I haven't seen a lot of women at our gym do pull-ups at all, much less sets.


I worked until I was tired, went down to the aerobics room and did my djurus and some stretching while Dianne did yoga, then we came home. 


Later, we clicked on the TV and there was another round of the World's Strongest Man Competition, from South Africa. First event, the Giant Farmer's Walk, involved heats of two guys. Each had to grab a pair of looked like rectangular, file-cabinet-sized blocks of metal with handles amidships, hoist those off the ground, and walk a course, there and back, for time. 


As might a farmer carrying buckets of milk, hence, I suppose, the name.


Only, the weights were about three hundred and fifty pounds per block. So these guys were carrying seven hundred pounds like I would carry a pair of lightweight suitcases. 


After they were done, one guy flashed his hand, and the callus was torn right off his palm, the flesh bloody. This was the first event, and he had to go through several more, moving big rocks and deadlifting mountains and all like that. The guy with the shredded hand had to bandage that and wear gloves to finish. 


He eventually won the day to qualify for the finals. 


The guy he edged out for first, who also qualified for the finals, was eleven weeks post-op for a torn and partially-detached biceps tendon. A large British fellow, six-five, pushing four hundred pounds in weight. Kind of fellow puts the Incredible Hulk into the shade.


These guys would give Hercules a run for his money. 


One of the ads was for a MET-Rx contest: Send us a vid of your killer workout and win a walk-on role on the new cable series, Spartacus


My wife said, "You should enter." I just laughed. I just watched guys bigger than Goliath play through pain that would send me crying to the ER. 


I don't think I'll be shooting that video ...

3 comments:

Ximena Cearley said...

Three is a set? Did she have weights on her ankles?

Steve Perry said...

Like the post said, it's relative.

Anything more than one is a set -- guys who squat heavy or go for bench press records do trips. Plus I don't know how many pull-ups or squats the woman did before I got there -- if she arrived when the place opened its doors, she was fifteen minutes ahead of us.

For you rope-shinnying flying trapeze artists, three pull-ups probably isn't much. I can do a dozen chins is pretty good form for the first set, but after that, the total starts dropping pretty fast ...

Steve Perry said...

P.S.

So ... how many reps and sets of chins/pull-ups are you doing, monkey girl?