Week 97 - Random Musings
A collection of random comments and musings this time.
Saw my sig line in full force again. Last week I was descended upon by a couple of aunts, a cousin and her kids and the kids from two other cousins. They live out of town and came up for a day trip to the local zoo. I have no kids but was elected as "tour guide" so off we went. Man, did I see a lot of out-of-shape dads at the zoo! I am thinking, geez, a lot of these guys are younger than me and look at that BF%. I think I saw two guys that stick out in my mind as being more or less in shape, but I think they were just more lean than actually being lifters or in shape. The one father/son combo that really sticks with me is the pair of them that each looked like a beach ball, proudly wearing T-shirts having something to do with football. I don’t get the football and fitness thing. To me, most professional (and high school) football players are fat and out of shape, except for maybe the kickers and quarterbacks. I just have to chuckle to myself when I see the ads on TV about how the NFL is promoting fitness in kids. Yeah, right. There was an ad on TV a season or two ago with a famous NFL quarterback telling adults that it is OK to be a couch potato. Sheesh.
Thought I really screwed up my left shoulder this weekend. I decided to add body dips to the routine; my delts are really lacking. I don’t have a dip station so I put two dining room chairs near each other and started into the dips. First one I went down too far and ended up on my butt on the floor. Nothing hurt except my pride at that point and I got back up and did three sets of 10. By bedtime my left shoulder was yelling at me and by morning it was almost screaming at me. I am thinking, oh great, the right shoulder’s been iffy since spring now I’ve screwed up the left one. I didn’t take anything for it, I hate taking NSAIDs… they work great, but I retain water like there’s no tomorrow when I take them. Anyway, by evening my shoulder was feeling a lot better and by the next morning it seemed to be completely normal again. Weird. I was worried because I had planned shoulders/chest/tris for that evening and figured I’d have to modify that or scratch it completely, but by liftin’ time I was good to go. I proceeded cautiously but I managed to do the full routine w/o incident.
Posted a pic last night of me in a new T-shirt I bought. Stumbled across it on a seasonal clearance for less than two bucks (!) and it looked like it had shorter, arm-flattering sleeves. Why not. Got it home and on me and wow. Made me feel great. The pix didn’t pick up every detail but my tris esp. really show up in a relaxed pose in this shirt. It was a good pick-me-up because I have been really down on myself this summer because the weight has come up a few pounds and I don’t think it’s muscle weight since the workouts have been really lacking this summer. Also my waist is up a bit, so I have been really kicking myself for the slide backwards. The new shirt helped to mitigate that a bit. The belly may be a smidge bigger, but the chest and arms are looking great.
Meanwhile summer is screaming towards its end, darnitall. In one way, it will be good because I will be back to work and back to a stricter diet and eating routine, plus I’ll be home to actually work out. In another way I always hate to see the end of summer. Got one more cottage trip coming up this week to enjoy the last gasp of summer.
Then it’ll be back to full time liftin’.
August 25, 2009 at 5:33 pm
When you start to notice out- of -shape people that signifies you have now moved sides ! Likewise for some time now I’ve been thinking to myself how many unfit people there are in this world.You read about how fitness conscious Americans are but the first time I visited the US I was amazed to witness so many unfit-looking people !
Anyway D.Alan I know you’ll cherish the 2 buck T-shirt…you should have bought the whole heap !
August 25, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Actually, I bought what I could… there was only one in my size left! However, today I stopped by another location of this same store and they also had one shirt of this style in my size left… I bought that one, so now I have two! I tried a third location of the store on my errands today, but alas, my luck ran out and they didn’t have any shirts at all. Obviously this was end-of-the-season clearance stuff.
And yes, Americans are very out of shape. There are those who are very fitness conscious and there’s everyone else, and not much in between. My IT job is in an inner city high school and what I see for body types among the students is just appalling.