Monkey Blog

Can you spot him in this clip?  And OMG at the girl in the black/pink/purple outfit.  LOL!

Up through high school I had a huge hangup about my height. I hate, hate, H-A-T-E-D how short I was. My buddies that I hung out with were almost all at least six feet tall. They all just towered over me and it drove me nuts. As I got older I found that life has a way of teaching you what is and isn’t important and being tall isn’t one of them. Now I could care less about my height, which is great.

I was looking at the front page of BodySpace and I noticed something interesting. Four of the top six guys are around my height. That kind of blows my mind a little even though it shouldn’t. What other athletic endeavor is there where being "shorter" is actually helpful? I never would have guessed it when I first started. It never ceases to amuse me at how many misconceptions I had about lifting before I started.

• I’m the most unathletic person in the world.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to do this.  WRONG
• I’m concerned that I might be too old to make any real progress. WRONG (I actually did think this BUT I was never let it going to stop me from trying. I just took a “screw it, I’m going to try anyway” attitude!)
• I’ll stick out like a sore thumb and be uncomfortable in a gym full of fit people.  WRONG
• I don’t like to eat much and I’ve never been over 145 pounds.  I doubt I could get any bigger than that.  WRONG

I could go on all day.  I’m just thankful that none of them kept me from starting!

I know this is common sense, but it still surprised me. Last night I did four sets of weighted dips at the end of International Chest Day and I was just completely wiped out. I started thinking how it had been a long time since I had done dips without a weight belt. Usually they have to kick me out the door because the gym is closing but this night I was a little ahead of my normal schedule so I thought "What the heck?" and dropped the weight belt and just did one last set of dips. Even thought I was exhausted I was amazed at how light I felt. I remember when I first started thinking dips were really hard, and I was almost 20 pounds lighter!

No, not the one the was used to build Spartans.  This weekend I had my 300th workout.  Wow.  I swear it doesn’t seem that long ago that I was a bundle of nerves walking in the front door of the gym for the first time.  At first I had the mindset of "Just make it through this workout."  Before you know it you’ve got a couple of workouts under your belt.  Then suddenly it’s a few weeks, a few months, and then a long time.  I can’t believe I’ve walked in that front door 300 times already.

My 300th workout was an arm day (my favorite).  I haven’t done barbell curls in a while.  I used the ones with a fixed amount of weight.  I curled with the 60 pound one and then the 70 pound one.  I felt really good so I tried the 80 pound one, which I’ve never tried before.  Bam, I got it with no flailing.  That felt great.  As I was looking at myself in the giant mirror on the wall while I was doing it I couldn’t help but think "I still can’t believe I’m doing this."  The skinny, completely clueless noob that had walked in those front doors wasn’t in that mirror.  I wasn’t referring so much to the amount of weight I was using, but that I was lifting at all.  For so long I wondered what it would be like to be in shape, to have muscles, to be active, etc.  It took me long enough but I finally forced myself to do it.

300 down and a lot more to go!

I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I decided that tonight I would give it a go. It’s International Chest Day and I was set to work with dumbbells tonight so I was going to try to bench with the 80 pounders. I vividly remember when my trainer first grabbed the 60 lb dumbbells for me to bench with. My eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw them and I could barely get them up (with his help).

I did my warmup and started off with 65 lbs. For my final set I walked over and grabbed the 80 lb ones. When I had them sitting on my legs I was really nervous and had butterflies in my stomach. As I started falling back I thought "There’s no going back now." Getting into position and getting them up for the first rep was really ugly. At one point I could feel some panic setting in and for a moment I thought about dropping them. Then I thought "SCREW THAT!" and pumped out a total of 6 clean, controlled reps. Damn that felt great. The biggest unexpected surprise about lifting weights for me is discovering how great it is to look fear in the eyes and giving it the middle finger.

On a totally unrelated note, before I went to the gym I went to the grocery store. I stepped onto their scale and it said 158. I immediately thought "Wow, their scale is frakked up!" and went about my business. When I weighed myself at the gym the manual scale said I was over 157 and the digital one said I was 157. OMG. I lifted the 80 pounders for the first time on the night I hit 157 for the first time. I practically bounced out of the gym I was so happy!

.

I always lose weight during the Christmas holidays but for various reasons I lost a lot this past Christmas.  I got down to 147.5, which really upset me because I had kept myself in the 150’s for over a year.  I know that I get too caught up with numbers, but being over 150 was a huge deal for me the first time it happened.  It wasn’t that long ago that being 150 seemed unthinkable to me.  I didn’t know anything about training or eating properly and it seemed impossible for a small guy who was already thirty five.

When the holiday madness was over and I could concentrate on training and eating properly again I decided to make a change to my diet.  I kicked the weight gainers to the curb.  Everything I do with my training and eating is with a mindset towards the long haul. When I decided to join a gym and start training properly I made the decision that I was undergoing a complete lifestyle change that I expected to keep up forever.  When I started training at the gym I completely expected that it would be a miserable, torturous experience that I was willing to put up with to get to where I wanted to be with my body.  What I slowly started to realize is that it doesn’t have to be like that.  Don’t get me wrong, you still have to bust your @$$ every time, but how long could you realistically last with a program that you find to be torture?  I never had the mindset of a ‘YY day transformation’.  I just decided that it time to change how I was living permanently.  It’s the same way with the diet.  Sure I could be leaner if I ate a bunch of foods that I hate but are good for me.  Cottage cheese is the perfect example.  It’s got a ton of protein but every time I put it in my mouth I can feel my gag reflex instantly switch into overdrive.  Cottage cheese is out of the picture.  But if you take the effort to find healthy foods that you like then sticking to a good diet isn’t a big deal.

With that said the weight gainers I was taking always seemed to against all of that.  I absolutely cringed every time I would see the nutritional label of the big tub that was sitting on my kitchen counter.  One serving has 17% of saturated fat and 46% of cholesterol of the daily recommended values.  You can’t tell me that that is good for your health in the long haul.  I finally had a “What the hell am I doing?” epiphany and threw the tub into the garbage.

I’ve managed to get myself back to my heaviest weight of 155, which I’m pleased as punch about.  I’ve learned several things about diet in the process.  The first is that wishing you were heavier will not make you heavier, no matter how hard you wish it.  Seriously.  For real.  Another thing I didn’t realize was that I was terrible about skipping meals.  “I’m late for work.  I don’t have time to eat breakfast.”  “OMG is the smoke monster going to let Ben live?  I don’t feel like hitting pause and getting something to eat.  I’m still pretty full.”  Blah blah etc etc.  It doesn’t seem like a big deal to skip a meal once in a while but it really starts to add up.  Now if I’m late for work I grab a South Beach bar (10 grams of protein) and eat it in the car.  I also make sure to eat every 3-4 hours like I’ve always known I should.  Just with those simple changes guess what?  Getting back to where I was with the weight gainers wasn’t a big deal.

.

When I got home last night it was too late to hit the gym.  That’s no reason to cancel International Chest Day however!  I decided to do one of my old school "all pushup" workouts.  Pushups are always a part of chest day, but I haven’t done an "all pushup" day since I started training at my gym!  When I used to do this I only did regular pushups with no variation.  I decided to mix things up and make them harder.  I got out my pushup pro handles and got to work.  Every rep included a wrist twist when going up and down.  Feet flat on the ground, 20 reps, very brief rest.  Feet slightly elevated off of the ground, 20 reps, very brief rest.  Feet elevated off of the ground, 20 reps, very brief rest.  After 80 total reps rest for a few minutes.  Arms normal width apart, far apart, close.  I was constantly mixing things up.  I ended up with 320 total reps.  I used to do a lot more than that when I was doing regular pushups, but pushups on the pushup pro handles are significantly harder.  When I was done I had an awesome chest pump.  If you can’t get to the gym that’s no excuse not to build up your chest.  This monkey loves his pushups!

I took this right after I was done.  Great workout!

Today I continued my adventures at the "why the hell are there mirrors above the benching stations?" gym.  It was International Chest Day but I couldn’t make myself lie down on one of those benches.  LOL!  Anyway the place is pretty cramped.  I grabbed some dumbbells and ended up doing my pushups rows in the area that was near the entrance to the office of the staff members.  I had just finished up my second set when I noticed that one of the workers that had been out on the floor was coming back to the office.  He turned and walked up to me.  I was convinced he was going to shoo me away from the office and make me go someplace else.  Instead he said, "I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what do you do to workout your arms?"  I was so shocked I almost fell over.  I always was incredibly self conscious about my stick arms before I started training.  Arm growth is definitely what I wanted the most when I joined my gym.  I get comments on here about my chest once in a while so it wouldn’t have been a big deal to me if he would have asked about that.  But to have a stranger ask me for tips about my arms just blew my mind.  I was so happy I swear I floated out of the place when I left!

. .

I’m talking about at the gym. 

I worked out at a gym I’ve never been to today.  I noticed that above each of the benching stations that they had mounted mirrors on the ceiling so that you could watch yourself.  I don’t know about anyone else but the last thing I want to see when I’m pushing up weight is my red, contorted face.  I found it really odd!

In a good way or not I’m not sure…..