idahodawg’s BodyBlog

I’ve been trying to get my wife to lift weights with me for quite some time.  She’s always gone to the gym with me, but she usually does her own cardio thing and then lifts some weights, but never on the same program as me.  About a month ago she said she wanted to lift with me, but I was on the tail-end of a mass program and didn’t want to cut it short.  She said she’d do it with me, but with different sets and reps.  That was all fine and dandy, but I could tell she didn’t really enjoy it and was afraid she’d not want to lift with me any more.  Then she found a workout in Oxygen Magazine (Spring 2009 issue) and said she wanted to try it.  I looked at it and thought it looked a little…well…easy.  It’s a 4-day split with "push" exercises on Monday (Chest, Shoulders, Tri’s), Quads and Hams on Wednesday, "pull" exercises on Friday (Back, Biceps), and Calves & Abs on Saturday.  You "only" do two exercises per bodypart; the first is 4 sets of 6 reps with heavy weight, and the second is 4 sets of 15 reps with lighter weight.  Now, I’ve been doing like 4 exercises per bodypart with up to 5 sets per exercise, so I’m thinking "No way this is going to give me a good workout."

BUT, I really enjoy spending time with my wife, especially doing something I love like working out, so I told her I would do that program with her.  All the while I’m thinking to myself "If it’s not intense enough for me, I’ll just add an extra exercise per bodypart."

Well, we started it this week on Monday, and because of some other things we had going on, we didn’t get to legs until yesterday.  I went as heavy as possible on everything while still getting all the reps with good form (having my wife as a spotter definitely helped).  The workout details are in my workout tracker for 4/6 and 4/9.  I was a little sore on Tuesday and Wednesday from the "push" workout on Monday, so I started to feel a little better about doing this program without adding anything to it.  As long as I was honest with the weight I’m lifting and go for max effort on every rep, I’d be okay.

Then came the leg workout.  Holy crap!  Smith machine squats (heavy) followed by dumbbell lunges (light), and leg curls heavy) followed by dumbbell stiff-legged deadlifts (light).  My legs were toast halfway through.  I couldn’t complete the lunges.  I had trouble walking to the car to go home.  My legs were shaky all day, and now, barely 30 hours later, they’re as sore as they’ve been in a long time. Just getting up out of my chair at work is painful, and I LIKE it!

We were going to do back and biceps today, but when we woke up this morning to go to the gym, we were both too sore to get out of the bed.  It’s a good kind of sore, though.  I’m really looking forward to back and biceps tomorrow. I just hope I’m able to steer the car on the way home.

So, lesson learned: Just because the workout came from a "girlie" magazine doesn’t mean it can’t work for us "manly" men.  Pick the right weight for the number of reps prescribed, give it maximum effort, and it’ll work.  Also, perhaps I’ve been overtraining.  We’ll see what kinds of gains I make with this program to see if I need to dial back my total sets and reps and dial up the intensity.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 8:52 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.