Training at a regular gym
I know, some of you are going to say: “but haven’t you had enough? Haven’t you learned your lesson about safety and powerlifting?” I did, but this is different (it is always different when you are having fun)! It is a regular gym, but a real big, well equipped, well manned gym. The instructors are all Physical Educators or Ph.Ed. students, really knowledgeable, probably because they pay better.
I used to workout there two years ago, in another, pre-powerlifting era. Then, I used to be just a curious, reckless, experimental practitioner, reading and trying anything that sounded cool. Muscular but cut, small.
Last year, I received a sponsorship from the Company and that includes training a few days a week at their facility. My team remains Nautilus at Santo Andre.
When I started training at the big gym, many people remembered me from the old days. Having me back with a few titles and a lot of extra knowledge and experience was exciting – I have been treated with kindness and respect from day one. Not only that, but many of the instructors and more advanced practitioners crowd around me for some powerlifting or strength training tips. A few of them, though, got really interested in learning.
Yesterday I explained the Bench Press to one young instructor. We did a load test and he is quite strong. Since BP technique demands quite a bit of adaptation, he felt unstable at first. I decided to stop at 286lbs (he weighs 165lb). He wanted to keep loading the bar, but I decided he needed to adjust to the technique first. Then he asked me:
“May I do more exercises for chest and triceps or is this over?”
I said “no, go on, they will be your assistance work – we will fix that later.”
“May I really ?”
That “really” should have told him off to me, but I was focused on my own shoulder work. When I looked back, the boy was doing a million and a half extra benching reps.
“Oh boy”, I thought.
A few days ago I sent an abstract (which I invented, please don’t believe all I write) from the International Journal of Human Genome Research to my friend Mendinho about the discovery of the Powerlifting gene. In homozygosis, the gene coded for a compulsive lifting behavior triggered by the contact with an Olympic bar. We had a good laugh. Yesterday, though, I wondered if that wasn’t a true abstract, and the other, on leptin reaction, was the one I invented…
