The Transformation Journals

So I am answering some of the questions on the profile page and one of them is about to grunt or not to grunt while lifting.  Do I?  As stated, we all have a time where one slips out.  You’re working really hard and getting tired.  Been doing max weight to failure.  Running on pure desire.  On that primal level, in "the zone" if you prefer.  You force out the one last rep, the one that truely is to failure, and emit this grunt, growl, scream.  It happens.  No worries or complaints from anyone.  On the other hand you grunt, drool and slobber with every rep.  More so on the ones you cheat by using momentum to do them.  No thanks.  It’s not all that.

 I am reading Dave Draper’s news letter, and had recently looked through Bill Pearl’s Keys to The Inner Universe and it strikes me.  I look at the illistrations in the book and read Dave’s words about "the Dungeon" and realize I miss a dungeon gym.  Do not get me wrong, I like my gym.  It is small, clean, and 24 hour access is a great benefit with my schedule.  Sometimes a bit too small if a lot of us are trying to use the free weights at the same time.  It is not a "health club" with a juice bar and daycare.  Those are great for people that need them and that is what gets them to the gym and they use the gym not just the daycare and juice bar.  I do miss the "feel" of a dungeon.  Free weights everywhere, stacks of iron plates to load on bars and machines.  Yes even the machines require you to load on the steel, not just move a pin to change the weight.  Now a good dungeon is clean and safe.  I am not talking about a dank, dark, and dirty pit.  You know what I mean.

So now I suppose we get to the real reason I am writing this.  I am at the gym.  There are just a few of us in the free weight area.  One of them is a grunter slobberer.  He swings the dumbells and crashes the weight stacks down on every rep.  He is using the cables to do some pulls downs and cross overs, I step to the Smith machine and he says he is using it.  Okay, I’m flexible, I go to the dumbell rack, no worries.  So then he moves over there too.  Plenty of room.  Someone else steps up to the cables and guess what, he says, "I’m using them".  He is looking in the mirror and flexing and posing and running around the room like a squirrel guarding it’s stashed acorns.  Don’t get me wrong.  Nothing wrong with checking yourself in the mirror, but it can go to excess.  Especially when added to the hording, grunting and slobbering.  And leaving your used plates and dumbells scattered all over floor.  After a bit, I just give up and move out to the machine area and finish out there.  I prefer to use free weights but I can still get a good workout using the machines.  Luckily, I have not seen him since, and hopefully won’t have that problem again.

 Okay, sorry to talk about anyone, but I feel better now.  Sorry for that too.  As always, more later.  Be well.

Six weeks until school starts and it looks like workouts will go to two a week.  This semester school will be three nights a week and with work as well two a week is all I will really be able to get in and still be productive.  Any more than that will put them too close together for proper recovery.  So the question for me now is; do I do a total body workout twice a week or do an upper - lower body split and hit each one once a week?  As usual just pondering out loud here.  I’ll post here what I decide.  Until then, six weeks of three a week as hard as I can. Then two a week from mid January until mid May.

I have not posted this anywhere yet I don’t think so here it is.  I had to go to a push - pull - legs split with cardio on non leg days.  The total body three a week was getting me into an over training issue with a lot of pain in my clavicles and the left lat delt.  So with the switch all is well.  As always, more to follow.

Be well.