I like to say about myself that I'm a freakish combination of brute strength and poetic sensibilities. That I am somehow the bastard love child of Chyna the wrestler and Emily Dickinson dawned on me when I realized I could lift heavier things than most. My straight women friends, as I started to heft some large box or tote some major furniture, would often say, 'Oh, honey, let one of the guys move that.'
Until a few months ago, however, this sense of my physical prowess was based solely on anecdotal evidence. Then at the tail end of last year, I started doing weight training regularly. That being a relatively solitary activity—when using weight machines and not needing a spotter to extract you from the floorboards ( like the funny bone in a game of Operation ) when the dumbbell you lift proves too heavy—I went along in ignorance of how I compared with others. I subsequently, though, decided to sign up at my local Y for a program called Commit to Be Fit, not only for the t-shirt with the attractive serif font but also for the free access to a personal trainer it allowed.
Before I started, I thought it would be a good idea to get a fitness assessment. On things like sit-ups and reach I was average to slightly above for women my age. But on bench press—doing as many lifts of a 30-pound weight as I could—I was above excellent: nearly off the chart.
The first personal trainer I met with, a tiny guy named Chris, talked so long about his philosophy of exercise that there was barely time for any workout—and that was with exceeding our 90-minute session by a half hour. The fact that a large part of what he advocated is that I stop believing I had control over my life and give it up to a higher being caused me to doubt we were a good match. And as my girlfriend Kathy pointed out, if I had no control, why bother exercising? Why not, she might have said ( but didn't ) , let that higher being get rid of my ass fat? So when it came time for my second session with a personal trainer, I sought someone new.
Her name was Bonnie, and from her I discovered that when I described myself as 'freakishly' strong, it was not, apparently, simply hyperbole. Having been doing weights for several weeks before I saw Bonnie, I had a good sense of my capabilities. She followed me from machine to machine to evaluate my form as I did a single set of 10 repetitions on each. At leg extension, she asked how many pounds I wanted. 'Sixty,' I said. 'What! No!' she said, clearly alarmed. 'I've never known a woman to lift that much weight on this machine! Let's try 20,' she suggested, as though I were either demented or a liar.
She put the peg in the 20-pound weight, and I proceeded to fling my legs up and down as though they were a sheet flapping in a fierce breeze. 'OK,' she said. 'How about this ...' and she moved the peg to 35. She seemed so shaken in her knowledge of women's abilities, I tried to pretend like 35 was a bit of a struggle. I left wondering who her other clients were—women who reclined on divans all day while being fed peeled grapes? From the sound of things, she certainly must have worked only with women who had never so much as lifted a 10-pound bag of flour without needing a day of bed rest afterward because while 60 pounds on the leg extension is a respectable amount, it's certainly not Herculean. Also, Bonnie and Chris had given me diametrically opposed opinions on how best to lose weight, so I lost my commitment to the Commit to Be Fit program.
I did not, however, lose my commitment to weight training. And now it is my girlfriend who is screaming 'What!' in disbelief when I tell her to what I have progressed, this time on the leg press.
Still, I hate the thought that the folks at the Y think I'm a quitter. But frankly, I wouldn't want to demonstrate for Bonnie the amount of weight I can do now without a vial of smelling salts handy. Then again, it could be kind of fun, watching her reaction. I imagine her eyes going boing and popping out like a cartoon character's, then her rubbing them, accompanied by an eee-eee-eee squeaky noise. After all, I does eats me spinach. And my bicep, unlike Olive Oyl's, is larger than a golf ball.
