My aunt had a double mastectomy with reconstruction after breast cancer and she has had issues with the implants that required follow up surgery 3 separate times…
It’s definitely not a great solution.
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Right?! Affirm every delusional thought and the world would be chaos.
Fascinating! That’s a totally new perspective and quote to me. I’ll have to let it marinate; it sounds very relevant here.
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I’m so sorry to hear that. Some women seem to do fine with them. Others, like me and your aunt, aren’t so fortunate.
What’s wild is that surgeons who are doing mastectomies on young women are flippantly telling them it’s no big deal because they can just go get implants later. It’s a load of BS.
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Lower Body Day
100 Rep Leg Press Challenge
The machine at 24 really makes me appreciate better leg press machines, like the one at HQ.
Yesterday I loaded it up with a 10 pound plate, and had to take a billion pauses to get through 100 reps. So this morning, I backed it down to just 5 pounds and it was much easier. I still had to pause three times and do a minor foot adjustment.
Turns out, when you’re dealing with 100 reps, even the tiniest increase or decrease in weight will make a difference.
Leg Press: 4 x 15, 10, 10, 10
5 second eccentric, normal concentric
Weight: 90, 140, 140, 140
So here’s an example of not progressively overloading a compound lift. My knees were giving me warning signs, so instead of challenging myself with more weight, I did higher reps and used a slow eccentric.
Do strength-focused people think this is worthless because I didn’t go heavier today than I did last time? I still felt the target muscles working and it was still physically challenging. A whole lot of muscular tension was present for a decent amount of time.
You can’t convince me that adding weight is the only way to make a lift effective.
Smith Machine RDL: 4 x 10
Got this idea from a Paul Carter tip. Man, he had some great ideas! I wasn’t that focused on weight or reps here. In fact, some of the sets were more like 15 and some were probably more like 8 reps.
But my main goal was to put tension in the upper hams and glutes, and train myself to properly do this exercise for that purpose.
Ham Curl on Ball: 4 x 12, 10, 10, 10
Nothing new here. My hams were already kinda smoked from the previous exercises.
Butt Lifter Machine: 3 x 15 with a drop set and partials
Pull-Ups: 3 x 7, 5, 4
I feel dumb resting a long time between sets of isolation lifts sometimes. So doing a non-competing exercise just makes sense. And why not do pull-ups if there’s a bar nearby that nobody is using?
Legs and glutes were toast, but the hubby-bear wasn’t finished with his workout, so I did some bicep curls and tricep pulldowns.
Anyone know what the consensus is on women with jacked stomachs? I want one and think they look cool, but recently some sort of health guru caused a kerfuffle on social media by saying that women with six packs actually aren’t healthy.
Ugh, who knows? Just do what you want in the gym.
Here’s the last thing. I’m so glad Chris got a picture of this because you guys have to try it. This is a stretch I got from T Nation coach, Tom Morrison:
Press your hand into a wall and externally rotate it. Straighten your elbow. Then try to press your palm into the wall.
You’ll get an enormous stretch up through the bicep and some sort of tendon in that area. It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before.
Tom says it can help you avoid pec tears, bicep injuries, wrist pain, and more. He explains how to do it (and why) here: The Daily Stretch Every Lifter Needs
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Upper Body Day (Mostly Shoulders)
• Dips: 4 x 7 super controlled reps
• Banded straight-arm pulldowns: Just enough to activate the triceps
My chest was tired right off the bat. Pressing movements weren’t feeling great. I tried to do pec deck and machine chest press and my strength was in the tank. I didn’t go beyond a warm-up set for either.
But my delts were ready for work!
Chest-Supported Bent Over Lateral Raise: 4 sets of this monster…
10-12 chest-supported reps
Stand up for regular lateral raises
10-12 reps
Drop set to lighter dumbbells, do chest-supported lateral raises
More reps
Stand up straight
More reps
Go 3 more times
I mainly wanted to learn how to do this exercise and get a solid mind-muscle connection. It was so effective that I only used 12.5-pound dumbbells and then drop-setted to just 5-pound dumbbells.
Watch Gareth Sapstead teach the chest-supported lateral raise. If you’re wanting to build shoulders, and rear delts in particular, it’s AMAZING.
What I noticed is you have to play around with your chest’s position on the top of the bench otherwise it kinda hurts. So tinker until it feels fine.
(Right after this I walked through a guy’s fart cloud. I don’t know what he ate but I feel bad for him.)
Rear Delt Pec Deck Flye: 4 sets of however many reps it took to feel the delts working
I’m going to be honest. The pec deck flye has always been weird for me. I usually feel it in the low traps and somewhere in the scap area. But it’s one exercise I’ve always wanted to use for delt growth because everyone who does it seems to have spectacular shoulders.
Machine Lateral Raises: 2 extended sets with partials and a drop in weight
Band Pull-Aparts: 3 sets to failure-ish
Shoulders were done-zo. But I really wanted to load up some external rotation with the band pull-aparts. Why? Because I hate my posture. When my shoulders hunch forward I look like a dude. Women who hunch forward usually don’t look bad. Women with developed traps who hunch forward look extremely masculine.
Where’s your OHP? How can you even train shoulders without pressing a barbell overhead?
Well, I can and I did. Overhead pressing is fine. When I do it, I use moderate to light dumbbells and do Arnold presses before hitting a mechanical drop set of regular DB overhead presses.
But when I’ve been consistent with barbell overhead pressing – and aimed for more weight – all it did was make my shoulder joints ache. And for all that, I didn’t even notice any delt growth from it.
The things that’ve built my delts the most were high pulls (and other Olympic lift variations), and heavy trap bar loaded carries. But heavy loaded carries irritate my elbows. And I don’t want to do O-lift variations without someone coaching me in person.
Also, my traps would like to meet you.
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Leg(ish) Day!
A. 100 Rep Leg Press Challenge
Once I hit the one-month goal of doing this, I kind of got inconsistent. Maybe this won’t be an every-workout-thing, but it’s fun to do before leg days! Today, I was planning to tweak it and do a strip set. Start with 15 pounds, do a bunch of reps, remove 5 pounds, do a bunch of reps, remove 5 pounds, etc. all the way up to 100.
But I got to 75 unbroken reps with 15 pounds, which shocked me, and then I decided to just go all the way to 100… even if it meant taking some pauses.
Question: Why was I able to use 15-pounds for this today when last week I struggled to use 10 and even 5 pounds?
Answer: Surge Workout Fuel. That’s the only difference I can think of. I had it today and hadn’t been drinking it during previous workouts.
For anyone new here, yes, clearly 15 pounds on a leg press is absurdly light. But try using it for 100 reps in a row with as few pauses as possible.
It’s “fun”. 
B. Leg Press: 5 x 10, 8, 5, 5, 5
First set: 90 pounds
Second set: 140
Third set: 160
Fourth set: 190
Fifth set: 190
C. Smith Machine RDL: 4 x 20, 12, 10, 8
First set: No weight
Second set: 50 pounds
Third set: 50 pounds
Fourth set: 50 pounds
Reps went down every set because my forearms were fatiguing. Not even sure why I’m listing the loads here. This exercise is all about feeling the glutes and hammies working. If you can get a better mind-muscle connection without the weight, then it’s as much of a win as getting it with a million pounds. I don’t care about PR-ing in this… kinda like I don’t care about PR-ing in anything. I just want to be sufficiently challenged.
D1. Butt Lifter Machine: 4 x 15 full ROM, then 10 partials
D2. Neutral Grip Pull-Up: 4 x 5 bodyweight
Doing pull-ups on lower body day is the life-hack I didn’t know I needed!
The Smith machine RDL doesn’t just hit glutes and hams, it also places tension on the lats and triceps. This makes a huge difference if pull-ups cause your elbows to ache. The RDL basically warms up the long head of the triceps, and I believe (can’t prove) that hitting that upper part of the triceps prevents my elbows from aching.
Now, obviously, 5 pull-ups per set is kinda low. If I’d done more reps, it might’ve caused some elbow pain. So I just aimed for a total of 20 reps this time… and that’s actually all I could do.
E. Ham Curl on Ball: 3 x 12
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It really does make a noticeable difference immediately within that session’s use
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Exactly. I wasn’t just surprised by those 100 reps, but also with the load I was able to use for the last two sets. It felt easy today.
In previous sessions it’s felt harder with lighter weight.
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Smith Machine RDLs are pretty great! I woke up today feeling nicely sore in the mid back, lats, triceps, glutes, and hams. I know soreness isn’t a sign of progress or growth, but it does give you some clues about what musculature an exercise is hitting.
So today’s gym session felt like it needed to be mobility, abs, walking. And that’s what I did.
Also… shall I start a list of all the things I was totally wrong about? Here’s a big one: Fasting.
This interview completely changed my mind. I went about it the absolute wrong way in my twenties and ended up messing up my hormones pretty badly. So now I’m testing it out with the 28-day cycle in mind. If you’re a woman, your hours of eating should not be the same every day of your cycle, and there’s one week in particular when you shouldn’t really be fasting at all… so this is all new to me and I’m excited.
Oh hey! Can we talk about gym friends? Over the weekend I went to a little party thrown by a woman who’s house sitting at a mansion once owned by the Maytag family.
This is my friend Debbie and her little dog Luna. We became instant friends in the gym one day.
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Upper Body (Minus Back)
The lighting in certain areas of the gym is just spectacular for muscle definition. But if you turn around and face the camera, you look like a monster. Okay, maybe just me. If I turn around I look like a monster.
Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is dating a woman who looks normal in certain lighting and scary in others? That’s my situation.
Hammer Strength Chest Press Machine
Warm up: 90-pounds for 20 reps, then 10 partials at the top
Working sets: 4 sets of 8 reps with 140-pounds
Back-off set: 90 pounds for 15 reps
Palms-up band pull-apart:
Lots of reps and isometric holds. Did this between sets of chest press. I’m really working on training my posture with resistance and I think this helps a lot! Some people call this the “no-money” exercise.
Chest-supported bent over lateral raise
4 drop sets like last time
Straight arm, banded pull-down:
Enough reps to light up the triceps
Dumbbell Z-Press Arnold Press 4x12
Cable Rear Delt Flye
Fun little superset.
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How is it that your gym never has anyone else in it? I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t hot seating a machine/bench/cable/rack.
#jealous
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Usually there are more people than this, but it’s weird how empty it was today! Our gym does seem to be dwindling though.
There’s a new VASA fitness and a Crunch fitness nearby that are both thriving. They have newer equipment and only charge $10 a month.
But I hear they’re overcrowded to the point that it’s hard to find a place to park during peak hours. I’ve also been told that too many people at those gyms spend their time taking pictures and posing… which, I can’t criticize because look at my log.
So I just nod and say, “oh that’s terrible!”
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We have two of these by me in town now. Good news: They have actual power racks/platforms with bumper plates. Bad news: Unless you go at exactly 11:03 am, there are never any racks open.
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I hated Crunch for exactly this reason, even though the gyms were really nice. The one I was going to in Atlanta had 9 racks and I still could never squat. I would get in line at the door at 4:45am (it opened at 5) and still struggled to be able to do anything… like anything at all, even if I was willing for leg day to suddenly become arm day (I always am).
So obviously I moved my family to another state; what could I do?
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Clearly the best solution.
I just need to open up a gym that has no air conditioning and is just 20 or so power racks, 10 deadlift platforms, and a couple of fat benchs. (No air con weeds out a lot of folks in Florida). Oh, and no dumbbells less than 40 pounds.
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Sounds like my longtime home of World Gym Cincinnati - it was amazing
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Ugh, even if I weren’t using a power rack for a workout, that many people make me anxious in the gym. It’s overstimulating.
I had that experience at Sephora recently. There were products I wanted to check out and questions I had for the sales reps, but the crowd was too much.
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That sounds awful! I’m starting to get why people are standoffish at the gym: too big of a crowd makes it hard to connect in any meaningful way with anyone.
Having a relatively calm gym environment makes it easy to say hello. It’s like small town versus bustling city. In a bustling city nobody says hello. In a small town everyone greets a stranger.
Our 24-hour is kind of like a large town or small city in that regard. Faces are familiar and people talk to one another on occasion.
Clearly the best choice.
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I’m vegan.
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