Let sleeping gimps lie.
Hope your dog’s surgery goes well.
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That is really interesting! I do love how reverential and beautiful Catholic mass is. My childhood best friend took me on a handful of occasions when I was a kiddo. 
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Thank you! He basically has this same surgery in a different location every year. He’s just a lumpy guy.
We’re going on week three of vet visits for Roxy. It started with an eye infection. Then the week after, ear infection. And this week, it’s a stomach thing.
We actually thought she was dying a couple nights ago, and then she had diarrhea all over the bed. After a whole night of that, she had nothing left to push out, so it turned into huge amounts of blood coming out. Seriously horrific.
The vet was able to slip us in early yesterday, so she got an IV and meds. She seems to be better so we’re relieved.
And today kipper will get that giant lipoma out. The vet staff and I are becoming really good friends at this point. So there’s a perk.
This is turning into a dog log instead of a training log, and I’m okay with it. If you’re still here, congrats! It means you handle bloody dog diarrhea, eye snot, and fatty tumors.
I hit the gym right after yesterday’s appointment.
Lower Body
Sumo Deadlift
This was supposed to be a simple 5 x 5 but I didn’t want to go heavy enough that 5 reps would be hard, so I went higher rep with a controlled eccentric. I don’t trust my joints during luteal phase.
Machine Hip Thrust
Worked up to heavy-ish sets of 5-8. This one felt safe enough to use more load.
Ham Curl
Did 4 sets of 8-10 ish. Hammies were exhausted by then.
Leg Extension
Did 4 drop sets hitting failure at about 10 reps, then tacking on another 5 at a lighter weight.
And then I used the tanning booth but the guy must’ve programmed 10+ minutes instead of 6 so I basically baked.
Other Stuff
One of my favorite cartoons as a kid.
Unity!
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saw that it was leg day and got excited! Hope doggo’s op goes well.
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Heck yeah! I was actually glad to get in there. So… I wonder if leg day dread might be a sign of being under recovered.
Or maybe hitting the gym is a lot better than sitting in a vet’s office and now I’m just happy to be anywhere but there! Haha
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Yesterday’s training session took place at an outdoor shooting range. So I got “reps” of running around hitting targets instead of bench presses and curls.
My friend Jim generously offered to train me and I had to take him up on that. He’s a retired teacher so he knows how to see people’s mistakes and figure out what was going on in their heads.
Funnily enough, I met Jim at a gym years ago when we were both competing in bodybuilding/figure, and when that gym shut down during Covid, we lost touch.
(His wife was really supportive of me when I got my implants out too. Precious lady.)
So last year I was emailing back and forth with him before a competition and neither of us knew that we knew each other! I thought I was emailing a stranger! And then when I got out of my car to meet him, we both kinda freaked out. What are the odds? Colorado Springs is not a small town.
Anyway, my advice is to make friends at the gym. Especially with people named Jim.
Gyms and Jims are always great.
Also, it looks like I’m competing on Saturday (outdoors!!) because Jim said to just show up and learn no matter how you perform. Here’s a picture from last year before we set up.
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I love the desert.
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I The Animaniacs.
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Me too. And sunrises make every landscape look magical.
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Oh yeah! Did you ever watch The Tick? That had to be one of the funniest 90s cartoons.
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My wife has/d a great bikini body, even after five girls. However she has always been an A. We had the implants chat a couple of times. Finally I told her she had a great body and there was no need or pressure to get implants. I think that was one of our best decisions.
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Good call. It’s awesome that you reassured her like that.
One of the things I learned from that debacle was the power of social contagion. I had been spending a lot of time with women involved (kinda deeply) in fitness, and it was considered weird to not have them. But in retrospect I can see how bizarre that notion is when you step outside that microcosm.
Most people don’t walk around with prosthetic body parts for aesthetic purposes. It’s just as strange as foot binding and corsets.
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Absolutely. And why did those ever start?! At what point did we decide disfigurement was attractive?
In real life though, I don’t really see women with either of those looks. Maybe Colorado is a little too crunchy for those to really take off.
Yeah super weird. And in a few years we’ll all look back and mock today’s trends.
I even wonder if there will be a time when we see less of an emphasis on glutes in the lifting world. I stopped making that a big focus several years ago. (Despite writing articles about having a “glute day” in the gym.)
The disproportionately large butt trend is actually fading in pop culture but it’s going strong in gym culture.
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if I were to take an educated guess?
female intrasexual competition… women competing with other women.
Same reason why many women value a $5000 handbag that men really couldn’t give a damn about. Because it wasn’t for men.
Men do the same thing too. We’ll compete with each other to the detriment of the attraction of women. I’ll use the biggest of bodybuilders as examples of this… most women do not find the Nick Walker build attractive.
So something that started as intersexual competition (looking good for the opposite sex) was taken FAR beyond the intent for the sake of intrasexual competition. Literally to their own detriment (some women still find this attractive, but most don’t).
Living in SoCal, I do see bee sting lips on a semi frequent basis. Fake chests and bootys are also rather common. Not too much for the molarbod, though.
Honestly, I hope not. I like legs and glutes to be complimentary to one another… not too much leg and not too much glute. I think to achieve this balance, added emphasis on glutes is required.
But any fit girl is more attractive than their unfit counterpart, imo. I think many men are in the same boat, so it will probably live on quite a while longer, but who knows?
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Good term. Interesting.
Sometimes I see a woman in 30s or even 20s with tons of filler and other stuff in her face. I don’t think she looks better or younger. She just looks like a 45-year-old with money… and she’s 29 and broke.
But that fits with the intrasexual competition thing: many women want to look like wealthy Real Housewives. But those women seldom look good, just like they can afford a lot of work. So it’s a flex. Like a very expensive but ugly watch for men.
A little cosmetic work is fine. It’s those extremes (like blow-up sex doll lips) that are strange social phenomenons.
Edit: Speaking of watches, this one is apparently $740,000. And it looks about the same as those they used to sell in Pakistani kiosks in the mall. But… it’s a flex.
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I see what you mean, and I think so too at least for a while. And then when glutes can be recruited and felt easily – not just during isolation lifts and compound lifts – but in everyday activities, like walking up stairs, hiking, etc, then entire days revolving around the butt are (probably) no longer necessary. I still isolate it like I would back or biceps, but it’s no longer a singular fixation.
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I’m fine with it. And I’m willing to bet that the majority of people who get stuff done make such subtle changes that we can’t even tell. We only notice the extremes.
“Wisdom tooth…”. That is the observation of the year! 
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Perhaps job competition for dental assistants is tougher than I thought.
(Sorry. That joke bites.)
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