So sorry for your loss.
Your gran obviously rocked! What an amazing story. Lost my great-gran a few years back in similar circumstances. She was a month shy of 100. Lived in her own apt in Newport KY til she was over 97. Broke her hip. Fuck!
Thanks for sharing the poem. It is so beautiful and poignant.
I want to be like your grandma too.
The goodbye is there in the hello, and vice versa.
But I know you know that.
Take care.
that was beautiful. i’m so glad you had each other in your lives. respect.
Many thanks for all of the wonderful things that have been posted in response to news abt my hero.
part of me felt like leaving just that for a week, the other part of me could barely remember how to tie my shoes and i just didnt get on teh interwebz all that much.
so to recap last week:
did lower bod accessory on wednesday. went well.
skipped upper accessory on thursday… sorta. had every intention to go after i climbed, and then i let myself get caught up in hanging out with friends and i didnt make it happen. good news is, my climbing skillz are coming back quickly. i know, i know, it doesnt matter this close to meet time.
thursday night the sleep monster hit me with a truck and i fell out without realizing it… till i woke up at 230 in a panic that i was late for something. calmed myself down, had a smoke, went back to bed eventually. as of now, that has been the last time i had one. we’ll call it 3am friday morning till now. seems to be goin ok.
work on friday was awful. i was tired, i wanted to smoke. the 10-6 shift girl was sick. the 12-8 shift girl had just given up caffeine a day or two before. i was 9a-9p. we had an interesting day… and then i found out dad respectfully requested my presence at the house on saturday to help with the new big garden.
said i was lifting at 1, and could stop by as soon as got back in the early evening. oh no no no no no… if i was lifting at 1, we were to start at 7.
START?! AT SEVEN IN THE MORNING??!!
so friday night i was in bed by 10, and at my parents house at 658 sat am. the others werent ready, so i threw a fit. literally. yelled and threw things. the tantrum was met with apologies and we started by 730.
so i helped by across-the-hall-bro (who was late, btw. then wanted a cup of coffee from the pot that was brewing. asshole.) dig up grass with shovels so that the ground could be tilled and worked and whathaveyou.
the area we dug up? 55x10. feet. with shovels. hands and knees. roll up a 1x5 foot piece, throw it in the wheelbarrow, dump it at the edge of the yard when its full.
got paid with waffles, eggs, and bacon, and was excused with plenty of time to shower and go lift…
saturday squat at EFS-
WITH BANDS! again. 
stumbled into the gym tired as hell with tired shoulders, so when asked if i wanted to wait until there was a free monolift instead of using the black ones, i took the bait. hung out, helped with gear and running racks. also, jasons mom and kids made an appearance… came with him from indiana… he came back just to lift. EFS is THAT cool. 
I may or may not have spent some of my time waiting playing with nugget sized people. woooo!!!
I used the orange bands and a box at parallel to do doubles. ted walked around for a bit with a tape measure and a chart, and told me the tension at the top was 200lbs at the top, so everything was +200 at the top. weird, in the coolest way.
worked up to 165 on the bar. still letting my elbows fly back some… bad bear.
after Pegg and Ted (sounds like a comedy routine) decided i’d had enough of doubles the box got higher by 2 inches and i did singles.
worked up to 235 on the bar. felt good… Jason says my legs were shaking, but i dont remember feeling them at all… just that the bar felt heavy on my back.
duh. but it was weird… didnt feel any struggle or tension or anything in my legs/ass/anywhere… just a heavy bar on my back, squeezing my elbows forward, and coming up as soon as my hamstrings hit the box. Jason has video and it will be posted sometime. also took video of 5 more pullups with just index and middle fingers.
then i drove my zombie ass home for sleep that didnt come quickly enough.
sunday bench at EFS-
doubles with 2 board!!
slept pretty well, felt like shit but not as bad as i thought, so i figured i’d just lift until something broke*. ha!
trying to cement a setup routine still, and it seemed to be goin pretty well. got 195x2 easily enough, so we went for 205.
then someone tried to change my setup… not my foot or hand position, but how i got there. i didnt like it and said i didnt like it and didnt wanna do it. humored the individual, and my spotters had to pull 205 off me. thanks ted and steve!!
so i went back to my old setup and worked the form some more, with a LOT of doubles starting back at 135 and up to 175… then back down to 135 for a “to failure” set, still with the 2 board.
so i got 135 x 14, pause at the top for a quick breath after every 2. i wanted 16, but didnt wanna have weight pulled offa me twice in one day.
did some db neutral grip presses for a few sets 16-20 reps, tried a few pullups but felt my shoulders screaming, then some lat pulldowns for endless sets- focusing on squeezing my back, then squeezing again/more at the bottom to help keep my back tight when im benching, squatting, and locking out DL.
very, very happy with my lifting this weekend. esp bc of how it started… at 7 fucking am with fucking shovels… gonna go take more anti-inflammatories now…
*I quit before i got hurt. actually, ted made me stop lat pulldowns when i said i couldnt feel my shoulders anymore. they were still working, just couldnt feel em.
Hey bear, sorry to hear about your gran. That was a lovely story though and i’m glad you had such a wonderful person in your life.
Nice training! A log without numbers - interesting. lol!
[quote]Mascherano wrote:
Hey bear, sorry to hear about your gran. That was a lovely story though and i’m glad you had such a wonderful person in your life.
Nice training! A log without numbers - interesting. lol![/quote]
wasnt sure abt exacts and didnt wanna BS. waiting on textual confirmation and then i’ll edit.
[quote]Mascherano wrote:
Nice training! A log without numbers - interesting. lol![/quote]
it’s kinda ninja - if Bear would tell us the truth about her real numbers we would all quake in fear and awe
some good hard training going on in here Bear, glad to see it.
edited
I have never lifted so hard that I couldn’t feel a body part. Frankly, that would scare the shit out of me. I guess we know who is a ninja and who is not.
I’m with kimba on the not feeling a body part thing.
Great training and you are seriously hardcore if you dug with shovels at 7am and still went to lift.
great training, indeed. sounds like a great bunch of people to train with.
Been a while since I reached for the bottle (of NSAIDS), but the shoveling and THEN squatting in the same 12 hour period would do it for me. I can’t wait to see the vids.
Not feeling a body part is freaky, but it happens. Glad someone was there to save you from yourself
Nice training. Glad that the zombie lives to lift another day.
Nice work bear. All that yard work would have destroyed me before I even got to the gym. Oh, who am I kidding. No one would ask me to do yard work at 7am or any other time of day. I think everyone was amazed that I even planted flowers in the window boxes at my house.
[quote]buckeye girl wrote:
Nice work bear. All that yard work would have destroyed me before I even got to the gym. Oh, who am I kidding. No one would ask me to do yard work at 7am or any other time of day. I think everyone was amazed that I even planted flowers in the window boxes at my house.[/quote]
I also did this this weekend… 
YAY!
Bear,
Thoughts are with you and your loss. Good work with channeling all of that in the gym. I know what you mean with working til shit goes numb, then trying to push thru that.
n- I lol’d hard.
kimba- it MIGHT be more toward retarded than ninja… i know theres a fine line there. it may interest you to know that i tried doing my fingertip doorway pullups last night. i can hang, and pull for abt an inch, but the muscles didnt wanna move. fine with me… i’d rather em be this way than so sore i cant put my hands on the steering wheel!
greenie- reiterating the fine line between hardcore and retarded… hahahaha!!
alexus- they really are incredibly patient with me. i do my best to keep the stupid questions in my head, and watch and learn, but im sure theres still some shit that i do/say that is ridiculous. I figure i’ll just talk shit and be funny until im strong.
veg- ding ding ding!! save me from myself!! yes. i surround myself with those kinds of people… not that i intend to rely on them all the time, just, in case…
bg- plastic flowers dont count.
bre- see above
beast- glad i’ll have company walkin that line!!
Hey bear! I was thinking about you this morning when my gran asked me to try to dig one of those flower-pot hanger thingies out of flower bed next to a tree. The fucking thing has been there for years and the tree root grew around it. Completely embedded. I was digging and chopping and using my best pulling techniques and it wouldn’t budge, just wiggled around. We live in a condo and some of the landscaping crew dudes were watching me. (Of course! WTF!?) Finally one of them came over and got it out of the ground. It took him almost 10 minutes and that’s after I loosened it up.
Sorry for the novel, but my point is: LANDSCAPING IS HARD WORK. How the hell you did it and THEN lifted on Saturday I cannot fathom. You must be a superhero.
