Giving actual numbers is so gauche.

Psst, I think she’s gone! We got the place to ourselves for a while! Just you and me, baby. Let's do what comes natural, do what feels right. There's no one here but us. I know you want what I want. 

The gym has been pure awesome for a while. I'm over a plateau and my numbers keep going up up up. I have to say, it is extremely gratifying. I recommend this stage to everyone. Skip the plateaus, which are boring and try your patience and feel like work. Go straight to "all gains, all the time", which is way more fun.

Flamboyant but straight Rob has instituted cheek kisses at the gym. Yep, now arrival and departure requires a round of cheek kissing; real kisses, not air kisses. I completely love this, since I am nowhere near my capacity to absorb kisses. I wish it would spread to other gyms. I wish it would become the norm for powerlifting. I love thinking about the giant triangular men* stopping by each platform as they gather their stuff, murmuring to each other and leaning in for kisses. "Strong lift tonight, bro. Good fight. Besos." *kiss*

I started something that is catching on, although I didn't mean to. After Sherry mentioned that people have a deep need to be seen, I started working that into cheering for people. I say it a lot these days. As a friend sets up for his lift and we gather to cheer, I say "I'm here and I'm watching your lift." Or "I see you lift and you are so strong." I told my workout partner Mike, 'I watch all your lifts'. It is surprisingly intimate to tell someone directly that you see them, but I didn't realize what it felt like until a couple months later, when Mike said (in the middle of our usual course of figuring out what to lift next and chatting) 'I always watch your lifts.' It took my breath away a little, to hear that said so straight. Oh. That's what the receiving end feels like. The several of us who work out together will always gather to watch someone's important lift, but hearing that aloud was very, very nice.

I'm still bemused by my relationship with Mike. He's a baby, in his early twenties. I don't know much at all about his life and we never talk outside the gym. I think he grew up a lot harder than I did. For all that, and within the very limited roles we play for each other, we know each other extremely well and the trust has become absolute. I really do think I've seen 95% of his lifts over the last year. I can say things like 'you know that when you make a jump like that, you get a hitch on the left and have to push your way through.' He always spots me. These days I give him credit for about 20% of my lift. There's the trust, of course, how I give my safety entirely over to him. He's become so good with cues, perfectly timed and specific to flaws in my technique. But mostly, I trust him to never take my lift away. Sometimes you're lifting and you get stuck. An overeager spotter will help too soon, lift the bar away or nudge it up. Not him, not ever, and I only hit my new bench PR because he waited for seconds as I pushed through. He said he knew I had it all along. I adore him.**

So my gym life is going well. We're having a intra-gym mini-meet next week and I'm hoping for more PRs. My opposite from the morning workouts is still on injured reserve, so there won't be anyone in my weight class to go up against. Booo! The rest of my life is pleasant summertime and friends, the usual.

*We don’t have many of those at my gym. We don't get a lot of macho guys at my gym in general. But one wandered into the bench press seminar and entertained us. A White Bear introduced me to the concept that a lot of men's speech is the phrase "I have a penis." I thought about that when she explained it and concluded that that generally isn't true of my guy friends. Mostly the content of my guy friends' speech is the actual content; they are genuinely talking about their weekends or bikes or whatever. But this guy! Yes! You could replace everything he said with "I have a penis."  He interrupted the lecture and demo several times, with stuff like, "So, like, if I can do a million reps at 98% of my MAX LIFT, is that, like, SO STRONG? Should I increase it? Because I COULD.” By the second time he spoke, all I could hear was "I have a penis." Yay! A real life illustration of AWB's point! 

(I got another real life illustration the other day when I was working on pull-ups at the park. I still can't do a pull-up from a still hang, but I'm doing negative reps (where you lower yourself slowly) and jump-pulls to fix that. Anyway, I'm doing that and the guy walking by in street clothes sees me, veers to the bars behind me, does a bunch of pull-ups and walks away. WHY? Why? What possible message could there be besides "I have a penis." Basically, he just exposed himself to us at the park. When he was twenty paces away, I shouted "Easy for YOU!" at him. Because I am seven.)

 

** A huge tragedy is approaching, which is that I'm feeling the very first inklings of doubt that I can spot Mike with perfect safety. He's starting to lift so much weight that I'm not perfectly confident I can catch it if it falls on him. This is terrible. We've been so well matched. I can't tell him, either, because the thought should never cross his mind. I've talked to our trainer and we're going to go to side spotting him, someone on each end of the bar. This will work, but it is the end of our smooth pairing, where we switch off lifting and spotting and loading the bar in long-familiar sync. There will be another perfectly lovely person involved, which is Change and so we hate it.

(Will this other person know that Mike requires the bar to look symmetrical, or will the other person use MISMATCHING tens?!!! Will I have to pull the other person aside to explain?)

Comments

[C.B.]

I'm only here to read what you have to write and you are so strong. :-)

I'll try White Bear's substitution exercise on my male friends' (including me) most recent Facebook statuses.

1. "I'm better now. (if only I could lose the f***ing headache...)" = I have a penis.

2. "Is looking forward to a weekend with my second family. And by "second family" I mean the one no one knows about." = I have a penis.

3. "saw an ad to learn twitter in under an hour using a four-part video course. I now want to cry." = I have a penis.

4. "FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!" = I have a penis.

5. "I ♥ Katies new hair cut!!! It is amazing!!!!" = I have a penis.

6. "The internets is slow today" = I have a penis.

7. "is about to watch Lefty" = I have a penis.

8. "Were it so easy." = I have a penis.

9. " this keeps getting better and better...finished for tonight aaaaand don't have to work sunday night.... BAM!!!!! BAM!!!!" = I have a penis.

10. "woke up unexpectedly. Maybe I should blog." = I have a penis.

And being seven is truly awesome, because men need reminding that just because we have penii, we don't need to be pricks.

[Mike]

"He's a baby, in his early twenties."

When I was still what is considered young in this culture, I despised when people condescended to me this way and generally refused to talk to anyone who did so -- because I was most often much more intellectually and emotionally mature than the person doing the condescending. And that was true from about the time I was 13 or so.

It's amazing the walls people build around themselves, the bulwarks they throw up against possibility, and the tiny condescensions designed to reinforce supposed greater wisdom with age, social classes, and the like.

I want no part of it, because most people generally have no clue what another person is capable of, how wise they are. Age means nothing, other than it gives older people the chance to pretend they've learned more.

[A White Bear]

I tend to find that the men I know and associate with perform their masculinity in very community-specific ways that are much more complex and interesting than "I have a penis." But on TV and among men who watch a lot of TV, we tend to see much more "I have a penis"-type masculinity. I wanted to clarify, so I wrote a really long post about it at my blog.

OTOH, CB's FB readings are hilarious.

[NickS]

I happened to click straight through from the main post to the comments without reading the part below the fold and CB's comment utterly confused me.

Megan, if you haven't read it before, allow me to recommend The Mismeasure of Woman. I think you'd like it. I was just re-reading a bit of it last night, and it's quite good.

Like many feminist works it is somewhat dated by the fact that some of its observations have become conventionally accepted, but it's well enough written that it's worth reading.

[Dubin]

Wait, we're doing COMMENTS now?!?!?

[doctorpat]

Yeah the comments are back!

And while I agree that actual numbers may well be a bad idea (for one thing, it probably leads to many comments that not only mention that they have a penis, but add that their penis is big, bigger than your's, probably bigger than you etc, etc...)

But surely a comparison with your earlier lifts would be OK? Maybe a percentage improvement?

[Megan]

God, I thought you'd never ask!

Bench: 145, up ten pounds after a yearlong plateau, and

put another 10 lbs on my deadlift to bring it up to 270lbs.

We're having a mini-meet on Sunday. I'm hoping for:

Squat: 200lbs
Bench: 150lbs
Deadlift: 275lbs.

[atb]

Okay, hilarious, and related (in an "I have a penis" versus women way): http://xkcd.com/322/

[doctorpat]

Your Deadlift is really high given your bench and squat, at least given the ratios I am familiar with (which are admittedly guys only).

And what were your starting figures?

[Megan]

Yeah, my deadlift is high, although I prefer to think of that as my real potential and the other two as low. It looked to me like squat can be about 80% of deadlift, so I'd like to see it up near 220 or 230lbs. I also want to get my bench up to 180, 190lbs. That'll take years, though.

Starting figures weren't that different.

Bench: 130lbs
Deadlift: 235 lbs

and we didn't do much squat maxing before the competition, so I don't remember a solid number as my initial squat.

[doctorpat]

Based on http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards.html

yes, squats are about 80% of deads, but as the numbers go up, the % difference shrinks.

It also tells me that your starting deadlift was somewhere between the "advanced" and the "elite" level, depending on how big you are.

Using these tables as a guide, it looks like you should bench 150 and squat 210. So you aren't off target at all.

Now you just need to reach the above elite standard, should take you another couple of weeks...

[Megan]

Naw, I'm bigger than that. My numbers are about "advanced" level now. I'd really like to bench more, though. The recent movement is great, because I've thought that my bench was lagging.

[atb]

Megan, nice numbers! You rock!!

[Megan]

Thanks, although compliments still make me squirm.

[doctorpat]

Megan,

Please interpret my comments as someone who wrote them carefully in an effort to avoid the dreaded compliment

[Megan]

We've been friends for years now, doctorpat. I know you wouldn't embarrass me with a compliment.