The Gym

I just bought myself a gym membership.

By no means am I new to exercise, I'm not, but I feel a profound difference in my workouts these days.

I'm big into strength training. Lifting heavy things off the ground and into the air appeals very much to the man-child in me who's still in love with Arnold the Action Star. No lie, action stars of the 80's and 90's and pro-wrestlers were my idols growing up. In many respects, I still want to be just like them, and like Stallone said (I'm paraphrasing) "that requires work in the gym."

I have a good amount of weights at home. I've been using them to get stronger and I've been having a lot of fun doing it. I try and read everything that Mark Rippetoe has to say on the subject of strength (he's big into being manly, google it) and put his ideas into practice for myself. I've had a good amount of success too, it's been great.

But it's nothing like having a real gym to go to. At home, instead of doing a bench press I have to perform a dumbbell floor press, which is a real bitch to set up at higher weights. At home I can only perform defecit deadlifts and the max amount of weight I can put on the bar is 200lbs, at the gym, on my first day, I lifted 225.

So the strength part is there. Oh, god, just having a squat rack is amazing to me. I love squatting heavy.

And, and, they have cardio machines. Now don't get me wrong, I might like to feel like a real man when it comes to lifting heavy shit in the air, but you ask me to run a mile and I'll turn into a baby. However, I love the elliptical machine. So I get to make my heart stronger, awesome!

Oh, and there are tons of weight machines to play with, guilty pleasure.