I Lifted Weights... IN A GYM!

Yep. I stepped foot inside a weight room for the first time in nearly 11 months last week!

Long story short: I had to hunt down a suite of offices at the "new" university (where I started teaching last fall) a few weeks ago to drop off my spring contract. I stumbled across the weight room and saw they only allowed a FEW people in at a time (and it was dead when I saw it). I figured I'd maybe try lifting weights WITH THE FULL INTENTION of not lifting if it seemed too crowded. Or if it became too crowded.

Last week, I stopped by that university to do a little class prep, and I was done in no time. So I had an hour to swing into the gym! My phone was on the fritz, but here's a pic from the university's website:

It had been "updated" since that photo: the wall on the left was all squat racks, the ellipticals and treadmills in the back were all moved into another room and replaced with free weights and benches (and a cable machine or 2), and the middle was all wide open.

There was 1 woman in there with me for a bit, and then a 2nd joined. Then one left, and then a guy showed up, and then the other women left. So for the last half, it was just me and 1 guy (who was pretty much confined to 1 squat rack), and there was never more than me and 2 others in there at a time. Nice.

I was super curious what I'd "be able to do" once I stepped foot back in a gym after lots of SOLID and REGULAR lifting at home. And I noticed 3 things:

FIRST, benching was HARD. My wife says my chest is the biggest it's ever been (and so do some shirts of mine), but that's all from 30-35 reps of push-ups at a time (and 4-8 sets/workout). So high reps and low weight. But when I put 135 lbs on the bench (my standard where I used to start), it was HEAVY. Of my 6 sets of benching, I did them all at 135 except for the 3rd set which was at 155 just to make sure I could still do that. (I did 8 reps of everything.) Whew. Not used to that weight anymore!

SECOND, when I did sets of arms while looking in the mirror (as I used to), the base of my neck looked HUGE. Not my entire neck, but mainly where my neck meets the collar on my t-shirt. That had beefed up during my 10 months lifting well at home. (I don't have mirrors all over my living room like at a gym, and it really caught me off guard!)

THIRD, My arms looked very vascular. Again - like the neck thing - this was comparing something that I was USED to seeing at mirrors in the gym for the last 10 years vs how it ACTUALLY looks now after having worked out HARD for the last 10 months but without having mirrors all over. I shared this photo in my "year in review" post, but here's some of what I'm talking about with my arms from about 5-6 weeks ago:

Overall, I tried to do many things I haven't been able to do at home: benching instead of push-ups, hanging body-weight rows (in a smith rack) instead of 1-armed dumbbells rows, bent bar curls instead of hammer curls, cable pull-downs instead of tricep dips, but still pull-ups like I normally do at home.

And I WASN'T extra sore the next day! I noticed my chest felt a little tight starting some push-ups 2 days later, but that was it. So it didn't kill me.

It showed me that what I've been doing at home has been good. And that it's nice to have a change of pace, but I didn't REALLY miss going to the gym vs working out at home. I'm sure I'll try it again, but I don't feel like I'm missing much by not going to the gym right now.

Oh, and my hands were SORE later that day from using a bar so much when I haven't been used to that recently. They were red and tender in a few spots:

Highlighting the red spots that weren't normal
that didn't come through as well in the first photo.

Happy to be lifting well!!