Defeating winter gloom, Phase 2

I got some Vitamin D, so Phase 1 is underway.

I decided Phase 2 is to exercise. So today built a homemade barbell which should allow me to do the two most important lifts - deadlifts and squats. If I build a bench, I can bench press with it too. The basic concept will work for auxiliary lifts too, if I decide to do any. I got my inspiration from browsing some forums yesterday, and PM'd the guy for details. Today I dropped $50 on supplies and assembled my ghetto weights.

Equipment:
Blue buckets, for experiments in concrete. Orange buckets, for sand. Two pieces of 2' chain (definitely overkill). Four 250 lb snap links. Two eyebolts and a new drill bit. Not shown: a 6' piece of 1" inside diameter steel pipe.



I clamped the pipe in my vise. (side note: the vise is the most awesome tool I never would've thought to buy. Everybody needs one!) The two yogurt containers held water to lubricate the bit. My poor little homeowner-grade cordless drill was, amazingly, up to the task of drilling 1/4" holes in that steel pipe. Once I got the first hole started, I really leaned on the drill and poured water from one container, over the pipe, into the second container. It took many many containers of water to drill each hole, and I swapped/recharged the battery after every hole.



After four holes, the water was pretty grody!


The holes were the only hard part. I bolted the eyebolts onto each end of the pipe, with some Loctite for good measure. A snap link connected each eyebolt to a piece of chain. Another snaplink hooked the chain onto the bucket handle. The buckets will hold close to 80 lbs of sand each, and the bar weighs 10 lbs.


Here's the clever part: the chains are adjustable. They're set so that when I'm squatted down completely, the buckets are resting on the ground. This means that if I try to lift something too heavy and fail, I won't be crushed by the weight. That's what the safety rails in a power cage are for.

I dragged the bathroom scale out and marked the buckets - about a quarter full of sand is 20 lbs.


But that's pretty clunky, really. You need a way to add weight incrementally - 50 lbs is a good warmup for squats but it's probably the most I can bench press. Shoveling sand in to add weight and dumping it back out to switch exercises is a no-go really. So I futzed around and made two concrete weights.

Remember those blue buckets? I lined them with some black plastic and mixed up some concrete. I added knotted rope loops in the concrete for handholds.


When they cure, I'll weigh them. Hopefully the plastic liner means they'll pop right out of the buckets, but if not, the buckets were pretty cheap. If I can get the concrete out, I'll make several more sets of concrete weights. They should stack inside the orange buckets.

The whole thing is far from perfect, but I'm not a competitive weightlifter so it's plenty good for me. The buckets wobble a lot on their chains, but I think that makes it better for my purposes - it'll really work my core stabilizers to pick up a wobbly load. If I really want to add more weight I can drill more holes in the pipe and hang another set of buckets (or find bigger buckets!)

Right now I'm using yard sand, but I'm thinking about setting up the Former Dr. Seuss Room as my weight room, and I will probably buy nice clean playground sand if I do that. What if there are bugs in my yard sand? Shudder.

If I buy a 2x12 and some bolts, I can whack together a bench pretty easily. I'll need to whack together a small platform to deadlift with this setup, but I have enough scraps in the barn to do that tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about this!

By Jove we might have it!

Today we made not one but two perfect circles. Well, not Euclidean-perfect, but definitely Platonically perfect. We also racked once and trotted twice, which somewhat reassures me that I'm not destroying her gait.

I really think Dixie's walk has changed a little, for the better. She used to have the LONGEST stride you could imagine, but it took your seatbones on a transcontinental journey with every stride. Lately, when we get in the groove, she still covers as much ground but it doesn't feel like I'm swinging back and forth as much - like my seatbones are going up a bit more, and backwards/forwards a bit less. Is that the beginnings of collection?

I tried setting up four cones down the centerline today, but that was too hard for us. I need a lot of time to adjust my aids, and she needs a lot of time to decide to follow my aids, and we couldn't comfortably make turns that tight. So I picked up half the cones and just left one at either end - we did figure eights and turns around each cone.

Towards the end, I asked her to speed up one more time for me, and she broke into a lovely trot. We halted at the far wall, turned around, and had started walking back when an army of demons began pounding on the roof with their knives. Or possibly it started raining on the tin roof, but from Dixie's reaction you'd think it was the former. She started to bolt but decided to just trot very fast back to the arena gate. I was proud of both of us - her, for trotting and stopping, and me, for not snatching the reins or getting unbalanced. I got off and led her outside, where she spooked at the rain and danced around like a fool for a couple minutes. Eventually she realized that the scary noise wasn't going to hurt her, so we went back inside, I got back on for one more lap at a walk, and we were done.

We'd both done our best, and we'd made real concrete progress on our own. Yay us!

My quads feel like I have been stabbed. No fuckin cardio today, no way. Lifting weights every other day is obviously a big enough challenge for me, and I don't want to risk being SO sore I can't ride. Maybe next week when I start to get in the swing of this I'll add cardio.

DiJ, Andrea, make a fitness blog and name it "Catchy Title Goes Here" for all I care! ;)

Spaghetti arms

Short and sweet: I went to the gym. I am a wuss, but I am a wuss with spirit and strength of will.

I'm doing a lifting plan called a Stripped 5x5, except I'm doing the 3x8 variant because for some reason that's more popular with women who are starting out. It's a good solid base for several months at least, then you'll gradually plateau and/or get bored and switch to something else.

If you don't know much about weight lifting, 5x5 means 5 sets of 5 repetitions of each exercise. So a 3x8 is 3 sets of 8 reps - more reps, but fewer total sets. It's 24 total lifts, instead of 25; not a big difference.

You alternate between two groups of three exercises - group A one day, then off a day, then group B, then off, then repeat. For the first set of a given exercise, you start off fairly low, then the second set is harder, then the third set is as hard as you can complete. If you fail on the last set, back down to a lower weight.

I actually started out with a couple yoga stretches, then 5 minutes of low-intensity cardio, then some more stretching.

First, I did a dumb bell bent over row, 25/35/40. That wasn't too bad. In between each set, I'd stretch and let my arms recover a bit. I felt almost badass hauling up the 40 lb dumbbell effortlessly. Rawr!

Next, I moved on to barbell military presses, 30/40/40. I picked up the 50 lb barbell for the last set, thought "oh no way," put it back down, and did another set of 40.

Side note: I'd written down what all I was planning to do - all THREE THINGS - before I left the house. Then I left it in the house. I'd deprived my brain of oxygen or glycogen or something and I couldn't remember what else I was supposed to do, so I just picked something I thought I could perform correctly. Dumbbell bench press, 20/25/failed at 30/25. It's just shocking how much heavier a 30 lb dumbbell got in like 20 minutes. Shocking.

When I got back home, I discovered I'd been meaning to do dumbbell shoulder presses, which are at least vaguely similar. Oh well.

Tomorrow I'm going to ride Dixie first, so I don't completely run out of the will to move. Then I'll do some cardio, probably spinning. Monday is the Group B day - stay tuned for more featherweight lifting results and possibly forgotten exercises! Woop!