Just the other day my normal writing schedule was thwarted, challenged, bamboozled, and hijacked. In other words, I got busy with other things which ate into my 'work' time. But, the day was not lost because I honestly was ignoring other things I had to take care of. Like working on the car I drive every day. Why not take it to a mechanic you say? Because I myself have a brain and am mechanically inclined. Not only that, due to my thorough and quality education in the sciences, I genuinely understand how and why each subsystem of a motorized vehicle works. For similar reasons, I understand how biological machines work, like the human body. It's great. So because of all this, I work on all the cars I drive myself. And those of my family as well.
I've got a long list of maintenance to tackle, so the loss of my writing session had a silver lining I suppose 'cause I was putting all this stuff off. Anyway, I wrenched on this thing for a few hours. All the while wearing work boots with soles that have gone all concave which manifested in taking a lot of energy out of my body via my feet. Not cool. But regardless I got the job done.
What was left on the agenda for the day was a workout. On tap, one of my weight training sessions which can get grueling. Part of the reason my writing session was missed was via my overall schedule being pushed back. Combine that with my mechanic work, meant now my training sessions was pushed back as well. I still wanted to make it to the gym, but didn't want to stay there later than normal. So, I settled on a medley of exercises which would get me through an entire full body workout in 30 to 45 minutes.
Specifically I did power snatches at lighter weight for reps, the hip sled (see pic further below) one leg at a time with what I thought would be light weight, and lat pull downs at not so light weight.
Power snatches I do on a regular basis. For those who don't know, this is an 'olympic' style lift involving a barbell loaded with weight sat on the floor. The idea is to lift the loaded bar off the ground and over your head in one motion. A true full body deal.
The hip sled and lat pull downs I used to do on a regular basis in my twenties. They fell out of favor with me since they didn't seem to mimic a normal motion I as a human would encounter in waking normal life. When am I going to sit down and pull weight straight down to my shoulders from above my head...? When am I going to sit down on a chair at an oblique angle and push weight away from me by my feet...? Not often. But, pulling myself up from a standing position by my arms. Or squatting, bending, or otherwise pickup stuff off the ground from a standing position...yes. Yes...!
Thing is though, I wanted easy in and out. I wanted different. And I was generally curious as to how I would do on these machines since I have not used them in well over a decade.
Anyone who knew me at my gym when I was 25 would have seen me on a regular basis chuck six plates on either side of the hip sled machine and do three sets of ten reps. Twelve plates in total. Gravity says that this adds up to 540 lbs not including the sled itself. Physics says I would see 380+ lbs (not including the sled itself). It's actually quite impressive. But that was over 20 years ago. Even though I am roughly the same weight, and generally much stronger on average, I in no way can match the ego lifting on this thing when I was in my mid-twenties. Rather, I went for one plate per side, a total of two plates. 90 lbs by gravity. 63+ lbs by physics. But, like I said, one legged. And dang, it was actually fairly difficult. My squat, dead lift, and lunges all surpass what I could do back in the day. But, since I had not hit my legs in this fashion on this machine, however unorthodox it may be, I was not familiar to me any longer. And my body felt it the next day.
Am I going to add this back into my normal routine... Hell no because I respect my spine. Pushing up weight while in that position is unnatural as I said and I want to be careful. But it did offer my body a new perspective to loading my legs which was nice.
Then there was the lat pull downs. The machine I was using did not have a complicated assortment of pulley's on it. The reason why I mention this is because, according to the physics of pulley systems, there was a one-to-one ratio between the weight on the machine I selected and the load on my back. For those that are a bit confused right now, the pulleys are needed because as I pulled a bar (from above) down to my chest (or shoulders) from a seated position, the weight loading my back was going up. This is facilitated by a simple system of two pulleys and a cable.
So as of writing this I am just shy of 170 lbs. And sure enough, when I loaded 170 lbs on the machine the bar pulled me off my seat slightly. But here was the difference. When I do pull-ups, I use my own body weight as a warm-up set. Then the weighted sets are done with a dumbbell held between my feet. However with this machine, doing 170 was a bit more difficult but still doable. Most likely due to the friction present within the bearings of the pulleys themselves.
This was my heaviest set on the lat pull-down contraption. I decided to back down and lower the weight for the remaining two sets because I noticed that my back was being loaded quite differently. To the point where I felt continuing may be dangerous by exposing me lats to injury.
When I do pull-ups, my legs are free to move. In actuality, they don't move much. But they are not pinned down and restricted either. By my arms AND legs being restricted on this lat pull-down machine meant my back, my spine, was left to contend with the rest of what was happening. This put an incredible load on my mid lat/spine region. And I can't necessarily say it was in a total bad way. Yet if I pushed it, it would have been bad for sure. But this machine I have avoided for over a decade now has in fact managed to load my back more than I had imagined it would in this brief weight training session.
Will I have lat pull-downs pop up in my normal routine. Nopes. But, having my back loaded in a slightly different way was an overall positive. Similar to the hip sled, the next morning made me aware that my lats do in fact exist.
All this has reminded me of one of the core tenants of physical training. Variety is a must. To challenge your body in ways that it never has been before, or ways it lost familiarity too, is extremely important. I talk a lot about the idea of tempering your mind and body via different mental, intellectual, and physical challenges. Doing so does allow your existence to be fortified. You can be hit with adversity at all angles and it's ok. You can tax yourself in many different directions and you'll be able to manage. On the other end, setting yourself up as a one or two trick pony will allow Achilles Heels of sorts to manifest.
Now I must say that my normal workout routing is very well diverse by design. And for the reasons mentioned, certain physical training bits are a no go for me long term for the risk seems too high without a base gain in functionality.
But man, not only was my body put through a different ringer. So was my mind. I felt out of place and out of sorts. I went to the same building. In the same workout duds. Saw the same people and had the same conversations. But, the routine was slightly different that's all.
It felt like I was in a new world.
What a breath of fresh air this was.
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