Weight Training with the Ridiculously Dominant Husband

I recently wrote about my 30 a day for 30 days challenge and my husband’s insane assumption of the role of my very own Biggest Loser-style trainer.  What I neglected to mention is that he’s also been doing weight training with me*.  Charles is scary big and when he does weights he bulks up and gains strength fast.  I, on the other hand, apart from being lacking in the testosterone department which fuels such incredible muscle growth, have always been known as “T-Rex” because of my arms and not because they’re insanely cool or killer-like in nature.

I like to politely refer to them as “farm-grown”.  I can’t do a bunch of reps but I can swing 20 kilos of cement or dog food up onto my shoulder and walk it to wherever it needs to go and so far that’s worked for me.  Having kids was a bonus that improved my arm strength too.  You can’t have a mama-addicted toddler and not build arm strength.  But that’s a whole other kettle of fish compared to doing proper weights.

So apparently my weight training program is geared towards strength and not bulking.  Which means low reps with heavier weights.  Sucks to be me.  Charles informs me that the idea is to do a maximum of eight with enough weight that I can’t possibly do nine.  I’ll bet you can guess which side of the line he errs on for the sake of caution.

To give you some perspective, our weights bar weighs ten kilos.  Before kids I used to just bench press this.  When I started weights training recently, I started on 25 kilos which I could barely do.  Since I seem to have achieved a level we’ll call “coping”** with the 25 kilos weights, tonight Charles decided that it should be 30.  The unfairness of it made me want to throw a tantrum.  Realising that strength training will probably involve upping the weights almost every time I manage to “cope” made me want to go cry in the shower and go to bed.

So tonight as I approached number five I realised I was not just struggling for dignity – it was all out for survival because I could barely keep the wretched thing off my neck.  I nearly cried when I got to seven and there was no way I could do another.  I wasn’t even sure I could get the bar back on the rack.

Ridiculously Dominant Husband (RDH) barked at me and demanded that I finish the set.  He even offered to help me, slipping his hand under the middle of the bar.  I did not believe he was going to help me for one second and he didn’t.  It wobbled its way all the way down and back up to crash into place on the rack.  RDH informed me I had another set to go.

Twenty minutes later and it was all over.  RDH perused my record and pondered the possibility of further increases.  I would have brained him with one of the dumbbells if I’d been able to lift it. 

I then went inside to make dinner and brag on Facebook and discovered that I couldn’t wield enough strength to peel the carrots.  Nor could I type.  Not to worry, apparently I’m getting much stronger.

* "With me" implies that he does them too but I’m too weak, which means changing the weights over all the time, so he does his training with far tougher customers who are closer to his level like my brother-in-law Chris and our friend Big Jim.  Perhaps a more accurate way of describing it is that he does weight training at me.

** Not crying and pleading for mercy.