It’s called the “bend-over pull through” but surely it deserves a better name than that! Help me out in the comments?
Me: “My butt hurts!”
Me: “Why is that?”
Other Gym Buddy: “My butt’s fine but I can’t laugh for how sore my abs are.”
Gym Buddy: “Oooh me too – and heaven help me if I sneeze!”
Me: “Sneeze crisis! Do you hold your sore stomach or hold your crotch to keep from wetting yourself?”
Other Gym Buddy: “Clearly you’ve had too many kids.”
Me: “Clearly I need more hands!”
Gym Buddy: “Speaking of kids, mine kept me up all night. I’m freaking exhausted.”
Other Other Gym Buddy: “Speaking of kids and exhaustion, I think I might be pregnant.”
Allison, the native Minnesotan: “Ooofda!”
Me: “You’re not pregnant, you just had your period three days ago, remember?”
Other Other Gym Buddy: “Since when do you know when I menstruate?”
Elderly woman walking by: “It’s because yesterday you refused to do abs because you said having cramps from hell should count. By the way, all of us in the Active Older Adult class took a vote and decided you need to buck up, Buttercup.”
Me: “Hmm… maybe we shouldn’t have these conversations in the middle of the weight floor?”
Gym Buddy: Says the girl who mistook a side stitch during running for ovulating and jumped off her treadmill shrieking “I command you not to lodge in my uterine lining!”. (True story, I did that. Well minus the yelling. I’m very polite with my bodily excretions in public.)
Other Gym Buddy: “Do we always have to talk about bodily fluids? Can’t anyone tell me why my lats are sore? What on earth did we do??”
Me: “I refuse to work my lats.” (Because it makes all my vintage dresses not fit. Call me vain if you like.)
Gym Buddy: “Are we going to start or what? We’ve already blown 20 minutes and I have a preschool pick up at 10.”
Other Gym Buddy: “Just a sec, I gotta go pee again.”
Gym Buddy: “You’ve peed twice already since you got here!”
Other Gym Buddy: “What are you, my mother? Are you going to count my toilet paper squares too?”
Me: Who wants to turn this frown upside down? Let’s do the Rachel Cosgrove warm-up!”
Collective groan: “I soooo don’t want to do this today.”
‘Tis true. This is pretty much how we start many a workout. Why we can’t just talk about American Idol and be done with it, I don’t know but just like we usually end our workouts talking about food, we often start them with a good whine fest. And I think this is a good thing!
Power of positive thinking aside, there’s a lot to be said for shared misery. And let’s face it, a lot of exercising is misery. If you don’t stand over your whirring treadmill belt right before starting your Tabata intervals and stare at the timer in abject horror then you aren’t doing your Tabatas correctly. It’s like your mother always told you, to grow you have to experience pain. And that doesn’t just apply to the botched home perm you gave yourself and then tried to cover up with “feathering.”
I always wonder about those people who never show pain – I mean are they just that stoic? Or just not working hard enough? I love working out – almost more than anything else – and I’ll be the first to admit that it can really hurt. A lot. I think it helps to embrace the pain, get it out, share it and realize that you’re going to do the hard stuff anyhow. And you’ll feel great at the end.
There’s a time and a place to go all Pollyanna – starting lines, finish lines, round 7 of a Tabata, and public restrooms are all great places to cheer a buddy on. (True and only slightly relevant story: While I was on the toilet at Target, my then 3-year-old son took advantage of my occupied state and crawled underneath the stall divider, surprising the poor woman doing her business next to us. “What’cha doin’?” he chirped. “Oh, the same thing that you’re in here to do,” she replied diplomatically. “Wooking at people’s butts??” he enthused. We could not get out of there fast enough.) But there’s also a time to let out your inner Daria and acknowledge that sometimes things just suck. (Like trying to apologize to a stranger through a restroom stall divider while both of you still have pants down around your ankles.)
So for anyone who only know us from reading my blog and thinks our daily workouts are calorie-torching, weight-heaving, sweat-soaked carnival shows set to our own laugh track and everything, while we do have a lot of fun – every day these girls make me laugh – I think I should point out that there are plenty of workouts that are awful, or worse – mediocre. There are days when everything’s sore or 3 Gym Buddies are out with sick kids or the workout I’ve picked is boorrrring or, you know, I get spit on. We’ve had equipment malfunctions, body malfunctions and way more than our fair share of wardrobe malfunctions (with the lion’s share of those being mine although today Gym Buddy Kristadid tuck her pants into her socks.)
And that’s okay. If you treat every workout like it’s the last one before the Biggest Loser final weigh-in then you’re going to be disappointed and maybe even so disheartened that you quit working out altogether. Not every workout is going to be great – most of them aren’t which is why the great ones are so notable! But every workout is doing something good for you, even if it’s just the fact that you got dressed and showed up.
Embrace your inner “meh”! Long live the “only if I have to”! Flaunt your sore butt! Just don’t look at strangers’ butts in public bathrooms!
Anyone else have a “meh” workout today? Do you have someone you can have a good whine fest with? Anyone else have a good public bathroom story?? Anyone remember the “Whiny Whiny Girls” song from Dumb and Dumber? (See video below: earworm alert)
It’s called a cable pull-through and they actually have a great purpose – improving deadlifts and glute strength!
That exercise should be called the jerk-off.
I hope today’s workout isn’t meh. I want to get past 185 on my hex-bar deadlifts. After that I can have fun with my weird animal crawls and playing with some new equipment at the gym.
Bahaha, I was thinking that or the “ball-sac grab”
I want “Embrace your inner “meh”!” on a tshirt 🙂
Every once in a while, I have a meh day. I’m still glad I went tho. I figure, consistancy is the main thing
Yesterday I went to yoga. At one point immediately afterward I thought “I feel great! I think I’ll hop on the Spin bike later!”
Because I have exercise amnesia. I always forget that after the yoga euphoria comes the yoga crash. I basically spent the rest of the day/evening trying to stay awake & not fall into the tub as I bathed my kids.
What I’m trying to say us that even when it doesn’t feel like one is killing oneself at the time, workouts can still take it out of ya! 🙂
When I get the workout blahs that is when it gets funny and/or annoying for everybody else as the only way I know that always perks me up is to do my clown routine. In the pool that means I start stalking people singing the jaws theme or swimming by them as fast as I canhumming the James Bond themes song. On land I like to do the chicken dance with weights. You do it slowly at first with music only in your head and then faster and louder until you see a person look. Then you go back to I’m just lifting weight, nothing to see here. The key is to make them suspiscious of you but not certain you are up to anything.
Yeah, some days are definitely just like that. The fiance always asks me when I walk in the door from the gym, “how was your workout?” and sometimes I can only say, “eh”. There are great days too but I haven’t quite figured out what makes the meh days meh. (Besides from the obvious ones of course, like when I fell over in Zumba last year!) Today is HIIT class so fingers crossed it doesn’t suck anymore than an hour of intervals naturally does!
Y’alls conversation cracked me up!!!
Since I work out at home (alone) I don’t have those conversations (out loud) but there are some days where I tell myself it is OK if I don’t go totally hard-core – just get the work-out done. Usually, those are the days I end up working harder and feeling better. (Reverse psychology on myself – crazy?? Maybe!).
Too bad the “clean and jerk” is already taken. Maybe this could be the adjust and jerk. Sorry, but exercise for exercise alone is almost always meh.
This is what I remember from the one time we worked out together:
1. Tabata on the treadmill (I hated every single one of the 480 seconds of it and despite my intentions, have never done it since.)
2. Playing on the TRX machine (and I still badly want one for my own house. I should just do it already shouldn’t I?)
3. The awesome and hysterical conversations throughout the workout, but especially at the end. I think we talked about food. A lot. We all might have been hungry after those dreaded tabatas. Suck.
These, by the way, are not in any particular order. My favorite memory is obviously # 3 and I clearly wish I could forget #1.
Ahhhh I would say 80% of my workouts are meh, 15% are good and 5% max are notable. So much of working out does suck, but I still love it and keep going. Even on the meh days I feel great afterwards.
Zliten and I definitely get our whine on during some workouts. Usually though, one of us is having a good day and the other one is whiny. Which, sometimes is good, and sometimes, if looks could kill… hehe.
And I’m convinced you should charge admission to be part of your club and work out with you – the “be a gym buddy for a day” guest pass, sounds like a blast! 🙂
When I have a “meh” workout I remind myself that half-assed is better than no-assed at all. Words to live by! 🙂
Gaye
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You had me at Rachel Cosgrove. She’s my Justin Beiber, too! : ) Love your article. So funny and so accurate! Haha!