How much can you bench press?

[angus]

okay, I voted 61-80 kg.  

I was at the gym this morning and after swimming a few laps, I remembered this thread and decided to check.  I walked to the free weight room but they looked pretty scary, so I went to the one of the machine rooms.  Finally I found a "chest press" machine and started experimenting.  There's a little pin that is pushed into a weight.  It is set in ten-kilogram increments.  I started with 10.  No problem.  Then 20.  Then 30, and so on.  At about 50 it started getting pretty tough.  At 70 it took most of my strength.  By then I felt like I didn't want to try 80, so we'll call it 70. At sea level on the surface of the earth that mass would have a weight of approximately 154 pounds.  I could probably lift more, but screw it.

Think that's sad?  Here's an even sadder story:  So my son has been asking for a Kid Classic Smoothie every day for a couple of weeks.  Every time we walk past the little cafe area on the upper deck of the club he asks about it, so I finally caved.  One banana, three strawberries, enriched strawberry jelly, concentrated orange juice, and whey protein, all blended to a fairly homogeneous texture and served in disposable styrofoam cup with a plastic lid and bendy straw.  $3.99 plus tax.  

We stopped at the counter and the woman behind the counter says, "May I help you?" and he says, "A Kid Classic, please."  She punches a few buttons on the cash register and then said, "That'll be four twenty-three."  So then he gives her a five-dollar bill.  Then she punches a few more buttons and the drawer opens up.  I said, "I think I have 23 cents..."  I dig around in my pocket and manage to come up with a quarter and three Lincoln cents.  I handed those to her.  Now, bear in mind that at this point the cash register drawer is open, we owe her $4.23, and we have tendered $5.28.  At this point one might reasonably expect her to reach in a take out on dollar and one nickel and hand them to us and close the drawer.  That is not what happened next.  What happened next was that a look of severe consternation came over her face for a few seconds, then she proceeded to stare blankly at the cash register for a while.  Maybe 20 seconds or so.  Then she began moving her lips and counting her fingers, again with the look of consternation.  At length she took a pen, one of those fat Spider Man pens with a fuzzy topper on it, and started scribbling figures on a piece of paper.  After a few seconds of that, she then started looking around frantically, moving small boxes and cups and pencils and pens that were cluttered about the counter.  Eventually she cried out to the guy making the orders, "Do you know where the calculator is?"  He asked, "What?"  She repeated, "Do you know where the calculator is?"  He then walked over to her and inquired about the situation.  She said, "Um, his drink is $4.23 and I punched in $5.00 and it says that I owe him, um, 77 cents.  But then he handed me this change..."  Then the guy said, "Well how much change is it?"  She said, "Well, a quarter and three cents.  Let's see.  Um, that's 28 cents."  "Okay, so he gave you $5.28 and his order is $4.23?"  "Yes."  Long sigh.  His eyes roll and he says, "okay, just give him a dollar and a nickel."  At that point about four minutes had passed since the cash register drawer had opened.  $1.05 was collected from the open cash registered and handed across the counter to me.  "Thank you, your order will be ready in a moment.  Next."

My son and I took a seat at one of the small tables on the balcony overlooking the basketball courts and awaited his Kid Classic Smoothie.  After another five minutes or so had transpired, I went to the other part of the counter, where the guy preparing the orders was, to inquire about the order, thinking that an awfully long pause had occurred.  Long enough, anyway, to prepare the Kid Classic Smoothie.  "Sir?"  "I was just wondering about my son's order..."  "Order?  What did he order?"  "A Kid Classic Smoothie."  "oh, yeah, Kid Classic.  Coming up."  So I sat down again and waited.  After a few minutes of watching him--he appeared to be jerking vigorously on something at about waist level, but the counter was high so I couldn't quite tell what he was doing--I decided to approach the counter again.  At that point, the girl who had been working the cash register came over and asked him what he was doing.  He explained that he was needed to open a new jar of whey protein but was having trouble opening the lid.  She said, "hand it to me."  He promptly handed it to her and she twisted the lid off, apparently with little effort.  It was now her turn to emit a long sigh and roll her eyes.

Eventually, the smoothie was delivered, and it had been completely devoured by the time we walked through our front door at home.  It's only about a 500-meter walk so I think we can assume that it was satisfying and delicious.  Worth the wait, as they say.

[angus]

80 kg today! 

So I went for the free weights.  The bar weighs 20 pounds and I put a 50-pound disc on each side and then lay back on the bench and lifted it.  That was 120 pounds.  It was difficult, but more than that it was scary.  I kept imagining me tilting it and one of those huge discs falling off or somehow I don't get it back into the cradle and it decapitates me.  I rather quickly decided to leave the freeweight area to the meaty guys who generally inhabit it, and I went back upstairs to the chest press machine.  I set it on 80kg and with all my might I lifted it up straight up.  The effort caused me to break wind.  Luckily it was only gas that I expelled.  But over a period of several seconds I managed to lift it until my arms were fully extended.  Then I tried my best to lower it while observing the rule about not slamming the weights.  (I was less successful in that regard.)  Just for fun I immediately sat down at the little sphygmomanometer in the nutrition shop upstairs and measured my blood pressure.  The result was even more scary than the thought of freeweights flying freely.

Once was enough.  I'll stick with 61-80 vote since that's the most I've tried, but honestly I don't think I'll ever again play with anything that heavy just for recreation. 

[angus]

I actually looked about for a retaining ring or clamp.  Maybe they're on a board on the wall or somewhere.  It's a pretty big room but it's full of stuff so they might not be obvious at a glance.  These bars are pretty fancy, and are fairly heavy all by themselves.  I am curious, though, so I might take a closer look at those in use. 

The guy I usually go to the gym with weighs only about 80 pounds, and he's less than five feet tall, so he might not make a good spotter, but I think you're right that weightlifters should use them.  Most of the guys that part of the gym work out alone, but they tend to be extremely muscular--RIPPED, SHREDDED TO THE MAX, AND BUFF AS HELL--and generally have a thick stack of discs on either side of the bar.  There are a few smaller guys there and they often work out in pairs.  Overall it's a huge sausage fest in that area.  The aerobic dance rooms and the yoga parlors provide the estrogen channel.  Cycling and swimming seems to attract males and females equally.

The pool closed yesterday for one week of resurfacing, so I'll have to find some other way to exercise.  Honestly, I can say that it's not going to be weightlifting.  Probably I'll do the stationary bicycles.  There are several varieties, but my favorite is in a small studio where you touch a button on the side wall and a big screen comes down with list of options allowing the user to choose from several rides.  It has such options as Acadia National Park, Hawaii, and the Bajio country of Mexico.  Just last week I took a 57-minute ride through Spain.  Music plays loudly while a voice urges confidence and tells the rider when to stand, when to sit, when to relax, when to shift or down, etc. 

I think people go to the club mostly for one of three reasons:  To get bigger (those are the young guys on the weights); to get smaller (those are the corpulent women who do the aerobics and, when finished, invade the jacuzzi, their collective presence causing the water to rise to neck level); and (usually middle-aged and older) people who want to stay in reasonably good health.  My systolic blood pressure is pretty consistently around 140 mmHg and my resting blood pressure is usually between 80 and 90 mmHg, which is fairly high.  I started looking at sodium on labels of food recently.  For those who want to reduce blood pressure without using drugs, the American College of Sports medicine recommends swimming, jogging, rowing, walking, aerobics, and cycling.  I actually enjoy cycling and swimming so that's usually what I do. 

[angus]

Your man card is history!!!!!!!!!!!!!

haha.  It was history the day I decided that the free weights were to scary. 

Oh, there are little orange hard polymer quick-connect clamps for the weights.  They have a small lever perpendicular to the body of the clam that is turned 90 degrees and it locks down, sort of like the mechanism on an aluminum pressure cooker.  I noticed them today on a peg on the wall.  Some of the guys use them and some don't.  I didn't touch any of that stuff today.  I went straight to the bicycle room and took a 49-minute ride through the Cape of Good Hope, starting in Cape Town.  Worked up a good sweat, then I went to the dry sauna--the steam sauna, like the hot tub, is in the pool area and is off limits for a week--and sat there with only a small towel wrapped around my waist.  Me and three other men enjoying the sauna, none of us wearing anything except towels.  How macho is that?  Then, I showered.  I used the big open shower area with eight shower heads in a big common room.  I showered with two other men.  How manly is that?  Three men, one shower.  What could be more manly than that?  I may not be buff and SHREDDED TO THE MAX like some of them, but I can strut about the locker room naked with the best of them.  Very macho. 

On the walk home I stopped at the liquor store and bought four bottles of red wine.  It came to $34.78.  Guess how I paid for it?  One twenty-dollar bill, two five-dollar bills, four one-dollar bills, and seventy-eight cents in coin. 

By the way, according to the woman at the liquor store--not the one near me, but another one about 3 miles away--said that men mostly pay with money.  Currency, or currency and coin.  Women, on the other hand, generally pay for their liquor with credit cards or debit cards.  That was just her observation, but think about that, you stud, the next time you whip out your plastic to buy your booze.