Much as I enjoy stomping around and lifting heavy objects, my gym habit is also all about my inner nerd. A couple of years ago, when my trainer outlined my first powerlifting workout program—in Excel, no less—my first thought was, “We get to do math?! Cool.”
That’s why I dig the basic biology that goes into the design of bodybuilding—versus powerlifting—workouts. Powerlifting (my usual thing) is about doing whatever it takes to lift one big thing, once. But if you trained that way, always going for a single maximum, your ligaments would revolt and you’d lose even the quilting bee. So instead, you might design four-week cycles that build you (in each event) from higher repetitions at lower weight to lower repetitions at higher weight; then you’d add, say, 5 percent overall and start over (cue spreadsheet). And how you look is a non-issue. Some powerlifters are cut and trim, some look like big kids who can’t move their arms in their snowsuits. Nobody cares. It’s about how much you lift.
Bodybuilding—which again, I’m only playing at, stunt-style, for one killer boot-camp week—is about looking marvelous: sculpting your muscles, winnowing fat, achieving definition and proportion. Your workouts are designed to isolate muscles, break down tissue, and rebuild it: better, stronger, denser. Add fat-melting cardio workouts, balanced with near-constant feeding (more about that soon), and you get all the bulk with none of the bloat.
So, today, for example. After Cardio Workout 1, 6 a.m., and Body Part 1 (middle back), 10 a.m., time for Body Part 2, 4 p.m. Delts. (As in deltoids, shoulders.)
Exercise 1, “prestretch trigger”—here, incline flys. Goal: Move the muscle through its full range.Movement: Hold ceiling support pole with one hand and lean away, à la “Singing in the Rain.” Lift barbell in other hand toward chest, engaging shoulder muscles (not curling bicep).Sets (10-12 reps each): three warm-up, one heavy, one double impact (each repetition equals two-thirds of the way up, back down, then one full motion).Exercise 2, “compound”—here, incline presses.Goal: Engage the muscle plus one helpful neighbor joint (here, elbow), as this is the heaviest lift of the series.Movement: Sitting on lounge-chair-angle bench (sitting upright would engage chest), press dumbbells from shoulder level to over head.Sets (six-eight reps each): one warm-up (70 percent of next weight), three heavy.Exercise 3, “peak contraction”—here, incline cable flys.Goal: isolation of joint du jour (the cables, as opposed to free weights, do the side work of balancing).Movement: Lug darn incline (tiltable) bench to middle of big frame with cables attached to weights on each side. Recline on bench, secretly resting. Then pull cables (with handles) toward chest.Sets (eight-10 reps each): three, doable weight.
The overall idea: You start by shocking the key muscle, full force, to wake it up. Then you keep at it, giving it less and less help as you go along. By the end, you get to the coolest kind of failure—this satisfying shaky feeling where you can hardly hold the pen to jot down what you just did. You’re spent—your delts are, anyway—and now you can eat.
So far—Day 2—I love these mini-workouts. I don’t have them memorized. I have to think about each set. I get to estimate percentages. I’m never bored, never overall exhausted. It’s fun to see the different casts of characters at the gym, depending on the time of day. I like having Jim explain—high-schoolishly, anyway—the bio behind what I’m doing and having it feel exactly how the science says it’s supposed to. So, the gym part I like.
Oh, but there’s plenty I hate about this little project.
And if you knew me, you wouldn’t believe it’s mainly the part where I have to eat so often. In fact, right now I’m late for meal No. 7 because a) I didn’t feel like getting up from writing this; and b) I am not freaking hungry.
It’s also the part where this something-every-two-hours schedule paves over all the other gardens you’re trying to grow. I had to bag all comedy gigs this week, I’m behind on other article deadlines, my boyfriend and I have managed to sneak in only one conjugal visit, and right now I somehow also have to cram in Cardio No. 2 so I don’t miss an event my roommate is running. More kvetching about that soon. Right now, suffice to say: pout, stomp. And this: Surely you knew that yesterday’s statement dismissing bodybuilders as “weird” had to be a set-up for another statement including the words “newfound respect.”
