Let’s get one thing straight right away. I am a powerlifter. I am not a bodybuilder. Powerlifting and bodybuilding are totally different sports: how much you lift versus how buff you look. As a powerlifter I train, as a hobby/competitive sport, to lift impressively heavy objects in events such as the bench press. (Much more finessed—sounds almost like “French press,” doesn’t it?—than, say, “clean and jerk” or “snatch,” which sound like events in a Fort Lauderdale bar but are actually things those big Eastern European guys do.)
Bodybuilders, by contrast, are weird. They develop bizarre bulging muscles, spread shoe polish on their bodies, and then, grinning from their teeny heads, vogue to bad music. And win prizes.
But this week, I am one of them. Training like one of them, anyway. Mainly because my personal trainer, Jim King, whom I worship and adore, is trying to kick my ass.
So, today is Day 2 of my bodybuilder-for-a-week workout. First, here’s the overall plan. For powerlifting, I’d do one brief, heavy workout a week (plus assorted lighter lifting and cardio workouts). But this week, it’s four 30-minute workouts a day, starting at 6 a.m. Two cardio, two weights (one body part each—Monday was chest and biceps). (More to come on the science behind the two different plans.) And here’s the hard part: seven daily mini-meals, garnished with several creepy-sounding supplements. Yep, I learned on Day 1 that the food’s more of a pain than the … pain. (Today’s Meal 4, for example, is 85 g. chicken/35 g. brown rice/35 g. asparagus, all measured out on my new li’l scale; all-day calorie total about 1,550.) Thank goodness my Little Gym That Could—Body Reserve in Park Slope, Brooklyn—is four blocks from my house, which is also a) my office, and b) where I grow fresh herbs whose calorie content is inversely proportional to their flavor power.
And I am doing this because? Two reasons.
1) I tanked my last lifting meet. TANKED. It was supposed to be my big comeback after last winter’s triple-whammy of losing, in one month, my boyfriend, job, and dog. I’d finally been training strong again; had maxed at 135 pounds (over 15 pounds more than I weighed). But once in the hot seat, I missed my second (120 pounds) of three required presses on a dumb technicality, mea culpa. Missed the third on another dumb technicality, mea maxima culpa. Had lame competition, was the only one in my weight class: could easily have earned Best Lifter, cross-class, in the meet. Instead, went home scuffing my sneakers like a bad kid—feeling like I’d wasted my time, and worse, Jimmie’s—with a victory as hollow as my chintzy trophy. Enter this bodybuilding workout, designed to knock the body off—or should I say up from—a plateau.
2) Getting ready for my close-up. Jim is also a photographer who does a lot of work with … let’s call it, soft-core hardbodies—those shadowy black-and-white muscle shots of people (clothed) working out. He’s been bugging me, non-creepily, to pose for almost a year. The photos look cool; I’d like to. But I keep putting it off, saying, “As soon as I lose THIS,” (indicating spare bike-tire of flab). See, my arms are diesel, my legs are diesel, but I’ve got this six-pack of … well, pull-apart dinner rolls that could really stand to be uncovered. So Jim cuts me a deal: He can get me camera-ready in one week. (We shoot Sunday.)
OK, three reasons.
3) Still making up for lost time (slash, pride) as a klutzy kid. I do not come from jock stock. Straight-A Mom got a C in tennis; Dad lettered in band. I was an excellent figure skater, but in Boston, that’s transportation. In grade school, I was picked last-ish, except when Tim Zampitella tapped me for cleanup in kickball, which was how I knew he liked me. In high school, I limped behind a pack of preppy gazelles who seemed to know how to play lacrosse the way everyone on Fame just knew the song. Clumsy misery until a Mainer ex-boyfriend bought me hockey skates, and I was hooked. Hockey turned out to be a gateway sport; I bloomed, late, into an actual athlete. (These are the gifts that outlive love. From him, I got ice hockey, and also mountain biking; from my last boyfriend, I got art history, and rage.) Now, I do hockey and rock climbing and powerlifting and snowboarding and even dog sledding—and OK, bodybuilding—because, thank God, I realized I can, and I love them. Now, it’s been long enough since being relegated to archery that I’m no longer actively, thinkingly, trying to prove anything. But I’d be lying if I didn’t wish that Mr. Cargill, the gym teacher who showed me “girl pushups,” could see me now.
