In November I started weight training again at the gym after almost two years off resulting from an injury. I had torn a ligament in my left arm trying to do tricks on one of my kids’ scooters; that took more than nine months to heal, and so I took up running for a while. (Including doing a marathon in Amsterdam.) But now, finally, I’m back to weightlifting three times a week. There’s still an unsettling internal twang in my left arm, but I’m trying to ignore that.

There’s a stereotype about weightlifters that they aren’t very bright. I’m not sure it’s fair, even if they do get to be governor of California. But today I wondered.

I was doing deadlifts of 75 pounds. (Pleasure remember:  I’m working my way back into this.) Three sets of 10 reps each. A guy next to me asks if I mind if he borrows one of the 45 lb weights near me so he can slot it onto his barbell. I don’t mind at all, because I’m not going to be using that 45 lb weight today, tomorrow, or any time in the foreseeable future. Then he comes back and asks if I’ll spot him. He’s getting set up to do standing barbell presses. He’s about my height (5’10”) and generally humanoid shaped — not disproportionate like this — so I’m especially astonished to see what he wants me to spot him on:  I see seven 45 lb weights on each end of the barbell, plus the 45-lb barbell itself, which leaves me quickly calculating that he’s about to lift 675 pounds.

“Can you spot me?” he asks again.

I look at him. “You do see what I’m lifting, right?” I nod in the general direction of the tinker toy I’ve been lifting. I’ve been mulling over moving up to 80 pounds, and he wants me to cover his ass if he starts to slip with 675.

“Yeah, but all you have to do is stand behind me and if I start to fall back, just push me forward.”

I have pictures of his starting to fall backward — and then succeeding, crushing me right through the floor like something out of a Looney Tune. Nevertheless, for reasons I cannot imagine, I agree to do this. So I stand behind him and he drafts two other guys to stand on each side, and all of us agree that none of us can do anything if this stunt goes haywire.

Then I notice one last thing I think I should mention.

“You sure about this? Because the barbell is bending.” Which indeed it is. I don’t know what its load capacity is, but it’s starting to look like the axle on a much-played-with Matchbox car. He decides to proceed, and I back way the fuck up because now I’m imagining shards of steel sproinging out from a shattered barbell and shooting into my eyes. He manages to get the load up off the rack and replace it twice with no problem. The third time, he’s almost unable to get the right end back into the hook and all of time slows down as three far more averagely built guys try to look useful when actually they’re panicking. But then he slots it and everyone is relieved and I go back to what I’m doing with my Minnie Mouse weight set while debating who’s stupider:  Him for attempting this feat, or us for spotting him.

Then I see him ask a girl with him to take a picture of the barbell he’s just lifted, with all the weights still on it. She dutifully takes the picture from a few different angles. I can’t resist saying to them both:

“Um, you didn’t do that right.”

“What?”

“The photos. She took photos of a barbell loaded with weights. What you wanted was a  photo of you holding the barbell loaded with weights.” When this didn’t quite sink in, I explained that I could take a picture of a car and tell people I had carried it around town, but no one would be impressed. They would want a picture of me actually carrying the car. Then he understood.

So then he asked all of us to spot him again so he could get the picture right. But everyone begged off.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 11:57 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.