Locker room ; a guy is taking his stuff out from the locker next to mine, as I open my locker I say :
“Good workout?”
He replies, “always”.
Simple. The truth.
Workouts are always good.
Why would it ever be anything different?
He asked me how mine went, “good, the first half hour was shitty, but I kept doing more, kept changing bodyparts, and it turned good, now I have a great full body pump”.
That’s the mindset, it’s always good! And that’s how you must train! With your mind right it can be euphoric cloud 9 every session.
If something ain’t going right, keep at it, do another bodypart, and something will click.
Pullups were okay strength wise, but I didn’t get a good pump, the feeling wasn’t there, mentally I was stiff, not yet fun loving and loose, tense, not yet outgoing.
I switched to inclined board situps. I do them every trip. 4×25. The last two sets were difficult. Is that the same blonde from the other day glancing at me again? I felt like she was as I did my pullups, if it’s the same girl she definitely was the other day, and seems to be doing so again today.
Dips, 5×20. Dips are my high t, mind right, movement at planet fitness.
Midway through the dips on a water refill run I initiated fist bumps with two regulars with whom head nods are always exchanged. Oh yeah, getting into the place. That blonde is glancing again.
If I’m social at the gym it gets exponentially better.
Leg time!
Leg press, straight to the stack. 4 sets. Stack x 35, 30, 20, 20. I took good breaks. Walking funny between sets. Great quad work. The blonde moves to next to me, she’s still glancing.
I go to the stretching room. Rest for long enough while noticing the college blonde is again in my immediate vicinity, and again keeps glancing. This went on from the point I was doing situps through.
Mentally prepping to wrestler’s bridge hold. Deciding whether to time it myself, or get someone to time me, which makes it easier mentally as I have them call out at every 10 or 15 second interval.
At this point, now half way to hitting on the aforementioned blonde I decide “I’ll have her time me”, and just feel her vibe out as in my bones I don’t HAVE to talk to her. She times me. I wanted to break 60 seconds on the hold, and preferably hit 90. I just about failed at 75.
Between unnecessary attractive blonde related nerves and the preceding leg pressing it was rough to do the hold. My glutes were spasming after this, on top of quads which were shaking preceding.
Notably I had actually eaten a Tootsie Roll between leg press sets as I had been getting low on energy from the efforts.
The girl called the time out weird. The ticks, 10, 10, 10, 10, 50, 1 minute, I say as I’m still in position “I’m keeping going”, and hear 10, and when I drop one fifteen. At 50 she must’ve sensed that I wanted it called out that manner.
While not the first girl to time me going 10, 10, 10, this one however mixed the manners. The other just called 10 indefinitely. Mentally I just count them 1,2,3 if they do count weird, and have taken to synchronizing my breathing in-out with every 10 second interval regardless.
That synchronized breathing, 5 seconds in, pause, 5 seconds out, pause, noticably extends bridge hold time.
Before parting ways, I thanked her, and introduced myself.
Spasming glutes as I recover and begin to mediate to :
3x on repeat. Near the end (~27th minute) I stand up, and start bouncing around, the wrestler next to the mat, fast and loose drills, shaking out tension.
She’s probably still glancing. I don’t notice at this point.
Amped up again I decide to rep out on dips. She leaves. I hit 46 reps bringing it close to failure. Drop. Immediately jump back up. 5 more.
On the gym floor 2 hours on the dot.
Walking to the locker room…the blonde is still training…and tries to hide the glance. She was there when I’d arrived, and repeatedly kept popping up in my vicinity all across the gym for two hours straight.
I enter the locker room…
Persistence & Tenacity