Great Bar Experience

I gave blood yesterday, which was great. (I always get a mental high from it because it's very fearsome to me.) I was glad that the instructions they gave me only told me to avoid lifting heavy things for four hours afterwards, so I could still go lift weights last night (about 7 hours after the donation).

Two of the things I do at the gym are the bench press (where you lie on your back on a bench and lift a bar off your chest) and shoulder press (where, standing or sitting up, you lift a bar over your head - straight up, that is - and then down to your chest). I've been doing these with free weights because the bars for the barbells are 45 lbs, and I can't yet press 45 pounds in either direction. (I'm bench pressing about 30 lbs, which sounds really woeful, but whatever.) But I don't like the free weights because my wrists aren't very strong and they wobble around a lot when I raise them.

So yesterday I finally found out what some of the other bars weigh. It turns out the the "cambered curl bar" (like the one on the left) weighs only 20 lbs. (I was actually told it was 25 lbs, but when I weighed myself with and without it on the scale, it was only 20.) So I put a couple of tiny plates on either end of that sucker and, man, it made my presses really much more enjoyable than before.

I also used weights for squatting for the first time - I did my first set of squats (10 squats) with a 10-lb plate held against my chest. I did a second set (12 squats) with no weight. I think I'll be ready to try a bar soon, and while I was exploring the bars, I discovered that the giant aluminum bar (same size as the regular 45-lb bars, but aluminum instead of whatever heavier metal they are) weighs only 25 pounds. So assuming I had facility with having a bar on my back, I could probably squat that right now, at least a few times.

Overall it was a great session. I really love lifting weights!