The bench press is a lie

Ah, the bench press.

If there was ever an exercise that designated "mandom," it's this one.

I've thought about why that is, and I've basically concluded it's because the bench is where you can thrust as much weight as possible airborne. Not like squats or deadlifts, where you're holding the weight against your body in some way. For some reason, saying, "Yeah, look at all the weight I'm holding against my thighs! Who's yer daddy?" doesn't have the same ring to it.

Basically, what I'm saying is that as a guy, I want to bench press a lot. A whole lot. Like a small car or something. Kidding, but I've developed a point where I'm going to officially be satisfied with my bench at some level: Doing more than my bodyweight. Right now, I'm about 60 pounds off of that, doing 3 sets of 8.

Of course, that doesn't mean I need to add 60 pounds to my bench, since I'm also working on losing weight. But that doesn't mean I'm always patient about this. Especially since I've been stuck in a rut with my benching and haven't made much progress in the past six weeks.

So, anybody have any advice on how they broke out of a bench press rut? I'd love to hear it.

Crawling in my skin...

Yes, the title of this blog is a great Linkin Park song. But that's not the subject.

Something's been creeping up at the gym, and it's starting to affect my routine there. Wanted to see if anybody else has dealt with it.

Recently, whenever I'm about to start sweating, I start feeling what feels like thousands of little needle pricks all over my face and neck. It can be anywhere from an itchy uncomfort to a very sharp, intense pain.

But, once I start to actually sweat, it goes away. It's only a couple of minutes, but a couple of minutes feeling like you've belly-flopped into a pit of cacti is a couple minutes too many.

Tried doing some research, but the only thing I could find that sounded like this was miliaria, and since I'm not really looking into a mirror while this is happening, I can't say what the deal is or if that is what's going on.

So has anybody dealt with this condition before?

Back on it

I just started taking creatine again this week.

And that, quite honestly, is the strongest stuff I take.

I'm Mr. Safe Guy when it comes to supplements. I blame my chemistry class in college. I enrolled in what I thought was the general ed chem class. Bill Nye The Science Guy I'm not; I'm a total word nerd and was a fish out of water in that class. How bad was it? I was the only student that entire semester that had to be warned by the professor to "not smell the beaker" in the lab.

It wasn't until about 12 weeks in and I was fighting to barely keep a C (which, by the way, you needed 73 percent to get, not 70) that I was told I was in the fast-track class for chemistry majors.

Since that experience, I've generally avoided anything that sounds too chemical-ish. An aisle at GNC might as well be the Anarchist's Cookbook or a Rachel Ray cookbook as far as I'm concerned. I comprehend phrases like "plasma volumizer" and "Beta-whatever" about as well as a gerbil reads Chaucer.

So, as a result, I've never really delved into the supplement universe that much. Whey protein and flaxseed oil is about as far as I've gone. And now I'm going back on creatine, since one month benching the same weight will do that to you.

I guess, any advice for maybe expanding my horizons in a way my ultra-safe personality type can handle?

A date which will live in infamy

A quick veer off topic here for something to note...

It's still Dec. 7 as I'm writing this post. Dec. 7 is the day, 68 years ago, that Pearl Harbor in Hawai'i was bombed by the Japanese, triggering America's entry into WWII.

Part of my job involves shooting news videos, and my assignment today was to go to a local remembrance service put on by a local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. According to their info, there are 18 members still alive. A half-dozen were there today. Not one of them was under 88 years old.


They raised a flag, then lowered it to half-staff (They were mostly Navy guys, so they were saying "half-mast"). After that, they went in from the cold and shared their stories from that day.

And with that, they became 20-year-olds watching bombs go off a few hundred feet away or getting strafed with aircraft gunfire. It's hard, even after 9/11, to imagine something like that on American soil.


I wonder how much attention we do pay to it. Even to the people who really should. A TV guy that came to cover the ceremony asked the vets if they could "wait a minute" before raising the flag. Problem is, the reason they raise the flag at 5 minutes before the hour is to correspond to it being 7:55 a.m. in Hawai'i, which is the time the attack began. Also, when the same person was asked if he wanted to interview a Bataan Death March survivor, he had no clue what the Bataan Death March was.

So, on my part, a hat tip to the Pearl Harbor survivors still, well, surviving. You have my respect.

Guilty

So, I came across an AOL blog post that was basically a rip-off of a piece Men's Fitness magazine did on "Six Exercises to Avoid."

Ah yes, the dreaded Internet list. This one basically said there are six exercise machines guys tend to use a lot in gyms that they claim actually cause more injuries than using free weights.

So, decided to take a gander through and see how many of the dreaded six I'm actually doing:

Leg Extensions: Well, I'm 1-for-1. The recommendation is to do squats instead. Which quite honestly, I should be giving a try anyways.

Behind-the-neck lat pulldown: Nope. I'm a front guy, and wide grip quite frankly feels strenuous enough on my shoulders. So I switch between wide overhand grip and shoulder-width underhand grip. With that I (and probably you) lift more weight, anyways. Ego boost!

Chest fly: Crap again. But the alternate suggestion is dumbbell flys, and I've honestly never felt comfortable doing those. So I don't expect to change in the future.

Seated hip abductor: Nope. I don't like machines that remind me of medieval torture devices. Even if it's not the really bizarre ones from good movies.

Seated rotation machine: I don't even think my gym has one. If I'm going to do something like that, I'd rather just use a medicine ball.

Smith machine: I'm going to go with a no on this because it's talking about squats. I don't use a Smith for squats, but I've use it for upright rows. And I do notice I lift more weight (like 20, 25 percent more) using the Smith than with a barbell.

So, 2 for 6, and a kick in the pants to do an exercise I probably should have been doing a long time ago.