So you think you're Tough?!

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted, so before I get too far a quick update - weight loss stalled a bit there at the end of the month, but I finished January up with an 11 pound loss. Not the 15 I was hoping for, but given the poor eating habits I had the last week of Jan, not bad.

Yesterday I had a REALLY good work-out at the YMCA. The best part about hard work-outs there is sitting in the steam room for awhile afterwards, and when I get tired of that, I head to the whirl pool for a human-soup soak.

Today I asked Khan (my oldest son) if he wanted to come work-out with me today. He's been going to the gymn pretty regularly lately to get ready for football season. He said sure, and we made a "daddy/Khan date" for after 5pm. I picked him up after basketball practice (he's the proud waterboy, as he hates playing basketball.) Off to the gymn we went.

I told him I just wanted to do a medium-weight circuit work-out, but him and his friend were welcome to do whatever they wanted. I set-up a small circuit of leg extensions,leg curls, lat pulldowns, dips, scrunches, and skipping. I had done a couple of those when he calls out "hey, Dad! You've gotta come and try this!"

Oh oh, these "try this" things never finish good for me.

Like the good father I am, I dutifully went over to check it out. There he is doing these squats - I don't know what the machine is called, but it's really designed for football players, as it does a kind of "dead lift squat" Anyway, he had 2 45lb weight on it (one each side) - each side moves independently - and he convinced me to try it. Holy cow that was hard! I went to go back to my circuit when he says, "hey, wimp, that all you can do?"

Oh oh, now it's on.

I replied, "listen, I don't have any upper body strength yet - you wanna go head to head, lets head over to the leg press" I figured this would scare him away enough, as he's seen me doing leg press and has a bit of an idea what I'm capable of. Not this time.

"sure - let's go - how much"

I try the Father's bluff again "How about we START at 600lbs?"

"ok"

Oh crap.

I load up 590lbs to start and rack of a set of 10.

Khan does 5, so I give him a rough time "I only thought we were doing 5" he says.

Since when do you do a set of 5??

Fine - let's put another 50 lbs on.

640 lbs, I rack of 10 again.

He matches me.

"fine, throw another 50lbs on, but this time we'll only do 5"

He matches me again. So, I tell him let's do 5 more with another 10lbs so that we've got an even 700lbs.

He matches me again.

Then he starts pushing me to do dips and chin ups, so I tried and he killed me. By the time I got finished and got home I was feeling very tired (okay, sick is maybe a better description.)

That kid is getting tough. Amazes me how these young guys gain so much strength in such a short period of time.

My twin boys are really excited to be able to get out riding their bikes again. I'm looking forward to the surprise we have for them this year - we're buying them kids road bikes. I've been shopping for awhile for 'em, and they sure ain't cheap, but they really like doing triathalons, so we want to encourage them as much as possible.