Plates = Progress

According to gym buddy Jon, "plates" are the 45 lbs/20kg weights used during bench lifting and sundry other activities. These were also a sort of milestone for me.

Let's go back about 4 weeks. Back when I first started lifting, my chest area was woefully underdeveloped. Having broken my wrist when I was younger, I hadn't tried to bench press in at least 15 years. My "enhanced" weight also meant that I rarely, if ever, did push-ups. So it was no surprise to me that when I started that the bar itself consisted of an actual set (versus a mere warm-up to get the blood going), and that 2x 25lb (10kg) was my limit.

I'll travel down a related path for a moment. It's interesting; many thinner people who look at fat people in disdain cry out "Put down the fork!" While this is fundamentally a truism, it's also cruel and cold-hearted advice that doesn't take into account that exercise and mindset are critical factors as well. While some people are content to be fat, I would venture to say that most people are not. Thus the diet fads, all of which promise the moon for little or no effort, at least at first glance.

Thus the problem I think most people face is the same one as I faced: lack of visible, trackable results. Last year, I tried Billy's Bootcamp as a method of losing weight. While I saw results (it is, I still maintain, fairly effective core training), those results were spoiled by poor eating habits. I had fallen into the trap of excusing bad eating by exercising.

This was a recipe for failure, and I think that I ended up rebounding that much harder. It is no surprise that I was fatter. Though my weight hadn't changed, my muscle mass had decreased and my body fat increased.

Getting back on track, like my weight-loss, I've seen progress in lifting weights. My first time benching I couldn't lift the 35 lbs (15kg) plates. Now I can bang out 10 with proper form. The 45s were a dream, but yesterday I did 4 reps clean and 2 more with Jon's help. While the weight itself was hardly noteworthy, it is that PROGRESS, the visible fact that A) I was lifting more, B) I am visibly more cut now, which fuels my desire to continue to work out.

In an tangential, though still oddly related, line it's the same as successful GMing, and perhaps the secret of Blizzard's success with World of Warcraft. Table-top role-players and online gamers NEED to see progress, need to see results, need to feel that the time and effort they are putting into an activity are being validated by results. My fellow blogger Rob warns me of the perils of looking at pictures of the past and being disheartened at a 20-year old physique. As he is a former Marine, I can understand his plight on an academic level. But all my childhood pictures are of me being fat. I can only look at my pictures and grin, as I am more healthy now than I have been in a decade, and possibly for at least 1/2 of my life.

In the end, this isn't a novel or revolutionary idea. Far from it, in hindsight it seems perfectly obvious. But this was an epiphany of sorts for me, and perhaps my first step into a world of better health.