We Must, We Must, We Must Increase our Busts....

I was in 8th grade when Grease hit the big screen, and like everyone else, I fell in love with John Travolta and idolized Olivia Newton John. I would daydream that I was Sandy and Mitt, the boy I had a crush on, was Danny. I would sing the songs and dance the dances, and I also adopted Marty's special exercise routine even chanting the motivational tag line, "We must, we must, we must increase our busts!"I was only 13 years old and had not begun to develop yet, but I was surrounded by girls who had, so my teenage mind believed that these exercises were just what I needed to blossom. Of course when I didn't see immediate results, I lost interest in them and moved on to another new trend just as a I moved on to a new favorite movie.

Flash forward to the present. My husband joined me at the gym again yesterday after work. We started as usual with our cardio work-out, and afterwards he offered to teach me another new routine of exercises. The first routine he taught me was designed to work my triceps and biceps; this routine was designed to teach me to work my chest and back muscles.

He selected four exercises, two were back exercises and two were chest exercises. The goal was to do three repetitions of each one. I found this routine to be more difficult than the previous routine he had taught me. Not only was the positioning more awkward this time, but it was pretty clear after the first exercise that my chest and back muscles needed a lot of work.  We began the routine on the Hammer machine. This is a free weight machine designed to work your chest muscles. The challenge, however, was that I wasn't strong enough to use any weights, so instead of pumping iron, I pumped air...or more specifically, I pushed through the routine without any weight beyond the weight of the the actual mechanism. I guess the good news was I did get through all three repetitions of the exercises, the bad news was I still needed an assist on the last two lifts!

The second exercise went a little better than the first. It was a double-pulley back exercise and I was actually able to pull a little weight this time. I would have probably considered my results on this exercise  a Grade B+ if I hadn't managed to flash the patrons behind me when Chuck repositioned me on the bench and in the process pulled me out of the back of my pants. Important lesson learned for this exercise....yoga pants or something that isn't held on by a drawstring! By the time we started the third exercise I was feeling a little self conscious, but fortunately Chuck had saved the simpler exercises for the last two. I managed to to get through the next two fairly easily and not only was I able to lift the weights this time without any assists, but I also managed not to lose any clothes in the process.

I left the gym a little concerned that I might not be able to manage the new exercises on my own and was batting around the possibility in my head that for chest and back exercises I might need to stick to the more traditional pulley machines which didn't seem to work my muscles as hard, but were easier to manage on a solo basis. About that point Chuck playfully told me in his own special words just how great he thought my chest looked while I was exercising. Suddenly I flashed back to sixth grade and my Grease days! Maybe there were some perks to this routine after all...perhaps I would give those exercises one more chance!