Lately I’ve been wondering if at 54 I can bench press 300 pounds.
Why, I have no idea. Maybe it’s that I have so many other challenges on which everything seems to hang in the balance that I need a challenge that is big enough to engage me but totally insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Thus it becomes… well, recreational in nature.
I’m not sure this goal is possible, but I’m making some progress. The other day I managed to put up 225 pounds three times. So I decided to try 250 pounds one time. You can already guess what happened next, can’t you?
I got stuck.
With 250 pounds sitting on my chest, I couldn’t budge the bar at all. Not even the slightest bit, which creates something of a predicament. Fortunately, this happened at Golds, and a bunch of massive young bucks came running. And I do mean running. “Stupid old dude stuck under the bar is going to kill himself,” is what I am sure they were thinking. It’s what I was thinking, anyway.
Once we racked the weight, one of them said kindly, “Want to try it again with a spot?” So we did. With just a little help getting the bar starting back up once it touched my chest, I got it.
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