Can You Crack an Egg with Your Butt Cheeks?

(Subtitle: What I'm Learning About Strength Training)

I'm going to give you the end of the story first. That way, if you don't want to read all the details, you don't have to.

Here it is:

I'm a hurtin' unit today. After doing some sort of lifting three out of the last four days this week, I'm sore. So very sore. It hurts to cough. It hurts to sit. It hurts to get up. It hurts to twist.

And, I love it!

Now, here's how I got here.

Tuesday, I did about 25 minutes of triceps, chest and obliques (or at least I think they're called obliques ... the muscles on the sides of your waist). Wednesday, Peggy came over and she ran me through a 15-20 moves to make sure I knew how to do them properly. She concentrated on form. (She will then build a routine for me to do three days a week.) Then on Friday morning, I put an hour in at Girls Got Grit, plus hit a Zumba class that had a glutes and abs concentration.

Ow.

I'm actually a little surprised that I'm sore, especially this sore, and I'm so happy I am. I'm happy because being sore means that I'm doing something right. Finally. Up until this point, I haven't been sore.

Little did I know, weight lifting is hard. 

It's a "detail" endeavor. And I'm a broad brush kind of girl. 

In other words, you can't just lift the damn weight. You have to lift it right. The right motion may be very small. You have to concentrate on that small part of the motion that you can FEEL and you have to find it every single time. 

It reminds me of golf, honestly. In golf, to get a good swing, you have to have your feet just right and your shoulders just right and your head just right, etc. It's a series of all these small, little details that must be done perfectly if you want the ball to actually go anywhere. 

And it's the opposite in just about every way from running. While I'm sure there can be intricacies in running, I don't know what they are. I just run. As fast and as far as I can. Broad brush. 

So here's an example. 

Feet shoulder length apart, 15-lb. weight in right hand, arm hanging loosely at your side. Left arm bent, hand on left hip. Bend sideways to your left to work the left side obliques.  

Sounds easy, right? Bend, straighten. Bend, straighten. Done.

Except, it's not that easy. 

Peggy can tell by looking at me that I'm not getting it. 

"Can you FEEL it?" she asks. 

"Nope," I reply honestly. 

"Right here," she says. She takes two fingers and pokes me in that muscle. "You should feel it right here." 

"But I don't," I say. Then she holds her fingers there while I bend and straighten. 

"Pretend it's an egg. Crack it. At the very end of that motion, squeeze that muscle and crack that egg."

What. The. Hell?

I don't even know I have a muscle there, so how do I concentrate enough to feel it and then CONTROL it? 

Which means I have to try again. This time with a new focus. Feet shoulder width apart, knees loosely bent, butt tucked under and abs tight. Shoulders square, neck loose, just a relaxed grip on the weight and eyes straight ahead, looking at myself in the mirror. 

Begin bend, keeping shoulders above hips ... no leaning forward or backward ... exhaling on the contraction of the muscle. Can I feel it? Am I feeling it? Getting to the end of the motion. Visualize that muscle and squeeze it. Squeeze it!

But you're only half done. Now you have to stand back up. Unbend, as it were. And all of the same considerations must be taken into account because the "lengthening" or eccentric contraction of the muscle is just as important as the shortening or concentric contraction. 

It's exhausting. 

But I must have found that muscle, because today it hurts. And I think I found a few other ones, too.

Just don't get me started on that move when you're down on all fours and donkey kicking your leg out behind you, squeezing your butt cheeks. 

With any luck, I will be able to crack an egg there soon.