Brian smiles every time I tell him that someone said I must be difficult to train. He’s probably thinking the same thing I am. I would think it would make him feel good that people recognize that there’s much more to lifting weights than just lifting weights.
We get all kinds of comments in the weight room and people get a kick out of watching us when we’re getting set up to train. Brian got me up on the T-bar row (chest supported row) one day, and someone said, “You guys really do everything, don’t ya?”
Brian often says that there isn’t anything in the weight room we don’t use. I jokingly remind him that I don’t do calf raises and that if he ever figured out a way for me to leg press, I think we’d have to charge admission for the show. (You have to keep a sense of humor about things.)
But Brian’s statement is pretty accurate. Together, we do just about everything.
I’ve already told you about how we’ve moved past the difficulties we’ve faced on the bench. So here’s how we move past other exercise complications to ensure that my bench will continue to increase.
Triceps: Before I met Brian, I couldn’t do triceps press-downs because when I’d press down, my body would want to lift up out of my chair. Try doing these sometime without digging your feet into the ground as hard as you possibly can. It’s kind of tricky. Now I get on the adjustable bench with the back all the way straight up. Brian puts one strap around my waist and under the seat and another around the tops of my legs and under the seat. I lean forward and he puts his hand flat against the top of my back just below my neck. This keeps me over top of the weight and the straps keep me down in the seat so that I don’t lift up. If I do triceps extensions or skull crushers on a bench, he just puts a strap around my belly and around my legs.
Dumbbell presses: I hate dumbbell presses, but there isn’t a whole lot to do to fix it. It throws me off balance quite often because the weight isn’t connected. Brian has me do floor presses a lot because at least when I get off balance, I can’t fall anywhere if I’m already on the floor. But we also do them on a bench. He puts a wood block under one end or the other if he wants me to do incline or decline instead of regular. He puts a strap around the middle of my belly and then he tucks the lower part of my legs under the bench and straps them up under the bench. This helps quite a bit.
I shouldn’t say I really ‘hate’ them anymore because Brian has done a lot to improve them. They don’t scare me nearly as much as they used to, but they probably won’t ever be my favorite either.
Curls: We do incline cable biceps curls on the adjustable bench. Brian uses two straps. He crisscrosses them. One goes over each shoulder, down my chest and torso, under the opposite leg, around under the seat, and up the back. It really keeps the weight from pulling me forward.
Sometimes he’ll have me do biceps curls sitting on the end of a bench with a strap above my knees and around the bench. He puts his knee in my back for me to lean on and his hands on my shoulders in case the weight starts to pull me forward. And that’s that!
I’ve also done curls with a curl bar either inclined or sitting backward on a preacher curl seat with the arm pad behind me to support my back. For incline curls, he straps me in just as he does with the cable curls. On the preacher seat, he put the strap around my waist and under the seat and also another strap around my belly. He also has to keep his hands on my shoulders to keep the weight from pulling me too far forward.
Rows: For barbell and dumbbell rows, I lay on a regular bench and Brian props the end up on a few wooden blocks. Then he uses three Velcro straps. One goes around my mid-section and under the bench. The other two are crisscrossed under the bench and up over my butt and hips.
Low rows are interesting. He made me smile the first day we did these. It isn’t something I would have thought I’d be able to do. We use all four straps for it. He puts a wooden board across the foot plates, and I hold my feet together over the beam between the foot plates. He wraps a Velcro strap around the board, across my feet, under the beam, and up over the back of the board. Then he does that again with another strap, beginning on the opposite side. A third strap goes above my knees and under the middle beam. The fourth goes around my waist and underneath the seat. After all that, Brian still has to hold on to my shoulders to pull me back so I don’t lose the correct form when the weight pulls me forward.
T-bar rows are my favorite. They are my favorite because I’ve watched other people do them and always thought I’d never be able to do them. During one of my deload weeks about two months ago, I was picking the exercises I wanted to do and that’s what I chose. Brian looked at me like I was nuts, but he picked me up, put me on, and figured out in a matter of two minutes how he needed to strap me. He used two wooden blocks and stacked them on the foot plates. Then he lifted me up and placed my feet on the blocks. My knees were propped right up against the legs of the equipment, which helped with stability. I know that one strap goes around my mid-section and one around my waist. One goes right below my butt and I think the fourth goes around my knees. I’m not completely positive because I can’t look back to see and I can’t feel where they are.
Upright rows are challenging for me, but the basic set up is similar to curls on the preacher curl seat. Brian just has to keep his hands on my shoulders so the weight doesn’t get the better of me.
Shrugs: I had never performed shrugs before I met Brian. (Have you noticed how many more exercises I do since I met him?) We use a cambered bar, which we also use for barbell rows, so I just sit at the end of a bench and he puts a strap above my knees and under the bench. Then he puts one side of the bar up on a wooden block and lifts the other side up to me. Once I grab it, he removes the wooden block for my set. It’s a simple set up, but I really like shrugs.
Kettlebell shrugs are a little more difficult. I sit on the end of a bench with the strap above my knees just like with a cambered bar shrug. But once I bend over to grab the kettlebells, I can’t pull myself back up. So Brian sits behind me and puts his arm over my shoulder, across my chest, and down around my side and pulls me back up. Once I have my balance, he lets me go and slightly steadies me with his hand on one of my shoulders. It was pretty scary when we first started, but the longer I’ve been able to work with him and the more I’ve learned to trust him, it’s not that big of a deal anymore. I take a deep breath and make eye contact with him in the mirror. Then I’m ready. I always do real well with the actual exercise once I’m in position. I just have to be sure that when I drop the kettlebells, Brian’s feet are out of the way!
Military presses: I’m much better at exercises that I can do one-handed. The only dumbbell exercise I really don’t mind is single-armed dumbbell rows because I can hold on with one hand to steady myself while the other is moving. Military presses take a lot of concentration for me and they are a lot of core work. Brian stands in front of me and tries to keep his hands at my sides to steady me, but he also has to be ready in case I’m ready to fail on a rep. It would really help him out if he had about six hands!
He puts a strap around my belly and around the seat, which helps with the balance as well. A strap also goes around my hips and under the seat. It’s the same set up whether I’m doing barbell presses or dumbbell presses.
Lateral pull-downs: I’ve always done lat pull-downs, but Brian has really helped me develop my lats with them because he actually pushes down on my shoulders. That helps me to activate my lats because other muscles aren’t taking over trying to keep me in place on the seat. A strap goes around my waist and under the seat. A second one goes just above my knees and underneath the seat.
Back raises: We don’t do this one anymore, but it was one of my favorites and very worth mentioning just because Brian was willing to let me try. It’s another one I’ve always wanted to be able to do when I saw people do them. Brian had me lay off the end of a bench one day. My entire torso up to my head was hanging off the end. He strapped from my hips to my feet to the bench and had me pull up backward. And I actually moved a little!
It was very stressful and maximum effort for me, but I never complained because I was so completely ecstatic about doing them. We moved to putting my arms through a band so that it was like a harness. Brian would stand over top of me and pull up and then I had to try to hold the position. This helped slightly with how much stress it caused my body, but I still ended up with tiny popped blood vessels all around my eyes. So Brian said that’s a no go now. It isn’t relevant to benching and it’s too much of an effort. It made me sad, but I understand. I’m not sure I’d ever be able to come all the way up because I think that would take glute strength more than anything. Maybe someday we’ll be able to go back to them once we improve my lower back strength. I’m just very grateful he let me try. Even though they aren’t perfect, I did it. And that’s all I wanted to know. It satisfied me a lot to know that.
TRX: Love the TRX! I do push-ups and rollouts on it. I do Ys, Ts, Ws, and rows. I used to do rollouts much better than recently. We’ve been working on extending my hip flexors in the front due to the spasms that I mentioned in my first article. The extension seems to allow my back to hyperextend more, which hurts quite a bit because I don’t have control of the movement forward. It’s very drastic and puts a lot of immediate pressure on my back, but Brian has ideas for how to improve that starting with a wheel on the ground instead of having my hands in the air on the handles of the TRX.
I also have difficulty with my right hip popping in and out of the socket. That always posed a problem on the TRX because if my hip didn’t stay in, it threw off the entire exercise. But recently Brian came up with something that worked out extremely well and allowed me to do some great push-ups! He used a ten-inch box and put my legs on either side of it. He put a strap around both shins and around the box to keep my legs in place. Then he strapped around my thighs, just above my knees, and put the strap a bit higher on the right side where my hip usually pops out. My hip stayed in place the entire time I was on the TRX and it felt really great.
Prowler: This cracked me up. It’s also one of my favorites. All my favorites are all things that I watched others do and never thought in a billion years that there would be ways for me to do them. On one end of the aerobics room, there are some pipes attached to the wall where bands hang and such. So Brian put his lifting belt on me. Then he took two of my Velcro straps and put them through the belt and around one of the pipes on the wall. Then I layed over a 12-inch plyo box. (We’ve started to put a mat over the box so that it doesn’t dig into me.) Brian attached a rope to both sides of the Prowler, and I pulled the Prowler to me. Then he ran backward with it, and I dragged it to me again. That’s how I run the Prowler, ladies and gentlemen! I love it!
Sometimes for cardio Brian attaches a rope to the pipe in the aerobics room. He holds the other end up, and I pull myself back and forth with my hands. I do pull-ups, and Brian just has to steady my legs so that I don’t swing too much. I (attempt to) climb the ropes. I usually only get about five reaches in before I start to slip down. It seems as soon as my full weight is off the ground, it’s too much for my arms to handle and I end up slipping down to the floor. But I have a lot of fun with them! Brian even throws chains around my neck for push-ups! There isn’t too much we haven’t experimented with. I’ve learned that if there is something we haven’t done, it isn’t because we don’t want to try it. It’s because we’re either concentrating on a competition or Brian’s brain is still reeling to find ways to set me up for whatever it is.
I’d still like to meet Dave Tate and his crew some day. I think it’d be cool to see if he has any extra insight to my workout situation. But that’d just be icing on the cake. I couldn’t have made a better match for myself in my trainer search. I stumbled into great knowledge and, just as importantly, great dedication. Unending dedication. Brian tells me all the time that this is about me, but I tell Brian all the time that this is ‘our’ journey. I wouldn’t be able to have a journey toward my dream if I hadn’t found someone with as much dedication in reaching my goal as I have. He has so much work invested in me accomplishing my goals.
So I guess what I’d like you to take away most from part two of my story is give everyone a chance and share your dedication. Even if you don’t have a chance or the time to go to the extreme like Brian has, you never know when just short bits of advice or letting people be around to experience your dedication will be enough to change a life. It might be a pain in the butte at times and you may have to go out back and beat the crap out of the tire with a sledge hammer to vent your frustration, but in the end, you’ll have helped that person become all he or she can be. It will be worth it. A favorite quote of mine has always been, “To the world you may be just one person, but to just one person, you may be the world.”
I love what I do. I’m very dedicated and determined. I know what I want to accomplish. It’s a very hard thing when you have that much desire and dedication and know you could succeed but also know that it isn’t physically possible unless and until you have someone there with you. It’s very liberating to find that and be able to achieve what you’ve always dreamed of achieving. It takes a great effort to achieve the dreams I’ve always had, but I think the bumps in the road that I’ve experienced have prepared me for that great effort.
There are sacrifices to be made and times of frustration and tears and beating my fists into the ground. I’ll never forget the 30 hours of traveling to Malaysia and two days of not talking to anyone back home until I finally got hold of Brian. I cried when he answered the phone. He said “Chels, is it worth it?” I said yes because I knew that’s what he wanted me to say, but then I went to the opening ceremony of the World Games the following day and I bawled my eyes out the entire time. I called him back and said, “Yes. It’s worth it.”
It was the greatest feeling I’ve ever experienced and I can only imagine what it’s going to be like when I make the Paralympic team. It’s worth it. When you’re doing it for the right reasons, doing it to fulfill your own passions and desires, it’s worth it. When you’ve watched others on television and dreamed of it your entire life and everything pays off and it all comes to pass, it’s worth it. Every scared moment with the dumbbells, all the experimentation and frustration, and all the times I’ve had to trust someone else to catch me when I fall, it’s worth it. Every missed rep and all the pain. I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything in the whole entire world. It’s all worth it.