In the last 10 months or so -- at age 55 -- I have started doing some weight-lifting. Back in my twenties, I did a very small amount of that using Nautilus machines at a local health club, but I had no real idea how to do it in a beneficial way and I didn't do it often enough, anyway. Recently, though, I bought a set of dumbbells and extra plates. I know myself well enough now to understand that I needed something I could keep nearby and reach easily -- something I could use from my couch (I have no room for a weight bench). I have a neuropathy (Charcot Marie Tooth disease) that is at its worst in my right foot, so I needed something I could do without having to stand. I started with 10 pounds, doing five sets of 20 reps per day, alternating working on my triceps one day and biceps the next. My neuropathy is present in my hands, to the point that I very quickly switched to doing hammer curls instead of concentration curls, but a couple of moths ago, I added concentration curls back into the mix. Currently, I am doing hammer curls (as well as the triceps lifts) at 60 pounds and concentration curls at 20 pounds -- it is amazing how much harder the concentration curls are for me to do, even though it appears the hammer curls work more muscles and lead to more visible results.
Anyway, yes -- it takes a lot of work to get marked visible results. I'm not doing insanely intensive workouts like an actor might. I can see some visible results -- and my wife can as well -- but all things being equal, I would have guessed/hoped that getting to 60 pounds would have meant I could see significantly more; after all, I'm lifting a cumulative total of 12,000 pounds (16,000 on my biceps days) per day, with each arm taking half of the load. Even so, I'm intentionally not going super intense for several reasons, one being a lack of time, but also because I'm mindful that starting this in my mid-50s does put me at greater risk of injury than I would have faced 30 years ago, and I would hate to hurt myself and have to stop for a long period of time to heal, thus possibly giving up any gains I have made.
Anyway … I digress …
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