Gold's with Nick: Seeing how the other half works out

November is supposed to get colder so garage workouts are getting moved indoors.   Nick has a Gold's membership and I'm going to do a one-month trial so we can do our workouts there.

We went to the "Golds Gym Executive" location downtown today.

It's a very nice facility, in its own way.  Obviously, quite different from CrossFit gyms that I'm used to, but it seemed like a great place to work out if you are doing more traditional (ie non-CrossFit-style) workouts.

Given that I was out of my element there, Nick led me through a typical weightlifting workout that he would do. It was fun.  It included lifts that I've done the odd time in the past, but not all that much, and it showed in the amount of weight I could lift vs. the amount Nick was doing.  And he's a humble guy, so he was probably holding back so as to not show me up.

Because -- HOLY SHIT -- Nick is way stronger than me.  I mean, it's something anyone could tell if they looked at the two of us side-by-side, but today really hammered that home.  At one point, I looked at his arms and realized they were twice as big as mine.

I guess his lifting weights regularly for over two decades had some benefits.

The workout included:

-Bench presses (I maxed out at 155 lb x 5 reps... or was it 8?   Nick did 215.  Fucking savage).
-Bent over dumbbell rows (Tyler 70 lb x 8; Nick 100 x 8.  )
-Dumbell bench presses (Tyler 2x40lb for 10 reps; I can't remember Nick's.  It was way more)
-Dumbbell flies (Tyler using a pair of 20 lb x 10 reps for 2 sets; Nick used 40lbs.  He's Schwarzenegger, I'm Devito.)
-Lat pull-downs (I think my weight was 125 or 150.   I did sets of 10.)
-Close-grip bench press (Tyler: 115 x 10; Nick 165 or something)
-Bicep curls (I think I used 2x 20lbs here, 10 reps.)


At the end, we played around with power cleans and rack jerks. Gold's doesn't have bumper plates -- at least not at that location -- so we had to stay within a reasonable weight range so as not to drop them.

Oly lifting is something Nick hasn't done a lot of, so I gave him a bit of instruction on the technique.   It soon became clear to me that he could easily eclipse all of my personal bests if he spent a few days working on them.

I did sets of 135 x 5 for the cleans and 155 x 5 for the rack jerks.

The locker room at Gold's is very nice.   I'd hang out there if it wouldn't be weird.