So, for those of you who don't read the comments section, I'm posting the link to stumptuous.com, the fabulous website about weight lifting for women that I've been using this time around as my exercise guide. Krista (the very Bay Area looking woman whose site this is) is fabulous, funny, well-informed, and, most importantly, kind. I highly recommended it for women everywhere; hell, it's probably good for men, too, but it's excellent for women. Whoot!

So, I was poking around there yesterday and I found her 4-day split workout plan, which is similar to the workouts I was doing 3 years ago. I noticed that she listed "swiss ball crunches" as an alternative to regular crunches. Since I've been upping the difficulty of my workout a bit each time I go, I decided to give those a try.

Holly fucking god.

Normally after weight lifting, I do a set of 30 regular crunches with no problem, follow it up with some other ab stuff that hits the abductors (sides), then stretch. I got on the ball to do my regular crunches last night, and I got through 15 before I slid off the ball to a whimpering mess on the floor. They are so much harder to do while balancing on a ball! Mother of god! I had to rest, then I tried to do another set of 15, but only got through 8 before I had to rest again. Then I did 7 more to round out my regular ab crunches before surrendering to the floor (ooh, the lovely, very flat and stable floor!) to finish up the leg extender thingies I do (if I don't know the name of something, I just make it up, sorry).

Definitely keeping the ball in the routine. I can really feel it today, much more than I usually do! Man!

In other workout news, there was a major bitch in the women's weight room last night. I had to go across the room to get the barbell I use for chest presses last night. On my way back from this trip -- a trip that takes about 10 seconds, tops -- this woman said to me, "I could have done a whole set in the time it took you to get that! This is what they mean when they say you should let people work in!" I was stunned. I stuttered, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you wanted to work in; you didn't say anything." and I sat down to do my first set of chest presses. I wanted to tell her that if she could do a set of anything in 10 seconds she was most likely doing the set too fast, but I refrained. I figured I'd get up after my first set and let her do a set, but she immediately pounced on the woman who'd been resting on the bench next to me.

"Can I work in?" she asked her. "She wouldn't let me work in!" I glanced over to see her gesture to me. My mouth dropped open, but I just rolled my eyes and continued with my set. Whatever. It's not worth getting into it with her.

"Sure," the woman told her, "But I was just about to do my last set -- do you mind waiting, then you can have the bench?"

"WELL! I could have done a WHOLE SET in the time it took you to say that!" the bitchy woman said. The woman on the bench stuttered, but the bitchy woman continued, wandering off, whining, "NO ONE WILL LET ME WORK IN!" over and over, I guess to find a different place to do her super-fast sets.

She reminded me of my cat, Marzi, how she wanders around miaowing in a high-pitched whine, but when you try to soothe her, to figure out what she wants, she jumps out of your arms and keeps crying. Marzi is a shelter cat, and gets insecure at night; obviously this woman had some similar issues. Or something.

Anyway, just wanted to rant about that a bit, thanks.