I agree with Gwynn. Training friends, family, and significant others rarely works. The reasons for this are many, but it almost always results in hurt feelings.
:-)
I have a bit of the same problem with my wife. She's a teacher, and I've heard it said that teachers make the *worst* students. I have to be VERY careful with any feedback on her form that's not glowing.
This is NOT her preferred workout, but she's willing to do it, and she's stated with no prompting from me that it's obviously having a lot more effect than the light-weights-1000-reps approach she'd been exposed to before.
For a skinny non-athletic chick, she's doing tons of things right. Bodyweight on the bar on her squats with no padding except her puny little deltoids, good low bar position, reasonable depth (I'd like her a tad lower, but it's better to bite my tongue). I'm proud of her.
Last edited by grubinski; 05-26-2010 at 03:05 PM.
I agree with Gwynn. Training friends, family, and significant others rarely works. The reasons for this are many, but it almost always results in hurt feelings.
Matt,
I'm probably way outside the demographic too, because I've spent so much of my life in male-dominated pursuits that the gender ratio on this board looks normal to me.
But the bad information isn't as gender-specific as you think. I had the same kind of problem with my husband after I started lifting for strength when he was still doing bodybuilding routines out of Men's Health. He wasn't getting stronger and his shoulders hurt all the time but there was no way he was going to listen to me about a better way to lift. So I don't think your question is just about women, or just about lifting weights for that matter. Your question is: "Now that I have found the One True Way, how do I go about convincing my partner?"
Many experienced married people would probably tell you to not even try. I solved my problem by being lucky enough to find someone who my husband would listen to, a personal trainer with a OL background who I found when looking for coaching for myself. Maybe it would help if you could find a strong female athlete or personal trainer to work with your girlfriend.
I agree with Isis. Matt's right, I am outside the traditional female demographic - now. However, I also spent the my formative years and up to age 32 as a modern/ballet dancer. Male to female ratio there is a bit different than either here or the martial arts world. And everyone, women and men, was afraid of getting "bulky muscles." Hell, there are still times when I wish I hadn't gained my bulky abs. My waist was a lot slimmer when there was less muscle there. But, the things that changed lifting from a conditioning method for martial arts training to a passion in and of itself would have drawn me to it then as well. Something to do with supreme focus and will, exhibiting power and strength and explosiveness, etc.
People are complicated. I agree with Matt that "99.9% of people are in the gym because they want to improve their image," which is kind of what I was getting at before.
As far as trying to change someone's mind goes, I have had little luck there. I have introduced this method to about five or six of my friends and my SO but none of them have stuck with it.
<edit: Rant removed>
aaaaaanyway. I guess I'll just keep on harboring the good (deadlifts and her recent rep-record on the empty bar bench press that she won't increase weight on) and just answer questions as they come... and keep an open invite to work in on the squat rack.
Last edited by MazdaMatt; 05-26-2010 at 07:15 PM.
Damn, I hate to miss a good rant. I've been married for 27 years and I had a good "trick" up my sleeve. My wife is very smart about things like dancing and whatnot, good postural awareness, etc. So when I began SS I asked her (because I sincerely wanted an assessment) to read the chapter on squats and critique my form. Well, once she knew what she was talking about it was easy to get her to try it. We worked together for many happy months... figured out our knees were misbehaving, got a 2x4 to fix that, etc. She was very happy with the results she was getting.
Now I'm out of town and she's off listening to some personal trainer... oh well. It will be fine.
Last edited by ColoWayno; 05-27-2010 at 02:00 AM.
Brenden, my GF is a very emotionally-driven person. I give her about 10:1 positive to "negative". And quite frankly, "push your knees out" is not a negative comment, it is an instruction. I try not to say things like "you're not pushing your knees out enough" because that's a negative statement.
Colo, that was a good plan, but I don't think I could get that sort of help from her. I think that my geeky nature lead to me to talk about the gym too much when I was learning (because I like to talk about what I lean) and she's equated learning about gym stuff with boring. She's also stubborn... even for a female (zing! )
My wife is a bit similar to MazdaMatt's. She's not good with "criticism", and she's very stubborn.
She usually goes to the gym quarterly, punishes herself on the nautilus machines and elliptical. The next day she's so sore, she never wants to go the gym again.
Rinse repeat every 4 months.
I do give her credit for going more than quarterly. She's adament about "losing weight" (I try to convince her to "get fit" instead and she's coming around to that) and she puts in a reasonably good effort... but "work smarter, not harder" doesn't seem to get through to her. Nor does the saying "insane is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result".
Her only failure of effort comes from a constantly negative mindset. If I can say JUST the right thing at just the right second she'll blast through a sticking point. We spent all summer trying to run up a BRUTAL hill near my place. Our last run of the summer she started to break stride about 20 feet away from the top and I said something that made her suddenly start running faster than the whole rest of the way up the hill. I showered her with praise for the next two weeks