I’ve loved lifting heavy weights since I was taught power lifting in college. But I do owe my current obsession with heavy lifting to Ryan and Brian.

Me in college when I'd just started the heavy lifting.

After college, I continued to lift. I did higher reps and challenging weights, but I never worked toward increasing my one rep max. I even threw in some P90x and Insanity (I highly recommend the P90x, but Insanity, I’m not a fan of). I was doing lots of cardio (not chronic cardio, but still cardio).

I shed all the weight I had gained since the end of my collegiate athletic career. I also shed a ton of muscle. I was just plain old skinny.

Ryan had also lost a lot of weight on the low-fat diet we did for 90 days and he decided he wanted to stop P90x and get back into heavy lifting. He invited me to tag along.

So Ryan and I began my first round of truly heavy lifting since college. My bench max went back up. My squat and deadlift got stronger. We were doing sets of 5 reps, and I was getting stronger and adding muscle. I gained 15lbs over the next 8 months of lifting with him. Part of it was definitely muscle and some of it was definitely fat. My diet had sort of gone out the window. And I had an excuse for that. I was bulking. HA!

So Ryan and I continued to workout until he hurt his back. He then needed to take time off, and I was left to lift on my own.

I continued our routine, but had hit a plateau and was making only the smallest of gains. It was hard lifting super heavy weights with no one there to spot you. That’s when Brian joined the staff at our gym and we began working out.

Brian worked on my lifting form. He changed the rep scheme. We did sets of 1-5 reps. We worked on increasing my one rep max. And boy did it increase.

Before I was stuck at 205lbs for deadlift. Now I’m up to 265lbs (and that is after reps). My squat and bench have gone up too. I’m at about 110lbs on bench (I’ve only gotten that once) and 205 on squat. Again both of those numbers are after reps so my max weights could actually be a bit higher! And I’m still working on getting those numbers up. I want to deadlift 300lbs, bench my body weight (120lbs) and squat at least 250lbs. I want to be a BEAST! haha

Brian also helped me relearn the snatches and cleans that I hadn’t done since college. Which I now love! There is something about mastering those explosive power movements that makes you feel so good. They are just SO COOL! Also, I’ve needed to work on them to pursue my other fitness passion…crossfit.

I got into crossfit because of Ryan. He introduced me to it when I visited him in California. We did a squat, pull up, push up, sit up workout in his backyard. It was hard and I liked it, but I didn’t fall in love with crossfit until I did the Murph. Yes, I’m a bit sadistic.

The Murph is: Run 1 mile, 100 pull ups, 200 push ups, 300 body-weight squats, run 1 mile. You do it as fast as you can.

That was probably the hardest workout I had ever done before. I got dehydrated and suffered a migraine, but I fell in love with crossfit because of that workout. Is there something wrong with me? Uhm..yes, probably.

But basically to sum up my ramblings today…I just wanted to say a big “THANK YOU” to both Ryan and Brian. Both of you have been such a big support. You two encouraged me to lift and have made me fall in love with heavy weights and grueling workouts. You two have inspired me to try to encourage other women to start lifting heavy weights!

So “Thank You Ryan and Brian, my Man Bicep Males!”