This one goes out to all my iron bros with girls who love to be active and fit… I personally love nothing more than to throw as much iron around as possible…I recently got back from about an 8 month deployment so regaining that strength is becoming a a fun and interesting journey… My girl…fiance, or soon to be wife recently purchased a marathon running book and she plans on conquering a marathon sometime here within her near future…
My question to those who have wives or g.fs who love fitness as much as you do…what are the best ways you’ve found to balance training yourself and also training her and helping her get more comfortable with movements, proper technique and so forth without dampering your own work out? just a random inquiry…thanks to all who answer…
Save yourself a headache and take whatever extra pay you got on your deployment and just hire someone to do her nutrition/programming/ or personal training.
haha…that’s not nearly as fun…and to be honest…I’ve watched the trainers in the gym she goes to right now and just about every other gym in the area and they all suck…taking their client back and forth through to most mind boggling shi* i’ve ever seen…I like to help her and show her the way cause I know she at least is getting some no b.s. training but it happens lately while I myself am trying to work out and it kinda eats up rest times as well…Step 1 may just be getting her on this site …
I introduced my ex to various programs, discussed the theory behind them, and then allowed her to make her choice based on what she felt was going to be the most beneficial to her. In the end, she went with 5/3/1 with barbell complexes and Tabata’s for conditioning. She ended up adapting a fair number of my vegan traits as well.
We worked out together roughly 75% of the time and I enjoyed it, being able to teach the movements helped me further reinforce my form.
Sounds like your gf has interest in long distance running, does she want to weight-train?
If her goals are seriously different than yours, then as a training partner it might be difficult. I’ve seen spouses that train together very well, but they have the same end-game in mind. I have no idea how one should train for a marathon, but I’m going to guess that heavy lifting 3 days a week or so would be counter-productive.
If she is serious about doing a marathon, then she needs to research how to train for one, and take it from there. Maybe there will be things you can help her with after she has established firm goals for herself.
Try getting her a program like “New Rules of lifting for women” or something similar and help guide her through it. What we usually do is while she’s in Zumba I take care of my stuff, and when she gets out I go over things with her until she’s comfortable. But in my experience, working out together doesn’t go very well for most unless you have very similar goals.
this is what I do OP… I go to the gym, get my heavy lifting knocked out and then my fiance shows up about an hour or so later and I train her. I’ll do some ab stuff with her and maybe some conditioning (jump rops/stair master/whatever) but I basically am just a 1 on 1 trainer with her.
Its pretty easy to do if you dont mind spending 2.5 hours in the gym. I love being at the gym so it doesnt bother me. I like training her because I can help her with her form, I can be encouraging to her when its hard and i know she can keep going, plus (TBH) for me its a big turn on to see her working hard and lifting “heavy” and putting in the work.
I think it is a very sexy thing for a woman to be comfortable with their body and to lift/workout hard. It makes me love her even more when she’s in there busting her ass and getting some lol I think it definitely helps our sex life to be at the gym together/keeping fit… For me, it is definitely a positive in our relationship.
I hate to stretch and absolutely loath doing abs but she makes me do it. She doesnt really like doing HIIT but I have her do it… we help eachother out.
(that might sound cheesy or lame or whatever but its true)
From what I get from the OP, it sounds like he’s not asking for help getting her motivated but how to help her in the gym without ruining his own work out. You know, he’s trying to work out, but having to take a 5 minute break in between every set to show his fiancee what to do next.
Anyway, if I’m right about that, you need to think this out ahead of time… figure out what you can both do as close as possible in the gym so you aren’t running all over the place in between sets. Easiest way to do it is set up in the rack, roll over a free bench and a set of dumbbells, and do everything all in the same spot. You can squat, bench, row, press, chinups, etc in the rack… or do the same DB work she is doing. If your fiancee someone who is just doing weight training for general fitness and to supplement marathon training… she can get everything done with dumbbells (lunges, stiff-leg deads, rows, press, arms, etc). Do any machine work you want at the very beginning or the very end of the workout and try to get most of your workouts done in the same spot and it’s easy.
Either way it won’t be more than a few months if you train regularly together that she will pick up everything and not need to be babysat and you can focus on your own workout.
I was able to convince my girlfriend that everything she knows about fitness is a lie and she should just do my workout. It’s cool that she’s squatting and deadlifting but changing the weights between sets sucks.
[quote]Glass Diamonds wrote:
NEVER work out together.[/quote]
My girlfriend and I train together all the time. We may not be doing the same thing, but we’re spotting/coaching each other the whole time we’re in the gym.
She’s intrinsically motivated like Push was talking about. She was lifting before we started dating and does it for HER and no one else.
OP, she’s got to be doing it for herself, at a pace that she’s comfortable with.
I started training with IH when I moved here and we went almost every day…since I started working in November, we don’t go to the gym together, if at all. It sucks going alone, it’s almost like separation anxiety because I don’t want to go if I have to go by myself. My advice would be to train together and separately so this doesn’t happen.
[quote]Glass Diamonds wrote:
NEVER work out together.[/quote]
My girlfriend and I train together all the time. We may not be doing the same thing, but we’re spotting/coaching each other the whole time we’re in the gym.
She’s intrinsically motivated like Push was talking about. She was lifting before we started dating and does it for HER and no one else.
OP, she’s got to be doing it for herself, at a pace that she’s comfortable with.[/quote]
This is the same with myself and my guy. We pretty much do all our training together and coach each other at meets but then we met through this sport.
It sounds like she has a different goal than you; to support marathon running. Why not go to the gym at the same time and train together but independently. You do you thing and she does hers. You don’t have to be joined at the hip if you have different goals. If she’s going to succeed, she needs to do her own mental work as well such as finding out what she needs to train to achieve her goals. In my opionion, that’s where a lot of the drive to succeed originates; in the head.
I don’t have direct advice for you, but my experience with my wife may apply here. I powerlift and my wife does triathlons/runs. She and my daughter (who runs track and cross country) assumed that my lifting knowledge only applied to powerlifting and would in no way apply to their goals. My wife does her thing because she enjoys it, but she also pays a lot of attention to weight and appearance. She has dieted off and on while training for a lot of endurance events.
She has done a full Ironman and two halves. In the process, she has ruined her metabolism (in my opinion). She has to eat less and less to maintain weight and has a terrible time with that extra bit of “storage” right at her belly. While this is happening, she is also not improving her performance in her sport. I suggested for two years that she add strength training to her regimen, and she resisted. She finally read it in a magazine, so now it’s a good idea. I set her up on Starting Strength, and she is visibly changing (in a positive way) and hitting PR times on her bike and running.
So, long story short, her goals may be different than yours but strength training will still be a useful tool, and very few if any of the books she reads will speak much about it.
[quote]Remu_87 wrote:
Try getting her a program like “New Rules of lifting for women” or something similar and help guide her through it. What we usually do is while she’s in Zumba I take care of my stuff, and when she gets out I go over things with her until she’s comfortable. But in my experience, working out together doesn’t go very well for most unless you have very similar goals.[/quote]
She’s had that book for close to 2 and 1/2 yrs now and has learned a lot…I’ll be wrapping up this enlistment here within a few months…so it’ll be nice to be able to spark that motivation back in her…
