goneawayworld | spar log!

Indeed. The pace gets a bit brisker.

Guts seems okay with operating the machine, until he realizes he doesn't know how to stop it. And so, once he is done with his little experiment, he lets the track slide him all the way to the end rather suddenly. He does catch his balance at the end, though, hopping off and landing on his feet rather than his ass.

The track gets a pensive look.

"The ground moving under my feet like this feels... strange."

Dislike. At least for now. He's going to need a little adjustment time.

Saturday snickers. "It stops on its own once the timer's up. Or you can hit this button." She smacks her emergency stop and jumps off the end.

"Yeah," she says in response to his comment. "It's not my favorite. But sometimes it's just too gross to run outdoors. Wanna look at the weights next? What looks interesting to you?"

He's the oldest, largest, and most experienced student she's ever had, that's for sure.

Edited 2020-05-01 20:05 (UTC)

Guts takes another glance at the equipment around them. The bars he could recognize as some sort of area made to test balance and acrobatics - fairly self explanatory. The bar racks he could get in concept. Some of the weight machines, though...

"What are the difference between these machines with the pulleys?"

He points between the cabled weights and the one with the hydraulics.

Saturday follows his finger. "Oh, preference, mostly. C'mon."

She leads him over and taps on the hydraulics. "These ones here are called hydraulics, they give you more resistance the harder you pull, basically. They're good if you're doing what's called circuit training, which means you do a few reps - repetitions - of a bunch of different exercises really fast, in a row. Like going in a circuit of the machines, right? It's basically your better option for very fast and intense workouts."

Then she taps the stacked weights. "These kinds are called cable or stacked weights, and they're better if you want to really dig in and focus on a certain area. You set the weight yourself, and it doesn't change in response to the force you put out, so it's good for isolating muscle groups and working on form, that sort of thing."

"I see. Which of these lends itself better to swordplay?"

He kneels near one of the cable machines, testing it out how it felt. Guts may be large, but his build was far more athlete than bodybuilder - dense and compact rather than size for its own sake. He exerted himself through his daily activities, and never really had to consider what would be a good balance or program of isolated exercises.

He swung his sword to test the strength of his body. He ran, rode, or walked because that's the only way to move from place to place. Balance and nimbleness was necessary to avoid being killed rather than dedication to any particular sport. His approach was a lot less... complicated. But it was also built up over a lifetime doing little else.

In the end, it was all tailor made for one specific purpose: hitting things with his weapon, and doing it well.

"Try both, see which ones you like. Or use free weights." Saturday sets herself up on the hydraulic. "I don't really use these a lot, honestly. Bodyweight and free weight's enough for me. But it's usually pretty easy to figure out what exercise you're supposed to do - here we go."

She starts doing leg extensions, demonstrating by doing how the machine responds to the force she exerts.

"Y'see," she says, over the clank of machinery. "These machines really let you focus in on working one muscle group more than the others. It can be useful if you got specific weaknesses you want to address, or to help learn how to do the exercises in the first place. From what I saw you doing back there, I'd say maybe work on your legs a little. You ain't skippin' leg day, but they're carrying a lot of weight and they do get neglected."

Leg day..?

Guts feels a bit foolish having to bombard Saturday with so many simple questions, so he refrains on asking that one. Maybe he should have just stuck to what he knows, like he always did. This was all defined along so many new axes he needed to get used to as a Ye Olden jock - but he's getting the basic gist of her training style.

There is a problem, though, in that the stacked weights didn't really account for strength that allowed one to swing around something like the Dragonslayer so deftly. He's hitting the ceiling without finding the strain he was looking for. He was used to running around with that metal slab of a sword and full set of plate armor all day - how would he replace that?

"Is there anything heavier..?"

Maybe a new angle or exercise? A new machine? He starts to prod at the same type of machine Saturday was using.

Saturday hops off. "Here, try the hydraulics. If that doesn't work, we'll load up a freeweight."

She helps him settle with brisk efficiency; it takes some doing, since the machine isn't exactly designed for someone his size. She chatters while she does so, an unthinking stream of words meant to distract from the manhandling and general discomfort of having someone yanking you about. He likely doesn't need it, but a lot of her kids back home do - in the way nervous horses need a hand on them when you move behind - and she is gonna get home one day, so best to keep the habit.

"See, what focusing in allows isn't just for you to build up specific weak areas," she says, finessing his legs into the press. "It also helps in getting to feel where the muscles are, learning how to keep good form and posture while they're active or exhausted or both. You wanna take it slow; you see dumb meatheads clanging around superfast like it proves something, and all it means is that they've shot their form to shit and they're not actually working what they're trying to work. Slow, controlled movements, that's the ticket. Give it a shot."

Guts follows along with her, not minding the physical manipulating on her end as much he might have. Perhaps he had simply gotten used to her presence after living together for a few days, even if that was a bit unusual for him. His sword is placed beside them as he attempts to make room - the seat did feel rather small.

He eases into it, at first, feeling out the movement allowed by the machine, as she instructed. Okay. Movement down. Seems simple enough.

With an intake of breath, he tries to apply some proper force to it - and, well, this was a regular hydraulic exercise machine, meant for humans without batshit anime powers. The plate gets snapped back as if there were no resistance at all, and something old cracks somewhere in the mechanisms. When he tries to pull his legs back, the plate just kind of sidles over. The tension is lost altogether. Is something in the plastic housing spilling out?

This.. this did not sound like how Saturday was doing it.

Saturday stares at the machine in pure, unmitigated astonishment for a moment.

Then she doubles over laughing. It takes her a solid minute to get control of herself, and she comes up wiping her eyes.

"Oh jeez, man, you broke it. I don't think these machines can handle you." She gestures towards the weight rack. "C'mon, let's try those."

She's laughing. Did he make a fool of himself?

"I appreciate you explaining all this, but perhaps I should stick to my sword..."

Listen, it took a good punishment and never failed him. It doesn't leak or break, and it was heavy enough to keep him in tip top shape. With a pensive look at the machine, he follows her over to the weight rack.

Well. At least lifting a metal stick with heavy weights on it isn't too distant from what he usually did.

Saturday piles on an easy fifty pounds for demonstration purposes and stands at rest, gripping the weights with proper form.

"The reason I like exercises like this is that you can do them with anything heavy, or just your own bodyweight if you gotta. That being said, even if they look familiar there might be something new to learn, so let me know if something looks interesting or weird."

And with that, she launches into a series of exercises, narrating as she goes, that probably look familiar right up until she gets to the one-legged toe raises. That would be odd maneuver that involves standing on something and going up and down on her toes very slowly.

"Looks weird as hell," she says cheerfully, racking her weights back where they belong like a good gym citizen, "but it works your calves like you would not believe."

As always, she gestures to the body part she's mentioning. Her kids back home don't always know the same words for things she does, either. And this doesn't insult them, or make them admit ignorance.

So, kind of like carrying buckets of water, or carrying things around in general. This did seem more familiar to something he'd do to train himself back in his mercenary days. Strike with a weapon to get good at striking, run to build your stamina, and carry heavy stuff around to build your strength.

Moving up and down with a big metal thing on his shoulders is simple enough, so he approaches a free rack to look at the bar and check the weights. One plate gets manipulated around in his hands to get a good tactile sense of it. Since they were made of metal, his prosthetic could actually get something of a grip of it.

Plus, no machines or pulleys to accidentally pull out of place. He could do this one, he supposes.

"And how many of these do you do? A hundred?"

Two hundred??? Two hundred toe raises. It is supposed to be a Day for Legs, right?

"For you? Hell if I know, you just broke the bank. I say go until you feel the muscles tiring, and that's your baseline. Then every time you wanna do a few more, even if it's just five or ten. You know the drill."

He does, really; he has to, or else he would have killed himself with that big ol' pigsticker of his. But there's always room for improvement. That's the jock's creed.

Sword is life.

spar log!

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