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The Honda isn’t that bad. If I changed the tires, that would make a big difference. The tires I have on it now came with the bike and are DOT/street legal. Fine on pavement or hard packed dirt roads, but it sucks on muddy and sandy trails. Plus it’s almost 100 lbs heavier than the KDX. That makes a huge difference for many things….getting stuck, picking it back up, maneuverability, turning, etc. Plus it’s easier for old people to load on a trailer..HA. There aren’t many (legal) trails in RI unfortunately. When we put on our races we have to get permits for the parks, but most of the trails we use go through private property, with the owner’s permission of course. Luckily I live close enough to many state forests in MA that allow dirt bikes. I just have to register it for offroad in MA.
Probably many of the trails you see are dirt bike trails, or mutli use. Many of them are way out of the way. For the most part, trail are marked with signage for hiking, biking, or horseback trails and don’t overlap too much. You don’t want to see a guy walking his dog or riding a horse on a trail designated for motorized vehicles.
I do jump…you have too for some obstacles…but nothing big yet. I’d like to try a motorcross track someday.
Update to this thread. I have continued to work out on a regular basis, but significant gains seem hard to come by. Overall I am still near my lifetime peak strength, but I can’t really go beyond it much. For bench press I have been able to hit the low 300s for the past few months (did 295 x 2 during my last chest workout two days ago), so there is possibly slow growth.
I will say that the lack of using a spotter to help has hindered my growth because I can’t push it to total failure. Benching 300 lbs. without a spotter is a bit scary, although I think this can also be a good thing since the adrenaline kicks in.
With that said, about a month or so ago I started putting on these guiderails to the bench press station which acts as a stopper to prevent the bar from crushing me if I couldn’t get the weight up. I hadn’t used them before because I felt like they got in the way of my bench when I got near the bottom, but I found a way to prevent this from happening. Anyway, I can now try to increase my bench press without fear of going over my limit. One of these days when I’m feeling particularly strong I will try for 310 or higher.
As for the rest of my muscle groups, there’s not much advancement to report. I max out around 210 on lat pull downs, but even that is hard to do. Legs are stronger. I hurt my left arm doing bicep curls about 2-3 months ago, and it still has not healed completely and gives me some pain whenever I tense my bicep for an extended period of time.
Was able to bench a personal record of 330 lbs. a few weeks ago.
Anyway, here are some of my workout pet peeves:
- Grunting so everyone can hear how much you are lifting.
- Occupying a workout station by just sitting there, mesmerized by your phone while others may be waiting it.
- Horrible smells from patrons.
- Not re-racking your weights.
- Singing aloud with the music you’re listening to through your headphones.
- Bathrooms that wreak.
- Having strangers working out next to you and chatting it up so much that you feel like you know every detail of how they spent last weekend.
- Hogging multiple sets of dumbbells at the same time.
- Being in a gym almost all by yourself, only to have someone walk in and use the exact machine or weights you were about to use.
- Patrons who wear inappropriate workout clothing.
I guess I need to update my workout journal. We moved into a new house about a year ago, so I had to stop working out at my old gym and it was about five months before I found another one to join. I finally joined around March of this year, but then a few weeks in the pandemic hit and so it closed, and it was back to doing no exercising for me.
When it reopened around May, I was able to start my workouts again. This was from scratch, so my bench press was down to its bare minimum. My max bench press at time was around 200 or so. Eventually I worked up, and I am now able to bench 295 (if I tried with a spotter, I might be able to bench 315 or so). I can do 100 lb. dumbbell presses six times, and I can do cable rows of 200 lbs. probably 6-7 reps.
The thing is, I’m typically only working about about 35 minutes per session. Years ago I would work out for an hour or so at a time, but since my gym currently closes at 10 p.m. on weeknights, I’m getting there shortly before 9:30 p.m. While I could probably make greater gains if I worked out longer, I think it goes to show that you don’t need to have bomb sessions at the gym in order to make gains.
Another update. After I quit my old gym in summer 2022, I joined a golf club and did that for workouts for about a year. I’d walk 18 holes usually at least twice a week, which is more of a workout than it sounds. I got pretty good at golf, but unfortunately it was expensive and had to stop.
I then joined a new gym in fall of 2023, but it never really worked for me. I don’t know what it was, but I felt like whenever I worked out there, I wanted to leave, and so I was always doing workouts to go through the motions instead of lifting hard to get gains. I ended up quitting it sometime around late summer or fall of 2024. I was totally out shape for the next few months.
Finally, by December of last year, I wanted back in, so I joined a new club again that I hadn’t been to. It’s a 24-hour access club, and I’m at about my six month anniversary there. For whatever reason, it’s felt like a better home for me and I have been able to do workouts on a more regular basis. Even so, increasing my bench press has been slow, and so it took me all these months to finally put up some decent weight (benched 275 lbs. last weekend).
I think I didn’t progress as fast because I had been using the standard bench press station without a spotter for a long time. That makes it scary and I play it safe rather than trying to bench to failure, which is where real benefits lie. Eventually, I realized I could do bench under the squat rack which has moveable safety guardrails on it. This works perfectly and allows me to bench as much as I want without a spotter. Today I benched 225 lbs. I think nine times, which is the most reps I have done in a while. I’ve also been able to dumbbell bench press with 90-lb. weights for about 6 reps, but hopefully I can move up to 95 or 100 lbs. soon.
It feels good to be getting back up there after all these years.
