dreadpiratebrown

OK, I'm in. May God have mercy on my soul. http://nerdfitness.com/community/entry.php?4258-My-first-6-week-challenge

Disclaimer: This may be long. I need advice about working out with my wife. We are both in our 30s, a good fifty or more pounds overweight, and we try to be active and eat right but time has caught up with us. Over the past few months we've switched to eating mostly Paleo, which has been pretty good to us so far in terms of feeling better, but I can't say I've noticed significant weight change yet. We also purchased the Rebel Strength Guide a couple of months ago and have been trying to follow along with the "Barbell Battalion" program (push presses, back squats, pullups, deadlifts). But we have run into some issues and I don't really know how to deal effectively with them. Issue #1 - Time. She is a full-time graduate student; I work from home. Early morning is really the only time we have to work out, because in the evening we are making and eating dinner, and then she is doing homework. Her education absolutely comes first, there is no compromising there. But getting up at 6 or earlier sucks. But the other side effect of having little time to spare means that she told me, "You read the program and then tell me what to do. I don't have time to read it myself." I tried to do this, but without sitting down and reading the whole damn thing to her, I feel that I am unable to fully convey all the nuances of the program to her, which leads to... Issue #2 - Communication. The last time we worked out, she was struggling to do the weight I had given her for the push presses, which was 5 pounds more than the last workout we did. She seemed to do fine with the previous weight, so I did what the program said and increased the weight by 5 pounds. Instead of telling me it was too heavy, she struggled to complete her set, had terrible form, and felt like she was a failure. She did not tell me any of this, I had to drag it out of her. Also, because I was the only one to read the workout document, I probably neglected to tell her that form is vitally important. Issue #3 - Attitude. We have distinctly different attitudes about working out. I want to enjoy my workout. If I see it as a task, I won't do it. She, on the other hand, says that there is no way she will enjoy this and must view it as a necessary task to complete. To that end, she does not want any kind of encouragement or pep talk while we are lifting; seriously, if I even say, "Good job." after completing a set or try to talk her through the final rep of a set, she just glares at me or ignores me. The flip side of this is that I don't get any kind of encouragement or help from her while I am working through my sets. We had a fight about this in the middle of the workout because it was causing me not to want to do it anymore. Issue #4 - Physical Limitations. I am much stronger than she is, and so far I have been able to continually add on weight, while she has not. This makes her feel like she is not making any progress, and/or that she is a failure. On top of that, she has bad knees (both ACLs have torn and been repaired at separate points in the past), and the squats and deadlifts cause her pain. This one especially I do not know how to handle. She does not have health insurance, and even if she did, she wouldn't go to see anyone because she distrusts the medical profession. She tells me that she knows her own body and will know when she has to stop, but I have trouble believing her. I don't want to be working out one morning and then have to go to the ER because she tore a ligament by lifting too much. All this is quite frustrating, as you can imagine. We are supposed to work out again tomorrow and I am not really looking forward to it right now. If anyone out there has any advice for me I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

Taking the stuff outside is not really an option. I don't have the time to move all those plates up the stairs and outside for one exercise and then move them back in for the others, and once winter comes around lifting outside would be pretty unpleasant. Is a seated press pretty much the same as a standing push press?

My wife and I started the Barbell Battalion workout this morning, and I have a couple questions about it. 1. Our equipment is in the basement, which is the only convenient place for it. The ceiling down there is quite low and push presses are thus impossible. OK to substitute bench presses? 2. I'm confused about the difference between "warmup sets" and "work sets". How many warmup sets are we supposed to do, and how do we know what weight we should be lifting for the work sets? And how much more time is that going to add on to our workout? Because there are two of us doing the exercises, it takes longer to finish everything. This morning it took us an hour to warm up, do 5 sets of bench presses and 5 sets of squats each, and cool down. I don't think we can really spare much more than an hour. Thanks! I look forward to seeing our progress as we work through the programs.