My Wife Carmen [A.U.]

[jeffbeans]

My Wife Carmen
Author Unknown

My wife Carmen and I have been married for seven years, but I only recently
learned of her prodigious strength. I guess I always knew she was strong. I
mean she is "almost six feet tall" according to her, which means she is
actually about 6'1" tall. (I have rarely met a woman who wants to be
considered tall, and most of them who are claim to be just under six feet.) So
even when she was relatively thin she weighed about 170 pounds and had very
little body fat on her.

She has always been into fitness of some sort, but when we first met she was
into weight loss types of exercise. You know, a little bit of running,
aerobics, biking, etc. And she ate like a bird. She often would walk the two
miles to her office and then home in the evening. She also knew how to dress,
and she looked like a million bucks in her clothes or out of them for that
matter. I always marveled at her energy and at her ability to get things done.
I never thought of her as particularly strong, but she never needed my help to
move things either so it should have come as no surprise that when she decided
to join me at the weight room one day she would be no slouch.

I am six feet tall and weigh around 210. I was pretty strong at that time,
having been working out regularly since high school. Yet she kept up with me
pretty well. I would do my reps at a particular weight and then change the pin
settings for her. I figured she would come to the gym, do a few exercises, and
then watch me for the rest of the time, but she was determined to do
everything I did.

We started in the circuit room, because I like to get a good general warm up
before I do free weights. I set the machines at my regular settings, usually
about fifteen plates, for my repetitions. At first I dropped the weight down
to four or five plates for her, but after a couple of exercises she said this
was too easy. So eventually we settled on about 1/2 to 2/3 the weight I was
working with. I was surprised, because there are many men who come to the gym
and work out regularly at lower settings and seem to be working harder than
she was.

The real surprise came when we got to the free weights. She did arm curls with
25 Lb. dumb bells and curled fifty-eight pounds on the preacher bench. I
thought she would have given up by this time. At the bench press I set up my
usual starting weight of 205 and did eight easy reps. I removed the
thirty-fives and was about to remove the forty-fives for her when she said,
"Don't, I think I can lift those."

"Honey, that is 135 pounds," I said, patronizingly.

"Well, at least let me try." So I spotted her. Surprisingly, she hoisted the
bar with relative ease, and completed six reps before reaching failure. I was
impressed, and told her so, but she looked disappointed that she had failed
after only six reps.

After I had finished my pyramid workout and removed all but the forty-fives,
she added ten ponds to each end of the bar and lay back down. This time,
without any help from me she completed eight reps at 155.

"Good God!" I thought to myself. "I couldn't lift that much when I started
out. I wonder what she could do if she had the time to work out regularly."

It was not long before I was to find out.

She began going to the gym to lift weights two or three times a week, not as
much as I was going, but pretty regularly. She would usually go before work,
and I would go afterwards. Every three or four weeks we would go together on
Sunday. For the most part she maintained what she was doing. I did notice that
she increased the pounds on some of the apparatuses; further she was able to
bench 185 for eight good reps. She was strong enough that she drew attention
from most men in the gym, and scared away the weaker ones who were ashamed at
how much stronger she as than them. I was proud that she was all mine, and I
told her so. She rewarded me warmly when we got home on those Sundays with
passion that only she could give and only I would ever receive.

A few months later she was the victim of corporate cutbacks and was given two
years severance pay. Suddenly she was in a position most would be upset about,
but thanks to her typical sunny side up attitude she saw the bright side.

"I know I can get a job any time; I am going to take advantage of that two
years severance pay and give myself a rest," she said.

Soon she got used to being unemployed and set up a daily pattern. She would
wake up with me and share a good breakfast before I went to work. Then the
rest of the day was hers. I did not know what she was doing with her days, but
little household projects got done, and she cooked a lot of nice meals. She
told me that she was getting to the gym more often, and she also read a lot. I
noticed that among the books she read were books on health, nutrition, and
bodybuilding.

After a few weeks of this she also began eating a lot more and a lot
differently. She had always been an omnivore, never one to shun meat. However,
she had preferred a mostly vegetarian diet with occasional meat, and she had
always eaten very small portions These days she was serving lean meat and lots
of it at almost every meal. I didn't really pay much attention to these
changes as I was getting very busy at work and slightly distracted. However, I
do recall that one night she had me barbecue a three-pound sirloin steak. In
the past that would have been good for at least two dinners with some left
over for sandwiches, but when I snuck downstairs for a midnight snack after
working a few extra hours after dinner, the steak was gone. I thought it
pretty odd, because we don't have a dog!

She was getting plenty of rest and looked vibrant. I on the other hand due to
increased pressure at work, was spending extra hours at the office and was
typically going to bed at least an hour after she did. My sleep was suffering,
and my workouts dwindled from four a week to one or two, and our sex life had
become almost nonexistent. I was also missing a pretty amazing transformation
in my wife. About two months after her lay off, when Carmen and I went to the
gym together, she had a surprise in store for me.

I had not been to the gym in a few weeks and felt tired. So when she emerged
from the women's locker room wearing her loose fitting sweat suit and met me
in the circuit room, I announced my intention to do my circuit reps for
warm-ups at a weight two notches lower than I usually did. She said, "OK" and
smiled. I set the weights where I wanted them and did my reps; then, to my
surprise, she did hers without changing the weight. Further, she didn't seem
to struggle.

After the warm-up, she took off her loose fitting sweat top revealing a
substantially pumped body with more muscle than I had noticed before. The arms
were swollen to what must have been sixteen or more inches, and everywhere on
her upper body muscle stood out. I could not believe my eyes.

"Wow," I said, staring in disbelief. "You must have been working pretty hard
at the gym for the past months. I can't believe I haven't noticed the change
before today?"

"Thanks for noticing now," she said. "I guess you just have been working so
hard that you haven't had time. I'm usually asleep by the time you come to
bed. Furthermore, the clothes they make for someone over six-one have a lot of
room to hide this kind of change."

So, now she was not only admitting to being over six feet but to over six-one.
That represented a change in attitude. Was she no longer ashamed of her size?

This is where the real surprises began. She used forty pound dumb bells for
curls, and did three easy sets with them. Her biceps seemed to swell a little
more with each set. Then she put thirty-five pound weights on each end of the
preacher bar and handled it with ease. Her arms seemed to bulge larger with
each rep. An even bigger shock came at the next station.

The bench press is an exercise where men measure their manhood. It is where a
man has to be a man. Although I was pretty tired, I put my usual starting
weight of 205 on the bar and cranked out eight reps. They were much more
difficult than usual. We then went through our routine of removing the
thirty-fives for her, but she surprised me by adding another forty-five to the
bar at each end.

"Aren't you ... going to bench anything" I said, thinking that she was adding
this for me. "Don't you want me to change the weights to your usual starting
weight?"

She looked at me, a little miffed, and said, "This is my starting weight,
honey."

I gasped. "What are you talking about?"

With that she just sighed and lay down on the bench and did eight slow and
very steady reps at 225. They seemed easy. She paused and said, "That was a
good warm-up. Your bench honey."

I swallowed hard and took my position on the bench and then grabbed the bar. I
was amazed at what I had seen but I was not to be outdone. I nervously gripped
the bar a few times, took a few breaths, pushing them out hard between
clenched teeth. Then I began.

This was the usual second step on my pyramid of 205, 225, 245. I never really
had great difficulty with it, but I was a little worried because I was out of
shape. Still, I expected to complete the set without too much trouble.

The first three reps were easy enough, but on the fourth I suddenly felt as if
twenty pounds had been added; it was hard. On the fifth repetition, I nearly
failed to get the left side of the bar up. On the sixth, I failed to lift it
more than eight inches off my chest. Carmen helped me pick it up and place it
in the cradle.

"Don't worry, Sam, when things slow down at work you'll be able to handle that
again" she said. With that she added ten pounds more to the end of each bar,
245 pounds total, and slowly did eight prefect reps before putting the bar
back in its cradle.

She then removed the tens and put on twenty-fives. She was going to go for
275. Now, I have done that before, for a few repetitions, but it is close to
my max. "Are you sure you want to try that much weight?" I asked. Half of me
was curious to see if she could do it. The other half was feeling totally
emasculated.

She ignored my question and lowered herself into position. She gripped the
bar, raised it up, and then lowered it to her chest. Slowly she raised it up
to full extension and lowered it again. She seemed to hesitate a little on the
way up. Good, I felt. At least my record of four good reps with this weight
looks safe.

I was spotting her and asked, "Do you need help?"

"NO!" came the sharp reply. It seemed to galvanize her. She lowered the bar
again and repeated the press. This second rep seemed easier. Her third was
more confident and stronger too. I had never seen her so focused on
accomplishing a task. She kept repeating them perfectly, and when she got to
ten she said. "How many more till eight? I wasn't concentrating on the count."

"Um, you've done ten already, " said.

With that she did two more good ones before lowering the bar into the cradle.

I gulped again, totally deflated. "What's your max these days?" I asked
sheepishly.

"I don't know. I've never tried for a max," she replied honestly and
unabashedly. "I usually workout by myself, and I don't want to try things I am
afraid I can't do. I spend more time on my legs anyway. You ought to see
them."

If her legs were stronger by comparison, than her upper body, I was in for a
pretty amazing show. As it turned out; they were. On the leg extension machine
she did the stack for fifteen repetitions, and after a short rest asked me to
stand on the apparatus. She then did twelve more. At this point she removed
her sweat pants to reveal the most incredibly ripped legs I had ever seen. At
six-one she was tall, and a lot of her height had always been in her legs.
They had always seemed long and slender. Now they were massive as well as
long.

"You've kept these hidden under those baggy long skirts pretty well too," I
said pointedly. "Have you measured yourself recently? How big are you?"

"Hmm! " She said with an alluring combination of shyness and teasing. "Why
don't you guess."

"O.K." I said, trying to figure which way to err. After all, most women did
not want to be big, but then again, she was lifting and eating like crazy. I
would try to guess accurately. "185 pounds, 190?" I guessed.

"Nope! You won't believe this. I weighed 202 this morning, and my waist is
still only 26 inches."

"Wow, it must be smaller than your thighs then," I said.

"I think it is pretty close when they are pumped," she said. "My biceps
stretch out at 17 inches at their tops, and my chest is about 43 inches."

"God almighty! That is simply amazing," I said. "You ought to be really proud
of yourself."

"You want to see something amazing? Watch me at the leg press."

With that she started adding the heaviest plates in the gym to the leg press
bar. At our gym we have a couple of old man-hole covers weighing 200 pounds
each that some member of the highway department made for people who wanted to
use a lot of weight. We started with them, and added three forty-fives to each
end of the machine. That represented three hundred and thirty-five pounds on
each side of the apparatus, plus the weight of the thing itself, over seven
hundred pounds.

She got down on her back, pressed up, and released the weight brakes and
began. She lowered the weight slowly just a little short of 90 degrees at the
knees and then pressed up. She did ten repetitions with relative ease before
stopping to add two more forty-fives to each end.

There was not much more room on the bar for more weight, so she asked me to
stand on the platform on the apparatus as well.

"I want to see if I can do this much weight," she said. "I have never tried
this much before." Then she slowly pressed the weight out for ten more
repetions.

She had to struggle a little this time, but managed to press out ten good reps
with over 1000 pounds. After she squeezed out the last rep and we got off the
machine I looked at her legs. They were shaking a bit and were indeed huge. I
got the weight trainer's measuring tape and measured her. Those thighs
stretched the tape out to 27 inches. I couldn't believe my eyes, and measured
again getting the same result. They were indeed bigger than her waist.

"Boy, I'm beat, and I am starved" she said. "I need to shower now. Then we can
get some takeout on the way home."

We bought two roast chickens from Boston Market. I figured we might do some
damage to one of them that night, and the other would be for sandwiches and
leftovers for the next few days. Instead, I got a good idea of how much her
appetite had changed. We split the first chicken right down the middle, and I
ate most of half a chicken. She daintily removed the skin, polished off her
half and started in on the second one, finishing it and two baked potatoes as
well as one large bunch of broccoli. She did not wolf it down. It disappeared
slowly over the course of the evening, but it all disappeared.

"I see your eating habits have changed too," I said as I started to put the
remains of my half-chicken back in the fridge.

"Don't!" She said. And with that she finished the rest of my half chicken as
well.

That night we had the best sex of our lives, but I knew my life had changed,
forever.

[jeffbeans]

Carmen's Amazing Curls


I guess I should have realized it then, after all she had only been working
out for about ten weeks and had only been working out hard for about five when
she not only out-lifted me at the gym but also surpassed the best I had ever
done. However, there was a part of me that thought what I had seen in the gym
that day was a bit of a fluke. That part of me thought that if I went back to
the gym on a regular basis and put my soul into working harder to get strong I
would recapture the strength advantage I had always owned over my wife. So I
found myself dragging myself out of bed at five AM in order to get to the gym
a few more times a week. I also cut back on the extra hours I was spending at
work, so that I could go to they gym occasionally after work when I was awake
and stronger.

I also invested in creatine, a substance I had read a lot about and heard
about but had never had the urge to try. Within a month I noticed results, and
after six weeks I was stronger than I had ever been. One Thursday I benched
300 pounds for four good reps. I had also upped my totals on the circuit,
which I did on my off days. I felt good about myself, and I was certain that
whatever had happened with my wife before, I had at least regained equality
with her. I teased her about it a little when I got home just to see what she
would say.

"You really have been going to the gym that much just to get stronger than me
honey? That's sweet. But I think it's a waste of time."

"What? Do you think you can do again what you did before?

"I might not be able to do all the weight I did last time, ... if you tied one
arm behind my back," she said. "But give me two good arms, and I will far
surpass what you saw before.' With that she pulled up her sleeve and flexed
her right arm. I was truly astounded.

I had been spending so much time at the gym and at work I had not really
noticed that she had gotten even bigger than before.

"Grab my bicep with both hands," she said. With that she relaxed it and I did.
Even in a relaxed state it was just too big for me to get both hands around,
but my two thumbs almost met.

Then she flexed. I managed to keep my index fingers touching each other, but
my thumbs were about three inches apart. I had never seen an upper arm that
big on anyone beside a male bodybuilder. I stepped back and looked with
admiration on the most beautiful and massively muscled arm I had ever seen in
person.

"Let's see that again," I said, and I grabbed her flaccid arm again trying to
fit my two large hands around the belly of the bicep. Once again when she
flexed I could not keep the hands anywhere near each other. By this time the
bulge in my pants was nearly as impressive as the bulge in her arm.

"That's impressive," I said. "Let's do the gym again on Sunday, and you can
show me what you can do."

"I'll show you a little something later too, my dear. We have not been to busy
in the bed lately."

"Oh, do I have to," I said teasingly. I was really looking forward to it.

"Yes!" came the reply. Her tone was not quite as jocular as mine had been.

I went away sheepishly. Wondering how many inches my hands could circumscribe
I wrapped them around my seventeen-inch neck. They fit with a small amount to
spare.

Later that night as she was dressing for bed I approached her from behind and
wrapped my arms around her considerable bulk. She had always been an inch or
so taller than me, but for most of the time I had known her I had outweighed
her. Six weeks ago she had been at just over 200 sexy pounds, and I had
weighed 210. I could swear she seemed bigger. I snuggled in and whispered
sweet nothings in her ear. Before I knew what had happened she had turned
around facing me and grabbed both my wrists, pinning my arms against my sides.

"Try to move your arms anywhere," she said in a challenging tone. I struggled
vainly but could not budge my arms from where she had pinned them.

"Give up"? she asked, with a silly grin on her face.

"Yeah, I guess," I said. "But anybody can do that. Having your arms pinned to
the side pretty much immobilizes them."

"Oh, really," she said. "You wanna try to hold me down?" I knew I had probably
said the wrong thing.

"O.K." I said. "I'll take your challenge." I grabbed her arms and pinned them
to her sides. "I'm ready," I said. But within seconds she had her hands over
her head and had reversed my seemingly strong but obviously tenuous hold. Then
she easily grabbed my wrists, forced both arms behind my back and wrapped her
left hand around both wrists. Dragging me over to her bedside table, she
produced some lengths of rope and proceded to tie my arms behind my back and
immobilize my legs as well. Then she sat me down in a chair and performed a
posing routine that set my loins on fire.

"Enjoying yourself my dear?" she teased, knowing full well that my member was
pulsing like never before. "I thought you would like this. I have a special
treat." With that she produced a set of straps that turned out to be a harness
of some kind suspended from a bar. In no time she had me wrapped in the
straps, had straddled me and was lifting me with a two-arm curl in such a way
that she was essentially gratifying herself with me.

Even if I had wanted to I could not have stopped her, but I did not want to.
The more she lifted me against her the harder I got and the more pliable she
became until I was way inside her and she was holding me there, lifting my
entire weight in order to satisfy both our sexual cravings.

Minutes later we came simultaneously with a loud groan and collapsed to the
floor. She tenderly unwrapped my bonds and we collapsed into bed. As I lay
there, it occurred to me that she had curled my entire 210 pounds somewhere in
the vicinity of one hundred times and had held my weight up against her body
for what may have been only a minute but seemed longer as we approached
climax. I asked her to flex for me one more time, knowing that she was
probably pumped as never before. Once again I tried to wrap my hands around
her huge arm. This time the forefingers met on the outside of the arm and the
thumbs barely reached over the top of the bicep and under the bottom of her
tricep. The entire prodigious height of her bicep was exposed on the inside of
her arm as pints of blood pounded into the muscle tissue of her arms. I
figured she must have measured twenty-two inches at least. I thought about
jumping out of bed and measuring, but I realized there would be other
opportunities for that later.

"Do you want to repeat some of that action in a more conventional fashion," I
asked, knowing the answer.

"I was hoping you would say that." She replied with the devil in her smile.
She wrapped har arms around me and even if I had struggled I could not have
gotten away. I did not struggle, and she even let me lead the way.

Three hours and two episodes later we collapsed for good and slept till
morning

At this point I decided to accept the fact that I would never again be as
strong as my wife but that I might as well enjoy the experience.

[jeffbeans]

Carmen part three




As I lay totally exhausted the next morning in the arms of my wife Carmen, my
curiosity about the progress of her workouts was piqued, and I suggested that
we work out together again some day. I think she too wanted me to see her
progress, and so we made a date to go to our gym that Sunday.

I was also amazed by and curious about her physical growth. I had never seen
someone make such a transformation in such a relatively short time. I knew she
had been working out regularly, and I knew she was working out hard. However,
I had never seen anyone make such progress in only a few months.

"That was a pretty impressive show of strength last night," I said. "How did
you manage it?"

"I've been going to the gym a lot, and I have been eating a lot of lean
healthy food," she said. "I have also discovered some stuff called creatine."

I had heard of creatine before, but I did not know it had extraordinary
effects. I mentioned that.

"It has had a pretty amazing effect on me," she said. "I recover much more
quickly than before, so I can do a lot more."

There was a pause. "What do you mean by 'much more quickly'"?

"Well, I can work the same body part for longer periods of time and do it
every other day. I am now going to the gym twice a day much of the time so I
can get a better workout, but I am less tired than I used to be from three
workouts a week."

"That explains some of it."

"Well, the rest of it is due to changes in diet. I probably eat at least four
pounds of lean meat per day as well as a lot of greens and some carbs.
Sometimes I eat a lot more. It really depends."

"You don't seem to be eating that much more when we're together," I said.

"What about that night with the chickens"? She enquired.

"Well, yeah, there was the night you ate two whole roasters, but mostly you
don't seem to eat that much."

"You come home late and we eat at 7:30 or 8:00. By then I have eaten three or
four other meals. That combined with the hard workouts has really added a lot
of lean muscle to my body. I ate a whole twelve pound turkey a week ago."

"Yeah, right!"

"I did. You want me to prove it tonight. Let's go to one of those buffet
places. I'll show you," she challenged. I needed some amusing entertainment,
so I agreed.

"I'll buy," I said.

With that she stood up and flexed again for me. It may have been my
imagination, but she looked taller as well as bigger. I mentioned it to her,
and she said "Let's find out." Reaching into the laundry basket she pulled out
one of my oxford shirts, fortunately an old one, and slipped it on. She had
always worn my shirts occasionally on days she wanted to be comfortable, and
in the past they had fit loosely. Today she not only filled the shirt out
completely, but her arms went two to three inches beyond the ends of the
sleeves and the tails of the shirt barely reached her well formed buttocks.

"Hey, this used to be loose on me," she chimed. "Wow, I must really be getting
bigger than even I thought. How's this for size"? She asked. And then I heard
a ripping sound as she first did a back lat spread and then flexed her chest
and her biceps. My nice cotton oxford was still on her body, but it looked
like something on the incredible hulk after he had morphed. It was shredded to
pieces.

"Sorry about the shirt," she said sheepishly. "But that was kind of fun."

She took off the remains of the shirt and stood on the bathroom scale. I
expected to see a big number, but I was astounded none the less. When the
weight registered on our LCD screen, the number 245 appeared in the little
window. This was on a woman who until six months ago had weighed about 170 and
had spent most of her years trying to keep weight off. The amazing thing is
that she still looked amazingly feminine, just in an incredibly muscular way.

"Impressed"? She asked kissing me softly on the lips. The bulge in my pants
was a more eloquent answer than any words I could muster. "It's odd, but I
think I have grown taller too. I don't completely understand it, but my skirts
and pants seem shorter than they were, and so do you now that I notice." She
looked down a little at me.

"There is one way to find out," I said, getting out the tape measure. Stand
against the wall. I marked the spot parallel with the top of her head with a
pencil and then measured the height from the floor. "Seventy-five inches," I
said. "That's six-three! You HAVE grown taller ... by two inches!" But every
bit of it was well proportioned and sexily female.

I looked her in the eye. She had always been taller by an inch. She had been
six-one, while claiming to be just short of six feet. I am six feet tall.
However, as I stood up to her I got a good view of her chin.

"Hmm! I wonder how that happened," I said. "You keep growing like this and
we'll have to get you a whole new wardrobe."

That night we went to Big Old Daddy's Buffet, a local joint specializing in,
well, nothing but large quantities of food. They have a couple of carving
stations and lots of other stuff. It's were people go to get stuffed with a
lot of food. We each took our tray and filled it with a couple of plates of
food. I had eaten lightly at lunch just to leave room for this feast, and I
took huge helpings of turkey and roast beef, but Carmen matched me. When we
sat down to eat I began to devour the food; she was eating slowly, and I
finished first.

"Slowing down"? I asked teasingly.

"Nope! Just taking my time."

I raced up to the food bar and got two more plates of food, stupidly
determined to make this into a competition. When I returned she looked at me
with a quizzical expression and said, "Don't you want to enjoy this?" I hadn't
thought of enjoying it. Then she got up and got two more plates of her own,
this time piled high with turkey breast and pork loin as well as stuffing and
vegetables. Her plates were piled even higher than mine, I noticed, a fact
that began to make me a bit queasy as I was halfway through the third of my
plates and beginning to regret that I had taken so much. I really began to
slow down as I neared the completion of that third plate and sat staring at
the other full plate of food. Meanwhile, Carmen just kept forking the food
down her throat, showing no signs of slowing down.

"I ran five miles of intervals today," she said. "After my lifting I went to
the track and just ran repeat half miles for about an hour. I am famished. You
know the amazing thing. I am gaining weight and strength, but I have also kept
up with my running, and my times are actually faster than they used to be."

I found that a bit surprising, even though the one sport she had done as a
youngster was track and field, and she had been a very good distance and
middle distance runner. It is difficult to gain weight and maintain speed and
endurance.

"I did ten repeats of 800 meters between 2:35 and 2:45."

I was aghast. "That's pretty fast," I said.

"Yep!" And she finished her fourth plate. You slowing down? I'm still hungry!"
And she disappeared.

A few minutes later she was back with two more plates. They were even more
full than before with lean meat and vegetables. "No carbs this time. I don't
want to get fat!"

"No," I said. "You probably don't ... where the hell do you put all that"?

"I don't know. Probably goes in here, she said as she made a move to flex her
prodigious bicep.

"Not here, darling."

She smiled. "OK. Honey. I won't show you up here." Within a few minutes she
had finished her sixth plate of food.

"You ready to go"? I queried.

She gave me a blank stare.

"No, I'm having a good time. You gonna eat that"? She asked eyeing my still
untouched fourth plate of food.

"Not if I want to get out of this chair," I replied. With that she reached
across, grabbed my plate, and finished it too, washing it down with her fourth
large glass of water.

"OK," I said. "I believe your story about the whole turkey.

"It was actually a whole turkey and a pound of lean hamburger," she said with
a sheepish grin and went back up for two more plates of food. I slumped down
in my chair.

Two days later we hauled our bodies off to the gym, and I got a look at how
strong she really was. We started in the circuit room, and I was eager to show
her how much stronger I was than the last time we worked out. The first unit
was a lat machine, actually sort of a pull up machine in which you can lighten
the load of your body by raising the counterweight. Also included as a part of
the machine are hand grips for tricep extensions. The stronger you were the
fewer plates you would use. Many people did the wide grip pull ups with eight
to ten plates. I had seen a few people do ten or so with their body weight,
but most who did that struggled to keep their form. I was feeling good so I
put two plates on the machine and stepped up to do my reps. I got fifteen reps
out, but the last few were a little weak. I heard a sweet little high pitched
giggle behind me.

"Impressed, baby?" I asked.

"Ooh, yes. You're so strong," she said with a little twinkle in her eye. With
that she stepped on the machine, removed the pin, and did twenty perfect reps.
She even got stronger towards the end and with each rep she pulled herself up
so the bar was level with her sternum, not her forehead or her nose. Then
after shaking her arms out and stretching a bit, she said, "honey, are you
willing to try something?"

"I'll try anything once," I said, ever the wise guy.

"Step up here with me and climb on my back like I'm giving you a piggy back
ride."

"What? Are you crazy"? I thought. But I did it anyway. Then she stepped up on
the machine, grabbed the bar, and proceeded to do ten reps with my 210 pounds
on her back. My big surprise was when she grabbed the tricep bars and did
fifteen tricep push-ups with me on her back.

"Hurry, honey" I said. "I am getting tired of holding on." Then I realized how
ridiculous that must have sounded to someone who was exercising with me on her
back. The rest of our warm-up consisted of me doing my personal best on each
machine for eight to ten reps and her doing the entire stack, usually five to
eight plates more than I had just done, with even greater ease for fifteen. By
the time we had finished, I was beat and a bit embarrassed.

"That was a good warm-up honey. Don't you think?" She chimed as we went to the
free weights room.

"Great!" I said, sardonically.

Feeling less than strong but wanting to impress her, I grabbed fifty-five
pound dumb bells to do my alternate arm curls. This was ten pounds more than
usual, but I wanted to make a mark. It was hard curling them, and my form
suffered. I swayed, arched my back, and grunted, drawing the attention of
everyone in the gym. After each successful contraction repetition my arm
flopped down out of control on what ought to have been the slow controlled
extension faze of the exercise. I struggled through seven reps with each arm
before failing on the eighth rep with my left arm. Still, I felt OK about it
because it was more than I had done before. Then Carmen grabbed the eighty
pounders. I watched in awe as she stood with her back to the wall to prevent
swaying or arching and did twelve steady reps with each arm, never letting the
arm speed up or slow down whether in contraction or extension. She then
graduated to the nineties and to the 100 lb dumb bells for her next two sets.
By this time the bulge in her bicep was incredible and the vein across the top
was about the size and thickness of surgical tubing. But she did not stop
there. She put two forty-fives on each end of a preacher bar and sat down at
the preacher curl bench and did three sets of fifteen curls there. Amazingly,
none of this seemed to faze her. She was neither tired, nor out of breath,
nor, it seemed, straining to achieve any of these lifts.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "Did you want to use the preacher bench"?

I had stopped exercising, watching in awe, after my one set of dumb bell curls
with the fifty-fives. Sheepishly, I removed the forty-five pound plates, put a
single thirty-five pound plate on each end, and proceeded to complete two sets
of ten repetitions without too much noise. The Carmen show continued in much
the same way for the next hour and ended with her surpassing my max on the
bench press for her warm-up. She put 315 pounds on the bar and did twelve reps
with that before adding ninety more pounds for eight reps and ninety more for
another eight. After peaking at 495 she descended back to her starting weight
for sixteen repetitions.

"Are you aware that there is not a man or woman in this gym who can lift as
much as you"? I asked. "Does this not faze you in the least"?

"I guess I had noticed that nobody lifts as much as me, but I don't see why
that is so remarkable," she said.

"It is a bit unusual," I said, "because women are the weaker sex." I wanted to
take it back as soon as it was out of my mouth.

"What!"

"I ... I mean ... what I meant to say was ... "

"I don't care what you meant to say. I heard what you said." She glared at me.
"'What you meant to say' is just a cover up for politically correct BS and
lies. You said exactly what you actually meant" She stalked away and then came
back. "I'll show you who the weaker sex is."

She was pretty pissed off, and she took three more plates and put them on each
end of the bench bar. I had never seen anyone of any gender attempt to bench
585 pounds, but she was determined. She slid onto the bench under the bar,
took a few deep breaths, steadied her concentration, and raised it out of the
cradle. She paused with it extended over her chest. She knew she was
vulnerable, because I could not effectively spot her with that much weight.
Then she slowly lowered it down to her chest and paused before pressing it
strongly and steadily up to full extension. I figured she had proved her point
and started to grab the bar to help her spot it back into the cradle.

"No!" She spurted, and repeated her performance slowly and smoothly. Her chest
seemed to be growing with each rep, and she seemed to get stronger with each
one until after a total of eight, she carefully placed the weight back in the
cradle on her own. I looked at her chest. This time she was breathing hard and
as her chest heaved I noticed that there was considerable cleavage of the
muscular variety. Her pecs, it appeared to me, made Arnold Schwartzenegger's
look small by comparison. She sat up and looked at me. "I love ya honey, but
your not the stronger sex."

Who was I to argue?