Transitioning 2 Heavy Lifting From Barbell Squats: Success

So the purpose of going from swimming to barbell squats was to prepare our “newbie” fitness blogger for some heavy lifting she needed to do later. The project required her to consistently move things that would be quite heavy, so she prepared herself by easing into more challenging movements.

Her day of reckoning came shortly after she did those barbell squats and extra leg presses, which didn’t give her quads much time to recover.

Surprisingly, she handled the heavy lifting well. The weight ranged from 50 to 100+ pounds, and the movements were repetitive and long-lasting. She did lots of reaching, pulling, pushing, twisting, lifting, walking, squatting, and so on.

It was quite clear that no injuries or restrictions existed on this person’s body. Only the quads were a little uncomfortable because they didn’t get adequate recovery time in between workouts, but oh well. They got over it after about the third day.

So it’s very possible for a tiny little “old gal” to handle heavy lifting without injuring herself or being like, “I’ve fallen—and I can’t get up!”

Is it the wisest choice for a small female? Maybe not. Unless one is trying to build upper-body strength, it’s not necessary to do all that. Other projects aren’t as weighty, lol. But that project allowed the blogger to test herself and let other people observe. She wasn’t sure she could do all that, but she found out she still had a lot of strength left.

From Swimming 2 Weight Movement and Barbell Squats: The Transition

The transition from swimming to more extensive activities went well for our “newbie” fitness blogger. Those lap activities loosened everything and prepared her for the following gym sessions, where she used equipment such as:

• Adductor machines
• Leg press equipment
• Back extension contraptions
• Arm muscle weight machines
• Rear deltoid and pectoral fly machines to verify and confirm full shoulder mobility in those directions

She added a considerable amount of weight to all the above machines and performed a generous number of repetitions. Full extended shoulder mobility and the ability to move the weight with them were confirmed.

Everything went well, and then she did this for the very first time:

Barbell Squats

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

That was the first time she’d ever done those in her life, so she didn’t add weight to the bar. The barbell squats took a little bit of getting used to, but she did it just fine. Nothing burns today except her quadriceps, but that was from adding extra-extra weight to the leg press machine, not the barbell squats.

High protein and water consumption followed the activity, and all was good.

The blogger concluded that she is good to go. She’s still a petite female (125, 5’2″), not a hulk or massive weight lifter of any kind. But no physical limitations or joint pains seem to be present at this time.