This, my friends, is a real man's CCW. Loaded avec Speer Gold Dot +P's. Although you could man it up a notch and make it a .357. Have you ever shot a .357 featherweight revolver, though? Not fun, but certainly more effective. The .357 scandiums just aren't a good option for comfort.
In any case, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of 7 shots of +P .380. Shit like Gold Dots are as powerful as normal pressure .38 special more or less.
I had a pectoral muscle injury at age 26, had to have an x-ray and EKG done to confirm it wasn't a heart problem instead, as I was feeling pain in the area. Turns out it was just a pulled muscle. I knew it was, anyway, but they told me I should have it done. I knew it was a muscle thing as it happened when I was playing tennis. It needed no treatment whatsoever, aside from abstaining from exercise for a couple of weeks. Still cost me $600, though, even with insurance.
Oh, and there are teenagers that come in and do chest and arms 5 days a week. Some do bench press every day. One of these people in particular frequently goes the same time I do.
He always does a shitload more weight than he can possibly manage to do one rep on, then asks for a spot. He was trying to do 75 pound dumbbell shoulder presses the other day and asked me for a spot. He wasn't doing shit.
Eh. It's probably even worse than that. Free weight squatters? I can count them on ten fingers, of the people I see, of course. Obviously I'm not at the gym 16 hours a day that it's open, but depending on my schedule, I go at different times. So, I've been there many, many hours at different times of day, and virtually no one free weight squats aside from maybe 10, out of hundreds.
There's plate-loaded squat more people use, where you put the plates on, stand up, push out a lever, and squat. It's bullshit and easy, so of course more people use that.
Deadlifts, no one does but maybe 5 on a regular basis, that I can see. Very, very few. People apparently just don't realize the benefits of deadlifts and squats.
Most guys go to the gym without knowing shit and go straight to isolation exercises without doing the first mass building, full body exercises. That's the fact at every gym across the globe. You see new people come and go straight to like, dumbbell curls.
There is a grand total of about two women at my gym out of a shitload who actually do olympic lifts. They both have grrrrrrrrreat bodies, too.
For that matter, there are hardly any other men who do deadlifts, and maybe twice as many who actually do squats.
Actual conversation overheard recently from a 5'5 guido-looking guy with a shaved head, huge arms and chest, and beanpole lower body: "I don't trust squats, you'll just end up getting hurt."
I weigh 205 at 5'11 pounds and I don't do more than 385. I plateau'd hard at 315 pounds for a long time. I have no aspirations or intentions of being in any kind of competition. I'm just your average gym-goer with slightly more knowledge and frequency of workouts.
I could probably do one messy rep of like, 415 or something. Definitely not more than once. I honestly have no reason to do more, and I couldn't without eating and training for it. I'd be more happy with an endurance feat of 315 x 20 or something.
That 155 pound asian guy pretty well has me beat in anything and everything. I can only bench press somewhere in the area of 240.
Yeah, I mean, this stuff is all sorta up for debate and probably varies from person to person. I do incline treadmill as well. Lately I start at 3.5 speed and 3.0 incline, and incline one increment up 5 minutes or so. I go for 20-30 minutes depending if I'm going to switch over to elliptical afterwards. I typically don't go more than 7.0 incline. Occasionally for like the last minute I'll crank it up higher.
Here's a video of an expert powerlifting explaining bench press form. Hint: He describes arching your back and setting your feet properly, just like that asian kid did.
