Darknessdancer
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I'm not so sure that letting a completely sedentary person with zero exercise knowledge deadlift 205 was a smart choice.
I've taken it upon myself to start my wife into kettlebells and I think it's important to not overwhelm her with exercises and details. We're both in our late 40's and I've been doing KB's for about two years. My wife has a history of knee problems, runners knee essentially, and now has a tendon issue in her foot that she's wearing a custom orthotic in her shoe to help with. Getting your wife started with walking is a great idea. After that, KB deadlifts. I got a lot of help from this board and I sent a video of my wife's technique to SFG @Karen Smith for review, which was extremely helpful. I'm slowly getting her into 2 hand swings and she's enjoying them. The big news is that there have been no ill effects on her knees or her foot, and we've been practicing probably 4 times a week on average. My style has been to drill the importance of staying fit at our age and just be patient while she practices her new skills. I'm no coach, never have been. So I'm learning along with her. Just one small improvement every session is all I'm looking for. The fitness part just happens, as every session is treated as a practice, not a workout.Ladies and gentlemen;
I've learned a lot from communities like this. But when I told my wife I could help most people train I realized I haven't actually done it with her needs in mind. I'm not a teacher or trainer--I've just trained with other people who would have been doing similar things as me (which wasn't women in my case).
This is going to sound impersonal but I'm trying to be concise and precise as possible for the sake of commenters being able to offer some concrete advice.
1. She's a completely sedentary 30 yo woman with a professional desk job. No jogging, no 5 lbs. dumbbells, etc.
2. She's about 5'4, 185 lbs. and healthy as far as we know. Cardiovascular, joints, etc. all good.
3. For personal reasons, she's resistant to public gyms. She just doesn't really want to train there.
4. She has no real interest in training to be an "elite" athlete. She is motivated to improve fitness, but not to kill herself for marginal gains.
I told her that I think kettlebells we own would suit her needs--she wants to train, but not for hours a day, and not in a public weight room--but I could use some help on programming for her.
Goals: strength and fitness and perhaps weight loss (but I don't think this is accomplished mainly by training programs) without pushing her too hard for the sake of maximizing gains at the cost of pain and suffering.
She's fine with understanding it will be hard since she's completely out of shape, I just mean she doesn't want or need a program that's designed to maximize her gains in an absolute sense because she has some goal she needs to achieve in [x] weeks. She doesn't have that mindset. She just wants to train efficiently.
For now I was thinking of a plan involving goblet squats, swings, TGU and maybe overhead presses? I realized one thing I hadn't thought of is that she cannot do push-ups, dips or pull-ups. I just don't know what kind of volume/schedule we should be talking about even keeping it simple with those few kettlebell exercises.
Side note, she deadlifted 205 lbs. the first and only time she ever touched a barbell. This is the internet, so I can admit that's more than I deadlifted the first time I lifted....
Walking - she's your wife, so take her for a walk through the woods, the city or whatever a couple of times a week. That's quality time for the two of you.
OS - resets + crawling. The 10min daily reset will be plenty for her.
This has been my experience as well.The general opinion is "do not coach your partner if you care about your relationship", support her, be there for her, let somebody else be the bad guy
let somebody else be the bad guy