Lacey walked into the gym early on a Monday morning, while the rest of the world was sleeping or just crawling out of bed to make their coffee and crawl back into bed with it. It wasn’t too crowded, but not completely empty either. It was way too early for the creeps to come watch girls bend over in a squat while sitting on the cycling machine pretending exercise. She showed the the stalwart man with muscles bulging out of his In Shape T-shirt her membership ID, and he gave her a smile, some towels, and told her to enjoy her workout.

Lacey started off with some dynamic stretching to warm up her lower body muscles, as usual. She bended down in a squat, the words ass to grass in her mind as a cue to help her. She pressed her knees open with her elbows, rocking side to side and opening up her hips. She did this for about thirty seconds before she placed her palms on the floor, and slid both feet forward while pressing into the floor and lifting her lower body up into a hamstring stretch, pressing her booty to the back. From here she moved between the two movements, going from a peaceful gnome in a squat with praying hands, to a stripper showing off her round glutes. After a few more dynamic stretches she felt warmed up and grabbed some different weight variations and dumbbells from the weight rack.

Lacey found an open area to exercise in and placed her mat down on it. She scanned the area, noticing a tan beach going sort of man standing next to her. He had dirty blonde curly ringlets, blue eyes, and a white T shirt with some lettering on it. It read “leave the weight lifting to the men”. Lacey glared at him and grabbed two thirty pound dumbbells, suddenly irritated by the ignorant slogan. She was going to make him look like an idiot by breaking a few PR’s today in the gym. She had been slowly working her way up to deadlifting twice her body weight for months, and today might be the day.

Rather than starting with breaking her personal record for deadlifts and exhausting herself in minutes, Lacey started with her favorite exercise; Bulgarian split squats. She started by finding a bench, which just happened to be in front of the insipid man with the offensive shirt. She placed each dumbbell on either side of her, and did some tippy tappy motions with her feet.

The man stared at her curiously, as she was the only woman lifting weights near her. He was working chest taking a break from his set, and appeared to have chicken legs as he probably didn’t train them often if he did at all. What an amateur.

She placed her left leg back, heel on the bench and placed her other leg far out in front of her; as this helps work more glutes than quad while doing lunge variations. She lifted up both weights, feeling the familiar cold metal against her skin. It was the only constant in her life, it would never leave her and it was always there after a bad day. She began squatting, her front knee at a 90 degree angle bending slowly as her other leg worked. She felt the pull in her hamstrings, glutes, quads, and it burned. She even felt the strain in her arms as both hands gripped onto the hefty weights and lowered both of them to the ground with control. The man’s eyes widened, and this time he read her shirt. “You think you can hurt me? Bulgarian split squats are my favorite exercise”. He appeared shocked, and he would definitely be soon to eat his words after she broke her personal record for deadlifts. This pathetic man was merely bench pressing eighty pounds. She powered through her reps, feeling both legs begin to quake. She smirked after her last rep of her other leg, and the man looked defeated.

“What can I say,” she said to him with a smirk still playing at her lips as the gym television provided background noise from a commercial.

“You see definition through progression, and maybe you should leave the weight lifting to the women, chicken legs.”