She's A Long Way From The Village

[dclaryjr]

My wife grew up in a small village outside of Korat and her "exercise" came in the form of work in the rice fields or other work around the home. We got married in 1975 while I was stationed at a small military installation down the road from Udorn. She's come a long way as this video shows:

[RY12]

Wow that's impressive! Has she always been athletic? I've noticed the khohn isaan and se asians in general seem to be strong for their weight, I have a tough time wrestling my girl, and she's 60 pounds lighter than me.

[Ken]

Awesome! Only in my dreams and not even in my "younger days". Thanks for sharing.

[cali4995]

That really is amazing. Not just that she can do those feats of strength at that age

but that she's really into exercise to begin with. Grandma not to be messed with.

[dclaryjr]

Wow that's impressive! Has she always been athletic?

She ran track (sprinter) as a school girl but hadn't done anything like that in a while when we got to the U.S. She noticed she was putting on some weight and started jogging. That was some 30 years ago and she's been at it ever since.

That was just a demo for the camera--she had already done her workout which includes three sets of those push ups (20/15/15), dips (15/15/15) and pull ups (8/8/8). She also leads three to five spinning classes a week, does a couple hours on a stepmill, stretches 40 minutes a day, and runs 7 miles on Sunday. She used to do a lot of free weight stuff (squat, press, rows, etc) but gave that up in favor of the body weight stuff a few years ago.

She's already declared that one of the bedrooms in our house in Thailand will be a mini gym!

[RY12]

My girl has expressed a desire to beef up, so this summer I'm going to get her on a basic routine in whatever gym i can find in phnom penh. She's really skinny, so I'm thinking of getting lots of protein in her diet, doing slow push-pull exercises, and focusing her cardio on something that builds muscle concurrently, like the sliding seat rowing machines with high resistance. I'm fairly knowledgable about weightlifting so I'm not going to have her doing anything stupid like clean&jerks with massive amounts of weight (sorry Slavs). One thing that concerns me is that I'm worried maybe she was malnurished as a child... though the Isaan diet seems healthy with all the fruits and vegetables, she's told me she didn't get protein much except for eggs. Does anyone else have experience beefing up a skinny girl?