My Wife Carmen




My wife Carmen and I have been married for seven years, but I only recently
learned of her prodigious strength. I guess I always knew she was strong. I
mean she is "almost six feet tall" according to her, which means she is
actually about 6'1" tall. (I have rarely met a woman who wants to be
considered tall, and most of them who are claim to be just under six feet.) So
even when she was relatively thin she weighed about 170 pounds and had very
little body fat on her.

She has always been into fitness of some sort, but when we first met she was
into weight loss types of exercise. You know, a little bit of running,
aerobics, biking, etc. And she ate like a bird. She often would walk the two
miles to her office and then home in the evening. She also knew how to dress,
and she looked like a million bucks in her clothes or out of them for that
matter. I always marveled at her energy and at her ability to get things done.
I never thought of her as particularly strong, but she never needed my help to
move things either so it should have come as no surprise that when she decided
to join me at the weight room one day she would be no slouch.

I am six feet tall and weigh around 210. I was pretty strong at that time,
having been working out regularly since high school. Yet she kept up with me
pretty well. I would do my reps at a particular weight and then change the pin
settings for her. I figured she would come to the gym, do a few exercises, and
then watch me for the rest of the time, but she was determined to do
everything I did.

We started in the circuit room, because I like to get a good general warm up
before I do free weights. I set the machines at my regular settings, usually
about fifteen plates, for my repetitions. At first I dropped the weight down
to four or five plates for her, but after a couple of exercises she said this
was too easy. So eventually we settled on about 1/2 to 2/3 the weight I was
working with. I was surprised, because there are many men who come to the gym
and work out regularly at lower settings and seem to be working harder than
she was.

The real surprise came when we got to the free weights. She did arm curls with
25 Lb. dumb bells and curled fifty-eight pounds on the preacher bench. I
thought she would have given up by this time. At the bench press I set up my
usual starting weight of 205 and did eight easy reps. I removed the
thirty-fives and was about to remove the forty-fives for her when she said,
"Don't, I think I can lift those."

"Honey, that is 135 pounds," I said, patronizingly.

"Well, at least let me try." So I spotted her. Surprisingly, she hoisted the
bar with relative ease, and completed six reps before reaching failure. I was
impressed, and told her so, but she looked disappointed that she had failed
after only six reps.

After I had finished my pyramid workout and removed all but the forty-fives,
she added ten ponds to each end of the bar and lay back down. This time,
without any help from me she completed eight reps at 155.

"Good God!" I thought to myself. "I couldn't lift that much when I started
out. I wonder what she could do if she had the time to work out regularly."

It was not long before I was to find out.

She began going to the gym to lift weights two or three times a week, not as
much as I was going, but pretty regularly. She would usually go before work,
and I would go afterwards. Every three or four weeks we would go together on
Sunday. For the most part she maintained what she was doing. I did notice that
she increased the pounds on some of the apparatuses; further she was able to
bench 185 for eight good reps. She was strong enough that she drew attention
from most men in the gym, and scared away the weaker ones who were ashamed at
how much stronger she as than them. I was proud that she was all mine, and I
told her so. She rewarded me warmly when we got home on those Sundays with
passion that only she could give and only I would ever receive.

A few months later she was the victim of corporate cutbacks and was given two
years severance pay. Suddenly she was in a position most would be upset about,
but thanks to her typical sunny side up attitude she saw the bright side.

"I know I can get a job any time; I am going to take advantage of that two
years severance pay and give myself a rest," she said.

Soon she got used to being unemployed and set up a daily pattern. She would
wake up with me and share a good breakfast before I went to work. Then the
rest of the day was hers. I did not know what she was doing with her days, but
little household projects got done, and she cooked a lot of nice meals. She
told me that she was getting to the gym more often, and she also read a lot. I
noticed that among the books she read were books on health, nutrition, and
bodybuilding.

After a few weeks of this she also began eating a lot more and a lot
differently. She had always been an omnivore, never one to shun meat. However,
she had preferred a mostly vegetarian diet with occasional meat, and she had
always eaten very small portions These days she was serving lean meat and lots
of it at almost every meal. I didn't really pay much attention to these
changes as I was getting very busy at work and slightly distracted. However, I
do recall that one night she had me barbecue a three-pound sirloin steak. In
the past that would have been good for at least two dinners with some left
over for sandwiches, but when I snuck downstairs for a midnight snack after
working a few extra hours after dinner, the steak was gone. I thought it
pretty odd, because we don't have a dog!

She was getting plenty of rest and looked vibrant. I on the other hand due to
increased pressure at work, was spending extra hours at the office and was
typically going to bed at least an hour after she did. My sleep was suffering,
and my workouts dwindled from four a week to one or two, and our sex life had
become almost nonexistent. I was also missing a pretty amazing transformation
in my wife. About two months after her lay off, when Carmen and I went to the
gym together, she had a surprise in store for me.

I had not been to the gym in a few weeks and felt tired. So when she emerged
from the women's locker room wearing her loose fitting sweat suit and met me
in the circuit room, I announced my intention to do my circuit reps for
warm-ups at a weight two notches lower than I usually did. She said, "OK" and
smiled. I set the weights where I wanted them and did my reps; then, to my
surprise, she did hers without changing the weight. Further, she didn't seem
to struggle.

After the warm-up, she took off her loose fitting sweat top revealing a
substantially pumped body with more muscle than I had noticed before. The arms
were swollen to what must have been sixteen or more inches, and everywhere on
her upper body muscle stood out. I could not believe my eyes.

"Wow," I said, staring in disbelief. "You must have been working pretty hard
at the gym for the past months. I can't believe I haven't noticed the change
before today?"

"Thanks for noticing now," she said. "I guess you just have been working so
hard that you haven't had time. I'm usually asleep by the time you come to
bed. Furthermore, the clothes they make for someone over six-one have a lot of
room to hide this kind of change."

So, now she was not only admitting to being over six feet but to over six-one.
That represented a change in attitude. Was she no longer ashamed of her size?

This is where the real surprises began. She used forty pound dumb bells for
curls, and did three easy sets with them. Her biceps seemed to swell a little
more with each set. Then she put thirty-five pound weights on each end of the
preacher bar and handled it with ease. Her arms seemed to bulge larger with
each rep. An even bigger shock came at the next station.

The bench press is an exercise where men measure their manhood. It is where a
man has to be a man. Although I was pretty tired, I put my usual starting
weight of 205 on the bar and cranked out eight reps. They were much more
difficult than usual. We then went through our routine of removing the
thirty-fives for her, but she surprised me by adding another forty-five to the
bar at each end.

"Aren't you ... going to bench anything I said," thinking that she was adding
this for me. "Don't you want me to change the weights to you usual starting
weight?"

She looked at me, a little miffed, and said, "This is my starting weight,
honey."

I gasped. "What are you talking about?"

With that she just sighed and lay down on the bench and did eight slow and
very steady reps at 225. They seemed easy. She paused and said, "That was a
good warm-up. Your bench honey."

I swallowed hard and took my position on the bench and then grabbed the bar. I
was amazed at what I had seen but I was not to be outdone. I nervously gripped
the bar a few times, took a few breaths, pushing them out hard between
clenched teeth. Then I began.

This was the usual second step on my pyramid of 205, 225, 245. I never really
had great difficulty with it, but I was a little worried because I was out of
shape. Still, I expected to complete the set without too much trouble.

The first three reps were easy enough, but on the fourth I suddenly felt as if
twenty pounds had been added; it was hard. On the fifth repetition, I nearly
failed to get the left side of the bar up. On the sixth, I failed to lift it
more than eight inches off my chest. Carmen helped me pick it up and place it
in the cradle.

"Don't worry, Sam, when things slow down at work you'll be able to handle that
again" she said. With that she added ten pounds more to the end of each bar,
245 pounds total, and slowly did eight prefect reps before putting the bar
back in its cradle.

She then removed the tens and put on twenty-fives. She was going to go for
275. Now, I have done that before, for a few repetitions, but it is close to
my max. "Are you sure you want to try that much weight?" I asked. Half of me
was curious to see if she could do it. The other half was feeling totally
emasculated.

She ignored my question and lowered herself into position. She gripped the
bar, raised it up, and then lowered it to her chest. Slowly she raised it up
to full extension and lowered it again. She seemed to hesitate a little on the
way up. Good, I felt. At least my record of four good reps with this weight
looks safe.

I was spotting her and asked, "Do you need help?"

"NO!" came the sharp reply. It seemed to galvanize her. She lowered the bar
again and repeated the press. This second rep seemed easier. Her third was
more confident and stronger too. I had never seen her so focused on
accomplishing a task. She kept repeating them perfectly, and when she got to
ten she said. "How many more till eight? I wasn't concentrating on the count."

"Um, you've done ten already, " said.

With that she did two more good ones before lowering the bar into the cradle.

I gulped again, totally deflated. "What's your max these days?" I asked
sheepishly.

"I don't know. I've never tried for a max," she replied honestly and
unabashedly. "I usually workout by myself, and I don't want to try things I am
afraid I can't do. I spend more time on my legs anyway. You ought to see
them."

If her legs were stronger by comparison, than her upper body, I was in for a
pretty amazing show. As it turned out; they were. On the leg extension machine
she did the stack for fifteen repetitions, and after a short rest asked me to
stand on the apparatus. She then did twelve more. At this point she removed
her sweat pants to reveal the most incredibly ripped legs I had ever seen. At
six-one she was tall, and a lot of her height had always been in her legs.
They had always seemed long and slender. Now they were massive as well as
long.

"You've kept these hidden under those baggy long skirts pretty well too," I
said pointedly. "Have you measured yourself recently? How big are you?"

"Hmm! " She said with an alluring combination of shyness and teasing. "Why
don't you guess."

"O.K." I said, trying to figure which way to err. After all, most women did
not want to be big, but then again, she was lifting and eating like crazy. I
would try to guess accurately. "185 pounds, 190?" I guessed.

"Nope! You won't believe this. I weighed 202 this morning, and my waist is
still only 26 inches."

"Wow, it must be smaller than your thighs then," I said.

"I think it is pretty close when they are pumped," she said. "My biceps
stretch out at 17 inches at their tops, and my chest is about 43 inches."

"God almighty! That is simply amazing," I said. "You ought to be really proud
of yourself."

"You want to see something amazing? Watch me at the leg press."

With that she started adding the heaviest plates in the gym to the leg press
bar. At our gym we have a couple of old man-hole covers weighing 200 pounds
each that some member of the highway department made for people who wanted to
use a lot of weight. We started with them, and added three forty-fives to each
end of the machine. That represented three hundred and thirty-five pounds on
each side of the apparatus, plus the weight of the thing itself, over seven
hundred pounds.

She got down on her back, pressed up, and released the weight brakes and
began. She lowered the weight slowly just a little short of 90 degrees at the
knees and then pressed up. She did ten repetitions with relative ease before
stopping to add two more forty-fives to each end.

There was not much more room on the bar for more weight, so she asked me to
stand on the platform on the apparatus as well.

"I want to see if I can do this much weight," she said. "I have never tried
this much before." Then she slowly pressed the weight out for ten more
repetions.

She had to struggle a little this time, but managed to press out ten good reps
with over 1000 pounds. After she squeezed out the last rep and we got off the
machine I looked at her legs. They were shaking a bit and were indeed huge. I
got the weight trainer's measuring tape and measured her. Those thighs
stretched the tape out to 27 inches. I couldn't believe my eyes, and measured
again getting the same result. They were indeed bigger than her waist.

"Boy, I'm beat, and I am starved" she said. "I need to shower now. Then we can
get some takeout on the way home.

We bought two roast chickens from Boston Market. I figured we might do some
damage to one of them that night, and the other would be for sandwiches and
leftovers for the next few days. Instead, I got a good idea of how much her
appetite had changed. We split the first chicken right down the middle, and I
ate most of half a chicken. She daintily removed the skin, polished off her
half and started in on the second one, finishing it and two baked potatoes as
well as one large bunch of broccoli. She did not wolf it down. It disappeared
slowly over the course of the evening, but it all disappeared.

"I see your eating habits have changed too," I said as I started to put the
remains of my half-chicken back in the fridge.

"Don't!" She said. And with that she finished the rest of my half chicken as
well.

That night we had the best sex of our lives, but I knew my life had changed,
forever.