The Housewife Changes
by Scheherezade the Amazon



Sarah

It was leg day, and I was ready to work hard, harder than two days ago, and
harder than any day yet in my five and a half weeks of working out since
returning to serious exercise for the first time in more than ten years.
First, I cold measured my legs, 22.5 inch thighs and 15.5 inch calves. I was
proud. This was much bigger than it had been when I started. I pick up muscle
easily. I always have. I guess I am just blessed with those genetics. I warmed
up with twenty minutes on the exercise bicycle and stretched. Then I started
with the large muscle groups. My first exercise was the squat. I put two 45 Lb
plates and a ten on each end of the bar. I settled under it, feeling the heft
of the bar against the muscle behind my shoulder, and lifted it off the
cradle. Then I squatted low, keeping my torso balanced and getting my butt
down below my knees. Finally, I exploded upwards, and repeated the same motion
nine more times. It seemed easy, so much easier than the first week I had been
doing it. I quickly removed the tens and repeated the whole exercise. I
believe in supersets, as they work for me, but you have to be quick about
removing the weight or it doesn't work. Then I added twenty-fives to each end
and capped them off with the tens. After a short rest, I repeated the
superset, this time with fifty more pounds than before. I finally added
another set of twenty-fives to the bar and did it again before doing the same
power moves in reverse. My legs felt like jelly, but it was a good jelly.

I continued my workout in similar fashion. Deadlifts, three sets at 350 Lbs,
Leg extensions, lunges, good morning dips with a hundred and twenty pounds on
the bar to strengthen the hams and the butt and the lower back. My routine was
complete, and my legs were responding. So engorged with blood were they, that
at the end of the day they measured 26 inches and 16.5. They were bulging in
all the right places, and there was separation between the heads of the
different quadriceps groups. I was really proud of my progress, and especially
proud of my legs, but it had not always been that way. Three months before I
was stuck in a job I should have loved but hated. That week, on a walk with a
friend, I came to the realization I had to change something about my life.

Richard

I am pretty much a traditionalist, and I believe in the value of hard work.
That is why when my wife of ten years came to me and said she had found some
supplements in pill form that would give her some energy back and allow her to
improve the value of her workouts, I was skeptical, ... and dismissive. I
never really believed those things, and I did not think they were necessary.

I became even more doubtful when I read the description on the bottle.
"Guaranteed to increase your functional strength by 1% each day!" There were
written caveats, and such. I told my wife it was a hoax, and she said. "Well,
it can't hurt to try, and it was on sale in a big way, so I bought out the
remaining stock in the store. I don't think they make it any more."

"I wonder why that is?" I thought but did not say. "Humph, well, there is no
harm in trying.

"The directions say 'to be used in conjunction with regular workouts of
increasing intensity.' They even have suggested workouts and a whole lot of
other things. This is cool. Now that I am not working, this will give me
something to focus on in my life," said Sarah with a smile. "I have always
wanted to get back into shape. I know I can't go flipping off the uneven bars
or doing one armed handstands on the beam any more. Gymnastics really is a
sport of the young. But maybe I can gain my strength and flexibility back."

* * * * *

Sarah had been an excellent gymnast through high school, one of the best in
the county. Her tumbling routines were legendary locally, and even Bela
Karolyi had come calling toward the end of her sophomore year. He was
particularly interested in one move she did in which she appeared to do a one
armed handstand push up on the top of the high bar. Of course, she used
momentum to make it look like she was doing a one armed handstand push up, or
so I figured. A two armed handstand pushup is hard enough. His interest cooled
off when he saw that Sarah's parents were both over six feet, and that a
growth spurt was coming for sure. He did not want to waste his precious time
with someone who was bound to get too big for Olympic competition. Almost as
soon as that happened, the fire for gymnastics went out of her belly. Probably
the puberty, delayed by years of hard work in gymnastics, hit, and her growth
spurt began. She went from 5'0 to 5'10" in a two-year period.

It was interesting dating her as she grew, especially as I was two years ahead
of her. I left for college, and every time I came back to visit, she had grown
another inch or two. At 6'2, I used to have to lean over to hug her. Now I
only had her by three inches. She joined me at Smith College right near
Amherst, where I was majoring in engineering and playing both football and
lacrosse. She majored in art, with a concentration in advertising design, and
I finished my advanced degree at the UMass Amherst, in the same town as my
small college while she finished her undergraduate degree.

We dated from my senior year in high school through college and finally
married when I had my degree and a good job lined up with a local firm that
made robots for manufacturing. It was a burgeoning field, and when I saw my
chance, I took my knowledge and self-confidence and started my own company. I
had seen the errors my former employer had made, and one of them was ignoring
my ideas about how to make better machines more efficiently. Soon I was
churning out more and better machines more quickly than my competition, and
the company took off. I was selling in America, in South America, in China. I
was selling to manufacturers, retailers, and the government. I became as rich
as Midas.

So that is why, after my wife got burned out working overtime for the graphic
design company that had hired her, she decided to leave work and concentrate
on herself, our kids, and some local charities for a while. That brings us to
the present, and the pills, and the new gym membership, and the new in home
gym we built in the basement of our new McMansion and the tremendous changes
that took place in my wife, Sarah.

* * * * *

Sarah started to read the little booklet that came with the cartons of pills
she had bought. Over the next months, she got into a routine that included
taking the kids to school, going to the gym, coming home to relax, do yoga,
and occasionally swim laps in our pool, and then pick the kids up from school.
She pored over the booklet repeatedly with interest, and occasionally would
come to me saying stuff like, "We need to change the way we eat." Or, "Did you
know that by increasing your intake of amino acids after you workout ... " or
"Using creatine before and after workouts increases the effectiveness of the
workouts." I began to notice a change in our meals at home. They were
healthier, full of organic meat and vegetables with only a few complex
carbohydrates. Very few French fries, mashed potatoes, large dinner rolls, or
white pasta dinners. I thought the organic meat was a waste of time and money,
but my wife insisted. We had plenty of money to pay for it, so I did not
complain. Plus, her cooking always tasted great. I also noticed a change in
her attitude and her looks. She wore loose fitting clothes most of the time,
so I never really saw her body, and we had little time for sex because I was
burning the candle at both ends, and she was going to sleep early and got up
after I left for work, but her face was radiant.

One night, after she had been living this lifestyle for a few months, she
suggested we go down to the weight room in our finished basement so she could
show me her progress. That was a night I will never forget.

Sarah

A few months ago, after I got so sick and tired of the men at my imaging
company ignoring my artistic suggestions on the one hand and making passes at
me on the other, that I decided it was time to resign and start a new chapter
in my life. Richard's company has taken off, and we literally have millions of
dollars, more than we ever dreamed of having. I don't need to work, and there
are other things in life than work, especially when a career that should have
been fulfilling is turning into an unpleasant grind, but, there is another
factor that drives me, and it is a competitive one.

When Richard and I first met, he was captain of the football team, and I was a
gymnast. I was a really good gymnast. Not to brag, but I won most of the
meets, and it all came easily to me. You see, I was stronger than most people,
not just most girls, or most young people. I was stronger than most people,
even at 5'0. I had noticeable muscles in my shoulders and arms. I also had abs
so strong that I could take a bowling ball in the stomach that had been
dropped from ten feet. I only know this because it happened. My brother was on
the landing of the stairs in our house practicing his bowling form, and I was
lying on my back playing with our cat. Suddenly he took a big backswing and
lost control of the heavy ball. He shouted in time for me to tense my stomach
muscles. Fortunately it landed there and not on my face.

I don't know where the strength came from, but it was there. I could lift and
move things that others couldn't, and I could beat all the boys and girls in
all my classes going back to, like, fourth grade, whenever we started
impromptu arm-wrestling competitions.

I had this move in gymnastics that nobody else could do. On the parallel bars
I would release the bar with my left hand, do two giants while holding it with
only my right, and then settle into a handstand and do a one armed handstand
push-up. I always told people it was a trick of momentum, but it wasn't. I
could have done more. In fact, in practice I did five in a row once and then
did it with my left hand too. The problem was, back then being a strong girl
was not always accepted. I guess I was proud of it at first, but I always kept
one eye out for the people who didn't approve.

One day in school I heard people talking around the corner from my locker.
"What a freak!" was a phrase I remember. And "She thinks it's cool. I think
she's weird." I didn't know who they were talking about till I rounded the
corner and I saw their reaction. They looked at me; then they looked down,
shuffling their feet, and got silent and changed the subject.

I now know they were probably jealous. Tired of losing in arm-wrestling to a
girl, tired of the attention I got for gymnastics, jealous of the fact that
Richard, the senior captain of the football team, was my boyfriend, and
annoyed that on top of it all I got A's in all my classes - all these things.
BUT at the time, I was devastated.

I pretended I hadn't heard it and went about my life like normal. I did not
let it stop my pursuit of my dreams. I wanted to be the best gymnast I could
be, but in the back of my mind I wondered if I really was a freak. I wondered
if it was right for a girl to want to be strong. The one thing I did know was
I wanted to hold on to Richard; he was the best thing in my life at that
point, next to my own achievements, I guess.

Richard was every girl's dream. He was tall and handsome, and tough and
gentle. He was also polite and thoughtful. He was proud of his athletic
achievements as well as of his incredible gifts in math and science, but he
took the time to show support of mine. The one area he was especially proud of
was his strength; he had the team record in the bench press and was stronger
than all the other boys on the team. I was careful to let him have all this
attention. I never let him know that I was strong. I did not want to
arm-wrestle him for fear that I might get over competitive, even beat him, and
ruin what we had. I did not want to do anything to undercut his sense of
masculinity. Why would I? He was so wonderful to me and supportive.

When he went away to college, I was supportive and loving, but I suffered a
double loss that year. Bela Karolyi had come calling and seemed interested in
recruiting me for the gymnastics training center in Texas. Then he met my
parents.

The look on his face told me everything, and I knew I was finished. He
determined then and there that I would probably grow too much and never be
able to do the multiple flips and turns required in the sport without injuring
myself. I would love to have faced the challenge, but I never got the chance.

Further, even if he was wrong about the likelihood of my making it to the
Olympics, he was right about one thing. My growth spurt hit the year Richard
left for college. I was constantly hungry, and ate prodigious amounts of food,
as my metabolism demanded. I craved meat. I could polish off a 20 oz steak at
a restaurant and then snack as soon as I got home on leftover pizza from
lunch. I once polished off a whole large pizza on a dare, and I polished off
eight big hamburgers when my brother challenged me to an eating contest at a
family cookout. I grew ten inches in two years.

I also got stronger, and I had to in order to keep doing gymnastics, but
without the possibility of reaching the highest level, my enthusiasm waned. At
this point, the idea of being strong just for the sake of being strong was not
appealing to me as it challenged the norm of women's behavior. So I let it
drop, and I did not think of it again until recently. I was cleaning up some
things in my husband's office the other day and noticed some old issues of WPW
magazine hidden in a drawer.

Initially, I felt bad about it because it showed that he liked to look at
other women. Who wouldn't be bothered by that? Then I realized that it gave me
an opportunity. I had always wanted to see where my strength could take me, to
test its limits, and I had not done that when I was young. But why not now? I
could get my strength back, and more. Plus, today's society doesn't have the
same taboos against strong women. I could get as I wanted and not turn heads,
or not turn them in a negative way.

This was a revelation, especially when I realized it was a secret desire of my
husband to see women with muscles. What a great thing it would be to surprise
him with a new body, so I did some research, I found information, I bought
some vitamin supplements that I had heard about and were greatly on sale. I
also joined a gym and ordered the equipment for a incredibly fancy home gym,
convincing my husband that it would be good for him too, because he could
enjoy working out there whenever he got the time. (It's good being married to
a really successful business owner.)

I started slowly, doing a circuit at the gym for a week and taking the little
pills once a day. The next week I added creatine before and after the workout,
and I doubled the circuit, adding a small amount of work with free weights. I
was pretty tired and sore, but the creatine helped me bounce back quickly. On
alternate days I would work in an exhausting cardio workout, and on the other
days I would go heavy. My progress was almost immediate.

By the end of two weeks I had begun to notice some changes. I was peppier, and
my face seemed brighter. Moreover, the definition I had always had as a young
girl began to return. I was initially dismayed that I had gained five pounds,
because I thought I had lost some of the fat around the edges. But then I read
some more and came to the realization of something I had always known. Muscle
is heavier than fat. My weight gain must have been due to muscle gains.

At 5'10" gaining five pounds does not show, but losing the fat around your
jawline does, and friends of mine began to notice. Unfortunately, Richard was
so busy at work that he hardly noticed at all. It really didn't matter. I
wanted to surprise him when the big changes began to come. I had measured
myself before I started. At 5'10" I weighed 140 Lbs.; I had12 inch arms, 34
inches around the chest with almost no boobs, 28 inches around the waist, and
37 inches around the hips. My thighs measured 19" and my calves 13.5". I was
in decent shape at that point, for a housewife in her 30s, but nothing like
what I had been or wanted to be.

I did not measure myself after two weeks, afraid to see that little had
changed. However, during the third week, I added split sessions of free
weights. I always started with a circuit of the machines, and then I did upper
body one day and lower body the next. The first two weeks of easing into the
routine had made the transition to free weights and split sessions easier, and
I was surprised what I could do in the weight room. The first day of upper
body, forgetting that I used to be really strong, I put 25 pound plates on
each end of the bench bar and thought I might need a spot. It was so easy that
I added a 35 to each end, doing the unthinkable and capping a smaller plate
with a bigger one. This was 165. That was a good weight for me. I did not
struggle with it, but I was tired after eight reps, but not so tired that I
couldn't do two more sets. I found 30 pound dumbbells appropriate for bicep
curls, and 40s for flyes.

The alternate days, I worked the legs hard. I had seen videos of Brazilian
bodybuilders working their legs, and I liked the results they got, so I
followed their routines, blasting my quads with sets of leg extensions and
hamstring curls and various types of squats and leg presses. Within a week or
so I was raising the weights I was doing and getting stares from the members,
some of whom were friends of my husband, so I began to go to the gym in the
morning to do lighter stuff and then came home for the heavy stuff.

After a bit more than a month, I decided to measure my gains. I knew I had
made some gains, but the quality of the change overwhelmed and thrilled me. I
had not gotten any taller, but my weight of 145 had risen to 160. My skinny
little arms had inflated to 14.5 inches and showed no signs of stopping. My
hips were only slightly larger at 39 inches, mostly because my butt was
substantially rounder and more robust. It was my thighs that amazed me. They
had grown from 19 inches to 23 inches in only a month, and I could see the
muscle groups. I was thrilled. All I had hoped for was beginning to come true,
and I was filled with a desire to get even better, even stronger. I found it
intoxicating to see my progress, and I wanted more.

I had found these little pamphlets in the cartons of the pills I bought, that
had great ideas about workouts and about nutrition. The more I read, the more
I realized I had to cut out white carbs and sugar and get as close to a
ketogenic diet as possible. I had to have more supplements, and I had to
increase my intake of organic meat and vegetables while including only a few
complex carbohydrates. I began buying amino acids and weight gainer and other
powdered supplements.

Our basement workout room was more like a workout floor. We live in a
McMansion in the hills outside Syracuse, York. Real estate is relatively
cheap. So we custom built this huge house with a great many amenities, more
than we need. The basement had never been completely finished, so now our
downstairs entertainment room flowed nicely into a beautiful and well-equipped
home gym, which would have sufficed for a small health club. We also had ample
storage down there for all the supplements, training manuals, and such, as
well as a bathroom and a wet bar that was useful for supplying water to mix
with my powders. Everything I needed was there. The benefit was that I could
do my hardest workouts at home without any prying eyes spying on my progress
and ruining my surprise, or worse still, judging me and making me feel bad
about this new thing in my life that I loved. I still worked out at the gym in
the morning, just to keep up with my friends and put in appearances, but the
bulk of my real work was at home.

In order to keep it a surprise, I bought more and more loose fitting long
skirts and oversized sweaters and such that looked good hanging low on my
shoulders. Richard noticed the change in my wardrobe and commented that it was
nice to see me wearing age appropriate clothes. "I hate these women who are
losing their shape but insist on wearing the same clothes the teenagers are
wearing," he said one day. "They look ridiculous." He was in for a surprise.
When I was finished with my new body, the teenagers would be envious of me.

In order to feed this growing body of mine, I had to eat a lot. I invested in
a quarter of a steer from the local organic farmer, and I bought plenty of
turkey and sweet potatoes, and brown rice. Three dozen brown organic eggs
every few days. Not to mention tons and tons of broccoli and spinach. My
appetite was huge. Without telling my husband, I was eating four meals a day,
and my caloric intake was close to 5000 per day, but it was a healthy 5000.
But some days I had these cravings, and I just ate a ton. There was the time I
made a nine-pound prime rib for dinner on Sunday night. I had about half of it
left after having fed Richard, the kids and I a nice dinner. The next day when
I finished my workout, I was starving. I finished off the whole thing along
with a large leafy green salad. Our dog loved the bones. I figured I polished
off four pounds of roast beef that afternoon, but I still had room for a large
helping of salmon, asparagus, and brown rice for dinner. You see, I was
working very hard and growing quite big. I was also building up some leg
strength and stamina.

One day at the gym, a younger woman was on the exercise bike next to me. I
glanced down at the electronic screen to see the routine she was doing. It was
a "Most Challenging" routine, and I chose the same one. She noticed and took
it as a challenge. Pretty soon we were competing with each other. Even though
she was clearly fit and was at least ten years my junior, I more than held my
own. As she pedaled hard, I pedaled harder. If she responded by increasing her
cadence, I did the same. Soon I had put the computerized pace rider well
behind me and in fact was far ahead of the health club's record pace for that
year on that course. It was a twenty-five mile course with a few steep climbs
and some climbs of great length. Even though she had about a four minute head
start on me, I finished at least three minutes ahead of her. I did a cool down
and then toweled off and went to the locker room to change. I stood there
shaking my legs and massaging htem. The thighs were engorged with blood, and
the muscles seemed even bigger than they had ever been. I was spent, and very
glad that my split workout that day called entirely for upper body work.

After I stepped out of the shower and dried off, the young woman approached
me. "Are you SBL83?" she asked.

"Yes," I replied. "Why?"

"You just rode the fastest time in the nation on that course for this year. I
am an experienced bike racer, and you blew me away." I stood aghast, not
knowing what to say. "I rode the fastest time, other than you, for a woman on
that course, but you not only crushed me, you beat the best men. That is
pretty fuckin' impressive.

"Tha...Thanks?" I stammered out.

"Listen, I obviously ride a lot, and I can't get people to ride fast enough
for me to get a good workout. Do you ever want to ride together? My name is
Alanna Hussell. And you are?"

Oh, I'm sorry. How rude of me. Sarah. Sarah Latella. Um, yes, I guess that
would be fun."

"We can ride some match races and surprise the fuck out of a few of the men
around here. You will be my secret weapon."

We exchanged numbers and other information, and I struggled to get my jeans
on. They had not been especially tight when I left home, but the workout had
done something for my legs. Later, I went out to buy a new bicycle, because I
knew my Schwinn cruiser was not going to be the right kind of bike. Then I
went home and ate lightly before attacking my afternoon workout.

Alanna Hussell

The weirdest thing happened the other day. I wen to the health club and
started riding one of the computerized electronic bikes they have their that
are connected to other health clubs all around the world. After a warm-up, I
chose a challenging workout from the "Most Challenging" list. It was a really
tough ride of 25 miles with some major climbs, including a long one near the
end. OK, so I've been riding about three minutes when this other woman,
probably ten years older than me gets on the bike next to me. "What the heck!"
I'm thinking. There are open bikes elsewhere. Why did she choose this one.
Then she looks at my ride and decides to do the same one.

Then I notice that she is pushing it and looking over at my computer screen to
see where I am every now and then. "Damn!" I think. "What the Hell." But I
start pushing it a little because this bitch is trying to chase me down. I
don't even know her, for God's sake. But every time I pick it up, she does the
same, and then I notice that we are going really fast on the flat part of the
course, like faster than I have ever gone for a long-ish ride. She is closing
in on me, and I have left the initial pace rider in the freaking dust. Not
only that, I have this other "ghost" rider who is supposed to pace me to a PR.
I have left that rider in the dust too, but this old lady is catching me. I
figure I'll pull away on the long climb. She is working so hard on the dlat
and the steep short climbs that she won't have anything left for the five mile
climb at the end. I ease up just a little to let her overwork herself. But I
was wrong. She powered up those hills and passed me like I was standing still.
I had to shift to a lower gear. I was spinning fast, but I wasn't moving very
fast. She didn't gear down nearly as much as I did, but she maintained her leg
cadence; in fact she increased it halfway up the hill right when I thought she
would weaken. Man her thighs must be strong as fuck, and she finished like
three and a half minutes ahead of me even though she started four minutes
behind me. But guess the fuck what! She dragged me to a personal record and a
time that is the second fastest female time in the nation for this course this
year. I looked at the computer times for the course internationally, and I
noticed that the fastest time on the course was from our club and it was today
and it was a female. Fuck me. It was her!. There must be hundreds of clubs and
bike shops hooked up to this system, and this woman I've never heard of was in
first place, two minutes ahead of the nearest male. I'm a nationally ranked
rider, and I have never seen her before.

When she got off the bike I watched her walk to get the shit to clean up her
bike and sanitize it. For an older lady, she has an ass that won't quit, and
her thighs were really pumped. It turned me on. I wanted to grab her ass, and
stick my tongue in places she could only dream about. The sweep of her thighs
is amazing, and actually, for someone her age, she's incredibly hot. I chased
her down and acted all cool about it, but I wanted to see if she would ride
with me, and Fuck Me!, she said yes.

Sarah

A week later, I had gotten even stronger and even bigger. Where my bench max
had been about 180 when I first tested it two weeks into my training, I was
now beginning my pyramid workouts at 185 and jumping up in increments of
twenty or so pounds to 245 before coming back down. My max may have been close
to 280, but I had never tested it. I was now doing multiple curl exercises.
Preacher curls with 100 pounds, for three sets of ten reps followed by
Concentration curls with 45 pounders followed immediately by a set with 35 and
another set with 25. I would repeat that twice on each arm. By the time I was
finished, my arms were like jelly. I started liking to measure them right
after I was finished, because they were so swollen. I loved looking at the
ever-growing vein that was climbing over the mounds of my biceps. I stood in
front of the mirror and squeezed out a double bicep pose. Even I was aghast.
My little twelve and a half inch arms had grown to 17.5 inches cold. I
measured them now and they stretched the tape measure to 19 inches.
"Nineteen!" I almost shouted. Nineteen, I quietly thought. I flushed with
pride in my accomplishments and knew I desired to take them further.

I had one more thought after my workout. "I wonder if I can still do it."

I stretched out my hands and performed a handstand. After holding it for a few
seconds I dipped down and did four handstand press ups. Then I tried it with
one hand. I almost collapsed to the floor. As strong as I was, I still was not
as strong relative to my size as I had been at 15. But I assessed myself with
the tape and the scale. 190, 19 inches (well, not cold, I cheated), 27 inch
thighs, 26 inch waist, 40 inch hips and butt, 44 inch chest. 16.5 inch calves.
It was time to show my husband my progress. I was so excited.

(To be continued)