Q&A: Pumping Up Muscles Before a Date
Pumping Up Muscles Before a Date
Question
There’s something we call “muscle pumping.” You do a short intense workout (heavy weight, few reps) that causes the muscles to swell temporarily. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I tend to do this before dates. I’m a 26-year-old Religious Zionist. Without judging, is this deceptive? I related to it like makeup and contact lenses, which are accepted. But maybe it’s different because people are less aware of it. In China they sell abdominal stickers with a six-pack pattern so it shows under the shirt, and that already seems like outright fraud to me.
Answer
I don’t know how to answer that. It’s hard for me to believe that a certain one-time workout creates a significant change. In the end, the relationship may begin with your muscles, but afterward it is supposed to be based on personality and essential compatibility. So this is only a question of whether to use these tools to create an initial opening. The decision whether to build a home together will not be based on that. And if it is, then I very strongly recommend that you not agree to such a partner.
Discussion on Answer
So that’s what I wrote. The improvement that this one-time pumping creates relative to your usual state is negligible. Beyond that, if it only helps with the beginning of the process, as I wrote, then it’s not a problem.
Anonymous Bachelor, ask yourself how you would feel if, to match you, the woman across from you padded herself with all sorts of straw and stuffing in the right places and squeezed herself into a Victorian corset made of whalebone before every date… If that’s fine with you—buy yourself an Amazon rubber six-pack simulation kit, and let’s go break the glass!
Thank you very much, Rabbi, and sorry for the strange question.
As for what you found hard to believe,
obviously this doesn’t improve “skinny guys.”
I work out regularly and, sorry for being blunt, I’m pretty muscular.
It’s a marker of masculinity and strength, and in my opinion it makes it easier to create an initial connection, just like good looks, which no doubt make things easier for both sides.
It simply gives both sides a basic desire to check out the possibility, and then afterward they get to know each other for who they are.
The “pumping” makes the muscles stand out more—they’re already in better shape than average, but this way they swell a bit more.