Ah yes... the Christmas Season...
... or whatever season it is you celebrate.
You get the idea.
Anywho,
These last two weeks have been a grind, and though I think I've made some progress, overall, it's been a little more difficult than I would have liked it to be.
The hardest thing to settle into in regards to a strength sport is that there is no single preparation test. There is no one task. They aren't like other sports. In football, you have a position and a job. In track and field, for the most part at the national level, you have a single event. But for strength sports... it gets a little hairy...
In powerlifting, in regards to the squat, the bench, and the deadlift, when an athlete starts to creep into the world of the elite, progress doesn't come as quickly as it once did. I'm finally starting to realize that. Listen, if I go to this meet on January 24, and I don't PR on all 3 lifts, I'm not going to be shocked. If I do, I'll be elated, of course, but I'm not planning on it. Two years ago, if I didn't put poundage on all 3 movements, it was because the program I was following was missing something. Now, I realize that adding 10 pounds (almost 5kg) on the bench after 3 months of training is kind of a big victory. In that regard, if I can put 10 pounds on my bench at the end of 4 three-month long strength cycles, that's 40 pounds on the bench over the course of a year. With that in mind, that puts me less than 3 years away from a state bench press record...
But that's how you have to think in this sport. At the same time, if the world was perfect, and I could put 10 pounds on each lift every 3 months, well then that puts 120 pounds onto my total each year, and it only puts me 2 years away from becoming one of the strongest guys in the country at my weight class and easily the strongest guy in state history weighing 163 pounds...
When I talk to people about what it is I actually do (whether it be lifting or writing), fairly frequently people call bullshit. I'm forced to deal with the idea, at least according to them, that it's either way too much to be doing and that I'm crazy, or that it's not that big of a deal and they don't know why I'm spending so much time doing it. Then, they scoff, as if their lives are so involved and important that they couldn't possibly have the time to dabble in what it is that I do. And then I think, well, sure. That's fine...
But, to be honest, I'd rather agree to disagree and just not have that conversation at all, you know what I mean? I'd rather have people not ask me about any of it because what that conversation does is it calls into question my philosophies on a bunch of other different issues, right? Because I think, well, if in 2 years, I'm one of the strongest SOBs on the planet, and I have a book published, and I get a song or two sold (I do those things on the side for those of you who have not been following), and at the end of those two years, I'm beat to all hell but I've progressed, but that other person is literally in the exact same place they were in two years before... well then what's it all matter anyway, you know? We're just going to have that same conversation...
So when I'm standing alone on a platform at 10PM on a Wednesday, or when I've gotten up early to write at 7AM on a Saturday morning, and because of that, I didn't go out the night before, I'm forced to have these converstaions with myself so as to not go absolutely crazy. It turns into a game of Us VS Them. It becomes a battle between the Warrior Poets (see last week's post) and the peasants. And then that's what gets me through.
And when I think about Christmas or the holiday season or birthdays or gifts in general, all I ever think about is that battle. Because the things I do on any given day are the things that I feel I owe to myself to do. When people ask me "what I want," as a gift, all I can think about is the battle. Because what I want is the freedom and the opportunity to keep on going. That's it. Everything else? The cards and the wishes and the gifts and the language and the bells and the whistles and everything else that goes along with it can burn for all that I care if I don't have the support and the understanding I need to keep going.
So as you all bring in the holidays, there is one very important thing that you all need to understand - and I'm speaking for the Warrior Poet tribe: Support us. That's all we want. Understand us. That's all we want. Not a single gift in the world can measure up to those two things. Remember that...
Peace out cub scouts...
All my best,
C
By the way, here's a great example of how not to pull from the floor. Welcome to Rounded Back City. Population, Me. Sometimes you're the hammer, sometimes you're the nail (a poorly postured stupid idiot nail.)
Here is the following week. I managed to tighten it up a bit, but I still ahve work to do. I'm playing around with where my shoulders are in relationship to the barbell.
And here's one final one. It's probably my proudest training moment. Over the summer, I called a 275 bench by December. Here's 265 for 3. We're on our way, kids:
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