People yes, some things, no.
As I was heading home meditating last Saturday aboard Occam’s Razor after a therapy session with my friend Crazy Pete I was passed by a locally known cyclist (in full regalia) who made their presence known by saying “on your left”. I bridged up and alongside easily and knowing who they were and in having never met wanted to introduce myself. They replied they knew who I was and sped up a bit. I rode alongside and asked about future plans. There was no interest returned in conversation and we parted.
In sharp contrast was my experience Sunday while beginning Week Three of my strength program at The Anvil. As I was moving into my deadlifts some of the local MMA fighters from Team Hard Drive were coming in for their workouts. Some of the fighters I had met before and we said hello. Some went to the sparring area. A couple of the guys were in the weight room along with one of their dogs. As I deadlifted the fighter who owned the dog began climbing up one of the warehouse’s support I-beams, reaching out to the top cross beam, doing chins and then climbing down. I continued to dead. Then he would kneel in front of a plyo box, jump to his feet and then jump on top of the plyo box. A 36 inch tall plyo box. Back to the I-beams. Then he put on a 20 pound weight vest, and began knocking out pull-ups, pulling up with enough energy to clear and then release from the bar, clap his hands and then grab the bar on the way down.
This is, in my opinion, bad ass.
However you would never know it. As I was deadlifting his dog came over and wasn’t quite so sure about me being in her gym. He came over and we talked dogs. We talked about dogs in our life, our dogs and his dogs. We talked about how hard it is to lose a dog and the role dogs have played in our lives.
I trust dog people.
We went back to our respective workouts, Clar came back to pick me up, met Nova introduced herself to his owner and we left.
It all mattered.
Sunday was the beginning of Week Three of my strength training program to return to ultra racing. It started out jumbled. We warmed up and began with speed squats with chains. Even as I was setting up the chains I felt clumsy. I set the bar up for my warm-up sets, stepped in and began to unrack the bar almost tipping over. I realized I had put a 25 on one side and a 35 on the other. Holy crap! Had I slipped into some XTREME wormhole in the space time continuum and become a globo-gym dork? What was next?!! Biceps curls in the power rack?!! This was no way to find the active edge! Stop the madness!
So I said to Clar I’m going to begin again. I went through the whole warm-up and began again.
Why?
It mattered.
I found the groove and went through the workout. I had a specific goal for deadlifts and I met it. It is the workout meeting reality.
Monday brought bench day, doing 5 x 1 for bench plus other work. My bench is embarrassing to me. I told Ken this today. He agreed my bench is poor in relationship to my deadlifts and squats and we’ll begin working on this next cycle. I wasn’t offended when he agreed with me my bench is poor. Part of everyone’s workout should be meeting reality.
Wednesday was box squat day. The sets and weight has remained the same but the number of reps per set has increased each week. I felt good and my Iron Maiden shined. She came to the box strong and in control and back out of the hole like she meant it. I have been practicing using the GHR and we worked through it together – Clar really nailed her last set there. She made her reality. She knows no one can manufacture your reality for you unless you let them.
It's taken me a while longer to realize that.
Today we closed Week Three with speed bench with chains, close grip bench and Kroc Rows and other work. Ken was in and we discussed further our next four week cycle. Week Four is a deloading phase and I am looking forward to it. My running has taken a back seat for the last couple of weeks – although I am still running strong and my cycling has improved there’s something about 8 x 5 squats that takes a little starch out of my legs and I’m just not that excited about running but want to get back to it.
Coach Dan John quotes Olympian Dan Gable is his book Never Let Go “If it is important do it every day. If it’s not important, don’t do it at all.”
It is important to me to be stronger. It is important to me to say hello to others. It is important to me to learn about other dogs and their owners.
It’s not so important to worry about people who just can't be bothered as much as is it not important to me to do biceps curls in the power rack for I now know you can’t manufacture reality and I have always known biceps curls in the power rack is a manufactured reality.
On to Week Four…
4 comments:
It was important for me to stop and take a couple minutes to read this. Your perspective is always important to me as well. Thanks for a good read and a good lift this morning.
I.M.
Therapy comes in many forms... a conversation, a ride, the written word, slamming iron. Thanks for the therapy, as always.
As always, great to read your insights. It amazes me how many parallels run through our lives. Those that matter, matter...those that don't matter don't. My meditation for this week has been taking the phrase "Imagine Peace" one step further..."Practice Peace". I can imagine all kinds of things--both good and bad, helpful and destructive. But, actually putting something, in this case Peace, into action takes a bit more focus. In doing this, I have found that practicing peace helps to weed out the things that matter and help gain perspective on what/who to keep in my life. I definitely have a long way to go in making "Practice Peace" a daily action/focus, but I am embracing the challenge.
Crash
every time one of kids hollers, "you aren't the boss of me!" to one of the others, I smile. good for grown ups to remember, too. you are your own boss.
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