Deadlift

Crushed my soul today

With three-fifteen times forty.

Useless without love.

The Price of Mastery

A little over a week ago I was deadlifting, which is one of my favorite lifts. It is a very heavy lift, in which the bar is resting on the ground and the lifter simply grips it and picks it up. I like the lift, but this particular time I went a little too heavy, and I lost my form. I tried to muscle through it anyway and ended up pulling a muscle in my lower back. So for the last week and a half I have been taking it easy. The whole next week I did not work out at all, and this week I am only running and biking. Next week I will add body weight exercises, and work my way back up.

The day after the injury I was visiting with my family in South Carolina, just sitting around eating ice cream, and I went into a series of back spasms that felt like they were bending my spine in half backwards. Never having experienced physical pain like that before, they rather took me by surprise, but eventually I took a muscle relaxer and the spasms stopped, or at least reduced enough so that I could function. It did not prevent me from continuing to visit, albeit from a prone position on the living room floor.

My Mom and my Aunt, lovely women that they are, went into full on maternal mode, offering every possible remedy and comfort they could think of, from a hot shower to a left over hydrocodone. My Aunt especially is an empathizer, to the point where I truly believe she feels pain sympathetically. She was more upset about it than I was. As I hobbled to the car, bent over like an old man, I told her, “It happens, you know? It’s just part of the price for living life. Sometimes the price is higher than others.” I don’t think it comforted her much, but it made a lot of sense to me.

In the intervening weeks of slow rehab I have been thinking about that statement, and I realize that I was touching on a far-reaching principle. To put the same thing another way, there is no greatness without sacrifice.

My cousin was once show-casing his photos at a photography show and an admiring person admitted, “I wish I could take pictures like that. You know, I wanted to be a photographer once. I got a camera and tried to learn, but all of my pictures were terrible.” When describing this event afterward my cousin said, “What I wanted to say was, ‘No you didn’t want to be a photographer. If you really wanted it you would have kept doing it over and over until you got it right. I can show you my early photos if you want. They suck. I just didn’t give up, that’s all.’”

The key component of talent, it seems, is the desire to do something. However, this desire is not simply the thought, “Oh, wouldn’t that be nice,” or at least it cannot be for very long. Unless you happen to be Mozart (prodigies do exist, although they are very rare) your initial attempts at any kind of greatness are not going to be great at all. They are going to be terrible. Even Mozart’s first compositions were not great compared to his mature work. They were comparatively great, great compared to the work of all the other three-year-old composers in the world.

In the same way, on a slightly less abrupt difference curve, the little girl who wants to be a dancer is not a great dancer. She does not have strength, grace, discipline or control, except compared to other little girls her own age. All she has is the raw desire, to dance, and a certainty that she can, in fact, do it. Whether or not she ever becomes a great dancer is entirely determined by what happens next. What encouragement will her efforts receive? Too little approval and she will lose confidence and give up. Too much, or the wrong kind of approval and she will think she already is a great dancer and will not work hard enough to achieve her full potential. Will she get distracted by lesser pleasures, such as parties, flirtations, pop-culture and allow the greater interest to be crowded out? Will she find a better goal, such as becoming a mother or a nun, and give up the lesser one to pursue the greater one?

(In any study of mastery there are two major questions: How does one become a master any given pursuit? And how does that mastery fit into the greater context of life? I only address the first question in this blog. The second would be topic enough for a book, rather than a blog.)

On thing is certain: if that little girl truly wants to become a dancer, she will have to sacrifice for it. She will have to turn a critical eye to her dancing as it is, comparing it to what it could be. She will have to avoid the temptation to blame her shortcomings on others, (“I would have, but I couldn’t afford lessons, my parents didn’t encourage me, it was a silly dream, I never had any encouragement, I wasn’t pretty enough, Lilly Perfect won that competition because her Dad knows the judges, etc.) She will have to choose to see failures as learning opportunities, and most of all she must not give up. She must pay the price.

The price is in getting up early or going to bed late, saying no to that extra slice of birthday cake, practicing your chosen pursuit when others are going out to the movies. It means being misunderstood by friends who do not see what you see, and think your insistence on following this particular echo very silly, especially when you are foregoing so much fun on the way. The price is in the sore muscles, or the physical discomfort of pushing your metabolic conditioning farther than it wants to go, or carrying heavy cameras up mountains to get that one perfect shot of the sunrise. The price is paid in injuries, sickness, boredom, hours and hours of mind-numbing, repetitious practice of the same basic scales and arpeggios over and over again.

So it is with deadlifting. When you rip a 450 Lb. bar off the ground and stand up straight and strong with a primal roar, feeling the steel flexing under the weight, feeling the power and stability from the soles of your feet, through flexed calves, knees straight but not locked, thighs hard as tree trunks under the strain, butt and hips tight, compact and locked, spine perfectly aligned, shoulders upright and sucked into their sockets, with every muscle of chest and back perfectly tensed to hold the posture, arms straight, forearms clenched, and fingers locked around the bar, there is a vitality in the experience that you could never feel without the risk, without the pain. There is more life, in the moment, a tiny expansion of the heart and body’s capacity for being alive. If you pay attention with mind and soul alive, there is food for them as well.

And then the price continues. As we age and get older, injuries become more frequent. Bones and joints become less resilient, muscles less flexible, pain more and more a constant. The abilities that we struggled so long and hard to perfect become harder, shakier, and eventually they slip away. We are left with the mystery of mortality, the loss of everything that we sacrificed so much to achieve, and the question, “Was it worth it?” But this gets into the second question, which I said I was not going to get into.

The point of this blog is simply that if you want to be good at anything, you must be willing to sacrifice. If you want to be great at something, you must sacrifice greatly. These are the beginning rumblings of a much further reaching set of thoughts. Who knows, maybe someday I will write a book. It will have to be a lot more organized than this, though.

Perspectives

This one time in a third world country in Asia, my team and I were assigned to train with the local military. The base we trained at was a little affair of cement buildings with tin roofs, charmingly straggling down the side of a mountain. We worked there, but we were staying at a little family owned in about half a mile down the mountain.

Now, I am pretty big on working out. Even when I am overseas I maintain a solid workout program. I see it as an intrinsicart of my overall worship of God, to strengthen and train everything He has given me, and hopefully toplaceit at His service however He wishes. Since my favorite workouts, besides martial arts, are weight training sessions, and since weights and kettlebells are too heavy and expensive to take with me, I found a piece of equipment that I can pack for cheap. It is a sandbag, specifically designed for working out. It has an inner liner of tough plastic with a velcro-reinforced zipper, and anouter bag of heavy duty canvas with reinforced handles and an even beefier velcro-reinforced zipper. Simply fill it up with dirt or sand, and you can lift it, swing it, throw it or slam it to your heart's content. Beautifully simple and elegant.

The first day after we had gotten settled in I looked around for a place to get some dirt to fill my sandbags. I planned on leaving them at the base so I could exercise after work each day, but the place I found to get dirt from was at a little construction site next to the inn. The innkeeper was building some new buildings so he had hired some local peasants to make bricks for him. They had a little dirt quarry carved into the hillside and they were carrying the dirt to the platform and pressing it into bricks with a hand operated press. The innkeeper's son said I could take as much dirt as I wanted. He also looked at me like I was crazy when I explained what I was doing.

So I designated Operation Fill the Bags as the workout for the day. I would run up to the base, grab my sandbags, run them down and fill them, and then carry them back up the half  mile to the base, one at a time. Getting them down to the dirt quarry was pretty simple, just a nice easy run. Once down there I borrowed a shovel from the workers and began to fill them.

Now, the workers spoke no English, but they seemed very interested in what I was doing. They stopped their work, all of them, and squatted in place. The press handle operating guy stopped operating his press handle, the dirt mixing lady stopped mixing her dirt, and they just squatted on their heels and watched me with strange, quiet bemused looks on their faces. I filled one part of the way, closed it up and hefted it to test the weight, then opened it back up and kept filling.

The innkeeper came down to laugh, and asked me how heavy I was making thiem. I guessed the one I had finished was about 40 kilos (turned out it was actually 42.) He laughed and said something to the workers. They shook their heads and murmured to each other. He informed me that they had been wondering if I were going to carry dirt over to the work site for them, and they didn't understand what I was doing.

You see, they absolutely could not conceive of any purpose for loading up a bag of dirt except to use it for construction. The concept of doing that simply for the purpose of exercise was utterly foreign to them. The had the looks that said, "What will these crazy white people think of next?"

It reminded me a lot of a look my dad's dad used to wear. He was extremely hard of hearing  and completely out of touch with his grandchildren's world. I remember running up to him over flowing with excitement about dinosaurs or a lego building or some such thing and trying to explain it to him. We could never be sure how many of our words he actually heard and how much of it he just didn't understand, but he would usually end up shaking his head with a bewildered smile. His face seemed to say, "How do these kids have time for this stuff? Why do they need to know about dinosaurs? When I was young all I needed to know about was farm work." And he would shake his head as if he couldn't understand such a waste of time.

The peasant workers had the exact same look on their faces, as brown and hard as the bricks they were making. "This crazy white boy! What is he thinking? Moving dirt for exercise? How does he have time for such nonsense? And I have been moving dirt for my whole life. If he wants to move dirt so much, let him come here and move some dirt in a way that will at least be useful. But if I were that rich that I had spare time, I certainly would not be moving dirt."

It occured to me that there was an unbridgable gap between their experience and mine. From my perspective, what I was doing made perfect sense. From their point of view it was sheer nonsense.

This troubles me in a way. I have always been driven to try to understand other people's point of view as much as possible from the inside, imaginatively stepping into their shoes and really trying to see what they see and feel what they feel. I guess it is part of being a storyteller, but this made me realize that no matter how hard I try, I can never fully enter into their experience. My background has given me a depth of imagination so that I can guess to some extent how they might be feeling. But they have no frame of reference whereby they can understand what I was doing and why. They cannot imagine what I have done, where I have been, what I have seen, what I have put myself through. And there is no way that I can know what it is like to labor at making bricks all day, every day, from the time I was old enough to pick up a shovel, never learning how to read, never imagining a world outside my mountain valley.

And yet God knows both of us. Compared to His greatness our relqtive levels of amallness are nonexistent. He is more intimate to each of us than we are to ourselves,and He loces each of us with an infinite love. Somehow, in knowing Him as I pray we both will someday, we will know each other perfectly.

May I see Him and all that He loves so that I forget myself.

The Good Life

Sit for a bit and rest between sets and I

Will share with you what you already hear

In the creaking, cracking, groaning of my knees

At full flexion, the bottom of the squat or swing

Of the ugly metal ball. With every rep they sigh

And cry

The price

Of life, lived to the full. Loud and clear

Like hawkers in the flea markets, peddling their fleas

My swings sell the idea of strength, but sing

Also of the cost, in the creaking that you hear

So clear.

I fear

I am mere mortal. I feel the changing breeze

In my hips and knees and ankles, at twenty-seven.

If even this life I cannot stand to fill;

And spend my life like water, how much harder still

The greater life poured out on me in Heaven.

I buy this fleeting strength with future pain,

But gain

A strength that will not wane.

I will not hide my capital in the earth,

But burn it out for every bit I am worth

And hope to see it returned to me again

A hundred fold, shaken, tamped full measure

Running over with resurrected treasure. 


The Glory of God is Man Fully Alive! Alleluia!

It finally came!

Two posts in one day? Crazy, I know, but I am geeking out right now! A Package awaited me on my doorstep this evening after work.

BWAAAAAA!!!!!! Mere cardboard cannot contain me!

There is too much awesomeness in this package for styrofoam! It cannot be contained!

Behold!

I am big! (This should be read with a Russian accent.)

I had been expecting this for some time, a 58kg Kettlebell (127.6 lbs.) It is used so there are two large dents on the top of one side. It is not actually a solid block of iron. It is a cast iron shell around a ball of lead and you can feel the lead core shift slightly when you move it.

Even though I had just come from the gym, I had to try it out!

You must intimidate Kettlebell before you swing it. Kettlebell must know who is boss! (Again, if you don't read that with a Russian accent you are doing it wrong.)

Comrade, drive with hips, and then let kettlebell float rest of way. Do not raise with shoulders.

Solid posture, straight arms, my shoulders might be pulled a little too far forward.

If my face looks like I am in pain, it's only because I am. This was my first ever attempt at cleaning the 58kg KB. Could have been worse, but the press or jerk is a long way off.

It tried to get a video, but I didn't set up the camera right so it only showed me from about the shoulders down. I'll get a video this weekend probably.

Well, that's me geeking out. We now return to your regular programing.

Memento Mori

After Mass today (courtesy of the mall monks) I drove on post to go to the gym. Everyone on post seems to have the day off today, including myself (I have no idea why, but I'm not complaining) so the gym was empty. Just me and the guy cleaning the weight room.

I haven't lifted in a while, due to training out in the mountains. Climbing is a different kind of workout, but I was still able to hit a 462Lb deadlift for one rep. My goal is to hit 500lbs again someday (without hurting myself this time) and be able to lift it for reps. I also did some hand stand pushups and some overhead squats, and then decided to call that good.

While I was changing in the locker room I heard someone moving around on the other side of the row of lockers. By the time I had finished changing I knew that 1) he was old, and 2) he had COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. My bet is emphysema because of that peculiar, regular, breathy cough.)

On my way out of the locker room I looked over to see my fellow going-to-the-gym-on-his-day-off comrade. I was right, he was old. Very old, probably in his seventies. His arms were wasted and wrinkled, I could hear every breath that came out of his mouth, and yet he was still strapping on a lifting belt.

It got me thinking.

I am 27 years old. I can run six miles in under an hour with a 45lb pack on my back, at 6,000 ft. elevation and be ready to fight when I get there. I can deadlift twice my body weight for reps. I can climb rocks, I can swim, I can fight. I have spent years training myself to this physical level, partially because it is my job, but mostly because I just enjoy being healthy and strong and able to do all those things. And no matter how hard I work, if I survive long enough I will look like that old man.

It is not a new thought, to me. I have long since been fully aware of my own mortality, and have put a great deal of thought into why I spend so much time training a body that is destined for old age (if I'm lucky) decay, disease, and the grave. I put more effort in than most guys, less than some, but in the end how much effort or what level of fitness you strive for is unimportant. What really matters is why. The reason is everything. Do you want to pick up chicks? That will work for a while, but not forever. Everything sags eventually, biceps included. Do you want to be known as the world's greatest (insert sport of choice here.) Fine. Maybe you can reach that level, maybe you cannot. What is certain is that you cannot maintain that level forever, and someday, maybe during your lifetime, maybe after it, someone will come along and break whatever record you set. My goal is to be able to serve and protect people, but even that will not last forever, on a strictly physical level. Someday I will be injured, or wounded, or killed, or I will just plain get old, and I won't be able to move, shoot and communicate like I can now. I won't even want to.

I admire that old man in the locker room with all my heart. I don't know what his reasons were, and he may well have been a horrible person, or the best man alive. All I know is that I saw discipline there. Never mind his physical weakness, his aches and pains, the disease that will inevitably kill him unless something else kills him first. Despite all of that he still straps on his weight belt and pushes himself.

When I get to that level I hope to be doing the same thing. I will no longer be able to crush the bad guys, or climb up mountains. My days of serving and protecting will inevitably end, unless...

Unless, in all of my physical training there is some spiritual sacrifice, some shaping of my soul. Even when I am lying in a hospital bed, my body wasted and broken, God willing my soul, shaped and forged through years of training, will be strong and whole. I will no longer be able to place my body between the innocent and those who would do them harm, but by God's grace I can still place my soul there. And in the very end, when I can do nothing, and have nothing left to give, may I accept even that weakness as an opportunity for God's strength.

Every young man should have the chance to see a very old man facing death. It helps keep us from wasting our time.

How Boys Become Men

This evening, after I finished my kickboxing routine, I decided to go out and enjoy a little kettlebelling before I was done for the night. Accordingly I went out to the truck, unstrapped the 44kg kettlebell I keep in the back of it, and started doing swings. My goal was 20 sets of 10, although I got a little froggy in the middle of the workout and threw in two sets of twenty (took the frogginess right out of me.)


As I was nearing the end of my workout a little boy came out of one of the nearby apartments. He was small enough to be about seven, but spoke well enough to be about ten, so I’m not sure how old he was. He was wearing black jeans and a black coat and carrying a power-ranger’s sword and I’d seen him running around the complex with other kids before. This time he walked right up to me, bold as brass, and said, point blank, “Are you strong?”

I chuckled (under my breath) and said, “Strong enough to lift this thing.” I nudged the kettlebell with my toe.

The young feller looked down at the ugly chunk of metal and strode over to it with a swagger practically oozing testosterone. He seized the iron handle in his two small but mighty hands (they didn’t even come close to wrapping all the way around) and heaved. He heaved with vigor. He heaved with vim. The kettlebell scraped on the sidewalk as it slid a little, but it weighed, I would guess, roughly twice what he did. He let go with a gasp, “Whoa! That’s heavy!”

I laughed a little bit, not in an unkind way, but he wasn’t finished yet. He manfully stepped back up to the plate, as it were, and once again gripped the iron beast with determined mitts. He pulled and pulled and pulled, and this time managed to tip it a little to one side. “Don’t hurt yourself,” I said, momentarily falling into my obligatory role as responsible adult. He let go, huffing and puffing.

“You’re a bit small for that, kiddo,” I told him, sympathetically. “You’ll have to grow into it.”

But he ignored my condescending remark with righteous scorn, and undaunted, seized hold of his enemy one more time. His face was focused, his miniscule fingers were clenched, his every fiber rocked with masculinity. Mighty was the struggle! He tipped it, he tilted it, he rolled it, and dragged it, but still one stubborn corner would not come off the ground. With a final, all-or-nothing effort, he pulled it on top of his bootlace (which was completely untied) and let go of it. “Whoosh,” he said. “I almost got it.”

“Yeah you did,” I agreed, because he had.

He turned to walk away, but it was the kettlebell’s turn now, and it yanked back on his bootlace and would not let go. “What the…” He exclaimed, glaring at his nemesis. I lifted it up so he could run away, calling over his shoulder, “I almost got it!”

A few minutes later he came running back out of his apartment. This time he had added a hood and some sort of face wrap, transforming his coat into a ninja suit. He was tearing across the yard for all he was worth, but he spared enough breath as he went by to say, “Sorry, buddy, but I got to go. See you.” And he was gone.

That is a kid who is practically made of greatness. Blessings on him!