A Middle Aged Adolescent (who cannot possibly be the only one)

[Nunedog]

It was a mixed week. I got the 437.5’s for the three squats, matched my 210 best for the press, but otherwise the singles stayed pretty frugal. The 535 deadlift didn’t budge; three weeks ago, 530 was a leg shaker I barely made, so I need to get a few more sets and reps under my belt.

On the topics of strength or health, I had a few forays outside the bubble of my garage and little STARTING STRENGTH world. These are encounters that mystify me in some cases, but I’ve learned that this reaction is more the result of my own bias than it is the rest of mankind’s failings.

An e-mail came in not long ago from another Dad at my kid’s school. Could I help with a strength training routine for his daughter, he asked. He’s a booster and volunteer at the school and had been walking through the gym on a rainy day. ‘I saw your daughter hitting a tennis ball against the wall,’ he told me. ‘I could tell how much power she has. My kid plays softball. She’s pretty good - but she’s weak.’
Of course, I told him. The plan that was they’d come over on a Saturday. Immediately, though, my daughter said it would never happen.
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’s creepy. She’s not coming over to some guy’s garage.’
‘Her father’s coming with her. You’re the one who’s going to be showing the exercises.’
‘It’s sketchy, Dad. People don’t do that.’ She glared at me like I was slow witted, and truth be told, I wasn’t quite tracking what improprieties were afoot. The poor softball player is just embarrassed and shy, but naturally this was my fault, like my kid always says.
I never heard another thing.

I attended Dr. Sullivan’s lecture for his book, THE BARBELL PRESCRIPTION, at George Washington University two weeks ago. Sullivan did a great job, making his case for barbell training in the broadest terms possible, an approach many of us have seen already. He defined the Sick Aging Phenotype and detailed how strength training meets all the criteria for being a viable medical intervention.
About half the audience were STARTING STRENGTH followers like myself, who had come to check out a real, live web-celebrity. The other half, based on their questions, were really trying to wrap their minds around the concept. Some were students who had to write papers. This is always amazing to me: some people really have zero familiarity with strength training.

On Easter, I was at a party with a surgeon I know. We got onto the topic of injuries and repairs and so on, and he started talking about his knees. He knows what I’m about, by the way, having seen me coach at a football clinic. He’s ‘bone on bone’ in one knee, he said, and is going in for an injection of filler, essentially, to cushion his joint.
‘Yeah, but how long is that going to last?’ I asked.
‘Fourteen months,’ he hoped. His pursuit was the outdoors, hiking or skiing in some pretty exotic places. ‘Eventually, though, I’ll need a knee replacement.’
‘It’s funny you mention that. I was just at a lecture by another doc who’s written a book . . . ‘ I said and gave a bit of background. ‘He said he’s told a lot of patients to get their knee replaced so they can come back and train. Otherwise, they’re just wasting time.’
I went on. ‘When you finally get it done, you’re going to have to strap on some weights and do some squats.’
His eyes went wide. ‘Heavy squats on a new knee?’
‘No, you don’t start with 350. You start with a broomstick and work your way up. You have to strengthen all those muscles that tie the knee together. You’ll be better at hiking and skiing and prevent all the play that led to the problems in the first place.’

It boggles my mind that people cannot see how easy these solutions are. The doc was dubious. The kid was horrified. The folks at Sullivan’s lecture struggled to imagine their elderly relatives inside a squat rack. The problem, however, is not their shortsightedness, I’ve learned this week. It’s my severe bias, which is based on my own extreme circumstances.

I was casting around for what I could write about when I heard a radio interview with the author James Forman, Jr., about his book, LOCKING UP OUR OWN: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN BLACK AMERICA. He’s a law professor and the son of a civil rights leader. In his book he tackles a lot of issues arising from blacks’ experiences in law enforcement.
At one point he was telling the story about some Washington, DC police officers in the early 60’s who were suffering from discrimination in their attempts to gain promotions in the department. They formed a study group, and eventually the scores on their written exams were so high that they overcame the skewed performance reviews from their white superiors.
Years later, newspaper editors called for the hiring of more black officers in DC. Surprisingly, the leader of the study group, by then in a senior position, opposed the idea, his logic being that if these young people simply showed up and went through the motions, they would not succeed.
Forman said on NPR, ‘ . . . you're describing somebody who comes up through the ranks, studies two times as hard, three times as hard - that does produce a kind of severity later when it seems as if people aren't behaving as you yourself would have behaved or at least as you imagine you would have behaved.’

Now, I am neither black nor a cop, but I understand this perspective completely, having worked twice as hard as a lot of guys to get to where I am. That’s an absolutely poor comparison, (I know, I know) considering what those guys went through, but it happens to be true, and it explains why I can be similarly impatient with people who gloss over the value of something important to me.

Had I heard this story before these encounters, I would have been more realistic in managing my expectations. The trick, when others raise the subject, is going to be staying cool, neither gushing nor calling BS and letting people convince me they’re looking for a solution. Even then they might have to make the case that they really need one. I’ll let them work up their emotions, not mine.

Here’s the plan for back inside the bubble, which probably reveals some deeply seated needs:

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 4/24/17 3 sets of 5 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5) Tom 380 JC : 162.5
2. Press (3x5) Tom 172.5 JC: 82.5
3. Deadlift (1x5) 475 second session JC 232.5

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups REP SCHEME 6-4-6 (4 at 53)
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 165, 170, 182.5
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 75, 85, 95
6. barbell curls: 3 sets (4 at 117.5)
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 305 JC: 130
2. Bench Press (3x5) Tom: 252.5 JC: 110
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235 JC: 112.5, 115, 112.5
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 342.5 JC: 145
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 155 JC: 75
3. Romanian Deadlifts - off rack - 3 sets of 5
Tom 377.5, 380, 377.5 JC 177.5

4. 8 rope climbs
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) . . . . 255, 275, 300
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 100, 125, 140
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

I’ll start with a naughty story, just so you don’t write me off as some kind of Seriously Sensitive Dude.
That surgeon friend I was talking about last week, the one with the bad knee, has specialized in a number of areas over the years but is now a plastic surgeon. Near the end of that Easter party, after everyone had had a few drinks, he found himself surrounded by all the Moms, who wanted the lowdown on breast surgery. They had questions, and he had answers, but for a moment it turned kind of serious.
He’s treated all kinds of cases, from purely elective augmentations to patching women up after the ravages of cancer and radiation. Apparently, there comes a moment of reckoning for everyone some weeks after the procedure. The body has recuperated from the trauma, and it’s time to see how things went. This the critical moment in which the blouse is unbuttoned and a woman’s psyche is exposed.
‘How do they look?’ she will whisper.
‘This is what I always do . . . ,’ he regaled the ladies at the party. He would turn around and look at the exam room door as if he had just been seized by a wild idea. He’d say, ‘You know, if I hadn’t taken a vow, or if I wasn’t bound by a code of ethics, I’d lock that door and dive in and be motor boating those puppies big time.’
This is all she needs to hear. It works EVERY time, he said.
The women at the party nearly wept. ‘All she’d want to know,’ one of them gasped, ’is that she looks great.’

I was leaning against the counter on the far side of the kitchen. That must be an old joke among plastic surgeons, I thought, or Hell - they probably teach it in medical school. I did not, however, react cynically, the way I used to. I had withstood so many lectures in my time that women did not want to be judged by their bodies that when they did judge others or let slip what they truly wished about their appearances, I found it hypocritical.
I did not think that this time around. I must be growing up in spite of myself.

Physical appearance and self image have come up as discussion topics before on this Forum, a little Googling and a trip through the archives would reveal. Plenty of success stories can be found. The men tend to say something interesting: ‘I no longer worry about what I look like.’ That runs more deeply than you might expect - but I’ll get to that in a second.
The most significant piece on the website is by STARTING STRENGTH coach Emily Socolinsky, The Price of Control, The Cost of Discipline, published about a year ago.
(The Price of Control, The Cost of Discipline | Emily Socolinsky)
This is a Dickensian telling of the insecurities born of her career as a dancer and the misery of a long term eating disorder. It ends happily, with her discovering strength training, but it’s long enough for a great many women to see themselves in one phase of her struggle or another.
Just prior to that, she wrote an article about a collegiate swimmer who had enrolled in her Baltimore gym, Fivex3. The swimmer was too skinny for her own good but morphed over time into not only a better swimmer, but a damned sexier version of herself.

I met Socolinsky at about this time, at a STARTING STRENGTH seminar in Westminster, Maryland. She was pleased to hear that I enjoyed the article about the swimmer. This was a big issue for her, she said. She soon had another article (the big one, above) coming out on STARTING STRENGTH.
I decided to take the plunge. ‘Aren’t you having it both ways?’ I asked. ‘On one hand, women do not want to be judged by their bodies, but on the other, you’re urging them to do that completely.’ The swimmer article featured a picture taken from behind as she knocked out a set of squats. She was sporting a set of black tights, which made for a lingering image, I pointed out.

Socolinsky cheerfully agreed with the assessment of those tights and waved off any concerns about hypocrisy. Women are always going to be conscious of their bodies, she said. We just have to direct that focus to the best possible outcomes.
This had taken two seconds flat. She had spilled the beans on women’s true feelings unapologetically.
Everybody bears the same burden. Yeah, I thought so. That means everybody is as nutty as I am.

My nuttiness is what eventually led me to that broad minded reaction to all the ladies at the Easter party. Not long ago, my daughter was out taking pictures of everything in sight with her new camera. I was reading the newspaper in the sunshine. Upstairs, where I showed her how to import new photos to the computer, we discovered a bunch of old, old pictures, of her as a little kid and me as a skinny little CrossFitter.
I looked like a piece of worn leather. I was tan, and you could see just about every fiber in my body. Where there was not bone or a bit of fiber, there were just empty spaces. I looked like an unfinished project. I remember how I bore the burden of self image in those days: I prided myself on being wiry - and tough, I convinced myself - but I hated how my face was so narrow it could split wood, and my head and neck jutted forward in a way I didn’t like.
When the new pictures started clicking across the screen, I was thrilled to see the difference 35 pounds can make. The kid had hit me from all angles.
I’m a strappin’ lad by comparison. All those empty spaces are filled. My face is filled out, and my head and neck are now a thicker, more vertical column. The beefiness is great, but the improved posture makes all the difference in how I carry it. For this, the credit goes to the heavy shrugs.

I think I know what’s behind those comments men have made on the Forum: ’I no longer worry about what I look like.’ In truth, the problems are solved. They’re absolutely giddy, thrilled with every twirl in front of the mirror. They’re free from self-consciousness over any glaring defects. That’s quite a blessing, to give yourself a contented whack in the squatter’s belly, comfortable in your own skin.

The more effective a training routine is, either at putting weight on or taking it off, the more accurately and realistically trainees can form a positive body image. They will then be all the more fulfilled when they achieve it.
This will not necessarily be what people first imagine. Some women might be surprised to learn that they will put muscular weight on, but they’ll start liking the new landscape. Men will not chisel themselves into superheroes, but they will certainly look capable of shouldering an ox-cart out of a ditch.
By the same token, poorly chosen routines (diet, exercises, etc.) account for all the emotional struggles people seem to have. There's no progress; as far as body images go, they can’t figure out what they want, or they have unrealistic expectations.

Emily Socolinsky and I left one question unanswered in that conversation a year ago: which is more attractive, the improved body or the confidence a person exudes as a result?
Pondering that mystery is a problem a great many people would like to have.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 5/1/17 3 sets of 3 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x3) Tom 412.5 JC : 182.5
2. Press (3x3) Tom 190 JC: 85
3. Deadlift: (1x3) Tom 505 second session JC power cleans 3x3

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups 6-4-6 REP SCHEME 4 with 53
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 167.5, 172.5, 185
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 77.5, 87.5, 97.5
6. barbell curls: 4 with 117.5
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 305 JC: 130
2. Bench Press (3x3) Tom: 267.5 JC: 122.5
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235 JC: (1x3) deadlifts 255
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 372.5 JC: 165
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 172.5 JC: 77.5
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 377.5, 380x2 JC: 177.5, 180, 177.5

4. 4 sets of rows
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) 255, 277.5, 302.5
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 100, 125, 140
6. 3 sets curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

The triples are in the bag, for the most part. I deadlifted 505 for three, but I’m not sure the third rep made it to full Homo sapiens sapiens completion. I was hunched over, like a species a bit further back on the evolutionary chart, probably with the same expression on my face.

You can lead a horse to water, the saying goes, but you can’t make him drink. That’s a conclusion reached time and time again on the Forum when members express frustration over friends or family members who don’t see the light about barbell training. Recently, one poor soul described three friends who disappeared despite decent progress.
A lot of people provided far smarter advice than I could ever muster. It’s a question of knowing your market, they said; get some coaching experience and start working toward credentials. Sensible business plans are the only ways to proceed.
I can’t find it now, so this probably comes from some other discussion, but one person said something to the effect of, ‘Well, don’t worry about it. Keep training, and let them see how successful you are.’

That’s the advice that stuck in my head, which should tell you what kind of businessman I am. It squares with my first instinct: let them see you dominate, and they’ll change their tune. The problem of course, is that there’s no way people are going to be around to see you succeed in a weight room, or, for that matter, I can’t think of any other opportunities for displays of strength in this day and age.

I was driving through town the other day, trying to spot an occupation that calls upon strength. A county crew was cutting down trees alongside the road. It was only two guys, but they were both on Bobcats, those bulldozer-tractor-forklift combinations. That probably makes financial sense for the county; the machines would be expensive up front, but they could do the work of ten guys without needing all their salaries and health insurance.
Similarly, jack hammers are now attachments mounted on back-hoes. I remember driving past construction sites seeing guys lined up to take turns with the jackhammer. I also remember the days when you didn’t mess with a truck driver. The term was synonymous with big, thick guys because once upon a time trucks didn’t have hydraulic steering. Those guys spent their entire days wrestling with enormous steering wheels that were level to the ground. The idea in that design was the best leverage possible, but truckers still had to push, pull, and twist with their entire bodies.

Despite growing up Preppie in New England, I found a way to inject some strength into my employment. My first summer job was as a sailing instructor - which I know sounds rough - but it involved feats of strength every day, hauling boats up and down the launching ramp on their little trailers. After that, as every camp counselor knows, I would then have to fight legions of ten year olds, who would leap on me and cling and fight until their parents came to pick them up.
A friend and I mowed lawns on weekends, and at one particular house I had caught a glimpse of long blonde hair. This was the source of some mystery; a new family had moved in, and word was this girl was one grade older than I. They had a picnic table in the middle of their lawn, so when we got to that spot, I would be the one to hoist it dramatically over my head so my friend could mow everything underneath - and just in case the young lady of the house was watching.
At the end of each summer, sailing families had to pick up their moorings. My Dad’s boat was out in an anchorage, attached to a line and chain and 250-pound mushroom anchor. Come October, a barge would pull all of these moorings out of the water and pile them at the end of the ramp to be picked up. I was sent down in the family station wagon to get ours.
Two workers were sanding the docks also placed on the lot for winter storage. As I backed the car toward the ramp, they stopped working and waited. Helping members load these giant things was part of the job, but they watched me open the tailgate and weren’t going to move until I asked politely.
The flange of a mushroom anchor is probably three feet across. The trick to picking it up is first setting the shank on the ground so the anchor looks like an umbrella on its side.
The fellas glowered at me from beneath their brows.
I grabbed the flange just below nine and three o’clock and heaved. The flange was up against my belly, the shank protruding satisfactorily ahead of me. As the chain dragged from its end, I walked over and slid the anchor into into the car. I wrapped the chain around the base so it wouldn’t roll, gave the lads a nod, and I was off.

Stuff like that was fun. Nowadays, though, I don’t have any chances to show off. Nobody’s called me to help move a couch, for example. I did change a lady’s tire few months back, which is not a big deal - although in this neighborhood people willing to get their hands dirty are few and far between. Not long after, I spotted another woman in similar distress and asked if she need help. She clearly thought I was some kind of pervert or rapist and stuck to her cell phone conversation. Two hours later, when I drove by on a separate errand, she was still there.
Even if you choose to do something on your own, you don’t have to do it yourself. I rented a U-Haul truck and had to push through a gauntlet of guys willing to climb on board and do the work for me. My neighbors have their groceries delivered.

I’m sure I’m insulting a great many tradesmen who know all about long, hard days of work, but I still have my suspicions about labor intensiveness these days. I’m old enough to remember when a deliveryman would strap a refrigerator to his back and walk down a ramp from the back of a truck instead of using a lift. I’ve also had the opportunity to take the Firefighter’s Challenge, at a friend’s invitation, and see just how many firefighters can’t even drag, let alone lift, the 150-(?) pound dummy.

It’s this reality that tempers my ambitions to coach. I’d probably be equally disappointed to visit that waterfront of my youth. The guys sanding the docks every October wouldn’t be teaming up to lift a mushroom anchor into anyone’s car. They’d have a forklift - but then, what on earth would an owner do when he got home with a 250-pound object in his car?
Someone has no doubt spotted the opportunity here. They’d load the anchor into a truck and deliver it, or more likely, they’d take it to a storage yard for the winter and charge even more.
That’s where the money is, in people not using their muscles.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 5/8/17 3 sets of 1 rep week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x1) Tom 440 JC : 200
2. Press (3x1) Tom 205+ JC: 92.5
3. Deadlift: Tom (1x1) 535 second session
JC power cleans: 112.5, 115, 112.5

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups; 4 with 53
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14 . . . 167.5, 167.5, 175
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 80, 90, 100
6. barbell curls: 117.5 for 4
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of the original (3x5) Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 305 JC: 130
2. Bench Press (3x1) Tom: 290+ JC: 130+
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235
JC DEADLIFT single 270
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x1)
Tom: 397.5 JC: 180
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x1)
Tom: 185+ (best - 20 lbs.) JC: 87.5
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 380 JC 177.5, 180x2

4. 5r ring pull ups
5. 3 sets of 5 partial bench presses; holes (L-5-8-11) 257.5, 280, 305
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 102.5, 127.5, 142.5
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

A series of conferences deadened any possibility of lucid thought this week, and all the getting up early and rearranging my schedule disturbed that contented leisure time a gentleman relies upon to excel in the weight room. I’m limited to a few technical observations:

I got the 440-pound singles in the squat, bumped my best press up to 212.5, and benched 300 once more. The 535 deadlift did not want to go, for a second time. That was slightly surprising, considering how 505 was willing to come off the floor three times last week. The 440’s earlier in the day were pretty rough, so I suppose they took a toll.
The plan is not to worry; I’ve made big deads on squat days before, so I’m not going to change anything, and in fact, I should aim for 525 on my next big single day, just to be sure I’m still in the ballpark. (That leg-wobbling 530 might have been a fluke six weeks ago.) As far as training is concerned, it’s more important to hit some kind of big single on Big Singles Day than it is to hit a world record every time - or to fail and be left hanging with your last warm up, some 50 or 75 pounds back.
I’ll also have to start increasing by 2.5 pounds from cycle to cycle instead of five, the way I do with all the other exercises.

The partial presses continue to make important contributions, though I’ve had to slow the progression on these as well. Each day I do them involves three sets of five reps; I’ll soon be inching only one set up a week, and 2.5 pounds at a time.
Particularly hard have been the Number Two sets in my standing partial presses, where the bar is at my eyebrows and my upper arm bones just below parallel to the deck. I’ve made it to the point where I can probably ‘dead’ - press more weight from collarbone level than from the eyebrows. I’m trying to sort out why. This second spot is where the upper arm creates its longest and least efficient lever arm, so maybe that’s the entire explanation, but I keep flexing my muscles and pantomiming the motion to see who might be dropping out along the way. It would stand to reason that any pec-muscle involvement decreases as the bar goes higher. The question is just how significant it is at the bottom.

A few weeks ago, the dentist noticed a small fracture, a chip gone from a molar. The moment he mentioned it, I knew how it happened, so my next stop was the local sports shop to pick up a football mouthpiece. It’s been boiled and fitted, so now in my partial benches I can tear into every rep like a pit bull or a badger and not let go.
That’s a skill that paid off the other day, as the 300-pound bench really didn’t want to cooperate. I struggled furiously, as my central nervous system recruited every motor unit in town and then called out the reserves, like this was a multi-alarm fire.
I was then completely spent for the rest of the workout, moving in slow motion and not sure which I wanted more, a beer or bed. The power cleans were sleepy, not unlike that BUGS BUNNY cartoon in which the evil, mad scientist is chasing Bugs through his castle. Somebody breaks open a bottle of ether, and the action slows to a drowsy, dreamy quarter-speed: ‘Come . . . back . . . here . . . you . . . Rab - bit . . . ‘ That’s how the second half of my workout floated along.

Bugs - Come Back Here You Ra-bit - YouTube

‘Nighty . . . night . . . ‘

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 5/15/17 3 sets of 5 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5) Tom 382.5 JC : 165
2. Press (3x5) Tom 175 JC: 85
3. Deadlift (1x5) 477.5 second session JC 235

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups REP SCHEME 6-4-6 (4 at 55.5)
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 170, 167.5, 175
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 82.5, 92.5, 102.5
6. barbell curls: 3 sets (4 at 117.5)
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 305 JC: 130
2. Bench Press (3x5) Tom: 255 JC: 112.5
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235 JC: 112.5, 115, 112.5
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 345 JC: 147.5
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 157.5 JC: 77.5
3. Romanian Deadlifts - off rack - 3 sets of 5
Tom 380, 382.5, 380 JC 180

4. 8 rope climbs
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) . . . . 255, 280, 305
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 105, 130, 145
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

I passed my physical the other day, so all is well, and I should be happy about that. I am; it certainly beats the alternative, but I do find myself a little disappointed not to earn any additional credit for being the big, hairy stud that I always thought I was.

At age 52, I am already on the death watch. The main event in this examination was a discussion of my blood test results, which happen to be pretty decent. Still, as if by force of habit, the doctor set a very somber tone and proceeded to inform me that I would NOT be needing any cholesterol medications. Invariably, somebody must come away from these moments shocked and disappointed. Perhaps she was; I’m not entirely sure, or maybe she was worried that I would be. I’m not on any prescriptions, which she found peculiar. I’m missing out on a big part of middle-age.

I see plenty of obituaries everyday for people who have gone to their reward by the age of 52. Two of my prep school classmates have died already, from colon cancer. An old Judo training buddy collapsed and died of a heart attack on the mat at age 43.
This would explain why the conversation with the doc was mainly about things that go catastrophically wrong, as well as their various warning signs, from trouble swallowing to dark patches of skin to any faulty execution among the exhaust ports down below.

I understand the necessity of this approach, and once everything checked out OK, I wanted to pursue a different line of thought, the idea being that if health could be represented on a spectrum, I believed that not only am I not down on the lefthand, ‘trouble’ end of the line, I’m past the middle and up in the superior, positively adapted range. I brought up the weight lifting: ‘First of all, I’m doing some pretty major weights, which should say something. Secondly, the training is right up at the edge of my performance envelope. I would think that if any systemic problems developed, they would show up in my workouts pretty quickly.’
She wasn’t buying it. Too many trained athletes die unexpectedly. The relationship between ability and health isn’t exactly direct.
We had already talked about how cholesterol numbers are pretty indirect measurements as well. They’re a step removed from the extent to which heart disease manifests itself inside one’s body. Electronic scans won’t tell the tale on arterial plaque. The only way to assess that is with catheterization, which is far too much trouble.
‘So there’s no way of truly knowing how you stand on heart disease?’
‘No.’
‘And a certain number of conditioned athletes are dying despite the supposedly positive adaptations they’ve made?’
This is where she had to hedge a bit. ‘Yes, but - they tend to have had family histories of heart trouble, or they ignored warning signs.’
That’s what happened to that Judo friend, I recalled. His father had died young.

Keep doing what you’re doing, was the final word, and every year get checked for signs of imminent death.
Soon afterward, I was doing my ‘fahves,’ squats with 382.5. Everyone knows what this is like, five reps with a weight at the very limit of your ability: it’s a hydraulic bodily experience, for lack of a better word. The reps are hard and slow, the blood pressure is up, and you’re keeping your chest jacked up with as much air as you can hold.
382.5 ain’t bad, as far as I’m concerned. That’s a pretty decent trick, getting hydraulic and handling that kind of load. Everyday existence should be that much easier by comparison. More importantly, 382.5 represents change. It represents a long process of incremental adaptation. Had I any major health impairments, the improvements would have stopped.

Unfortunately, we’re still a step removed from having a handle on our true, underlying health. I’m using my improvements, or lack thereof, in the gym as an indicator of whether some other impairment exists. As vain as I am about them, my weightlifting maxes are as imprecise about what lies beneath as my cholesterol numbers. That’s the sobering realization this week.

So if 200-300-400-500 isn’t responsible for my good check up, what is? It has to be my lifestyle, which happens to be largely geared toward lifting heavy weights. I don’t smoke, I don’t eat garbage, and I drink sparingly. When it comes to any other substances, I follow an old Clint Eastwood line from an interview: ‘If it’s more intense than a beer and a blonde, it’s probably not good for you.’

This is a splitting of hairs that I have to spell out carefully - for my own sake. The weights are great for my strength and health, but when it comes to life and death, they offer at best a correlation, not a corollary. They provide a connection but not a consequence.

I should have known you can’t engineer survival. The lifting can skew the odds, and with any luck, the better the lifts, the better the odds.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 5/22/17 3 sets of 3 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x3) Tom 415 JC : 185
2. Press (3x3) Tom 192.5 JC: 87.5
3. Deadlift: (1x3) Tom 505 second session JC power cleans 3x3

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups 6-4-6 REP SCHEME 4 with 55.5
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 170, 170, 175
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 82.5, 92.5, 102.5
6. barbell curls: 4 with 117.5
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 305 JC: 130
2. Bench Press (3x3) Tom: 270 JC: 125
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235 JC: (1x3) deadlifts 257.5
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 372.5 JC: 167.5
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] ( 3x3)
Tom: 175 JC: 80
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 380, 382.5x2 JC: 180, 182.5, 180

4. 4 sets of rows
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) 255, 280, 305
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 100, 125, 140
6. 3 sets curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

THE LATEST: AP at 5:17 a.m: “An apparent suicide bomber attacked an Ariana Grande concert as it ended Monday night, killing 22 people among a panicked crowd of young concertgoers, some still wearing the star’s trademark kitten ears and holding pink balloons as they fled.”

Downstairs in my DVD collection, I have a fantastic video series, Season One of the History Channel’s BATTLE 360. It’s the story of the USS ENTERPRISE, the World War Two aircraft carrier that fought in more major battles against Japan than any other ship. The videos document the ‘Big E’s’ entire career, starting from December 1941, when she pulled into a smoking and ruined Pearl Harbor for fuel and supplies.
BATTLE 360 takes an interesting approach to recounting the stories. They have interviews with pilots and crewmen from the Big E, commentary by historians, combat footage, and where they don’t have actual film they animate the action with computer graphics. Ocean charts and schematics for ships or planes vary between two and three dimensions and spin or shrink as typewritten ‘briefing materials’ appear on the side of the screen. It’s actually pretty cool.

ENTERPRISE sailed a few hours later, the very next morning. Her work, first to protect Hawaii and then commence raiding, began immediately. She sailed dangerously far to the west, to launch the B-25’s of Doolittle’s Raid on Tokyo. Then came Midway, the Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, and Guadalcanal. ENTERPRISE was utterly indispensable; her sheer presence in the Pacific must have afforded American commanders time to gather their wits and plan the campaign. She survived significant battle damage, and in 1943, as other carriers joined the fleet, she was sent to the Puget Sound shipyard to be refitted.
This gets us closer to the most compelling piece of analysis in the entire BATTLE 360 season. The historians make the case that the Navy was applying the cruel lessons of the war. The greatest danger was from the large and fast Japanese torpedo planes. ENTERPRISE was given a torpedo ‘blister’ along her hull for protection, and when she sailed out of Puget Sound, she, like the newer ships in the fleet, “bristled with 20mm and Bofors 40mm anti-aircraft guns, two of the most effective anti-aircraft weapons of the war. Radar-controlled fire directors for both the 5" and 40mm guns - added in 1943 - gave ENTERPRISE the ability to beat back attacking aircraft in all weather, day or night.” Says a historian at this point in the show, ‘American warships are incredibly dangerous to approach by the end of 1943, and that situation only gets grimmer for any Japanese attacker as 1944 and ’45 go on.’

As the father of a young girl just now discovering concerts and dances, as well as another who’s in the thick of her college party career, I find myself furious and disappointed at the news of this concert attack in Manchester, England. This is exactly the opposite of how one might feel about the beast putting to sea to rejoin the fight in November 1943. Is there a point that is germane to STARTING STRENGTH and training? Yes, it has to do with resolve - but let me work my way up to that.

This past Saturday night, we went to see Flogging Molly in concert. The club-sized venue didn’t have metal detectors, so at the door, everybody was frisked. When the show was over, the security folks just stood aside as folks flowed out of the building - or in and out, depending on who was trying to find their friends or get in line to buy a T-shirt. It was at this point after Ariana Grande’s show that the bomber struck.
Friday night, just prior, my wife and I attended the Evening Parade at the Marine Corps Barracks. This is quite the to-do, with a VIP reception ahead of time, the bands, the Silent Drill Team, and precision marching. Marines in dress uniform take over the entire neighborhood to direct traffic and assist guests. Also present are plenty of fellows in full camouflage, toting weapons. It’s a very civilized affair.
Later, as we walked down the street back to our car, my wife was startled to hear a disembodied voice in the darkness tell her, ‘Have a nice evening.’ Right beside us, in the shadow beneath a low tree, were two Marines in full camo, each holding a large machine gun.

ENTERPRISE was purely a creature of the role for which she was intended: unleashing unrestricted bare-knuckled fury, hurling of as much metal and explosives at an enemy as possible, to obliterate them and reclaim large tracts of ocean. Her planes and guns shot down 911 planes. Her fliers sank 71 ships. They damaged or probably sank another 192. The point of this example, however, is not the impressive hardware but the resolve of the leaders who built it and put it to exhaustive use.
The Marines’ show of force on the streets of Southeast Washington indicates a thinking through of a potential situation. Rather than hoping nothing untoward happens at their patriotic event - an admittedly tempting target - and rather than preparing to react to an emergency - which would be too little, too late - they fully plan to participate in any extracurricular activities from the very beginning. Why? Because they’re friggin’ Marines - with plenty of experience with things suddenly going crazy, so they are resolved that events unfold on their terms.
It’s worth taking the ENTERPRISE metaphor to its conclusion. When the Big E returned to action, she was in every major battle as the Americans closed in on the islands of Japan. For nearly four years, as Americans’ fear turned to hope and then joy, the name ENTERPRISE was in just about every newspaper headline about the Pacific. When she sailed into New York Harbor after the war, massive, massive crowds were on hand to see her.

Is the weightlifting connection coming? Yes. Hang in there.
My anger at the Manchester bombing is based on what I see as a lack of resolve on the part of the authorities. Yes, I understand that Britain’s intelligence people work very hard, and every so often someone is going to slip through the net - but as the week has progressed we hear that the suspect is part of a network and freshly returned from Libya - - and that local Muslim leaders warned the authorities about this guy’s radicalism. That’s a big miss.
On the local level, I would hope that every police chief in the UK and US is now looking at the calendar and thinking about concerts and sporting events - especially the chiefs in cities with ethnic enclaves full of disaffected folks with jihadist sympathies and police records. Load up the truck with metal barriers and get on the phone with organizers about setting up perimeters and dispersing the crowds through multiple exits. That takes resolve. That takes time and effort, but yeah, strap on the extra anti-aircraft. Win.

The US presently has two ‘incredibly dangerous’ institutions that can visit bare knuckled fury upon our enemies. The National Security Agency scares the Hell out of everyone. Change the laws. Redefine the challenge. They should be helping to fight the war within, not just without, or they should be sharing their toys with the FBI. Our ability to churn information and find the tiniest needle in the biggest haystack is invincible. The second my kid goes over her monthly data allowance, I hear about it, and it costs me money.
I’d change the laws on probation and test the limits on probable cause, privacy, and the nature of searches. If you steal a stick of gum and seem like the kind of person we should worry about, you’re wearing an ankle bracelet. You’re known to police and have just returned from Libya? Here, slip this on. Now we know if you walk into a gun store, visit an organization we’re watching, or gather with anybody else who has an ankle bracelet. We hear your cell phone calls, see what you’re doing on the computer - regular or Dark Web - and if you approach an Ariana Grande concert, the lads in camo with the machine guns are alerted.

The US Treasury Department isolated Iran from the international financial system. Not only could US-based banks not deal with Iran, foreign based banks who did were barred from conducting deals in the US or with the US dollar. That led to the nuclear deal.
If we slapped this on North Korea, we’d receive a polite phone call the next morning inquiring about a meeting. If we slapped this on ISIS, we’d certainly find out who our friends are internationally - but this would put a damper on the global reach of ISIS. They can try to get clever with hiding their accounts, but we will churn the transfer data.

(continued below)

[Nunedog]

(from above; two entries today)

If the solutions exist, then the only thing missing is the resolve to implement them. That’s the problem with a democracy, a diffusion of responsibility among politicians. I also worry about this on a bureaucratic level, among officials who mainly stay in their lanes instead of thinking expansively.
Now we get to black iron’s bearing on the situation: Patriots’ tight end Rob Gronkowski recently donated 250,000 dollars’ worth of training equipment to the Boston Police Department, for use in stations around the city. A friend of ours was there for the occasion. ‘Yeah, Gronk’s a great guy,’ he said. ‘Hey, you guys are all into that kind of stuff. What do you think?’
Disclaimer: Gronkowski and his family have a fitness equipment business, and they do sell racks, weights, and bars, but I don’t know what they gave the police. Our friend spoke mainly about a TRX-styled band system. I hope Gronk donated some black iron, and maybe squats in a rack didn’t lend themselves that day to a crowded press conference.
My thought, then and now, is that the brass would be better served to drop in on a regular day and take in an hour’s worth of heavy barbell training. Not only would they see the physical benefits their cops are receiving, they’d see the psychological ones as well. Trainees taking their programs seriously, whether they’re hitting a new deadlift max of 305 or 605, develop some ENTERPRISE-level resolve. They learn to hang tough, that squatting 400 pounds is going to be a bare knuckled moment of fury. You want to get 200-300-400-500? That’s a relentless three and a half year campaign, dude, like island-hopping the Pacific.
Those of us dedicated to training understand that it’s a discipline, that success relies upon effective engineering and analysis, and that when new challenges arise you have to adjust your game. The original reason that sports were included in higher education was so that students, and later professionals, would reason by analogy and understand that excellence is a function of constant change, not complacency.

The cops, service members, and agents who train like this are going to be ‘incredibly dangerous’ on the job, and the mindset will affect their brand of leadership. Our national security leaders who spend their days behind desks need to get their hands on a barbell and rediscover what it’s like to be on the hunt.

In moments of crisis, some people are rocked by doubt. Some of us are furious. If those protecting us showed as much resolve as we do three or four times a week in our garages or gyms, then little girls in kitten ears would not be lying dead while others run in terror through city streets.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 5/29/17 3 sets of 1 rep week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x1) Tom 442.5 JC : 202.5
2. Press (3x1) Tom 205+ JC: 95
3. Deadlift: Tom (1x1) 535 second session
JC power cleans: 112.5, 115, 112.5

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups; 4 with 55.5
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14 . . . 170, 170, 177.5
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 85, 92.5, 102.5
6. barbell curls: 117.5 for 4
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of the original (3x5) Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 305 JC: 130
2. Bench Press (3x1) Tom: 290+ JC: 135+
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235
JC DEADLIFT single 270
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x1)
Tom: 400 JC: 180
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x1)
Tom: 190+ (best - 20 lbs.) JC: 87.5
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 382.5 JC 180, 182.5x2

4. 5r ring pull ups
5. 3 sets of 5 partial bench presses; holes (L-5-8-11) 255, 280, 305
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 102.5, 127.5, 142.5
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

On a glorious and sunny Memorial Day I headed out to the garage, coffee in hand, and found myself greeted by the six year old boy who lives next door. The rest of the neighborhood was dead asleep, but was the kind of breezy, bright morning that pulls a young fellow out of bed with a sense of expectation. He had come to satisfy his curiosity, sparked probably by seeing me stagger around the driveway between sets or the glimpses he’d catch from the back of his nanny’s car.
The two of us stood together as the garage door rose. Which weights precisely was I going to lift, he wanted to know, looking over the kettlebells, dumbbells, and plates here and there.
‘These ones right here,’ I said, with a whack on the iron plates. I set the hooks on the squat rack, as well as the safety bars, narrating as I went along. The bar went on the hooks. ‘This is where the action will be.’
I offered him a wooden dowel for his squats.
We went to the porch steps for some calf raises to loosen up the old Achilles tendons. I dropped and lay back along the steps to get a couple of back-cracks and deep breaths.
‘What are you doing that for?’
‘I have to stretch my back, to get it ready to hold a lot of weight.’
In the garage, he counted my 10 reps with the empty bar. This was about the time his Dad first called.
‘He’s up here,’ I called back. ‘He’s all right!’
After another round of calf raises, 135 was on the bar for five, which he counted for me. ‘How much is that?’ he asked.
‘135 pounds. Each of these plates weighs 45.’
I don’t know if he did the math, but he said something very smart: ‘That bar has to weigh something, too.’
‘You’re right. The bar is just as heavy as one of these plates. It has to be a pretty big, strong piece of metal to hold all the weights that go on each end.’
He was hanging right with me. This was turning into a decent conversation. I loaded two more plates on.
‘How much is that?’
’225.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you can do that,’ he said gravely.
This is when his father called once more and insisted that he come home.

I saw his Mom later in the day, and my suspicions were confirmed. They were worried that he was being a pest. The poor little guy had burst into tears when he got home. ‘It’s OK,’ he pleaded. ‘He likes me!’
For my part, it occurred to me that in a span of minutes I gained and then lost the only training partner I’ve had in decades.
I told his Mom, ‘He can come by any time. In fact, he’s the only person in the entire state of Maryland who’s shown any interest in weight lifting, so I’m glad to have him.’

It’s a shame he couldn’t stick around because I had quite the show planned. Not only did I manage the 225, I got my three 442.5 squat singles.
I pressed 215 for a PR, though after missing it once. The trick with heavy presses is not to choke under pressure. I had hit 205 without even feeling it. My center of gravity was forward in true Ivanchenko fashion, and my mind was on bigger things. When I got to bigger things, I must have worried about the enormity of it all and made my wobble too big. The wobble has to be fast but not big on big weights, and you have to stay chill enough to let your center get underneath the bar as you finish. It’s an act of violence followed by an act of faith.
525 came up in the deadlift with the feeling of more in the tank. 530 was rocky a few weeks ago, and I had twice missed 535, so I’ll have to edge upward a little more carefully.

Most exciting was the 305 bench press Wednesday, which means, with only 10 pounds to go, I’m officially allowed to lust over having three big, clanking wheels on each end of the bar, which is 315. In the press, I can lust over two big, clanking wheels on each end, which is 225. These numbers still might be months away, but it’s time to set a little desire on slow boil.

Speaking of desire, we come to power cleans. Actually, not speaking of desire, I first have to mention something said by Louie Simmons, but then I’ll get back to the fact that training the power clean is a little bit like tangling with a fickle woman. You can’t let her know how much you want her.

Westside Barbell’s Louie Simmons deserves credit for an interesting point he makes about the Olympic lifts: slow down. In the case of the power clean, the weight you’re handling is about 50 percent of your deadlift, so you can afford to take your time. The problem is in going too fast; the weight is still heavy enough to pull you out of position and out of sequence.
The whole ballgame in the cleans is getting the bar to touch that 30-yard line on your lower thighs, which is when - Rip says - you jump, your legs becoming the sole force driving the entire enterprise. If you really try to tear the weight off the ground, you’re probably backing away from the bar and pulling with your arms, which means you’re going to miss that spot on your thighs and wind up in a big, whipsawing mess.
Simmons reminds us, in effect, take your time and handle the bar. It’s only half of what you can pick up anyway, so stay in charge of the situation: slo-mo - use your legs, your back, whatever you want - no big deal - up to the 30 yard line, and then you can uncork - though that’s not really necessary. Don’t worry; it’ll be there.

That’s the approach I had to remind myself of Wednesday morning. I had fallen into the classic trap on my first rep: fired up, I gripped it and ripped it, but then hit myself low on the chest with a wrist-wrecking piece of garbaggio.
Similarly, when I was a younger man, my amorous desires were often aimed too far above my station, with disastrous results. My first job was in an internship program with a bunch of other recent college grads, so romance was a large part of the agenda. After I had been there a while, a true goddess arrived. Conscious of my spotty record and seeing how every other guy in the place was already falling all over himself in her presence, I concluded she was out of my league.
Some weeks later, we were all out for a social evening. The goddess found me at the bar, sidled up closely, and to my utter astonishment confided, ‘I want to know why you’re ignoring me.’
She was as beautiful and expensive as a race horse, as the saying goes, and by virtue of her family’s wealth also used to running in pretty fast company. I was truly in over my head. The relationship was not to last; my mistake was playing her game, not mine.
Every once in a while, though, when I hit a power clean with reckless indifference and the bar comes floating in perfectly, I think of ol’ Alison stirring her drink and gazing into my eyes.
I wonder if she ever thinks of me.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 6/5/17 3 sets of 5 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x5) Tom 385 JC : 167.5
2. Press (3x5) Tom 177.5 JC: 87.5
3. Deadlift (1x5) 480 second session JC 237.5

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups REP SCHEME 6-4-6 (4 at 55.5)
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 170, 172.5, 177.5
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 82.5, 92.5, 102.5
6. barbell curls: 3 sets (4 at 117.5)
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 307.5 JC: 132.5
2. Bench Press (3x5) Tom: 257.5 JC: 115
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235 JC: 112.5, 115, 112.5
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 347.5 JC: 150
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x5)
Tom: 160 JC: 80
3. Romanian Deadlifts - off rack - 3 sets of 5
Tom 382.5, 385, 382.5 JC 182.5

4. 8 rope climbs
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) . . . . 255+, 282.5, 305
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 105, 130, 145
6. 3 sets 12 dumbbell curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
swim 1 mile

[Nunedog]

Stood alone on a mountain top,
starin' out at the Great Divide
I could go east, I could go west,
it was all up to me to decide
Just then I saw a young hawk flyin'
and my soul began to rise
And pretty soon
My heart was singin'

Roll, roll me away,
I'm gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin, gotta keep ridin',
keep searchin' till I find what's right

I had a rental car and a plane ticket instead of Bob Seger’s big two-wheeler, but that was the song pounding through my head as I took one last spin through town and hit the highway. I had just attended my 35th high school reunion, and amazingly, just as seeing some of the guys at that funeral a few months ago had promised, the magic was absolutely undiminished.
That’s a vital thing, to get back in touch with one’s tribe, in my case a boys’ Jesuit prep school. Not that we really knew it at the time, but our shared experiences were the very building blocks of our souls. That’s how, 35 years later, the party picked up like we had never left, and we came away with a renewed sense of all the validation and empowerment we took for granted years ago.
I even have a weight lifting tale to tell.

‘You finally gained weight,’ my old coach said when I stepped out of the car. Here he was in the flesh, the legend who started me on Fives when I was a skinny little twerp and who’s produced decades’ worth of track and field champions, one NFL player that I know of, and a US Olympic Team member.
I figured I’d buy him lunch before the reunion itself that evening. It was the least I could do, though unfortunately I didn’t know the town we were in, and I couldn’t find a fancy enough restaurant to make it the gesture it should have been.
He’s retired now; my kids are 19 and 13. He was sorry to hear that my mother had died six years ago. ‘You know, she sent me a very nice letter when you won that national championship.’
That was when I was in college. I didn’t know she did that.

‘I’ve actually learned a few things over the years,’ I wanted him to know. In our e-mails prior to this weekend, he was pleased with my 200-300-400-500 stats.
I recounted all the painstaking thought that went into devising my partial press routine, which is what finally got me to benching 300 pounds. ‘We almost had it,’ I reminded him. ‘We sort of hinted at it once in a while in the rack.’
He gave me a knowing smile. ’That’s the overload system. I knew it the whole time - but I was wary of using it.’
I’m not sure what shocked me more, that my brilliant innovation had appeared in STRENGTH AND HEALTH more than 50 years ago, or that he had had the bloody treasure map all along.
“I worried about what it would do to kids’ joints,’ he explained.
I could only laugh. Well, what the Hell . . . 35 years . . . better late than never, benching 300.
It occurred to me that all this learning I’ve done recently is simply getting me back to what he’s known all along. This seemed all the more true when he went on to explain how the potential in rack work is truly untapped nowadays. He did pursue it with one of his shot-putters one year, and for the standing press concluded, ‘Yeah, you should be able to get 400 pounds up and off your shoulders and against some pins for a few seconds.’
(More on that in the months ahead)

We also recalled a great many stories about the characters who walked through that weight room door. Every day was about Hell-raising as much is it was strength training. Jokes would fly, and the afternoons were raucous. He was probably the biggest troublemaker of us all, presiding over it the way he did, knowing that more important things were going on than just our getting strong.
We could work through sets at benches or racks all around a crowded room and take turns and change plates with the precision of a flight deck crew. Then again, it could all devolve in an instant into Kung Fu Theater.
The greatest display of strength I have ever seen took place took place in that room. I spotted a kid as he attempted a 200 pound bench press. He had Erb’s Palsy, which meant one crippled and shrunken arm, probably as the result of a birth injury. He showed us once that he couldn’t lift a five pound plate with it. He took a grip with his good arm on the center knurling of the bar with 200, steadied it with his bad arm, and then lowered it until his fist squished into his sternum. He drove it right up at me like a triceps extension.
By the same token, a given day might see a competition emerge between two guys to see who could bash the biggest hole in a patch of drywall with his head.
The coach was pretty unflappable. The day this happened, he strolled in, hands in his pockets, and noticed them backing up like bulls to charge the wall. ‘Hey, you know, guys . . . ‘ he began.
One of them rushed forward, but the usual ka-chorf of breaking drywall was replaced by a sharp sounding thwack! The kid reeled back and then sank to the ground in agony.
‘I was going to say, pretty soon you’re going to find a stud in that wall.’

I reminded him of the time our champion discus thrower almost cut that baseball player in half.
‘That happened a lot of times. They never learned, and I had to tell him to stop aiming at them.’

‘You know what else I remember, talking about rack work and overloads?’ I said. ‘Remember those huge 85-pound flywheels we used for quarter squats?’ They were so big we could put a full sized 50-pound plate inside each one. I always wondered what happened to them. They’re probably in some Steampunk museum, I had imagined.
‘They’re in my basement.’
‘Are you serious?’
The year I left, the school was refurbishing, so two guys in the year behind me helped the coach run his old weights home. The 85-pound gears and his small-bore weights never went back. There they sat, for 35 years.

We were soon in his basement, climbing in the darkness through a few generations’ worth of family possessions. We moved bicycles, a rocking horse, and a kiddie pool away from a wall. Beneath our feet were old rusty weights, 5’s and 10’s - and a bar I recognized. I pushed closer to a set of ping-pong table panels and an old door that created a space of pitch blackness.
This was like scuba-diving in the wreck of a German U-Boat. When I got close to the opening, I pulled my phone from my pocket, took a picture, and looked at it. There they were.

Over the years, at various reunions, old lifters have said they’d love to have these as keepsakes. That night, the coach called me over from my ’82 section to a cluster of guys from ’72. ‘Show them the pictures on your phone.’
As they marveled in recognition, he added, ’Tommy’s going to take them.’
They all looked me over. Lucky bastard. ‘When you get them,’ one guy said, ‘get 10 big bottles of Coca Cola and bathe them in a tub for about three days. That will take care of a lot of the rust.’
‘When they’re cleaned up, paint them that John Deere green again,’ the coach said.

As I post this on a Friday morning, a freight company is picking them up. I should have them in a day’s time. They will be restored and in my garage as a monument to good times, or if I ever load them onto some kid’s bar, I’ll say, ‘You’re in the company of legends.’

DAMN! I will gladly take advice on how to load pictures.

Heavy-Light-Medium
Week of: 6/12/17 3 sets of 3 reps week
MONDAY
1. Squat (3x3) Tom 417.5 JC : 185
2. Press (3x3) Tom 195 JC: 90
3. Deadlift: (1x3) Tom 507.5 second session JC power cleans 3x3

4. 3 sets heavy pull ups 6-4-6 REP SCHEME 4 with 58
5. 3 sets of partial presses [Tom] holes 8-11-14; . . . 170, 172.5, 177.5
JC: [holes 3-5-7] 85, 95, 105
6. barbell curls: 4 with 117.5
7. abs: banded pull downs

TUESDAY - Conditioning
sled pull 2 miles; 45, 25

WEDNESDAY
1. Squat (80% of Monday’s weight) x5, 2 sets Tom: 307.5 JC: 132.5
2. Bench Press (3x3) Tom: 272.5 JC: 127.5
3. Power Cleans 3x3 Tom: 235, to 270, 235 JC: (1x3) deadlifts 260
4. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 545
5. abs: hollow rockers

FRIDAY
1. Squats: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 375 JC: 167.5
2. Press: [90% of Monday’s weight] (3x3)
Tom: 175 JC: 85
3. Romanian deadlifts (off rack) 3 sets of 5 -
Tom: 382.5, 385x2 JC: 182.5, 185, 182.5

4. 4 sets of rows
5. 3 sets of partial bench presses holes (L-5-8-11) 260, 285, 310 approx
JC: [holes L-4-6-8] 100, 125, 140
6. 3 sets curls
7. abs: T-bar sit ups

SATURDAY - Conditioning
row 6000 meters

[Nunedog]

sorry