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

  1. #301
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    • starting strength seminar april 2024
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    A new chapter has begun in an old story I’ve told, about a young neighbor from our 2017-2019 assignment to Cleveland. He was a young, high school would-be-football player who used to drop by my garage from time to time to talk about weights and training. His football career did not turn out as hoped. Nor has college thus far; this Fall was supposed to be his first semester, but he spent it at home attending classes online, experiencing none of the freedom he hoped for.
    In a bold stroke, he’s shipped out to boot camp at Ft. Benning, as part of joining the National Guard. They’ll pay for college, which he’ll resume probably in the Fall. Money’s not the issue, since his parents are partners in major law firms; rather, it’s independence. He needs an accomplishment of his own or some control of his destiny, perhaps realizing something I was trying to tell him: he was robbed of any chances of either on the playing field.

    The poor kid was an unwitting participant in a strength training program that utterly failed to prepare some 75 percent of his team for varsity level high school football. He was fooled - hoodwinked completely, despite my trying to convince him of the facts about training. He was undersized but all heart and desire, and his willingness to work hard was played upon by an unscrupulous strength coach who clearly knew better than what he was telling a team of some 90 players.
    We’ve seen this in other moments history, always with the same results.

    “Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert.” - Adolph Hitler
    That a fringe political party whose first converts are society’s outcasts and losers can seize power, inflame nationalistic passions, and lead a nation into a war that costs 55 million lives, including the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, is not an insignificant accomplishment. We would do well to bear its many lessons in mind. According to the United Nations and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazi Party’s primary driving force, propaganda, can be described in the following summary:
    PROPAGANDA is biased information designed to shape public opinion and behavior. Its power depends on
    -message
    -technique
    -means of communication
    -environment
    -audience receptivity
    PROPAGANDA uses
    -uses truths, half-truths, or lies
    -omits information selectively
    -simplifies complex issues or ideas
    -plays on emotions
    -advertises a cause
    -attacks opponents
    -targets desired audiences

    It was the 1929 economic collapse that spelled the end for the republic in Germany that followed the First World War. Disagreements among mainstream parties and voter dissatisfaction made people turn to the simple and concrete messages of Nazi propaganda. Some feared poverty, others communism. Farmers feared for their homesteads, and angry young men wanted to restore Germany’s lost territories and military might. The appeal of Adolph Hitler, with his fantastic skills as an orator, increased the Party profile and attracted members by denouncing the German republic and blaming Jews for the nation’s many problems. He condemned the Versailles Peace Treaty for all the burdens it placed upon their nation: admitting guilt for the war, surrendering territory, and paying massive reparations to the victories allies. In an uncertain economy, he found an enthusiastic audience. In 1932, the Nazi Party won 40 percent of the seats in the parliament, an indication of massive growth in a short period of time.
    In fact, the significance here is that prior to 1929, the Nazis had trouble gaining any political traction. As their fortunes improved, their anti-Semitic message only really caught on with right-wing radicals. Astutely, the Nazis didn’t push this too hard, especially where it didn’t play well, so as not to alienate voters. As time passed and the rhetoric heated up, much of the populace had grown used to overlooking this part of the ideology.

    Drawing a parallel to my young friend’s experience would be to say that he was exploited. He was used; his best interests were ignored in a vast undertaking that served only the interests of its leaders.
    That’s a stretch, you might say, or even, Come on now, dude: the strength coach didn’t know any better - or the program was dictated by insurance regulations.
    He did know better, which I’ll get to in a second. Still, he stuck with a program based on front squats and push presses. ‘Only advanced kids get to back squat and bench press,’ the kid explained. The coach had a system in place that cycled 90 kids through a big facility, so this earned him his paycheck while not exposing anyone to adaptive level stress.
    The vast majority of Ninth Grade boys signing up for football are impoverished and uncertain from the standpoint that they lack size, strength, or any athletic standing. They just want to strap on the uniform of their Jesuit prep school and make something of themselves, battling for gridiron glory. Their only option was to get with the program - immediately, and stick with it to show their commitment.
    ‘Check this out,’ the kid said in my garage one day. He held up his phone, on which he had a video. ‘This is my coach. He’s a badass.’
    He narrated as he played an Instagram video: ‘He squats like, 385 - and this is him deadlifting 445.’
    ‘Wow.’
    Remember, this kid and I met when his parents asked me to look at his form. He was having bladder or bowel issues, and the cause was his abusing his lower back as he tucked his rear end beneath him in hex-bar deadlifts. On another occasion, he dropped in to get some coaching on his power snatches, an exercise he loved despite not being able to launch more than 85 pounds.
    I had to explain something important. ‘This is a hamstring driven event. The only way you can lift more is to get them stronger. Front squats don’t do much for your hamstrings. Neither do hex-bar deadlifts. Do you see the problem?’
    ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged, willing to overlook it.

    As the ambitions and stakes grew for the Nazi regime, so did the need for more aggressive and effective propaganda techniques. Maybe it’s the other way around, that as their control of information and culture took root, new political opportunities unfolded. In 1933, as Hitler became Chancellor, he named Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels as Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. A radical anti-Semite and committed Nazi, Goebbels furthered Hitler’s political, racial, and territorial goals by seizing control of the mass media. He shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, transferred Jewish owned publishing houses to non-Jews, and secretly took over established periodicals. Nazi ideology became the focus of radio, film, newsreels, theater, and music.
    A singularity of message made for a singularity of purpose. They cultivated the idea of a national Aryan identity, a society with no class, religious, or regional differences, an idea that worked magnificently, further committing Germans to the cause and marginalizing the Jews, Gypsies, and other nonconformists who didn’t belong.
    The ‘politically unreliable,’ especially among teachers and professors, were purged, and independent youth organizations were dissolved. ‘Classroom and Hitler Youth instruction aimed to produce obedient, self-sacrificing Germans who would be willing to die for Adolph Hitler and the Fatherland.’
    Summary paragraphs do not do justice to the human costs of of reducing a nation to a legion of mouth-breathing dullards willing to commit or condone all manner of depravity. Nazi propaganda and the public’s appetite for it had escalated in tandem; the Nazis could introduce and the people could accept nationalistic policies they never would have contemplated a few years before.
    Military aggression was presented as a necessity. Nazi propagandists hammered the message that the war in 1914 was was started by the nation’s enemies, who planned to destroy Germany and enslave its people. Germans had to be fully bought in: willing to overlook hardships at home during the war and shut their eyes to the brutalities directed at people in occupied territories. Doubt was weakness - subject to punishment.

    (continued below)

  2. #302
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    (from above)

    From an earlier blog post: ‘At about Thanksgiving last year, when the kid wondered aloud if he’d ever play, I told him his only chance was to show up for summer ball back-squatting at least 315 and benching 200 as a 150 pounder, so when he hit somebody, they’d know it.’ That was Thanksgiving 2018. That Spring would finish his junior year, and the Fall would be his last season.
    ‘I can tell you everything you need to know.’ I assured him. I also knew a secret: his Mom was buying a rack and set of weights for him that Christmas.
    He didn’t want to train on his own. He had to be there showing the coaches he was part of the team, he insisted.
    ‘They don’t have an open gym at some point, where you can do your own thing?’
    ‘No. Everything is spelled out in advance.’
    You can’t dog it and lift somewhere else?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You can’t even do an extra set of curls at the end of a session?’
    ‘Curls are a nonathletic exercise.’
    ‘Curls are for impressing women.’
    This was also when it was time to look at colleges. With the Indians having been to a World Series and LeBron and the Cavs winning the NBA Championships not long before, and with his parents’ connections around town, he had met a handful of sports stars. He wanted to study Sports Management in college, so he looked at programs at UConn and Arizona.
    Over time, as he came to my garage, his demeanor changed. He wanted to show that he was getting pretty hardcore. ‘We got crushed today,’ he often began.
    ‘What’d you do?’
    I’d hear about nutty, punishing sled intervals or high rep push presses - and then came the day he described the 7 sets of 7 front squats with 7-second descents.
    ‘Are you kidding? What kind of weight can you do that with?’
    ‘An empty bar,’ he admitted.
    I had heard enough. ‘This guy’s wasting your time.’ We were two or three months past Thanksgiving.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I have to be honest with you,’ I said, which was a preface I had used before. ‘This guy is playing you. You’re not getting any stronger.’
    ‘On some things - ‘
    ‘Like what? What’s your squat? Have you done any back squats?’
    He guessed he could handle 225.
    ‘225? Seriously? You’ve been lifting weights for two and a half years, and MAYBE you can squat 225? A high school kid can squat 300 in a year.’
    As he looked at me, I said, ‘You know what this means, right? You’re not going to play.’

    He didn’t come around much after that. He also had his driver’s license by this point, and bigger and better things to do. In the summer of 2019, we moved back to Maryland. That Fall, however, the kid’s team traveled to play against a Catholic prep school near us.
    They arrived with the full squad of 90 players. These were 90 kids who had not only been tricked into running through a senseless off-season program but also compelled into believing in it. They had to show attitude and intensity day in and day out. They actively and enthusiastically did wrongheaded, destructive things, working against their own best interests, such as stumbling around and collapsing during 7 sets of 7 front squats or puking into trash barrels.
    The game was a complete ass kicking from the very beginning. The other team smashed the line of scrimmage wide open, and a back sprinted through the open green space as fast as the armies of Patton and Montgomery racing up the Italian peninsula. Fortress Europe was in big trouble.
    Every player on the Maryland team was stronger and faster than every player on the Ohio team. By halftime, it was 35-0.
    This had not been their year, even in Ohio. Much of the team stood listlessly on the sideline as the home team’s second and third stringers continued the beating. That’s where they stood all the time, anyway, which got some of the parents grousing. ‘The coach plays only about eight kids, both ways,’ the kid’s Dad explained. ‘With a few others here and there, and a few more on special teams, only about 25 kids ever set foot on the field.’
    That meant that 65 of those 90 kids along the sideline had wound up in this debacle under completely false pretenses. They had surrendered their fate to a strength coach who simply could or would not produce athletes of any use to the football staff. They also surrendered high school years that could have been spent elsewhere, their good faith effort - and even their sense of identity - to adults who played upon their naive hope and used them all wastefully.

    My young friend lost interest in Sports Management. His Mom says that Cyber, Intelligence, or Security are possibilities nowadays. I texted him when he was at the airport. ‘Hey!’ he greeted me, before signing off later with, ‘I’ll be back soon enough.’ He sounded older and wiser already, something that doesn’t happen to everyone, through history or even nowadays, it seems.

    (5, 3, & 2 and 3, 2, 1 rotation)
    Week of: 1/18/21 5 and 3 week
    MONDAY
    1. Squat: 5, 5, 1, 1; with 80, 90% 380, 427.5, 447.5
    2. Romanian deadlifts / rack pulls: 2x5 reps; 2x2; 365, 445
    3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
    3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485
    4. reverse hypers (3x10)
    5. abs; banded pulldowns

    TUESDAY
    1. Inclined bench press: 3 sets of 8 Tom 197.5
    2. Bench press: 225-265, reps 210
    3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 8
    Conditioning (second session)
    sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

    THURSDAY
    1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 3* reps Tom 487.5
    2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 440
    3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 4 sets of 5 Tom 340 chains
    4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
    5. abs: hollow rockers

    FRIDAY
    1. Press: 175-195, reps 140
    2. Pin bench press, 2 sets of 4, 240; tempo-Spoto press, 2 sets of 4 195
    3. Pull ups (5x10)
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
    6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

    SATURDAY - Conditioning
    swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

  3. #303
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    I have received feedback on last week’s post. While she understands what I was up to with the piece, my wife considers it to be complete horse manure.
    She has three main objections:
    1. The conspiracy at the Ohio prep school was not limited to the coaching staff. Actually, it was never a conspiracy. It’s just the way sports are these days.
    2. A competent strength coach would have made little difference.
    3. The conversation in which I told the kid, ‘You’re not going to play,’ was unnecessarily cruel.

    1. The conspiracy at the Ohio prep school was not limited to the coaching staff.
    That 65 out of 90 kids were never going to play required that EVERYONE be in on the unspoken secret: coaches, the school principal, the parents - and the kids. ‘Camaraderie’ was the word my wife kept using. The kids simply wanted to be on the team and hang out with their buddies. Why else would they subject themselves to the process all year round? They were never as naive as I imagined. The training process was ‘being on the football team,’ and every single kid was as legitimate a member as the most talented starters on the field.
    The weight room the school built was a million-dollar, 16-rack collegiate level complex. It had to have been a school policy that it was available to everyone, which probably took the form of a team no-cut policy. Secretly or not, a great many parents were happy their kids would never see the field and risk serious injury.

    2. A competent strength coach would have made little difference.
    She told me to imagine that I were the strength coach. Everybody would be doing fabulously, the strongest kids deadlifting 400 and more, and the weakest kids still squatting 300. Still, that wouldn’t change the pecking order; the starting lineup would only be the topmost tier of strongest and fastest kids. All that strength and improvement wouldn’t make a difference.

    Here I disagree. In that game two seasons ago, the coach did not have more than three or four linemen with any strength. They were soon spent by playing both ways, which in the long run probably cost the team more than playing different sets of kids. If the coach had 15 or more players squatting and deadlifting in the high 3’s and 4’s, he would then have separate offensive and defensive lines, with talent to spare. It’d be a lot less easy to ignore kids with phenomenal strength, in all position areas.
    Even if a fair number of kids never got on the field, they at least would have strength for other sports and some actual accomplishment in their lives, as well as a knowledge of how to train.

    3. The conversation in which I told the kid, ‘You’re not going to play,’ was unnecessarily cruel.
    This was not my intention, but I was exposing his embarrassing secret: he had compromised with himself long before. He would never play, he accepted, but he just wanted to be associated with those who did, which was a shame he could hide in cahoots with all the others doing the same.

    I’ve done this before, where I have been utterly slow to catch on to other people’s secrets or scandals. Assuming that everyone is as straightforward and boring as I am, I’ve missed the boat on a number of mental health crises or extramarital affairs among friends and neighbors. Jeez, I was rubbing the kid’s nose in his weakness, both mental and physical. Damn. Sorry.
    Hang on: would I have been doing him any favors by nodding and smiling, saying that all this nonsense was great? If there are all kinds of ulterior motives at play, and I’m not picking up on the coded messages, then folks might have to spell things out for me. When the kid said he wished he could play varsity football, I was nice enough to believe him.

    I’ve been there, as a useless 120-pound runt on the JV team in the fall of my sophomore year. I started lifting soon after, but at Spring Ball at the end of sophomore year, I didn’t get in the inter-squad game, and I caught some dismissive comments from the head coach. They worked as intended. Screw this, I thought. I’m done. I’m not going to ride the bench and give these people the power to make my life miserable. I’ll be the master of my own fate.
    Now that I think about it some 40 years later, I can name five or six other kids who also did not make the leap from JV to Varsity and who also must have gone through private moments of despair. 40 years ago, however, bench warmers were losers. They were parasites. Nobody would stick around. Those of us who didn’t make the cut got over it and moved on with our lives.
    The week before senior year started, we were called in to have our fancy yearbook portraits taken. I was hanging out in a hallway with friends as the gym teacher made his way through the building. This was a guy who said to me as I hopelessly tried out for his freshman football team years prior, ‘If you’re lucky, you can be half as good as everybody else.’
    He stopped in front of me. ‘Am I supposed to be getting you pads?’
    Genuinely surprised that he even knew who I was, I stammered, ‘Um . . uh, no.’
    The friend right beside me said, ‘Aw, come on, man. You’re the strongest kid in the school.’ Pound for pound, yes, but that future Philadelphia Eagle and Dallas Cowboy, with whom I had lifted all summer, still had me in gross tonnage.
    The coach peered at me.
    ‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘My time can be better spent elsewhere.’ That latter part was an explanation to my friend. I was perfectly polite to the coach, but the moment was a declaration of independence: I no longer seek your approval.

    That’s why I simply couldn’t grasp what the kid was doing to himself.

    We just had a bathroom renovated, and more than a month ago, a contractor who stopped in to give us an estimate turned out to be a football coach. Having finished the consultation, he and my wife were headed out through the kitchen, where he saw my 16-year-old daughter wearing a football T-shirt some boy had given her. ‘You know someone on the team?’ he asked.
    It turned out to be a small-world moment. He was - a huge guy - the defensive line coach for that school. My wife quickly called up the stairs to me.
    When I came down, she was opening the garage to show him the gym. ‘Very nice,’ he said, ‘but it’s too cold.’
    ‘We can strap on some extra sweats,’ I said as I arrived. My wife made the introductions. ‘Tom has experience coaching high school kids,’ she was quick to tell him.
    ‘You have to get some heaters in here,’ he insisted.
    ‘Nah, we’re not pussies.’
    My consummately professional wife, for whom every moment is a networking opportunity, glared at me.
    I tried a different tack. ‘In the 1970’s, a handful of Pittsburgh Steelers linemen, guys notorious for throwing their opponents around the field, used to lift weights in the basement of a bar called the Red Bull Inn. Teams did not have the fancy training centers they do nowadays.’ I nodded at the stone and concrete one-time smokehouse and the sharp-toothed 85-pound flywheels leaning against a wall. ‘This is the Red Bull.’

    After he left, she turned to me. ‘What the Hell is the matter with you?’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    “‘We’re not pussies?’”
    ‘We’re not, as it turns out. I lift here, you lift here, and a 16-year-old girl lifts out here. This guy works with defensive linemen, supposedly the biggest and scariest dudes out on the field, and he starts whining about the cold?’ I had waited to catch some kind of sympatico vibe on the idea of toughening kids up, but it never happened.

    That moment came up in the conversation the other morning. ‘You’re never going to coach,’ she said.
    I agreed. ‘Not in this day and age. Strength coaches who actually coach strength are just . . . friggin’ outlaw.’


    (5, 3, & 2 and 3, 2, 1 rotation)
    Week of: 1/25/21 3 and 2 week
    MONDAY
    1. Squat: 4 sets of 3 Tom 415
    2. Romanian deadlifts, rack pulls: 2x5; 2x3+ 375, 445
    3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
    3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485
    4. reverse hypers (3x10)
    5. abs; banded pulldowns

    TUESDAY
    1. Inclined bench press: 3 sets of 5 Tom 215
    2. Bench press: 225-265 reps 212.5
    3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets, 40’s, 50’s
    Conditioning (second session)
    sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

    THURSDAY
    1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 2* reps Tom 517.5
    2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 465
    3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 2 sets of 5, 350; 2 sets of 3 372.5
    4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
    5. abs: hollow rockers

    FRIDAY
    1. Press: 175-195, reps 142.5
    2. Bench press pin press, 2x4, 242.5, tempo spoto presses 2x4, 195
    3. Pull ups (5x10)
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets, 40’s, 50’s
    5. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

    SATURDAY - Conditioning
    swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

  4. #304
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    On Wednesday night the 20th, pop star Katy Perry, singing at the the Lincoln Monument, was just getting to the first refrain of her hit, ‘Firework,’ when she and the camera turned in a magnificently staged shot to reveal behind her the Reflecting Pool, Washington Monument, and a sky filled with a brilliant shower of sparks. At about the same moment, local pages on Facebook and Nextdoor, a neighborhood app, similarly exploded with messages: ‘What’s that rumbling sound?’ and ‘What’s going on?’ Folks in DC and Northern Virginia ran outside in their jammies to watch.
    This was the big finale of the prime time Inauguration TV show, and the producers were blowing Roosevelt Park and the Potomac River to Kingdom Come. With the leaves off the trees, the sound was traveling more easily, people on social media surmised. Someone claimed that an odd temperature inversion in the atmosphere made sounds that would have dissipated upward thunder outward instead.
    It was probably just the sheer amount of firepower that spread shock waves so far and wide. The show’s producers, when they contacted fireworks manufacturers, must have been told that since the pandemic canceled a great many Fourth of July shows, ‘We have tons of extra.’
    ‘We’ll take it.’
    The display was massive. Viewers saw the Bidens watching from the White House balcony, Vice President Harris and her husband at the Lincoln Monument, and the entire city awash in the light.

    Even if it’s not a great work of art, ‘Firework’ is a nice song about discovering one’s true potential. When all seems lost, Perry assures the downhearted, they’ll still have their moment to shine and shoot across the sky. The message unfolds like a bird taking flight, in a gradual then soaring progression that tops out with Perry belting out the final refrains.
    Interestingly, her background is as a Christian singer. Ten years ago, when she burst onto the pop scene and all her songs played in the car as I drove the kids around, she never really fooled me when she tried to be naughty, singing with Snoop Dogg. Luckily, she’s also perfectly willing to be goofy, which has added to her appeal, along with her thoroughbred level girl-next-door looks. This got her in a Super Bowl halftime show and the Inauguration, where true to her roots she’s at her best singing songs of empowerment.

    It is so much more fun writing tales of dashing and daring, of people being awesome and generous with their talents, than dwelling on the negative. In those last posts about that shoddy strength coach, a point had to be made, but it was no great pleasure. Now, with the United States under a new administration, it’s fun once more to describe a sense of hope and calls for new awesomeness. I feel badly for those compelled to dwell on the negative.

    As the President has described, the future of the United States will be determined by how we handle four critical crises: the COVID pandemic, the crippled economy, climate change, and racial disparity (and discord). Smart enough not to consider himself any great visionary, he’s calling upon experts from far and wide. With regard to distributing the COVID vaccine, the White House has received what must be very tempting offers from Amazon and Walmart - which probably took the form of 30-second presentations: ‘From the factories, we go to five major distribution centers on overnight routes. Each of those ships to five regional centers, and those 25 ship to five, making 125 warehouses [and so on.] We’ll slap bar codes on the boxes and track ‘em.’
    This would be like World War Two, when factories were pumping out a Liberty Ship and a few B-17’s every single day. It lends itself to another great moment of Americana - where you can picture the scene: elderly patients awaiting the vaccine in line outside a hospital, as a Budweiser truck sails into the driveway. The driver hops out, pulls up one of those roller doors on the side, and loads a bunch of boxes marked ‘Pfizer’ on a dolly. Then, just as we’ve seen these guys do a million times at the package store, he spins the dolly around and heads for a door. Folks in line watch and exchange glances until someone pulls down their mask to say, ‘That’s genius. In 100 years, we’ve never run out of beer.’ Up ahead, the line begins to move.
    An Electric Vehicle initiative aims to create jobs and replace the gas powered fleet by building a ‘robust charging network’ around the country and providing billions in grants to manufacturers who will retrofit their facilities to build ‘EV’s’ and batteries. Environmentalists like the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters have signed on - but so have the United Automobile Workers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, as well as Ford and General Motors.
    Those ready to criticize had better join the debate the week before your Presidential briefing takes place - presuming you have something constructive to say. Remember, you can’t trash other strength coaches unless you have a plan that’s proven to work.

    In China, 11 miners were rescued after a fatal explosion trapped them more than 2000 feet underground.
    On that Inauguration TV show, 13 year old Brayden Harrington, the stutterer Joe Biden met in New Hampshire, recited a section of John F. Kennedy’s Inauguration speech, including, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,’ - and he slayed it.
    The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are headed to the Super Bowl one year after finishing 7-9. They had potential, if not focus, before quarterback Tom Brady joined them upon leaving the Patriots. ‘It only took one man,’ coach Bruce Arians said, and the ‘belief he gave everybody . . that this could be done.’
    On the coronavirus front, over 300 hospitals on five continents worked together to produce a definitive study on the use of anti-coagulants. The great problem with this disease is that confused and overwhelmed doctors don’t know which medication to use in which phase of a patient’s progression. (Earlier is better; later when too much damage is done, it cannot be reversed.)
    Scientists are also getting a better handle on the role of interferon in both disease progression as well as the long term symptoms afflicting those known as ‘long haulers.’ Interferon is part of the body’s innate immune system, and if the virus can suppress or delay its expression, a patient’s situation can quickly become critical. Interferon disruption also plays a part in the long term effects people feel.
    That’s interesting, say other scientists, because we know how to fix that. We can enhance the innate immune response. In fact, that’s what fevers do, and raising the body’s temperature by way of hot baths has been shown to increase natural killer cell activity and concentrations of interferon by as much as ten-fold. People have been ‘taking the waters’ for centuries, knowing it worked somehow. Now, scientists can articulate what’s actually happening.
    Awesomeness is in constant supply. We just have to push it in the right direction.

    If a handful of people I know on Facebook are any indication, we will always have naysayers. I’m cool with an honest policy debate, like arguing the merits of Westside versus Starting Strength and what goals you’re seeking to achieve, but . . . seriously - I’d say to these people - you want to spend your time spreading misery?
    ‘The lies have begun!’ they declare, along with, ‘This is a one-way trip to socialism.’ What a drag, to be constantly suspicious, staring out the window waiting for some kid to come along so they can scream, ‘Get off my lawn!’ I have never seen a Republican share a post about a policy that measurably makes other people’s lives better.
    Even sadder, for some people this is a matter of survival. FOX and other right wing news outlets have audiences to attract and ad time to sell, so they have to spend their days finding fault, misinterpreting, and questioning motives. Politicians looking to raise their profiles must do the same. Ultimately, this is disingenuous, providing for themselves at the expense of honest debate on the issues.

    President Biden must have looked up at those fireworks and thought, ‘My God, what an honor.’
    Well, yeah, but that was also the level of our expectations.
    On social media that night as folks clamored to know what was going on, someone wrote, ‘That’s the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, giving proof, baby, that our flag is still there.’

    (8, 5, & 2 and 3, 2, 1 rotation)
    Week of: 2/1/21 2 and 1 week
    MONDAY
    1. Squat: 3 sets of 2 or 1: Tom 447.5
    2. Romanians, rack pulls 2 and 2 sets 365, 455
    3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
    3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485
    4. reverse hypers (3x10)
    5. abs; banded pulldowns

    TUESDAY
    1. Inclined bench press: 3 sets of 2 Tom 237.5
    2. Bench press: 245-255 265; 215 reps
    3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 8
    Conditioning (second session)
    sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

    THURSDAY
    1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 1* reps Tom 530
    2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 475
    3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 2x5 350; 2x2 400
    4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
    5. abs: hollow rockers

    FRIDAY
    1. Press: range 175-200, 142.5 reps
    2. Pin press 237.5x2; 2x4 tempo Spoto 200
    3. Pull ups (5x10)
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
    5. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

    SATURDAY - Conditioning
    swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

  5. #305
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    I really can’t get into this, of course, but my older kid was arrested last week, in the latest episode of a long running battle with mental illness. Suitably frightened by the news, my wife and I are scrambling for solutions.
    You’ve probably gathered by now that my life is pretty easy, that I have my own garage gym, have created for myself a pretty effective training routine, and can find time to knock out these long posts. Writing is a skill I’ve decided to work on, just like lifting weights. Life has probably been too easy, where from the safety of my armchair or behind a keyboard I’ve been able to indulge in exciting stories of people operating in faraway places or behind enemy lines. I haven’t been in a position of personal extremis in quite a long time.

    I can only reason by analogy. That weight in the pit of my stomach is worry. What do I tell myself on those sleepless nights?
    Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.
    Gather your resources - your weapons, tools, personnel.
    Stand by to launch.
    Remember, this won’t be easy.

    Our training, in the weight room or on the combatives mat, teaches us to be resourceful. Information exists on setting up an effective training routine. When a technical problem presents itself, coaching is available, which can change an athlete’s outlook significantly. Technique can be a way to separate one’s self from the enormity of the task they’re facing. When my wife is deadlifting, I remind her of what I tell myself: once your back is set and you’re just beginning, push the floor away and feel your hips and the bar rise together for the first few inches. After that, we’ll see how the lift goes; getting started is the hard part. In the squat, as you tee up, you really have to be breathing, I tell her. Create a sense of solidity, expansion, energy, and rhythm that’ll be self fulfilling.
    In combatives, we’ve hit upon a boxing styled cover, with our forearms across our eyes, that can be both defensive and offensive in a pinch. Big, bodily turns can make it pack a wallop, and those same turns are a way to break free from holds, establish new positions, and deliver other powerful strikes. Our name for it is the ‘Lawnmower.’ Others who have similarly discovered the idea have called it the ‘Stonewall’ or the ‘Armadillo.’ We’re still exploring its potential.
    In some cases, the solutions are unattractive at best. When you’re down on your back, subject to a ground-and-pound from above, you can’t just seek to throw him off in a panic. You have to stay cool enough momentarily to find out where he is and what leverage you can use. Maybe you can pull him down, eventually to trap an arm and leg to roll him, or if he stays high, you have to get an elbow and knee together to create an edge you can use as leverage. You’re going to suffer while you’re there.

    That’s where I am now, facing a major reckoning over some very difficult years as a family. This has to be beneficial to the kid, who’s had no interest in treatment despite all the claims of anxiety. It has to be therapeutic for me, too. This structured life I’ve created is probably a reaction to those lost years.
    The rescue crew is rolling out. It turns out I’m one of those being swept out to sea.

    (5, 3, & 2 and 3, 2, 1 rotation)
    Week of: 2/8/21 5 and 3 week
    MONDAY
    1. Squat: 350x5, 2 sets 380x5, 425x1
    2. Romanian deadlifts / rack pulls: 2x5 reps; 2x2; 365, 460
    3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485
    4. reverse hypers (3x10)
    5. abs; banded pulldowns

    TUESDAY
    1. Inclined bench press: 3 sets of 8 Tom 200
    2. Bench press: 225-245-255, reps 215
    3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 8
    Conditioning (second session)
    sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

    THURSDAY
    1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 3* reps Tom 490
    2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 440
    3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 4 sets of 5 Tom 340
    4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
    5. abs: hollow rockers

    FRIDAY
    1. Press: 175-195, reps 145
    2. Pin bench press, 2 sets of 4, 245; tempo-Spoto press, 2 sets of 4 200
    3. Pull ups (5x10)
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
    6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

    SATURDAY - Conditioning
    swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

  6. #306
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    In gathering my resources to face the personal and family reckoning I’ve described, I’ll take a moment to put in a plug for the Home Team: in times of uncertainty, find an English Major. Whatever the crisis - political, personal, pestilent - an English Major can direct you to someone who’s been through it before and written everything down. I’m going to start fielding Spring Training’s first grounders by examining an easy example of a character transformed, Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL. We all know the story: the miserly, unforgiving Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his old business partner as well as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, all of whom force him to examine the error of his ways. Come the morning light, he’s a new man - or himself once more. He knows he must rapidly atone for his thoughtlessness, but more importantly, he has been restored to life.
    We’ve seen so many versions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL that it’s lost its meaning. The truth is, it’s terrifying - quite literally the stuff of nightmares, which shouldn’t be watched as a movie. It should be experienced at night, by candlelight, as an audiobook read by a great actor. Dickens ultimately has a promising message: if a piece of human garbage like Scrooge can be redeemed, then there’s hope for the rest of us.

    I don’t plan to fill this blog with the particulars of my therapeutic experience. Along with privacy comes dignity; the airing of dirty laundry is unseemly, as if I’m fishing for reassurance. I do feel, however, that this is a blog about building strength, which is something that comes in many forms. If my broad descriptions prove helpful to anyone else in distress, it’s to say, ‘It’s cool. You’re not alone.’
    That means I’ll be keeping a private journal, the better to optimize my reflections. My experiences with therapists, the ones working with my kid through all those years, are pretty negative. Not a single one ever articulated what they were discovering or what the long term plan was. In fact, when I’d bring up the subject, they’d claim I was displaying ‘aggression.’
    If someone - even a mental health professional - were to ask me about barbell training, I could explain the logic behind the choice of lifts and the workings of a linear progression. We work toward intermediate programming, and I’ll point out that while much depends on them, it’s an open ended proposition that will follow a general trend and bring about a number of specific adaptations.
    They’ll see their progress day by day. It won’t be a case of hitting the doctor’s office every Wednesday for six months and then being told to back off when I ask, ‘How’s it going?’
    I’m reminded of a book review that flew past a few years ago, which I hope I’m recalling correctly. Upon the death of his wife, an author could not get past his overwhelming, crippling grief. It was Hellish, which made him decide, ‘If I’m in Hell, then I might as well see what this place is about,’ so he undertook a comprehensive study of Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY, which includes INFERNO, no doubt pausing for his own meditations. He had to crawl deeper into the pit in order to get out.

    Speaking of being trapped in a pit, I have a waking nightmare every once in a while, where in the darkness of my room, it’s like I’m trapped in a grave, left to dwell on my regrets - which is strange, because it’s not like I have a million of them. This sensation struck me on occasion even as a kid.
    More accurately, I get struck by flashes of memory, of times gone by when I was running with a pack, having good, uncomplicated fun. The realization that these are gone now, that people have moved on, stabs like a knife at my heart, amping me up.
    In A CHRISTMAS CAROL, though he doesn’t realize it at first, Scrooge is in this kind of pit, which becomes abundantly clear to him at the end. Dickens whips up an alchemy with two very powerful yet opposing forces, the darkness of a man’s soul and the Forces of Light. Dickens is also cagey; they’re not immediately presented as benevolent spirits, though it is clear they are considerably more powerful than Mister Scrooge.
    Flinty and coldhearted as he may be, Scrooge does operate from a position of advantage. Upon the death of partner Jacob Marley seven years prior, he’s the sole owner of a ‘counting-house,’ which would mean he’s a money lender, also in the business of warehousing and shipping, and possibly - and most cruelly - landlording. Scrooge is ‘a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, . . a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.’ He leaves his office door open to keep an eye on his wretched clerk, Bob Cratchit, who works in a ‘dismal little cell’ with a fire of barely one coal’s strength, despite the bitter cold. He’s also a force of loathsome personality, scolding his young, newly engaged nephew, who’s come to invite him to a Christmas revel. Similarly, he bickers with a pair of gentlemen prevailing upon him for some provision “for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.”
    “Are there no prisons?” asks Scrooge. The conversation goes downhill from there.
    In fact, as the supernatural activities get started later that night in his room, Scrooge hangs impressively tough. He’s in a profoundly haunted house; already he’s seen the iron knocker on his door take the shape of Marley’s head. Once inside his dark and gloomy front hall, he’s greeted by the sight of a ghostly coach-and-six, a large horse drawn hearse, turning and charging up the very stairs he will climb. Even as the ghost of Jacob Marley clumps into the room, chained to any number of ‘cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses,’ Scrooge holds his ground, sneering, ‘You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’
    His arrogance fades, however, as the vision of Marley and all he represents becomes increasingly real. Marley’s chains are the shackles he had placed upon himself in life. He is doomed to wander through the world, witnessing ‘what [he] cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.’ The news that ‘I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day,’ has Scrooge sweating and shivering in the same instant. “Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, “Was it a dream or not?”

    The logic of the story is pretty simple: with Scrooge’s resolve broken, the Ghosts of Christmas do not have to perform any great feats of reasoning or persuasion. They simply confront him with the enormity of the moments in his life, and we see an impenetrable old man overcome with emotions. In the journey to the past, Scrooge is amazed by the clarity and detail of the shadows of ‘the things that have been.’ He is quick to sob as he sees himself once more as the lonely boy at boarding school who must console himself with reading tales of adventure. Soon the moment turns joyous as his younger sister turns up in a coach to bring him back home: (interestingly) “Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven!”
    This sister goes on to bear a son who would become the nephew who appeals in vain to Scrooge earlier that afternoon to come to a Christmas gathering.
    Scrooge next sees Fezziwig’s Warehouse, where he apprenticed, close up for the day to host a great ball. He is wide eyed with excitement as he watches the dancing.
    “A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.”
    “Small!” Scrooge will have none of it.
    Then come two unbearable moments in ensuing years. In one, Scrooge the young man is in the company of ‘a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears.’ It’s a break-up; another idol has replaced her, she laments, Scrooge’s pursuit of wealth.
    Scrooge is incredulous that he’s getting dumped, but he does yield the point.
    Her farewell is, ‘May you be happy in the life you have chosen.’
    If that weren’t torture enough, the Spirit then brings him to behold a Christmas Eve some years later. It’s that same woman, now ‘a comely matron,’ with children of her own and a happy household - the life Scrooge could have enjoyed. As her husband comes home, the children swarm him, tearing through his pockets for presents. Later, in a quiet moment, the man tells her he passed by Scrooge’s office. This was the day Marley died. “His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe.”

    “Spirit!” said Scrooge in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.”
    (continued below)

  7. #307
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    (from above)

    Here’s the section for all the red-blooded lads out there - the weightlifters and tough guys who like food, booze, and chasing women - and who knew: the only thing Tiny Tim needs is to jack the protein. We can handle that.
    This is Christmas present, the Christmas of right now, right this very second, the blood-pumping, sense-thrilling mix of cold air and warm food and warm hearts. Dickens sets the stage for a case study in vitality and masculinity, the qualities that holidays were meant to validate.
    Scrooge, as they say in self defense parlance, is ‘switched on,’ keeping a sharp lookout all around his bed for the arrival of the next spirit. We must be careful not to consider Scrooge simply a shriveled old man; he was once young and vital, as we saw moments before. Dickens reminds us that he’s not an incapable guy: ‘Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two . . . are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter;’ The clock tower bell tolls, yet no spirit arrives. Finally it occurs to Scrooge that the Ghost is in the next room, so he must climb out of bed and shuffle to the door. Already, he has lost the battle of the Alpha Males: the Ghost does not appear before you; you appear before the Ghost.
    Scrooge is greeted by an enormous, bearded, barrel chested figure, his bare torso visible beneath his open robe, impervious to the cold blasting through the window and the massive fire roaring in the hearth. ‘Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam.’ This is to call to mind the measure of a man, his appetite as well as his ability to provide for others.
    Off they fly over the city, where Scrooge beholds a merry populace enjoying snowball fights, dashing to the grocer’s to prepare their feasts, and then answering the church bells’ summons. This is Christmas as an athletic event, a hearty, red-cheeked bustling in the snowy streets.
    They drop invisibly into the house of Scrooge’s nephew, to the very party to which Scrooge had been invited. To his great surprise, Scrooge finds himself warmly regarding the young man. As far as the fiancee goes, listen to Dickens: “She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed—as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory.”
    As it turns out, they’re talking about old Scrooge, yet as dismissive or impatient as everyone might be, the nephew remains generous and fair minded. ‘I have nothing to say against him,’ and ‘’I can’t be angry,’ he maintains between belly laughs and deep quaffs of brew.
    It also turns out that Scrooge’s niece is not the only ‘provoking . . [and] perfectly satisfactory’ young lady in attendance. Her sisters are there, and after some music, one of them finds herself in a game of Blind Man’s Bluff, where one of the lads, presumably blindfolded, is cheating flagrantly and hilariously, chasing her around the room, knocking over fire irons and climbing over chairs until they wind up in a corner behind a set of tall curtains. There, as Scrooge and the spirit can see, they embrace and kiss passionately as the rest of the room seemingly forgets about them.
    Before that, Scrooge and the Ghost drop in on the home of his ill-used clerk, Bob Cratchit. “They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty;” yet somehow they’ve managed a decent sized goose for dinner and are making as merry as possible. However, Scrooge is moved by the sight of Tiny Tim, ‘a cripple,’ the little boy whom Bob always hovers near, often grasping his little ‘withered’ hand.
    ’Tell me if Tiny Tim will live,’ Scrooge begs the Ghost.
    ‘I see a vacant seat . . . if these shadows remain unaltered.’
    Clearly, Tiny Tim is a literary allusion to the effects of poverty. True, people can muster holiday spirit every so often, but the effects of deprivation are real - and deadly. Throughout the story, we see the spirits of other unfortunates, the very folks Scrooge has been willing to overlook. If Tiny Tim has a wasting disease (and is later saved) then critics surmise that he suffers either from rickets, from a lack of Vitamin D, or a condition called renal tubular acidosis, either one of which can be tackled pretty easily.
    As Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present are due to part, Scrooge notices a tiny foot protruding from beneath the Ghost’s robes. The ghost reveals two ‘yellow, meager’ children, a little girl and boy, Want and Ignorance, respectively. ‘. . [B]eware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased,’ warns the Ghost.
    “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
    “Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words.”
    Unspoken but understood between them in the silence is the Ghost’s final admonition: ‘Man up.’

    We know how this ends, but by this point, so does Scrooge. As the final Spirit arrives, he can hardly stand, his legs are shaking so much. The Spirit waits a second to let him recover, upon which Scrooge says, ‘I know your purpose is to do me good . . . Lead on, Spirit!’
    Nothing Scrooge sees is particularly unexpected. Upon his death, his household items make ghastly pickings for a set of ghastly pickers. Most significantly, one woman goes to pawnshop with a set of bed curtains, the curtains which had for so many years kept Scrooge alone in the darkness.
    Upon the death of Tiny Tim, we see the Cratchits try to put a brave face on a new Christmas, only to have Bob lose his composure in a matter of minutes.
    The specter leads Scrooge to behold his own gravestone - of course, an inevitability at some point - but Scrooge’s seeing his own forgotten, neglected stone makes him realize he’s practically dead already. He’s in a profoundly dark and haunted place, which is his mind - his life - if not literally the house, and he’s been enclosed in the bed curtains of retreat and isolation.

    ‘Golden sunlight, Heavenly sky, and sweet fresh air’ explode into the room when Scrooge tears his window open.
    Really, the classic movie IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE does a more thorough job depicting its transformed protagonist, George Bailey, embracing life once more and the world re-embracing him. Some CHRISTMAS CAROL adaptations take the dramatic liberty of fleshing out Scrooge’s new lease on life. Dickens, however, wraps things up pretty quickly. He’s more interested in Scrooge’s immediate psychological state and delivering a simple but important message.
    First, a few details: from his window, Scrooge wrangles a passing boy to fetch the nearby butcher and the prize turkey that’s been hanging in his window. The turkey’s the size of a 442 engine block, and Scrooge happily pays the boy, the butcher, and for a cab to have it delivered immediately to the Cratchit residence. He rushes out and quickly tracks down the men who had appealed to his charity the previous day. ‘I fear [my name] might not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon,’ he begins and soon suggests a donation that might do a fair number of folks some good.
    “My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?”
    “If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farthing less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.”
    Scrooge appears at his nephew’s, where the festivities continue. He raises Bob Cratchit’s salary considerably, becomes a second father to Tiny Tim - who thrives on his new ketogenic diet - and a friend to all.
    That’s just Dickens tying up loose ends. More important are Scrooge’s senses of liberation and purpose. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man.’ He frisks around his apartment to the point that he’s out of breath. Every corner of what had once been a crypt is bathed in light. “There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! There’s the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!”
    “He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness.”

    Be careful not to miss Dickens’ most ghostly little moment: It’s when Ebenezer as a young boy is brought home from boarding school by his sister. “Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven!”
    This would suggest that decades before, Scrooge’s father was treated to his own Christmas ass-kicking. Yeah, this can run in families or be compounded in family situations, Dickens is telling us. Plenty of folks have sorted it out, however. When the chips are down, and you’re left to face your past, present, and future, remember you can’t do it alone. Help comes from without: the spirits, experts, authors . . . or even from Above.

  8. #308
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    (8, 5, & 2 and 3, 2, 1 rotation)
    Week of: 2/15/21 5 and 2 week
    MONDAY
    1. Squat: 3 sets of 5 Tom 367.5, 405x1
    2. Romanian deadlifts, rack pulls: 2x5; 2x3+ 365, 445
    3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
    3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485
    4. reverse hypers (3x10)
    5. abs; banded pulldowns

    TUESDAY
    1. Inclined bench press: 3 sets of 5 Tom 217.5
    2. Bench press: 225-265 reps 217.5
    3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets, 40’s, 50’s
    Conditioning (second session)
    sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

    THURSDAY
    1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 2* reps Tom 472.5
    2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 425
    3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 3 sets of 8 330
    4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
    5. abs: hollow rockers

    FRIDAY
    1. Press: 175-195, reps 145
    2. Bench press pin press, 2x4, 247.5, tempo spoto presses 2x4, 205
    3. Pull ups (5x10)
    4. Dumbbell curls: 4 sets, 40’s, 50’s
    5. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

    SATURDAY - Conditioning
    swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

  9. #309
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    In the news in recent days has been the hiring and firing of Chris Doyle as Director of Sports Performance for the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars, a controversy that drew attention to accusations of racism and bullying in Doyle’s past. That's another misstep for Jacksonville. Having won only a single game last season, the Jaguars are in need of a complete restructuring. They’ve hired champion college coach Urban Meyer, most recently of Ohio State, and they’re in position to draft the nation’s top prospect, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Meyer’s turning to Doyle would seem to have made sense; in 20 years at the University of Iowa he trained 180 players who went on to play professionally, as well as 19 assistants who became head strength and conditioning coaches.
    However, Doyle’s naming drew immediate criticism, including that of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an advocacy group for minority coaches and management professionals throughout the league. Doyle, who had been let go months ago by Iowa, resigned the position; Meyer and the Jaguars issued a statement saying they ‘should have given greater consideration to how his appointment may have affected all involved.’
    This brings us to some interesting questions: How do we avoid these reigns of terror? What does Doyle do now?

    Two and a half years ago, I wrote about University of Maryland strength coach Rick Court, who was forced to resign after the death of 19-year old Jordan McNair, a football player who suffered heatstroke during a conditioning test. An investigation revealed that Court personified ‘the fire-breathing, helmet-smacking, iron-fisted drill instructor, his head shaved bare, whistle dangling from his neck.’ Court cultivated an atmosphere of ‘fear and intimidation,’ ‘belittling, humiliation, and embarrassment,’ and ‘extreme verbal abuse.’
    Players said, ‘He'll put more weight on the bar than you can do, ever done in your life, and expect you to do it multiple times.’ He was also known for ‘heaving collapsed athletes back to their feet to continue running.’
    While Chris Doyle insisted ‘he never crossed the line of unethical behavior or bias based on race’ at the University of Iowa, [numerous] ‘former players alleged Doyle disparaged, demeaned and bullied them while in the program,’ according to ESPN. The Iowa athletic director decided that ‘separating from Doyle would be the thoughtful and sensible approach for Iowa to move forward.’

    One would think that the best possible ally an aspiring athlete can have is a good coach, someone who can help them develop the strength, conditioning, agility, and skill needed to succeed. For example, we know a lot of professionals - in every sport - pay to join top tier training centers during the off season. They don’t go there to be abused and humiliated.
    Why should college students put up with that? What happened to Court and Doyle respectively, that their calling descended into sadism? (This assumes, possibly naively, that they each got into coaching because they enjoyed helping kids get stronger.) If Doyle has launched 19 other coaches into positions of leadership, are they now running prison camps? I don’t imagine that Rick Court actually meant to kill Jordan McNair. However, he can’t shrug him off as a statistical anomaly if he had a habit of tormenting individuals up close and personally.
    Power corrupted these guys.

    Consider this scenario: a big Division One program, with all the typical training facilities - yet in this same town is one of those commercial training centers run by a handful of former pro stars, employing a former Olympic sprinter or two as well as accomplished coaches and trainers. In the off-season, pros come from far and near.
    If a handful of the college team’s players could afford to go train in the professional center during the winter, would the coaching staff let them? The players would return for Spring Ball in tip-top condition. The football coaches certainly couldn’t complain about a lack of preparation.
    The strength coaches would lose their minds over being put out of work. If they can’t compete with the pro shop - or if they treat people miserably - the players would have no use for them.
    That defeats the power imbalance, at least as it existed at Iowa and Maryland. Coaches are traveling gamblers willing to bet a school’s athletic budget, ticket sales, and television revenue that they can cull enough talent out of a stockyard of potential talent to field a winning team. The poor players are commodities, shifted and traded like futures while all they want to do is pursue dreams of greatness. If they’re deemed lacking, then they’re driven mercilessly, which is where we see the Rick Courts of the world striving to lash a few more diamonds out of the rough or punish the weak for their lack of promise. Not a lot of love is lost in college ball, if the number of pro-caliber players leaving years before their eligibility expires is any indication.

    Back in Guam, the Navy SEAL’s I knew were self motivated guys. Even those who didn’t run their heads off as triathletes still ran, swam, and lifted to keep their qualifications. Special Warfare is an entirely voluntary career field. In fact, well before any of them shipped off for training, they were told that the experience would be physically and mentally brutal. The instructors would go out of their way to test candidates’ resolve, since experience has shown that their brand of training and combat requires the most resilient mindsets. Even as they made the team, they remained dedicated, to the point of competitive, in their training.

    A college football program that operates like a SEAL Team and evens the balance of power is one in which off season strength and conditioning is optional. While that might sound like a recipe for wholesale apathy, it’ll have the opposite effect, throwing open opportunities for those willing to work. The coaches can post standards for those hoping to earn - or keep - their scholarships: say, a 1.0 (times) bodyweight press, a 1.5 bench press, 2.0 squat, and a 2.5 deadlift. There would be scores for conditioning and agility, as well as on-field skills, and the coaches could weigh the combination as they see fit.
    Now the strength coach becomes a resource, if he or she is any good, but the players don’t have to listen to a damned thing if they don’t want to.
    The head coach can go further, spelling out that if players want to dress for games and make the actual playing squad, they’ll have to commit to all team activities during practice season. Playing top tier football means the kids will be met with very, very high expectations regarding dedication and professionalism, but in return, they will be treated like adults. This can be spelled out well ahead of time, even put on the school website, so players will know what they’re getting into long before anybody feels ‘forced’ into anything.

    In 1978, the visionary, landmark film ANIMAL HOUSE captured the truth that some young men of college age suffer occasional lapses of judgment. The SEAL’s, I should point out, were hardly choir boys, either. Football coaches no doubt deal with moments of lunkheadedness all the time, which must try their patience.
    To get out ahead of this, one initiative could be a social awareness curriculum, ranging from basic manners - learning to use a knife and fork, tie a tie, and talk to women constructively - to issues of style, fashion, art, and then politics and race. This way, guys who are otherwise pretty insulated from normal campus life can gain some awareness of society’s expectations. As with strength and conditioning, this agenda can’t be rammed down their throats.
    At Iowa, Chris Doyle’s impatience with his players was allegedly race-based, with Black players enduring abuse along the lines of ‘ghetto’ or ‘gangsta’ comparisons. That’s what drew the greatest condemnation upon his departure from Iowa and brief hiring in Jacksonville, but stories have also emerged of his ‘stepping on players' fingers during workouts [during warm-ups or stretching] and an incident in which 13 players were hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis.’

    If above I speculated that Doyle and Court meant well at the onset of their careers but were corrupted by power or pressure, then an alternate explanation would be that these guys are like those priests or Boy Scout leaders we’ve heard about, maneuvering into positions of advantage in order to inflict cruelty.
    What do they do now? I’ve run out of time to answer that question, and I’m not in any position to speak about atonement. We can only hope that aside of trying to find new jobs, these guys are seeking some kind of personal salvation.

    (8, 5, & 2 and 3, 2, 1 rotation)
    Week of: 2/22/21 2 and 1 week
    MONDAY
    1. Squat: 3 sets of 2 387.5 single 425
    2. Romanians, rack pulls 2 and 2 sets 365, 415
    3. Power Cleans (3x3) light JC 75 - 95
    3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485
    4. reverse hypers (3x10)
    5. abs; banded pulldowns

    TUESDAY
    1. Inclined bench press: 3 sets of 2 Tom 240
    2. Bench press: 245-255 265; 215 reps
    3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 8
    Conditioning (second session)
    sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

    THURSDAY
    1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 1* reps Tom 500
    2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 450
    3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 2x5 350; 2x2 350
    4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
    5. abs: hollow rockers

    FRIDAY
    1. Press: range 175-200, 145 reps
    2. Pin press 250; 2x4 tempo Spoto 205
    3. Pull ups (5x10)
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
    5. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

    SATURDAY - Conditioning
    swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

  10. #310
    Join Date
    Dec 2015
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    Washington, DC
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    starting strength coach development program
    The floor press, a lift that doesn’t seem to be much discussed around here, and which is mostly associated with the goateed, shaven headed giants of the Westside Barbell world who have far bigger Upper Body fish to fry than the rest of us, actually has a fantastic lesson to impart. It’s a cue that can change people’s understanding of the bench press.
    The idea, as you’re lying on the ground, is to let the bar down slowly and allow the backs of your arms to get fully pushed against the floor. You relax and commit the weight to the ground, as if this were ‘a box squat for the upper body,’ as the giants would say.
    At this point, you get a freebie - a ‘do-over.’ As the bar rests on your vertical forearms, pull your torso up and reset your shoulder blades so that they’re pinched and shrugged back once more. You also re-arch your back, as though you’re putting the shoulder blades in your back pockets.

    Yes, you already did that. You might be following all the rules, setting your shoulders and arching your back for a set of benches, but as you’re lowering the weight, you’re losing that position. Think about it: obviously, if there’s something to reset on the floor, you’re losing it - even if you had no idea. It’s been happening more than you realize, which is why that sore shoulder or pec muscle has snuck up on you.
    Then, locked and loaded, you drive the weight up - - with zero pain.

    That’s the revelation: the pec pain you’ve had is NOT from your grip width and NOT from your elbow angle or all those other stupid things you’ve been trying to fix. IT’S YOUR BACK. You’re hurting your front because you’re losing your back.

    Forgive me if I’m a little late to the party. In STARTING STRENGTH, Mark Rippetoe does spell out that an athlete’s adducted shoulder blades ‘make a flat spot on the upper back to push against the bench itself.’ This also tilts the upper back, pushing the rib cage up, and increasing the mechanical efficiency of the pec and delt contraction. He grants that keeping one’s back tight can be difficult; one cue is for an athlete to think about driving that flat spot in his back against the bench as much he does his arms into the press. Learning to complete all one’s reps without losing this ideal position is a goal.
    The Australian website RANGE OF MOTION and a piece in THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORTS PHYSICAL THERAPY explain that when the shoulder blades are wedged apart during the lift, the leverage in the shoulder is wrecked as things spread sideways. ‘. . [T]he entire load is placed on the capsular ligament of the shoulder as the humerus goes into hyper-horizontal abduction.’ This is a failure of the scapular muscles to ‘position the glenoid so that efficient glenohumeral movement can occur . . . When the scapula fails to perform its stabilization role, shoulder complex function is inefficient, which can result not only in decreased neuromuscular performance but also may predispose the individual to injury of the glenohumeral joint.’
    Not only do the muscles surrounding the shoulder blades provide joint stability, the surface of the bench does as well, serving as the foundation on which the press motion is mounted. If proper technique is not used, the problem is not so much an acute injury as it is long term. With an unglued scapular-thoracic joint and ‘hyper-horizontal abduction,’ - your arms beyond horizontal when the bar’s touching your chest - the muscles involved in internal rotation of the humerus tighten ‘reactively.’ They’ve been awkwardly hanging on for dear life; they don’t want to stretch anymore; they hurt.

    In the long, sad story of my bench press, ‘decreased neuromuscular performance,’ has definitely played a part. I don’t think I’ve ever kept my back in one piece correctly, but only in recent years have I been strong enough to do myself any damage. I got my lifetime goal of 300, and even 310. It was gunning hard for 315, three wheels on each end of the bar, that tore me up.

    I think I can get on the hunt once more, rehabilitating the strength and positioning of my upper back by way of the floor press. In seeking to reset less on the ground each time around, you do learn to tighten up at the top of the reps, with the bar at arms’ length. The idea then is to transfer this skill (carefully) to the bench, where I won’t have the fail-safe mechanism of the floor meeting my elbows. This won’t be any kind of rapid adjustment, and using moderate weights will be the most sensible way to proceed. I can’t focus on the back half of things if the presses themselves are life and death struggles.
    What do I say to that sore little pec muscle deep in the seam between my chest and delt, who’s been mistreated for so long? ‘Dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

    (8, 5, & 2 and 3, 2, 1 rotation)
    Week of: 3/1/21 8 and 3 week
    MONDAY
    1. Squat: 3 sets of 8: 320, 405 single
    2. Romanian deadlifts, 3x5: 315 hangs
    3. 4 sets of heavy shrugs 485
    4. reverse hypers (3x10)
    5. abs; banded pulldowns

    TUESDAY
    1. Inclined bench press: 3 sets of 8 Tom 202.5
    2. Bench press: 225-245-255, reps 215
    3. 5 sets of 10 Hanging rows
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 8
    Conditioning (second session)
    sled pull 2 miles; 20, 0 (and six 50-yard runs)

    THURSDAY
    1. Deadlift: work up to a set of 3* reps Tom 450
    2. Deadlift: back off sets - 90% of top set; 2 sets of same* reps Tom 405
    3. Squats: (90% of Monday’s weight) 4 sets of 5 Tom 320 chains
    4. Reverse Hypers (3x10)
    5. abs: hollow rockers

    FRIDAY
    1. Press: 175-195, reps 147.5
    2. Floor Press: 4 sets of 3; 220
    3. Pull ups (5x10)
    4. Barbell curls: 4 sets of 5
    6. 3 sets kettlebell sit ups

    SATURDAY - Conditioning
    swim 1 mile or row 6000 meters

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