the Toothpaste doesn't go on your Face

I've accepted the fact that while my brain works well it's also slower than my box jump cycle time, and I hope that my writing is at a minimum adequate because I know that my speech varies from cryptic to idiotic. I'm still sometimes shocked by my apparent verbal incompetence. I recently told a group of people that I squat like they brush their teeth, and I quickly realized that neither they nor I knew what I was talking about.

It was an accident, but I'm right.

Yes, maybe this is after the fact rationalization, but it's like this: I think it's important, I do it with regularity, and I don't get the toothpaste on my face.

Lately some attention has been given to the fact that I start squatting with an empty 45 pound bar. I usually say, and it's true, that I can't immediately squat to parallel, but I'm not just warming up my hips; I'm seeing where the toothpaste is going. I'm not perfect at anything, and sometimes I get a minty-fresh and supposedly whiter mustache, but the idea is to rein that shit in before it's all over my face.

I haven't catalogued how many ways there are to fail at brushing teeth, and after years of multiple tries a day, I'm not too worried about it. There are many small ways to go wrong squatting, but they all show up as one of the big three: sitting down and not back, falling forward, and having the knees collapse inward. Sometimes everything works, and life is beautiful. Usually one, two, or even all three of these things are happening. The trick is to start figuring this out at 45 pounds and have everything fixed somewhere south of 300 pounds.

Consistency makes the process possible. Every repetition at every weight is done in the same way. If like me, your left hand goes on the bar first, then your left hand goes on the bar first from 45 pounds until your third lift in competition. If you're going to arch out a 1rm attempt, you're going to arch out 45 pounds. If you don't have a two-step walk-out, I don't want to see it, and if you do, you don't take three steps with 45 pounds. And of course I could go on ad naseum.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I might try to brush my teeth wrong handed next time and see what happens.

I wouldn't dream of doing that with my squat, but maybe that's because mommy never did tell me I had to squat.

I do this because I want to.

I might as well become as good as I can.