NASA Squats

I'm still exhausted after the NASA Colorado Grand powerlifting meet yesterday in Loveland, Colorado.  It's taking a bit of will power on my part not to dip into the leftover Vicodin today, so I think I'll just put up video of my second and third squat attempts.

After opening with an easy 385, I tried 407.

I thought I'd have no problems at 418, but I got smashed.

I'll figure out what the problem with 418 was and start going after 440.

For now I'm happy that I made my major goal of squatting over 400 in a meet.

Thanks to everyone who helped from text love, to ammonia and wraps, to Internet psychotherapy.

I felt alone sometimes, but I know I never was.

Twenty-Four Hours

In the end you have your contractile tissue and your heart.

I've done good work with my contractile tissue.

 My heart always wavers, but lately it's been taking walks around lakes.  In a frighteningly deep sense I enjoy its wanderings because it shows me I'm still Human.  I'm learning to sit back and watch it without worrying or trying to direct it.

But look, it's the only one I have, and I need it to be in line for the next day until I'm done squatting.

I've yet to see flowers handed out at the end of a meet to the lifter most in touch with his feminine side.

If I could I'd be sequestered today.  I can't quite pull that off, so I'll smile and do my Human impersonation.

I'll even eat tonight with one of my training partners.  Hopefully she'll shut the fuck up.  If not, I'll have no qualms about suggesting it to her.

Right now I'm cultivating the Heart Full of Napalm.

Thank you for your understanding.

I'll be back Sunday.

Lifting, Legs, & 04:30

It's easy to almost lift.  You watch someone do it and then go through the motions.

It's harder yet to lift correctly.  Aside from being in uncomfortable positions, you have to obsess over annoying technical points.  So now you're uncomfortable, and instead of thinking of finding comfort, you have to push your knees out, or squeeze your shoulder blades together, or flex your butt cheeks.  Then too, if you're doing it right, you have to wonder if perhaps you're going to get crushed.

And when you're thinking in terms of crushing or being crushed, it becomes a matter of attitude.

I won't say that I do it the right way, but rather that my way works for me.  If attitude is teachable, I don't know how to do it.  I try to show it and see what happens.



After waking up way too early, again, today, I checked my e-mail and was elated to find that Mike T. has at least one important aspect of attitude nailed: making shit out of training partners.  Mike sent our group of lifters this picture of me, obviously completely authentic and undoctored in any way.

How he got it, I don't know.  I don't remember it which makes me think it must have been off Sao Paulo about 6 years ago.  Hey, not only was I younger, I was also drinking can after can of Caracu.

So it goes.

What I have to say to Mike is that now when I get out of bed and don't even bother pumping up with an air squat, I look like this:

What you got to say now you sparrow legged no ass bald faced punk?








I train people at 4:30 am now.  This automatically leads to correct attitude:

First ever 4:30 am class.

Weekend

I was thinking a lot beyond squatting this weekend.  It was challenging, and I think rewarding.


I'm still going to squat big next Saturday though.

Bigger Straws

I don't own a camel.

I've heard that you can pile straw on them, and when you put finally one too many straws on, the camel's back breaks.

I doubt that you can get a Human to stand there while you try the same thing, and I don't care about static loading anyway; I care about squatting.  I'm sure that if I tried to squat straw for a one rep max adding one at a time, I'd quit through fatigue and boredom before I got to a reasonable warm up weight.

Realistically a straw for squatting Humans is probably five pounds.  Yes I know there are fractional plates, but they're rarely used, so you slap a 2.5 pound plate on each side, you have five pounds, and that's probably a straw.  If 100 pounds causes discomfort or even better fear, then 105 might very well break your back.

I know entirely too well that five pounds is real.  On a linear progression like I've been doing the last two months or so, I use an additional five pounds each session.  Over weeks and months it's relentless.  My working weight for sets of five has gone up 100 pounds over the last ten weeks.  Yes, five pounds is real.

So five pounds is real but five reps is not.  I'm looking for a 1rm, and that in competition.

Without giving numbers, I plan to open the August 25th meet with my current meet PR.  Barring injury I'm next going to put another twenty pounds on the bar, and depending on what happens there, I might very well next put another twenty or twenty-five pounds on.

I'm not playing this time.

I know that if I fail, the failure will have been a physical, technical, or mental problem.

 I'm quite sure I have adequate strength for what I'm attempting.  My training loads have been higher than ever, yes even higher than before surgery.

In the last months I've uncovered some technical problems, and I'll work full time on fixing those after the meet.  For now I have to dance with who I brought so to speak, and while she's not the prom queen, I wouldn't kick her out of the gym for tipping a chalk bucket over.

Following surgery I've lost a lot of my former fear.  I'm all full of titanium and synthetic mesh, and my intestines are not going to spill on the floor.  My mental game is much improved, but there is still the fear of a back break.

I'm trying to PR by 20-45 pounds.

I've decided a straw must weigh 50.

15 Seconds of Fame

Saturday I went to a seminar with two time World Champion Rafael Lovato jr. at Dark Horse Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.  I was one of the first people to arrive, and I was astounded when Rafael greeted me with, "hey James, how's it going?"  I was trying to figure out what I had done that would make him know me, and then I remembered that we had been introduced briefly Thursday, and well, I do have a distinctive appearance.

Only one of these guys has not been a World Champion.

Winning

You know you've blown up when people get you tattooed on themselves.

I think this was in Marseilles.  I don't remember the women; must have been the absinthe.