I saw that my old friend and elitefts teammate Dave Kirschen competed at the Arnold this weekend. After pulling a pr he symbolically left his belt on the platform. He went out and hugged his family in what he said would be his last meet.
Dave and I have talked about competing and retiring a number of times. Some make a conscious choice on when to walk away. Others don't even realize it will be their last meet. Injuries, illness, family, etc all happen in life. I know I have certainly experienced "Man plans, God laughs."
Another old friend and training partner from the past Mike Olmo squatted 950 lbs easily and simply walked away. I always wondered how he could have walked away so comfortably without even taking a stab at a grand. At the time he was ok with it. A good 15 years later he's back to training and regrets not going after the 1,000 especially being significantly older now along with some tough injuries holding him back.
After I hit my last 600 raw bench at 275 I knew I was done with seriously competing on a high level. When I say seriously competing on a high level I mean when you are sacrificing everything else in your life to be on top. Since then I have competed a few times and planned on doing meets here and there for fun. At the very least I wanted to hit one more at 181 to make my 7th different weight class as an adult. The sad reality is with my injuries it might not be in the cards.
The point of all of this is, don't make the mistake of leaving anything on the platform for the next time. Tomorrow is promised to no one. ALWAYS compete as if it will be your last meet!
