8/14
Activations
Suspension strap planks with some fall out pauses.
MAG handle pulldowns 8x8
Bell rows 6x8 per arm
Banbell Press 8x5, Couple down sets
1 lap med heavy prowler
8/13
Activations
2 laps light prowler
8/12
Activations with 1 lap med heavy prowler
8/11
Activations with planks
Pulldowns many
1 lap prowler med heavy
8/10
Activations with bird dogs and plank woek
3 laps prowler
8/9
Activations
1 lap prowler
Belt squat 8x8 worked on breathing through entire sets
Lot of weird shit
back crawl with 25lb plate-one long run
Used crash mat to do walks on knees with a plate
Reverse lunges onto mat with plates
"Somebody got to pay." This part of a quote from one of my favorite movies ever, Wall Street. This popped into my mind as I started writing this one. This past week was a tough one for all of us cumulating in the funeral of our friend Jacob Holmes. It was a end but also a beginning as it always is with life. His send off was pretty awesome with laughs, tears , lots of sangin' and some good sermons. At one point , I did lean over to Ryan and say, my going out is going to be viking style. Burn me up and have drinks to celebrate the good, the bad and as my friends can attest, the really really ugly. Ryan asked me what body of water and I said we are going to get a kiddie pool with a funeral pyre over it. LIght me up and send me on my way...
Early in life we have lots of laughs, good times and bad times. The lessons we learn mostly are how to avoid alot of the bad times . We avoid real death at funerals. The reality of the end is seemingly unbelievable and most brains are not ready for this inevitability . We grieve but we don't really understand, at least I did not as a youngster. We have pain but it is just the way we percieve it at that time. We really don't understand it. I spent all of my life clamming up and locking down when people died or were gravely ill. My first instance was my grandmother. She was a awesome grandma who spoiled my brother and I when she could. (My first instance of granny boobies was with her when I mistakenly went in her room without knocking. So when that joke is said, I think of her as well and lauggghh) I loved her dearly and still do. We moved alot so we would see her for year or so stints early in my childhood when my father took off to Korea during his service time. During my last year of high school, my father was retiring and sent us back home to my birthplace of Indiana. For me this was great, as I knew everyone and I was the new kid in town enjoying all the victories of the new kid in town(in high school, wink, wink.) who but still knew everyone. My grandmother had moved about a hour away with my Aunt Madie. I had a car(well most of the time, it sorta quit half way through my senior year until I rebuilt the engine) and was running wide open the entire year. I worked for my Aunt and Uncle cleaning their trailer for gas and beer money(she had a zillion birds too and my main duty was cleaning their cages weekly. The love birds hated me and squacked at me nonstop). When I say wide open I mean all that you can imagine, non stop. I don't know how I graduated honestly or lived in some cases.
But during this time my grandma would ask my Mom about me and why I wouldn't come see her. As much as I loved her, I could not stop long enough in my selfishness to go see her. When I graduated, my father had still not moved up with us and changed his mind about staying in Indiana. Part of it was finding work and I think part of it was his own selfishness not to leave South Carolina and his friends. So we packed it up and took off back to SC after I graduated. I don't remember who we said goodbye to except my Aunt and Uncle. I honestly never forgave myself for that either. She died a year or so later. At the funeral, everyone was crying except one of my cousins who just stood there shaking his head. I did not cry either. I clammed up and shut down with guilt and shame for decades.
Fast forward to the mid 2000s. I was killing it as a powerlifter and trainer. I had as many people as I wanted to keep me powerlifting(that was my only real job to me at the time). I rose up from the ashes I had wallowed in since childhood, my own personal phoenix story. One of my clients was Larry Powell, he had severe rheumatoid arthritis to the point he was not suppose to live past 16 years old but here he was, in his 50s , taking many beatings from me. I trained his wife Tammie in the beginning and it took some convincing that he could lift weights at all. But once at the gym, he loved every second. I often had to modify exercises as his hands would not allow him to grip much. His feet were knotted terribly and he hobbled . Honestly everything on his body was knotted. But GD , he never backed off and hated every second I had to modify things for him. He talked shit back to me constantly so I turned it up on his ass daily. He was a engineer at a paper mill for decades and argued with me daily about how the parking lot surface was the same no matter which way we dragged the sled or pushed the prowler. THe parking lot has mild grades on it so I knew all the ups and downs, where it stuck to the pavement, how the weather played a roll in it friction wise, which way was harder on different equipment. He argued these variables made no difference even after I watched him take his beatings out there. He never relented on that fact which to this day still makes me laugh. As the years went on, he went back to school and worked after his mill retirement. He stopped coming as much and after while I rarely saw him. He always had heart issues as well and they finally caught up with him he passed. He was a tough old bastard and I loved him too. But at the time, I was not ready for this and did the same thing at his services. I clammed up, locked down and avoided it like it was not real, even though I knew he was gone.
There are other stories like my Cousins Junior and Joyce(they were more like my Aunt and Uncle who were awesome and I loved them dearly as well-fantastic people who cared for everyone) but my history repeated itself under these circumstances and I shut down. But, eventually the toll gots to be paid. With Jacobs passing, a large portion of the chickens came home to roost. All of these memories flooded me all week and still are. I know some is age related but I also know you just got to look them in the eyes and deal with them. That is the hard thing to say. Much is just shame and guilt which I think sometimes I have come to terms with but still catch myself in sadness and some tears. You always wish you knew then what you know now. The reality is it is just the fear of the unknown and just not facing it. I have spent alot of time hunting this down through powerlifting into the unknown , be acitvated, hours of massage therapy, endless hours doing sled and prowler, self help books of ALL types, mantras , etc. All the things I have done have certainly helped me along and sometimes you get what you get when you need it with these things. Sometimes you just have to take that shit and take a big ole bite of your own made up world of shit sandwich. Your shit sandwich always tastes good to you , it is yours and yours alone, but at some point and time you do have to understand it is a shit sandwhich ,which you have made up over the years and that at any time you can stop eating on. Although I have made alot of progress as stated earlier and it is possible that my shit sandwich is now a shit slider. Still there but smaller now and a known admitted quantity.
The moral here is there is no moral. Say goodbye to your friends and loved ones when they leave , tell them you love them, try not to be a jerky jerk all the time, eat some cookies, have fun doing whatever you have to do and if you want to do something else, go do it.
Spud