Constantly Learning

Life has the great ability to teach us very valuable lessons or even to reaffirm previously learned lessons. These lessons can sometimes be very brutal, and for a guy like me, it must be that way in order to sink into my very thick skull. A few weeks ago, I subjected to one of these reaffirming merciless life lessons in a way that gave me plenty of time to think about it. It was like getting a baseball bat to my low back by Mark McGwire.

New Homeowner

It all started with purchasing my first home back in the beginning of the year. It's not a huge house or a really expensive house, but it's my house and I like to take care of my things because I work hard for them. The house was built in 2005 and apparently sat empty for over a year. This meant that all the grass and landscape was totally shot. I don't want to be the a-hole on the block with the crappy yard. Plus, I don't want to drive past a bunch of crappy-looking houses on my way home, so I shouldn't let my house look crappy. As soon as the weather improved, I started working on the yard whenever I could find time. Living in the desert and loving the desert, I wanted to bring a little bit of that to my yard. I wanted to bring in some boulders and some slate-type rock that can be found out in the desert. During my first trip out to find rocks, I found some big rocks to place around the yard and some rocks to build some small retaining walls around my trees and around the lawn. On my second trip; just recently, I was going to just get more smaller flat rocks for the retaining walls. After loading my truck up, I started on my way back. Along the way, I spotted this big rock that I really liked. It was probably 10 or 12 inches thick and completely flat on the front and back. It was two-and-a-half feet across and maybe three-and-a-half feet tall. I figured it weighed somewhere between 300 to 500 pounds. It reminded me of a tombstone or a husafell stone. I thought it would look totally appropriate in my front yard! I thought for a split second, that I went out only to get small rocks and that I needed to get back home to meet a friend coming into town that day. That thought was quickly extinguished and I stopped the truck to get a better look.

The Stone

This was the very beginning of my lessons. I flipped the rock up and realized it was very dense rock and a bit heavy. A brief statement flashed through my head, “I should stick to my plan and get on home. It's early in the morning, I am tight, and still sore from my last train.” Like I said, it flashed through my head and then off into oblivion. I backed my truck up and popped down the tailgate. The rock was on a hill, and as I set up with one foot on the hill and the other on flat ground, another thought flashed through my mind, “This is probably not the best way to pick this stone up, I should slide it down and pick it up on level ground.” Well Chad's sometimes enormous ego (or the little devil on my shoulder) quickly squashed that thought with a very profound and loud statement of, “Dude, it's 300 to 500 pounds. Just throw it in the back of the truck, you sissy!” I decided I liked the later statement better! I bent over and picked up the rock, but as I got it off the ground, it tried to flip forward on me. I set it back down and got a better grip. On the second attempt, I got it about half way up, looked over to check the height of the tailgate, and my low back exploded with a sharp pain. I felt this pain before and immediately dropped the rock, closed the tailgate, got in the truck, and drove home.

At this point, I was still optimistic that it was a light strain. However, as I drove home on a very bumpy desert dirt road, my optimism was taking a hit. With every bump, I let out a F-bomb with clinched teeth. I was flexing my abs like crazy. So, for 10-15 minutes, it was F%^&, F$%^, F@#$, F@#$, F@#$, F%^&, F^&*, F$%^, with my teeth mashing down on each other and my abs screaming at me to give them a break. My only thought at that point was, "Damn I can't wait to get to pavement!" Once I finally got home, I made my way to the ice packs, which are always ready to go in the freezer and laid down on one of them. After my first session of icing, my optimism returned. It didn't really feel that bad and I already started planning a short rehab to get back to training heavy, which by the way, was going really good lately. By the time my friend arrived a few hours later, it was starting to get pretty sore. Shortly after, I decided I would not be leaving the house that night, and as it turned out, I would not be leaving the house for a few days.

That next week wasn't fun – at all. I'm sure, to everyone's surprise, my sleep wasn't good that night. I don't mean like "normal," I mean like no sleep because every time I moved, my back was killing me. My alarm finally went off the next day for work, but after trying to get up for 15 minutes with no success, I knew I had to call in. This is definitely something I rarely do and after I finally got to work, I had plenty of comments about how bad it must have been if I actually called in. I figured I better get some sort of plan together to get through this as soon as possible. I knew getting up was seriously painful and at this point, the pain was telling me that I was just irritating the muscle that I wanted to heal. So, I decided I would try to get up as little as possible, but still ice as much as possible. I also took my time getting up and tried to do it with as little irritation to my back as possible. This actually took a little while to figure out. When I moved too much one way, my back would tense up painfully. So, I laid back down, tried to get my back relaxed and then I'd try another way. Let me tell you, when it takes this long to get up, you really need to plan out bathroom breaks or, I suppose, have a large empty bottle by the bed. I'm not sure I could get myself to do that. Although I may look like an animal, I do appreciate indoor plumbing.

Once I finally got up, I grabbed an ice pack, two boxes of granola bars, and a couple bottles of water. This turned out to be my sustenance for two days. I would get up to go to the bathroom, grab ice packs, and put ice packs back in the freezer. Speaking of bathrooms, after the first poop I was glad that I was just eating granola bars because it allowed me to not poop for a couple days. I am a bit anal about my anus being clean. After doing my business, I found that it's not so easy to clean when your back is screwed. I tried going underneath sitting on the toilet, reaching around on the toilet, reaching around standing, reaching underneath standing, and everything else I could think of. The whole time, my back is killing me and tightening up even more. I finally had to lean my clean (non-wiping) hand against the wall bend over a bit and reach around, glad to have a half-way big bathroom! It was a serious pain in the ass (I am throwing puns around like mad). I never thought I would want a bidet so bad. I think the name "ass shower" would have been more appropriate, but I'm sure it would have bothered the sensitive people. Of course, my redneck friend suggested running a hose through the bathroom window. Honestly though, I would totally have done it if only I could get to the hose! That whole experience exhausted me and it felt so good to lay down after it.

Rehab

Having a background in physical therapy I did everything I could to speed the healing process. I did light stretching from the beginning and as much icing as I could. After a couple days, when it started to improve some, I stretched a bit more and started some very light exercises. After a few days, I figured out how to get up without hurting myself and was moving around, but my back would get exhausted quickly. I was able to stand up straight when I first got up, but after just a short time, I ended all hunched over and crooked. I knew it was important to get moving, so I would get up a few times a day and take a couple small trips to the post office or whatnot. I finally got into the chiropractor after a week, which helped a lot. Instead of getting all twisted after my back got tired, I just hunched a bit like my low back was just exhausted. By Friday that week (I hurt it the Sunday before), I got up and wanted to go to work. I showered and got cleaned up, but had to lay back down. I got back up to get my shoes on, which was a very difficult task. I eventually gave up because my back was so lit up. I ended up calling in all week and went back to work that Monday. From that point, everything got progressively better and but was still frustrating. However, it was but where near the first week. I made it into the gym to help the guys and made every day of work, even though I would have rather stayed home and iced my back. The one thing I couldn't do all weak was tie my shoes. Hopefully I can tackle that next week!

At first I was just pissed I did this, and didn't see the lessons that life was smacking me with. Training was finally starting to go well and I was making great improvements. The new technique was coming along and I just ordered two bench shirts and a deadlift suit. I was starting to find and plan a competition. I was just aggravated with a WTF next kind of attitude. The more I thought about it (I had plenty of time laying in bed to think), the more I actually laughed about it. I mean I really should have known better, it was my own fault. I think mistakes and pain can be our greatest lessons. It's just like touching a hot stove, it usually only takes once and we get the point. Well most people get the point after once, stubborn hardheaded Germans like me do not get it so quickly sometimes!

Lessons Learned

The biggest lesson I was reminded of is that technique is hugely important. I know better than to pick something heavy up in a bad position. It's to easy to mess up your back that way. I learned that years ago, back when I was working in physical therapy. The majority of back patients got hurt because they were in a bad position. Sure, you can still hurt if you're in the right position, but the odds drop significantly. This really translates into powerlifting, too. I can't tell you the amount of guys I know who hurt themselves warming up with light weight. They figure it's an easy weight and they're just warming up, so they don't need to pay attention to their technique. They put their body in a very bad position and it doesn't take much weight at that point to hurt something. I've always been very good with warm-ups because I saw it as a great opportunity to work on good technique and make it a habit. Now, I just need to remember that with anything I lift in life. Powerlifting continues to teach me valuable life lessons.

Still thinking about technique, I also noticed for the first week-and-a-half that I had to really keep my back straight when I squatted down or stood up. This was a lot because I could not just bend over to pick anything up. Basically, instead of looking like a good powerlifting squat, it was more like an Olympic squat. After just a couple days, my knees would just be on fire and ache. It reminded me of back when I first started powerlifting and I would do ass to floor Olympic squats. I trained 5 x 5 with 555 and my knees would ache for three days after a session. Once I learned to sit back with good technique and I had no knee aches or pain whatsoever. It just shows that good technique is really essential to maintaining good joints and safety throughout your life.

This experience also reaffirmed the importance of ab strength. Everything would've been much worse if I had weak abs. In fact, the Sunday after I hurt my back, I had a granite job. My co-worker and I had a granite counter to install in a house and it had to be done on that day. I have to admit, I was a bit scared about re-injuring my back on that job and it probably wasn't the wisest decision I could have made, but I needed the money and my partner could not do the job himself. Anyone that has installed granite knows a slab, even prefab is not so light. I made sure to wear my belt and trusted in my ab strength to get the job done. I took my time, got plenty of air, pushed my abs out hard, and was very careful walking with it. It was a true testament of what ab strength can do. My back was unable to fire very hard at all and even bending over to pick up something light was hard on my back. However, with my abs flexed hard I was able to get the job done. So, I'll say this to all the guys out there that never do ab work; you're very simply not lifting the weights you have potential to in all three lifts because you won't take a few minutes to do some heavy ab work. Do less stupid curls and throw in some ab work to put some big PRs on your lifts. If you use your abs right and they are strong, you will lift more!

I saved the best lesson for last. It is a lesson I actually need to be retaught every so often and I hope the next time, it's a little less severe than this time. This lesson is all about ego. The ego is a funny thing because in the right amount, it's a great and powerful strength. At the same time, in the wrong amount, it can be devastating. I believe I can attribute the majority of my big lifts or feats to my ego. It goes hand-in-hand with a positive attitude for me. I could not go up to a platform with a torn hamstring and squat a huge PR of over 1100 pounds without an enormous ego. It took an attitude of “F it, I am Chad MF'ing Aichs and I can squat this even with a torn hamstring even though I never squatted this much weight before!” Stepping up to a third bench at a world championship after you bombed your first two attempts take a huge ego. It's that ego that lets you smash that bench with authority. Too much ego (especially at the wrong time) will be the exact opposite effect. It was my ego that told me to just lift that stone and not set my feet up even and flat like I should have. My ego believed I was so strong that I could to it either way. Well, I just explained where that ego got me; it got my training set back a month or two. It was also my ego that didn't listen to my head about just sticking with my plan and going home. It wasn't the time or place to have that ego. It wasn't a competition or a life threatening situation, it was just a rock I wanted to put in my yard. Training is also not the best place to have an ego. I see so many guys have huge ego in the gym and I just laugh at how it hurts them. Their ego makes them go to heavy, when they need to be working on technique or dynamic training. Their ego makes them not listen to guys that can help them because their ego thinks they know everything. I remember one time when a TV crew wanted to come into the gym and interview me, but the only time we could arrange it was on a recovery day. My partners asked if we were going to go heavy on that day because of the interview. I said hell no, it's recovery day and I have a meet coming up. I wasn't going to screw my training just so I looked cooler lifting heavy weight on a TV program. That was one time I was able to wrangle my stubborn ego! It's a fine line with the ego, it needs to be controlled to the level where it's intelligent confidence. The level where it makes you successful and doesn't destroy you.

It seems that no matter how old I get, I will always need these life lessons to keep me in line. They keep me learning and make me a better man. They say life is hard and it most definitely is. Maybe those hard times are like a sort of "ying and yang." The hard times are necessary to teach us about life and make us appreciate the easy times. They keep us honest if we take a little time to think about them and realize the lessons we can learn. They are a good thing even when they seem like they are not. What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger!

My mom asked me if the rock was worth it. I replied, “Well maybe if I had got it!” So, in closing out this column let me say the rock won that battle, but I will win the war! That rock will eventually be in my yard, but I will approach our next battle better prepared and a smarter man!