I've mostly lived my life in either blast or dust. When I go for something, I go all out with blinders on and nothing else matters. If I'm not interested in something, it doesn't mean anything to me. Either I care with every part of my existence or I don’t care at all.
Lifting, competing, and strength sports have been, without a doubt, blast or dust for me. When I was competing at my highest level in powerlifting, it was all that mattered and it was the number one thing in my life. I know blast and I know dust. What I don’t know is a balance between the two. This is an area that I have spent little time in and, until now, never cared about. At this point in my lifting career, balance is fast becoming something that I feel a need to learn more about.
Recently, it was brought to my attention that I write mostly about the extreme end of powerlifting and that those lifters just looking to improve but not necessarily be the best in the world can't relate. I'm not sure I agree with this, but I do agree that training to be the best in the world is what I know. I know how to train blast with extreme goals because that’s what I do and that's what I did. Being in the world of blast, you see things differently than other people. It's a very different perspective and a very different mindset. Even so, I feel like I've always been aware that most people don't want to train that way or have those sorts of goals. I've always known that the majority of people are just looking to improve or be the best that they can be with the situations in which they live. Maybe I've been writing in a way that turns off a lot of lifters or maybe I haven't. Either way, I'm willing to give the point some thought and it's a good opportunity for me to write more about balance.
When I speak of balance, I'm talking about balance in life, which affects training. Very few of us can put training or any one thing as a true first in our lives. People often say that something is number one in their lives, but it rarely ever really is. Today, people just have too many responsibilities and too much going on. We're always being pulled in too many directions.
However, some people do choose to make something the number one goal in their life. They're willing to dedicate massive amounts of time, money, and effort toward this goal. They'll put most other things in life on hold or let them pass right by for this goal. Of course, family and loved ones often come first, but even they have to rank as an emergency in order to be moved ahead of that goal. I've done this for powerlifting and I did it for over ten years. I sacrificed toys (vehicles, motorcycles, guns), money (saving and future retirement), relationships (they took too much time and energy), time with my niece and nephew, time with my family, my health, and my body. I lived in a small old apartment with little furniture and no television for years. If it wasn’t benefiting my lifting, I didn't spend money on it. I quit a county job and then went back to that job because my boss guaranteed me that I wouldn't have to work any overtime, so I would never miss training. He also guaranteed that I would always get time off for competitions. This job did have a retirement plan and I figured that was a good back-up plan either way.
Every decision that I made was based on how it would affect my lifting. Because I slept horribly, I spent my weekends in bed because I needed to recover and get whatever rest I could. There wasn't any partying or going out and staying out late. When friends and family wanted to do something, I either declined or, at best, made it later in the day so that I could stay in bed longer. This isn't balance or anything even close to it. This is the personality of blast.
Even though it was an unbalanced life, I stand by my choice to do this. To reach the level that I did, I had to do these things and I would do them all over again. It would be hypocritical for me to say that everyone always needs balance in their lives. In the past, I've written about how I believe that everyone should at some point in their lives go full on for a goal and give everything that they have to that one goal. I still believe that and I'm damn proud that I could do that. But just as I believe that people should at some point in their lives blast toward a goal, I also believe that there is a point in life when finding a balance is just as important. Life is about experiences, journeys, and challenges, and it's always changing. Everything has its time.
I'm not an expert in balance, but at one time, I wasn’t an expert on strength training either. For me, life has always been about learning, meeting challenges, changing, and improving. The biggest challenge for me is finding that balance between training and all the other things in life that I love to do. At this point in my life, it's easy to put everything to the side and just focus on training. I'm trying to be conscious of this and control it. I'm trying to find the fun in just lifting and competing again. For a long time, pushing myself to the limit was fun. Breaking records and barriers was fun. Back when I was young and had started lifting, it was just fun to be training. I'm working on finding that fun again, but I'm also working on having goals that are adjusted to life.
In past articles, I've written about how life affects training and it really does. I now own a home and I'm working on fixing it up. I'm working hard to pay off my debt and put some more focus on my retirement, which means that I work a lot. I want to spend a lot more time with my niece and nephew. I have a relationship that I'm working on. I want to spend more time riding and more time on photography. All these things take time, work, and money. All these things affect training and, even more so, recovery from that training. These are things that have to be taken into consideration when setting goals for your lifting. For me, there has to be an acceptable balance between all these things so that I can find happiness in all of them.
This doesn't mean that I didn’t have happiness in my powerlifting blast mode. Actually, I had great happiness in that mode and I have many, many great memories that still make me smile. Nothing lasts forever though and we only live so long. There are many things that I love to do in this live and I want time to do some of those, too. Being full blast and pushing my body to the limit was great. It's a part of my life that I'll always be proud of. In this sport, you only have so much time to push the limits. Your body can only take so much wear and tear. You can only avoid injuries for so long when you're on the extreme end of it. It isn't if they will happen; it's when they will happen. In addition, we have to deal with the inevitability of aging. We all get older. These things are fact and you can try to fight them, but eventually they'll win. Don’t get me wrong—I'm all for fighting them. I fought like a madman for strength and I'll fight for what I want until I die. Like Don Quixote, I may be crazy and misguided and I may be fighting a losing battle, but I'll fight for what I believe in.
So I'll be lifting until I die. Lifting has been a part of my life for so long and it will remain a part of my life. I won't go gentle into that good night; I'll rage like a big, strong mf’er. I'll keep training, and I'll keep competing, but I have to think about my goals and about how life will affect these goals. For example, I have a bench meet coming up and it wouldn't be very smart to just think that I'll bench 900 pounds. I'm down over 60 pounds (which I did for health and life reasons), I've done some serious damage to my triceps, I'm struggling with some shoulder issues, I haven't had much time back in my bench shirt, and I haven't competed in a long while. In addition, my life has changed a lot. Getting ready for this meet, I had times where I worked five weeks straight without any days off and no time to sleep in. I'm doing granite and tile work, which is a lot more stressful on the body, especially at 320 pounds. Right now, I have more stresses worrying about getting my debt down and meeting my financial goals. When I'm in the gym, I'm training hard, and when I'm able, I make sure to get to bed early. On weekends off, I try my best to get some sleep. I'm watching my diet and I make sure that I get my grams of protein in. I just have to keep in mind that this isn't the way it used to be for me. My goals have changed.
Here's an example of how my life has changed. In the last month, my parents wanted to remodel their kitchen. My dad is retired and on a fixed income, but my mom is working another year or so. I have the ability to do a lot of the work and make the cost much cheaper for them. They are my parents and have supported me in many ventures throughout my life, so I like to give back to them when I can. In years past when my training was first in my life, I would've still done this work, but I would've told them that it had to wait until the time was right. Now, I just started on it and got it done quickly so that they wouldn't have to deal with demolition and a mess for very long. My dad did all the woodwork and built a new island. He redid all the cabinets as well as the electrical stuff and plumbing. I came in one weekend with my co worker/friend to do all the granite. We did the island, counters, and sink. It was all hand done. The next weekend was a three-day weekend, so I got all the tile set on the floor. Then I came back to grout the floor and set the backsplash.
The granite work wasn’t so bad on my body because I don’t mind the lifting or carrying. It does get a little hard on the low back with cutting, gluing, and polishing. The tile work kicks my ass though (my hat is off to all you tiles guys out there who do this day in and day out). Being on my hands and knees for a couple days just tears me up and makes me sore for a week. So when I'm thinking about my training in the gym, I have to take into consideration this work that I'm doing on the weekends. I'm getting up early on the weekends, so there isn't any chance to catch up or get sleep. Then there's the stress put on my body, muscles, and joints doing this work. Also, instead of having a couple easy days to let my body recover, I'm working hard physically.
So the first weekend that I started, I just had a deload week and it was the granite installation weekend. I figured I would be good to go ahead with regular training. The next weekend was the tile work, which beat me up good. I knew beforehand that I was probably going to take that week off training. With the way I felt, I did take it off. I only went in to help my partners and do some light stretching. With my sleep and poor recovery, I would've just taxed my body even more, which would have only set me back. The next weekend was just grouting and another small job that wasn’t bad, so I did my regular gym training. This is just the best way for me to adapt my training around life based on how my body deals with things. If I were someone younger who slept better and was used to setting tile, I might not have been affected so much. Everyone’s life is different and we all react to it differently. We just need to be aware of life and adjust training accordingly.
Blast and dust isn’t such a bad way to live. I'm willing to bet that most really successful people reach that success because they have a tendency to be blast. I wonder if many of those people eventually find some balance after they've reached some success. I've known people who never found that balance but kept going blast the whole way. Those people died young or ended up extremely beat up at what I considered a relatively young age. Some were stuck in wheelchairs when they were older. That isn't for me. I still have a lot to do and I want to be walking on my own until I eventually keel over. I want to be able to run around and play ball with my nieces and nephews for a long time. I also have a lot of hard earned knowledge about strength training and I don’t want to teach it from a wheelchair or not be able to lift my arm over my head. So I'll learn about and find some balance in all things. In my mind, being in my 80s and stepping out on a platform is still a form of blast anyway!