Let There Be Pain

My hands remind me of the steel, the calluses half torn from last night’s deadlift and a sore upper back telling me that those reps were just right. My hamstrings feel like I was hit with a golf club before bed as I walk toward the kitchen with the need to eat over 1000 calories at breakfast so I can keep adding weight to these lifts that build me up and tear me down rep by rep, week by week.

I’m not what the lifting circle would call a “big guy.” My numbers wouldn’t be anything to brag about at a USAPL meet, but I keep learning. I keep analyzing. I continue to improve techniques and strategies, lifting programs, and nutrition, all in the attempt to one day say I gave it my all. The problem with that is there are competitive lifters in their 60s still giving it 110 percent. It’s a lifelong pull and push against every kind of grain—managing free time, diet, sleep, patients, education, employment, and money among other things.

Revelation

Elitefts™ had an article about late night PRs. A few months ago I had my revelation. It was 11:00 p.m. and squat night. I hadn't had any other time in the day and this was my window. I also felt like shit. In the haze mode designed to convince our body only rest is needed, I set up the rack for my sets. My warm up continued on to the set weight for my 5 x 5, with my body tuned in to Clutch playing through my headphones, smelling TigerBalm, and looking at the bar with the plates waiting for me. It’s funny how during my relatively short time under the bar, I’ve already found the rut I step into every time my hour to lift rolls around, that same rut that keeps your body and brain in line to focus on the simple task of moving the weight.

Feeling parallel, I pushed my knees out and drove my body up as though I was pushing through a hatch out of Hell, over and over and over again until my 5 x 5 was finished and the plates sat there looking at me as I was aching, heaving for breath and confident that this still wasn't enough, sitting on a plyo box rubbing my hands together. Now I could move on.

Do it Again

The task is doing it again. With more. And again. With more. So unlike the 'on the job' stress of a spreadsheet due in 12 hours where you have to calculate this and that and try budgeting your time better, there’s a physical and mental hurdle one has to jump every time the numbers have to increase, every time you’re at the bottom and your knees start coming in, every time you find yourself under a bar at 11 p.m. (the non-alcoholic heavy kind). A place where you decide if this is physically possible or not. Most people say it isn’t and yield to the hurt. Saying it’s possible to do even more than what nearly killed you the week before is what separates the guys on the curl machine from somebody chalking their hands and pulling the slack out of a Texas bar knowing that this is going to be difficult.

The plates don’t care if you had enough sleep or if you’re sore. They’ll always add up the same and hang on your back with the same disregard for your problems at home or at work, with the same arrogance as when they beat you times before. But taking the time to understand how they work on your body blurs the line between “controllable” and “uncontrollable,” “can” and “can’t.” Taking the time to move them pound by pound erases the line between “did” and “didn’t.”

And the beauty is that we decide. We force. We push. All in the attempt to look back at a number on a paper saying that we gave it our all.