Starting Strength Seminar in Wichita Falls, TX
If you are on the quest to get 70’s Big or have considered coaching other people to get strong, then check out the new Starting Strength Seminar. You will learn the nitty gritty details on mechanics and anatomy, and then apply those lessons while coaching other people and getting coached while under the bar. There will be one at the Wichita Falls Athletic Club in Wichita Falls, Texas on February 26-28. This would be a good chance to train and learn at one of the best gyms in the country.
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Some of you are actually doing what you’re supposed to: getting strong and not complaining. AC has been busy coaching people in getting strong at Georgia Southern University. His pal Pat has done well:
Listen Skinny Guy, you aren’t trying. You sit down at night and wonder why you aren’t getting stronger as you pick at chicken breast and broccoli. You might even be the guy eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast…like a child.
It’s time to man up Skinny Guy. I don’t like skinny guys, much less you, Skinny Guy. You either think you ought to be skinny like all of the psuedo-manly guys on TV and in movies or you like to be skinny. If you didn’t like being skinny, you’d do something about it. You would take your skinny jeans and skull cap off (you probably wear the skull cap in summer time too), and you would engage in activity that would require you to not be skinny.
Some of you Skinny Guys have actually decided to do something about it, but you haven’t gotten past this phase of BITCHING about everything that goes on. If your name is Skinny Guy and you don’t gain five pounds in the first week of training, then you aren’t trying. Guys in our gym gain 15 pounds in two or three weeks. I have heard some of you rejoice in the fact that you gain five pounds in a month. That disgusts me, Skinny Guy. I know you’ve been skinny your whole life, but get over the fear of gaining some kind of bodyfat. Your name is Skinny Guy for chrissakes! As we have said before, if you have been skinny your whole life, you don’t get to have an opinion on being fat.
Things that are worth doing are typically not easy, but some of you give up and think that you have a special scenario that requires some kind of unique advice that is not A) eat more food, B) squat, press, and deadlift, and C) stop your whiny bitching.
For some reason I have been in a foul mood, and I think it is Skinny Guy’s fault. My patience is wearing thin. If you think you have a form issue with any of your lifts, then pick up Starting Strength and figure out what that might be. There are plenty of videos on Rip’s Q&A Board. Find a coach if you can. Assuming you have done these things, you should know what you are doing wrong and may be able to cue it yourself. If you think your form is “pretty good” and your name is Skinny Guy, then you aren’t eating enough.
From now on, you guys are only allowed to ask for programming advice if you meet the following weight requirements:
5’7″ and taller: >200 lbs.
5’3″ to 5’6″: >185 lbs.
Under 5’3″: Submit an application to be chased by Jarred Allen
If you have met the weight requirements, then you have done something difficult enough that you have learned not to bitch about your inadequacies and you have manned up. Ladies are always welcome to ask for advice, because that means you have at least considered getting strong, and this gets you a gold star.
And since I know you are going to ask, Fat Guy, keep eating your protein and fat, but cut back your carbs. If you are Really Fat Guy, then you may want to try a drastic approach for a few weeks (no carbs at all). Oh, and I apologize to Fat Guy and Big Guy that we have to give Skinny Guy so much attention…he just doesn’t fucking listen.
Brian lifts a beam that is 300+ lbs. Skinny Guy couldn’t do that.
I was completely annoyed on the Letter of Intent Day comments how a lot of you posted numbers that you wanted to hit in training as opposed to posting competition goals. The whole point of Gant’s post was to commit to competing — and barely any of you did that! Well, now I’m going to piss a lot of you off, because I have to inform you that You Are A Coward. Some times the truth hurts. Coward.
AC squatting in competition last November
The other day I was talking to a cute gal, and she said that she was skeptical of competing because she was afraid of losing. She was just being honest in our conversation (perhaps she was opening up to me like a flower?). In any case, I set her straight by informing her that competing isn’t only about winning, especially in your first try. She agreed, but it may have just been my charm.
In any case, avoiding competition makes you a yella-belly-coward. Gant, who has been in more competitions than Michael Jordan, gives great insight when he says that competing will help you learn about yourself. There is a reason that sport builds character, and this is probably the most enduring quality about competing.
A lack of competition is never a good thing. Our society likes to coddle people, and those people make it a habit to do very little for themselves. This concept becomes embedded deep in their primitive brain, and there is the expectancy of someone else to provide goods, services, and even money. This type of person becomes frightened into doing anything out of the ordinary and accomplishing things on their own. They get scared of taking risks.
Sport is an obnoxiously appropriate way to safely exercise your ability to put yourself out on the line and to risk something. Fearing failure is identical to being a failure.
Competing in sport forces you to experience things that you otherwise may not. In life, you may purposely place yourself in safe situations in which you can’t fail. People do this all of the time, but the most successful people in history didn’t become successful by being safe and conservative.
Sport and competition are not always rosy endeavors. I’ll remind you that I just bombed the piss out of my weightlifting meet on Saturday. I spent three months of hard training in preparation for that meet, and I failed in all of my goals. What, you think I’ll just give up because I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of a bunch of people at a meet again (and technically lots of people on the internet, since my life is sort of on display on this website)? I tell my trainees this all of the time: when shit goes wrong you figure out what variable is to blame, and fix it the next time it comes up.
A hard day of training in November. Training does not equal competition.
And by the way, had I actually totaled at that meet, I would have been the 105 kg Texas State Champ…by default. I was the only open competitor. Stef held the distinction of being in first and last place in the women’s 53 kg class. Are you trying to tell me that there weren’t any 53 kg CrossFit girls living in Austin, TX that could have lifted in the meet?
People who like to call themselves CrossFitters are notoriously annoying for not competing in anything at all. They claim that they are competing while training, which is comical. Sure, there are some who actually compete — I mentioned yesterday that Dutch had brought some people to the meet, and this is good. However, plenty of “CrossFitters” love to claim the status of being an “elite athlete” while not even participating in any kind of sanctioned competition (even though the CF creed states something like “regularly learn and play new sports”). It just doesn’t sound intelligent to claim that you will beat everyone at their own sport when you don’t even partake, that’s all. It seems that the fear of risk and failure permeates us all.
And that is the point. Look, if you aren’t a collegiate or pro athlete, you already know you aren’t the best in the world. Especially if you are older than 30 years old — you aren’t suddenly gonna become awesome in something. Intuitively you know that you are, at best, mediocre in the grand scheme of things (unless you try and invent your own sport, which is silly). Suddenly you realize that the thing that you fear the most is taking a risk into the unknown.
I want you to compete, because you will be better off after doing it. Most of you will not do exceptionally well in your first time, and this is supposed to happen. A virgin ain’t no Casanova, okay? Think very carefully in what you want to compete in this year. If you are on 70’s Big, then you are strength training. This not only prepares you, but gives you direction in what you could try competing in first. Go ahead, click on the comments, and make yourself accountable to taking a risk. Or you could just be a coward.
The San Diego Chargers’kicker Nate Kaeding and I have two things in common: we are both ugly and we both didn’t perform very well this past weekend. The difference is that Kaeding is a Pro Bowler, and I’m just some jackass.
There were a lot of set backs in the month right before the meet. After hitting 127.5/165 in one training session in early December, I had a programming issue, a training break to travel for Christmas, got sick the next week, and then tweaked something in my shoulder the week before the meet (which I believe was unrelated to lifting). The shoulder issue didn’t seem serious and seemed to hold up Tuesday when I worked up to my openers and Thursday when I worked up to my last warm-up.
I felt it slightly as I warmed up on snatch on Saturday, and opened with what felt like a solid 125 (a meet PR). I don’t remember if I felt my shoulder during the lift, but I could feel it afterwords. Things went down hill from there. I felt pain on my second attempt at 130, and the shoulder seemed to not lock out and I missed it behind. In the warm-up room I could feel pain in my shoulder as I externally rotated with my elbow raised (imitating the snatch). I’m pretty sure that in an attempt to avoid that range of motion I looped the final attempt at 130, sort of racked it yet left the bar out in front, lurched forward to save it only to have my left knee hit the platform (which nulls the lift) and dropped it.
The clean and jerk continued to be disaster. I felt fine on my warm-ups until the last warm-up. It felt like my shoulder couldn’t shrug up to lock the weight over head, and I was lopsided, yet stood up with it. The weight I would fail on for three attempts was 155, 10 kilos below my PR, and something that I easily did earlier in the week. This was weird since I couldn’t actually feel my shoulder hurt like it did in the snatch — it felt like it didn’t work. I proceeded to miss the last two jerks, which was embarrassing.
As much as I don’t want the injury thing to be an excuse, it must have been an issue since it seemed that shoulder did not operate like it normally did. Perhaps it was my lack of experience in lifting with a shoulder issue — I don’t know. I went 1 for 6, didn’t total, thus didn’t win anything (I was the only open 105 kg lifter), didn’t qualify for nationals (287 kg total), and didn’t total 300 kg — which had been my goal for three months. It’s particularly frustrating to train very hard and fail miserably in every aspect.
Thank you to Dutch Lowy, who was handling some of his lifters at the meet. He helped load my bar for me during the warm-ups so I didn’t have to waste any energy.
The good that came out of the meet is that some of our lifters did well. Colton, a 14 year old 77 kg lifter (you may remember his deadlift video a few months back), went 6 for 6 and a 111 kg total after training the lifts for two injury riddled months. Alicia, who joined the gym when I first arrived here, went 5 for 6 with a 85 kg total after I convinced her to do the meet and start learning the lifts 5 weeks ago. Kyle, a 15 year old lifter snatched 75 (meet PR by 5 kilos), and a technicality prevented him from a meet PR 90 kilo clean and jerk (he dropped the bar before the “down” command), and finished with 75/85 for a 160 total (meet PR). My friend Brent, an 85 kg lifter, went 4 for 6 and had meet PR’s of 101/125, and thus a meet PR total at 226. Stef made weight (a chore), totaled, but didn’t have a great meet after barely surviving the bubonic plague that went around Wichita Falls recently.
I got a lot of experience handling lifters at a meet as well as watching Rip do the same. I have a lot of work to do in order to be better prepared for the next meet. First order of business is gaining 15 or 17 pounds…I only weighed in at 100.2 kg (at one point I was 228, down to 220 after being sick, then 224 on the gym scale before leaving for the meet). Despicable.
And for the few of you guys who showed up to watch the meet, I hope you enjoyed yourselves. Sorry if you had wanted to hang out a bit more. I wasn’t delighted by my performance, or lack thereof, and we had to get back to Wichita Falls in a reasonable amount of time.
Rip has said that we plan to have two weightlifting meets at our gym this year: one in the first quarter, and one in the third quarter. Start making plans to lift now. More on this later.
It’s PR Friday. Post weight lifted, gained, or eaten to comments.
The WFAC is better than your gym. I’m sorry I’m not sorry. When AC was here we filmed a tour of the gym. I believe this is the first and only video tour. Enjoy our improvising. Note: I just realized AC edited out when I talk about my dog Leda. He is an asshole for that.
Oh, and the Texas State Weightlifting Meet is happening on Saturday. We were supposed to have 11 lifters going, but that number has fallen to 6 (including me). Here is the schedule. Ignore the roided up Incredible Hulk who appears to be blowing out the back of his shorts with a monstrous fart.
