Skip to main content

Death and Iron

It's been almost six months since my last post.  Three months ago, if I am honest, I didn't think I would be sitting here now, typing these words.

I thought I would be dead.

I am not going to get into all of the details - not yet, anyway.  I will save all of that for another post, when I am feeling more of a combination of elegiac and poetic, and when I think I'm ready to write about my declining health, and how it has affected my life in ways - often, amazingly - better, but bitter, as well, than I imagined such declining health could.  

But my health has caused some real problems.  Until only a few weeks ago, I haven't been able to write, and I haven't been able to do the one thing I almost love more than anything else I do on this green Earth of God's: lift weights.

But I am writing again.

And I am lifting again.

Hopefully my health will continue to improve even more, which means even more writing and more lifting.  Often, the more I lift, the more I write.  Or maybe it's the other way around.  I don't really know.  But I know that somehow the two are intrinsically intertwined with one another.  It doesn't even matter if I'm not writing about "lifting matters" at the time - the two are still interconnected.
My son Garrett, taken a few month's back.

Last night - while my eldest son Matthew was at the local gym "priming" and "pumping" his chest and arm muscles with a cascade of cacophonously glittering machines - Garrett, my youngest son, and I decided to do nothing but an old-fashioned "grease-the-groove" deadlift routine in our dungeonous garage gym.  It was hot as hell - to use a much cliched term - outside, and one of the overhead lights went out in the garage when we stepped outside, casting an eerie glow over the whole bar-bending event, as we quickly broke into high-humidity-induced sweats.

Iron Maiden serenaded us in the background as the deadlift bar clanged more times than I could count.  Occasionally, the dog next door howled over the proceeds, whether it was from the iron, or the "new wave of British heavy metal" screaming through the speakers, or simply mine and my son's presence, I don't know.

The bottom line: it was good to be alive.  And it was good to be lifting weights.

And it is good to write once more.

Comments

  1. Good to see you writing again! This blog has inspired me a lot. I also enjoy training with my son and it's great to see him get stronger. All the best to you!!! Hope you can get your health fully back.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave us some feedback on the article or any topics you would like us to cover in the future! Much Appreciated!

Popular posts from this blog

Skill Training as Size Building

AKA: The 90% Rule for Mass and Power Some Thoughts and Programs on “Skill Training” as a Method for Gaining Size and Strength      In my recent essay “Heavy and High,” I suggested that the key to gaining mass for the natural bodybuilder lies in the ability to do programs that utilize both heavy weights and a high workload.  When a lot of modern bodybuilders think about training for hypertrophy, they largely think along the lines of training hard and then coupling this with plenty of rest and recovery.  Almost every program you encounter—whether you read about them, watch a YouTube video discussing it, or have a casual conversation about them with a fellow gym-goer—revolves around the balance of “intensity” with rest days after workouts.  The harder, or more , you train then the more you should rest.  I’m not denying here that workouts do, and should , involve those considerations, but I prefer lifters to think in terms of workload and work ...

Bodyweight Training and Beyond

  High-Volume, High-Frequency Bodyweight-Centric Workouts for Transforming Your Physique Part One: Bodyweight Training and Nothing But      If you are going to achieve good results no matter your goals—be it strength, hypertrophy, or a combination of the two; whether you want to be “lean and mean” or big as a house—then you must learn to balance the 3 training variables of volume, frequency, and intensity.  (Intensity in this article, unless otherwise noted, will be how it is used in strength training circles—as a percentage of your one-rep maximum, not as the manner it's used in bodybuilding vernacular, which is how “hard” you train.)  As I have often explained, two of the variables need to be high—or, at least, one high and the 2nd one moderate—and the remaining variable needs to be low.  The exception to this is if all of the variables are moderate in a program.  Because of this stance, it means I have never believed that there is o...

Power Partials

  Partial Rep and Power Rack Training for Added Strength and Power Pointers, Tips, Programs      After some time spent under the bar, a lifter will often hit a wall when it comes to strength gains.  It can happen to any lift or to all of one’s lifts.  Oftentimes, the lifter will try new training programs, additional work, or less work.  Sometimes, they may attempt to alter their nutritional regimens, increasing calories and/or protein, all in a hope to get their strength moving again.  But one of the best techniques for increasing strength once more is the time-tested method of partial reps, often performed in the rack but also with the help of boards or blocks.  In this essay, I want to look at the various ways that partials can be utilized, especially for the three powerlifts, the squat, the bench press, and the deadlift, although it can be used for other lifts, such as overhead movements and even curls.     ...