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

Get Big Quick

       If you have been involved in the iron game for even a little while, you probably know most of the “get big advice.”   Stuff such as “eat a lot of protein and calories,” “train heavy on the big lifts,” “get plenty of rest and recovery,” and other such “basic” advice can be found in any number of articles, YouTube videos, or Facebook posts.   And most of it is pretty good and fairly sound—I’ve written plenty of such articles covering similar material here on the blog and I will continue to do so.   But in this essay, I want to do something just a little bit different.   Here, I want to look at some various tips, training ideas, and nutritional hacks that are not your run-of-the-mill suggestions.   Most of these are not to be used long-term, but they can be quite useful when utilized over a short period of time, such as one training cycle or even over the course of only a few weeks.      Before we get starte...

Bradley Steiner’s Rugged Size and Strength Split Routine – Easy Strength Version

  Bradley J. Steiner, author of the original "Rugged Size and Strength Split Routine"      In the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, Bradley J. Steiner was the voice of (what he called) “sane, sensible” barbell training.   His workouts were full-body programs done 3 times per week, utilizing a limited number of big “bang-for-your-buck” movements such as squats, deadlifts, barbell rows, bench presses, overhead presses, barbell curls and the like.   They were intended for the average, drug-free lifter who didn’t have the luxury of living at Muscle Beach in Venice, California and training all day, but worked a full-time job, had a wife and kids—you know, a “regular” life—but still wanted to build a strong, impressive physique that could move some heavy iron and turn heads at the local swimming hole.      He wrote prolifically for (primarily) IronMan magazine up until the early years of this century.   When I started writing for IronMan i...

Basic Lifting, Instinctive Training

                     While doing research for my last article, I was re-reading Bradley Steiner’s original “Rugged Size and Strength” essay (from 1972) and came across this bit of advice: “Do not attempt to set up a pre-planned schedule of either sets or reps.”  That may not seem like much—it’s the kind of “basic” advice that’s easily overlooked—but there is wisdom in it, minimal as it may seem at first glance.      Depending on the workout program and the lifting population it’s aiming for, that quote could be either good or bad.  It’s not good advice for a beginner’s program, any beginner’s program.  It’s not good advice for intermediate or advanced lifters, either, who are attempting a new workout program or a new “style” of lifting that they haven’t utilized before.  For instance, if you’ve been training for the past decade on a bodybuilding workout consi...