Rumbling and Rambling, Roving and Raving
August 26, 2003

It’s clever to know where you’re going, but how you get there tells the real story. And though talking in circles might get you nowhere, you cover a lot of unexplored ground in the process. Having properly prefaced today’s newsletter, let me say I expect its collective readers are deep thinkers of a broad cross-section and not among the failing characters referenced in the paragraph below.

Exercising for health is both simple and easy. It’s bright, breezy and liberating. The grim fact that people don’t engage in the invigorating act is unacceptable, an alarming display of ignorance and apathy.

Exercising to improve one’s ability in sports or recreation is hard work and challenging. The athlete, outdoorsman or action person is motivated and inspired. They love life, are energetic and seek expression through motion and strength.

Exercising to exceed in the sport of weightlifting or bodybuilding is particularly grueling. The means and the end are combined, the act and the purpose joined at the hip. In time they, the training and the goal, become entwined, enmeshed and overlapping. The two become married and inseparable, as one.

You don’t lift weights to achieve mass, power and speed one month and start scrimmage the next -- tackles, passes, touchdowns and cheerleaders. After a winter with the iron, it’s not batting practice in the spring with mitts and bats and balls and beers. The benefits of improved strength and endurance gained from your tough hours in the weight room are not enjoyed while you test your talents and develop your skills on the rings, high bar or track and field.

You don’t lift weights for a season. You lift weights now, later, again and again, once more, another time, today, tomorrow and the next day. Between workouts you think of working out and you rest, repair, wait, plan and hope and scrutinize much too much. Then it’s back to the iron and steel, sets and reps, monotony and speculation, perseverance, discipline, patience and doubt.

When you’re alone doubting you are usually cranking open another can of tuna fish. Doubt either engenders rigidity in your diet or causes its collapse. In my experience, if it’s not tuna, it’s sardines. Water is dessert from heaven. The training doesn’t end with the strain on the gym floor. It continues with the reign at the dinner table, what you eat, when you eat and how much and why.

Its six meals a day, high protein, low carbs, no Italian pizza, no Danish pastry, no French fries, no Mexican beans, no Chinese rice, no Japanese sake, no German beer, no Russian vodka.

No wonder it’s not the choice of sports of the nation. It’s a political disaster, discriminating, intolerant and not a lot of laughs. Who can walk the line? At least with other sports you get to play. Somebody throws you a ball, you swing at it with a bat or catch it and run like crazy or you toss it to a giant who jumps and dumps it in a basket or pass it to a gorilla who grasps it out of thin air and dives over the goal line, rolling and springing to his feet to the delight of coaches, team mates and girls with flailing pom poms. Sometimes you kick the ball or bounce it off your head or steal it or pound the guy who stole it from you. All the time people are cheering and yelling and rooting and laughing. I’ll have a hotdog and a Bud Light.

In the smelly weight room you crawl under a bar loaded with seemingly immovable iron plates that clank and proceed to lift them up and down for 6, 8, 10, 15 repetitions, more if your joints, muscles and oxygen hold out. Then, with no one looking or caring, you replace the massive mess with a crash, sit up, and like a fool add more weight to the sagging the bar. Time to kill, you sit on the edge of the bench and focus on the next thrilling expenditure of energy and strength, knowing pain is necessary to achieve advancement in the sport of your dreams.

Five sets of this muscle-building exercise and you can move on to another and another and another. There’s the one where you bend over and lift, and the one where you stand and push, not to mention the one where you sit and pull. How about the one in which you load the big dumb bar on your back and go up and down with your wobbly legs ‘till you want to die. That’s always good for a few cheers from the bleachers. Let’s add a few more plates -- nickels, dimes, quarters and halves -- like they were money and we were rich. Spot me, man, I’m going for a single. If I don’t make it, tell my girl I love her.

I remember when I first lifted weights.

The mad pursuit emerged from an active kid who loved to climb trees and jump from their heights. I had a favorite limb from which I chinned, on a favorite tree I called the Monkey Tree. It was my original and personal gym that served me and me alone for years. There were two chairs in the cellar by the coal bin that I placed back to back. I performed thousands, maybe millions of dips between those old splintered chairs when I wasn’t chinning on the Monkey Tree. Handstand pushups came later when strength and balance were at my command. Wow.

Then the weights rolled onto the scene: the bar, the plates, the collars, the wrench, the clanging, the improvised exercises and the gravity and the pain. I loved the idea of lifting weights -- the height of manhood to a 12-year-old -- but they weren’t as much fun or as free as the Monkey Tree or even the dirty old rickety chairs in the cellar by the coal bin. I soon hated the dinky wrench and smashed fingers caught between the cold and noisy plates and the downright uncontrollable heaviness of the mute metal. Sheesh. I’m just a little kid. I pushed and pulled and from the corner of my eye wondered if anyone cared. No one noticed. Not once did a brother or parent say, “how cool” or “let me try.” It was like I was invisible. I was lucky, really. They didn’t laugh, nor did they say stop that banging and clanging and get those miserable things out of the house. The nasty devices were rolled under my bed when not in use, which was next to the beds of my two older brothers. Tight quarters and tight muscles for a squirt.

19 and just married I drove three exits on the N.J. Turnpike to the Elizabeth Y’s closet-size weight room three nights a week. That went over big. I soon took a second job (precious daughter on the way) at the Jersey City Vic Tanny’s Gym on weekends. That went over big. Before a year was over, I moved to California to train at Muscle Beach. My young family (Penny, 17 -- Jamie Lee, 9 mos.) followed. That went over big.

In each period after the novelty wore off, the work became Work with a capital double-u, “u” for ugh. Early mornings or after the job, long sessions, pain, sweat, compromise, sacrifice and hard work are the components of commitment. “Why” I know now, but didn’t then. The 20-stair descent to the floor of the Muscle Beach gym, the Dungeon, held apprehension every morning for three years. I trained six days a week and never missed a beat. Each workout was to exceed the last. The pressure was self-imposed and mounted day after day. The titles came and went. The reps, the sets came and went. The days and nights came and went.

Today it’s different.

The sport’s become a circus sideshow, an extreme display of cartoon-like bodies, a monster truck-physique exhibition with unwieldy, exaggerated custom crafts surging and bulging in place, ready for the starting flag. I mean, you’ve got to appreciate the scene. It’s wild, rambunctious and jaw-dropping. It’s also unbelievable. Where do these guys and gals come from?

August 20th, 2003, I enter the gym with contained enthusiasm. It’s been this way -- joyful, meaningful, fulfilling, entertaining and exhilarating -- for years. Once out of the struggling and lonesome early-developing years things improved considerably. The step from competition took me another rung upward and the completion of the World Gyms in ‘89 paved the way for training for the fun of it.

Though I train one or two days less to match my age, already acquired muscle and increased need for recuperation, I train harder, with more spirit and with more intention. The expected injuries that accompany time are a nuisance, but have supplied me with unusual focus, training assessment and training affection, gratefulness and humility. I snarl, but I don’t bite; that is, I haven’t bitten anyone severely. The workout sessions are solid, bold and mighty (okay, okay… for an old hound dog).

I go heavy when I can, when I get the urge, when I feel right, when I need to or when I must. I don’t set world records but I occasionally set some PRs. I’m no longer waiting for the other shoe to drop. I assume it is an anvil, a rusty and battered anvil from an old shed where thick and powerful horses were once shod and rugged hand tools were formed and knurly spikes prepared for early rail lines. I can wait forever.

To go heavy I devise no elaborate program with weight and rep and set progressions based on a six- or eight-week training cycle. The numbers are not recorded and the workout details are not documented. I don’t prepare my training, like following dots to form a picture. I go with what I have every workout and take it a little bit further by urgency and God’s grace.

Your spirit is your life and your body the field of venture. Your mind becomes the workhorse. That’s why I underline focus, concentration, confidence, continuity, listening and learning moment to moment.

Since deadlifts and squats are a regular part of my regimen (I can push buttons and press pants real good, but not weights) and intensity is my partner, every muscle group and their attachments are sufficiently conditioned and I’m ready to go for a one-rep max whenever the desire gets under my skin. I usually hold out ‘till my bodyweight is on the rise and I’m rested. It’s risky, but you know how it is. I warm up for five sets of ever-increasing weight and ever-increasing force, regularly assessing the boundaries (courage, will, mood, muscle-under-load endurance, pain variety and pain level, risk factor, relative strength) and get to it when the signals are right. As long as they’re right, the anvil will remain high in the sky, hanging and rusting and motionless.

Usually the weight goes up along with my spirits and GH factor and systemic response. If it doesn’t, I don’t even come close. The whole world, it seems, was hanging on the other end. Next time.

Now, if I want to lose that layer of fat I retain for health and good luck, I apply my secret 14-day muscularizing workout and diet plan.

More on that next week, winged warriors. Meanwhile, stay tuned to KBOM for the latest in high-flying adventures and soaring true stories with your host, David the Bomber.

Brought to you each week by Bomber Blend and the Top Squat, Brother Iron Sister Steel and Your Body Revival.

Music by Laree

Anything resembling fact is purely accidental.

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