With Cliches, Who Needs to Think?
Zabo and Dave, early barefoot training
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How are you?
Once an amiable, no-response-necessary greeting, those three words have become the most maddening mystery of the day.
An accurate reply could last 20 minutes should we choose proper medical terminology, provide adequate diagnoses and treatments and a list of medications. And this is absent the best part, a description of our aches and pains and emotional woes.
The four-word extended model, how are you doing, question mark, only adds to the confusion, suggesting you should be doing something. Oh, swell!
Next time you see me, skip the how are ya and just say hi. And whatever you do, don’t ask, “What’s new?” The answer is certain to be terse, muffled and disappointing and accompanied by a grimace and hollow stare.
Har.
I can joke about these things because I lift weights and I’m talking to a bunch of muscleheads. We’re strong, love a good mystery, dig pain, drink Bomber Blend and beat the snot out of depression. We hoist iron for the fun of it and toss steel for kicks. We’re cool.
I’ll give you two tens and a five for a twenty-five. Plates are our currency; pounds are our stash. We’re loaded, we’re rich.
Someone came up to me in the gym the other day and asked what is better for the older trainer, to lift heavier at a slower pace or to lift lighter at a faster pace. I told the tottering sap -- must have been 50 or 60 -- to shut up and lift, I was busy. Geez, where in the world do they come up with this stuff?
I admit the old geezer got me thinking. I hate that.
I went back to an original and absolute precept, We’re all different, pal. I threw in an unrivaled axiom, different strokes for different folks, Bub. Automatically, to each his own, dude, one of my favorite philosophical truisms, slipped in place. I was onto something big. When backed against a wall and left to my wits, my survival instincts bare themselves like incisors.
It’s now or never, kiddo, I went on. The answer was clear: A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, my friend. Only the strong survive, son. Never let go, chum. I was on a roll. Rock on, bubba. Never give up, big guy. With cliches, who needs to think?
Sheer brilliance: the consequence of time, experience and practice, trial, error and success, knowledge, understanding and discovery. I answered his question without having to think. My way or the highway, buster.
Having a keen ability to imagine and having astutely observed aging lifters from across the gym floor and having the enviable gift to empathize with the forlorn and downtrodden, I surmised an answer worthy of his ear.
This is what I would do if I were you, Mac. In fact, this is what I do today, did in the past and will do in the future.
I blast it according to mind, matter and spirit. My mind has ‘blast it’ built in like a hidden computer chip. Blasting, and bombing by the way, approaches light weights today as it approached heavy weights years ago, only today is light-years later. I’m older, the iron’s lighter, it feels heavier, and I apply much more meaning to the words dare and care, move and groove, focus, form and pace and, of course, bomb and blast.
Nuance is everything.
Blasting requires more warming up as time marches on, and the expectations down the line are not as dynamic, though one does not necessarily know it by the pain and stiffness one endures. Where there used to be a swell pump, there is swelling; where there used to be grateful burn, there’s agonizing tendonitis.
Another iron animal might perform her workout with a cheery disposition, a comfy weight and average exertion. Cute! She then smiles, snorts and goes on to her next set. This is very commendable. It’s healthy, wise and predictable.
I wish I could do that, but I can’t. I get as far as the first set and I fold. It’s bomb and blast, or go home. I cannot go home.
I train as fast as I can without hurrying, as I did years ago, though fast resembles a turtle hightailing it across a dry pond bed while the steamy, summer sun slowly sets in Savannah the Florida panhandle. Turtles get high scores for focus, direction and persistence. They don’t worry and they don’t fool around; they are stealthy, they get where they’re going and they have a million laughs along the way.
The lattermost detail is over-exaggerated and not fact-based.
My heart, a small disaster, gets an A for effort and a D for performance. I’d go faster if I could, but I wait till I catch my breath before I move on, supersetting being my preference (a well-kept secret until this very moment). I prefer heavier weights to lighter weights, but it’s difficult to determine the difference between the two lately.
They’ve become a blur; both are unyielding, unrelenting and impervious. I choose the handier of the two.
None of this is to suggest my workouts are anything short of brutal. There’s a way of squeezing juice out of a turnip and sweat and tears from iron and steel. It’s all in the grip, the grasp and the grab… and the attitude. Oh, and the consistency we provide, the food we eat, the rest we enjoy, the lifestyle we live and the people we know, like us, you and me.
You laugh, but give me a pair of 25s and 35s and a bench and a crate and I can bomb it and blast it till my body thunders. Hmmm… I just read my words as I fed them into the computer and it hit me: I’m as close to my workouts today as I was yesterday. They are as meaningful and fulfilling and purposeful as they were then. And they are here and now.
Some loopy combinations; pick and match and jam in any corner of your world:
- Low incline curls and one-arm lying triceps extensions, same bench
- Thumbs-up curls and one-arm overhead triceps extensions
- Incline flies to presses to stiff-arm pullovers in a single set
- Incline flies and sidearm lateral raises
- Cleans and presses from floor
- High pull bent-over rows and dips off the bench, legs raised
- Dumbbell squats and stiff-arm pullovers, dumbbell in each hand
- Two-hand bent-over rows and flat flies
Drink lots of water and have a happy nappy.
I may be youthful and dashing, but I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Trust me… Dave
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