300

You's guys oughta fire the content provider of this here blog.

I used to see months and months between blog posts on other less-respected blogs and just shake my head in reproof.  Shaking your head is wagging your finger when no one's there to see you wag your finger.  Nowadays I see months and months between posts and I nod my head knowingly.  It's hard, making the donuts.  Especially when the donut maker is trying to make, like, good donuts.  I guess I felt pretty good about the last couple posts, felt like I was getting close to saying something important well.  Problem being, that's some deep water for me.  I have never regretted minding my own business.  Spouting off about dying and living and parenting, these could easily be construed as minding NOT my own business.  I'm not back-tracking or soft-shoeing what I wrote.  Hardly.  I have some courage in my convictions, a lot actually, but I, well, I don't know; did you ever have just one more beer than you really needed and you go past diminished inhibitions to talky-talker guy?  And then you quit drinking for the night, by will or circumstance, and you come down pretty quickly and you think, jeez, I wish I didn't blabblabblab so much?  Have you ever done that?   Well I have to say I find myself kinda drunk on being alive sometimes.  Lately.  Since, uh staying alive.  And I'm deeply interested in how to do it well.  Be alive, that is.  Live.  And I'll talk a blue streak about it.  I mean it, and it's the truth, at least in the moment for me.  But then I sober up and go, man, I hope they don't think. . . .

See for instance like the "I mean it" sentence?  I mean that to say "I mean (am genuine and honest about) the blue streak when I'm saying it.  Follow me?  The sentence, however, could be read as simple emphasis: "I'll REALLY REALLY talk your ear off".   And I sorta mean that too, but the ambiguity is rather poisonous to MEANING anything at all.  I could (and regularly do) lose a big chunk of an hour thinking about how that plays out between written and read.  And if something so simple has those layers of meaning and intention and understanding and complexity, how much more difficult are our daily lives with people we love and care about, with things at stake?  Things are always things at stake. Welcome to the stream of my consciousness.  All which, you've figured out by now, is my way of saying sorry for taking so long updating the blog.

But anyway, after we got the deer butchered we hung hams in the root cellar.  The jerky was gone in about 4 days.  Nate and Dad and I took a swing at Sopperessata.  I capped the skull, and the antlers are mounted in the dining room.  I left the hide in tact on this one, a little touch that creeps Heather right out.  It's a little too close to taxidermy for my taste, to be totally honest with you, but I like bones.  I like antlers.  I don't really think of them as trophies.  Only Heather fills that role.  (and some others but I don't want to embarrass her).  I think of them as monuments or memorials.  Momento mori.   Sometimes I just can't help myself.

And below is me getting pinned by 300 lbs.  Rep before that I stood up with 285.  It felt so good I almost tried to make it for a double, but instead I racked it and took a crack at 3.  Not this time.  So close I had a giant wave of disappointment not making it.  Until I remembered 285.  This is so like me.  Hurray, 285!!!   BOO, you putz, you cant even squat 300!?  The good news is I got over it pretty quickly.  The kind of thing that, last year even, would have rattled me, ruined a good workout.  I expect with the new year many of you have set goals and mapped out steps to achieve them.  Good for you.

Here's me not minding my own business:  throw away your goals.  They're not good for you.  They're enslaving you and robing you of the joy of movement (my new term for exercise).  Seriously.  You sit down and you think carefully about what is possible and then add just a few more pounds, subtract a few seconds--a sign to yourself that you're serious and committed.  Sound familiar?  Let me ask you this?  How much you squat?  Dead?  Clean?  Mile time?  2k row?  You know these numbers?  Yes.  You do.  Don't lie.  You know all these numbers and more within 15 seconds and 10 lbs.  You know where you're at.  You spend any time at all exercising, you know how good you are.  Exercise journals make me laugh.  Does anybody need to write this stuff down?  I sure as hell don't.  What's important gets measured.  What's measured gets remembered.  Better yet, does not need to be remembered, is just known.  You tell me the workout, I'll tell you how much, how many, and what time.  Guessing you are the same way.  Maybe you're not; if you don't know, you don't need to know, it's not important enough.  Yet.  When it is, you will.  Not for nothing, I notice golfers are like this.  They remember the order of shots on DIFFERENT HOLES IN ROUNDS PLAYED YEARS AGO.  Me, I can't remember but one or two of the dozen shots after I took a drop.  I don't really get that wound up about golf.  But I can tell you how many unbroken handstand pushups I can do, kipping and strict.  How many I've done at different times in my training and certainly whether that was enough to beat Cope or not.    I remember very well the day very early in my transplant recovery when I looked up at a set of rings and could just feel in my shoulders I had a muscle up.  I knew it.  Chalk, false grip, kip, boom.  TWO!  We know these things so well we know them a priori, without testing.

So the goal-setting, chasing is funny business to me.  It's a little Kabuki theatre: write down the number, the big-bad number, chase the number, kill the number, write down new number.  It's inauthentic and worse, misplaces emphasis.  Our goal is to train with joy, move and breathe and goddamn enjoy being alive.    I can squat 285lbs.  Not a lot.  But a lot for me.  Most I've ever done, Jack.  You know what my goal is?  286.  And when I get 286?  287.  Your goal is to do more, faster, better. Who you kiddin?  Why don't we just say, I want to be better?  That's a good goal.  Think if we could all achieve that goal.  We can.

I want to be better.  At everything.  That's my "goal"  But what I really want to do, my goal is to enjoy the work, enjoy the progress, The process, teach someone else how to do the same.  These are the things I want to work on.  If your effort is consistent and your movement is sound, you'll adapt, you'll make progress.  The numbers and times will take care of themselves.  Trust me.

But ff I say, in a very doctrinaire, psychology-today, passbook savings kinda way "my goal is to squat 300 lbs"  all the time I spend beneath 300 or missing 300 (see below), I'm not good enough, I kick myself and set myself up to miss training days, avoid hard work, cherry pick work outs or . . . wait for it. . . set NEW DIFFERNT goals.   OR, as soon as I squat 300, I check the box and let all the air out of what was by all other measures a pretty good training day, and start chasing another number.  Am I the only one?  I can't be.

I guess what I'm learning and trying to tell you is to make being happy training THE goal.  Just training, working, hard.  Work for work's sake.  Because you're warmer than room temp.  Find real joy in movement, at the lactic threshold, in squeezing so hard your nose bleeds.  It's happened.  Missed the rep, but man THAT's time under tension and some kinda PR.  In the new year I've been training gymnastic movements with much vigor.  I'm basically at the beginning.  The very very very beginning.  It's humbling and hard and everyday I leave the gym, muscles trembling and central nervous system fried.  I could say Im training to do a front lever and a straddle planche and so on.  This is the way my programming is set up.  But really what I'm doing is learning to move, teaching myself body control, staying limber and getting stronger in ways that are beyond functional, they are elemental.  I like to think I am writing my own user's manual.  Yeah, I want to do a flag someday.  Whatever.  Tomorrow I want to do one more hollow hold than I did the day before.  And if I can't, I want to squeeze harder on every one that I can do.  Maybe my nose will even bleed.

Head up head up head up




Sorry again for the delay.  I want to say it won't happen again, but I'd rather be honest with you.  I'm off to Central America for a little R & R, touch some monkeys, wrestle some crocs, maybe try to stand up on a surfboard.  There's always room for improvement.