The Middle of the Strength Universe

March 30, 2010 in BLOG 4 Comments

I am pulling up to school this morning and Master RKC Brett Jones calls me. I get in and Mike Brown has a bunch of new FMS ideas. My emails have piled up with some of the best and brightest names in strength training.

In my mailbox later in the day, Lyle McDonald has some personalized diet ideas for me. Later, I work on refining my Get Ups with the 32s with several quality people critiquing my work.

For whatever reason, that’s a typical day of mine. Gant Grimes, noted strength coach and lawyer, dropped by yesterday and, to be honest, it is a rare day that somebody from the “know” doesn’t pop by the gym. Why?

For one thing, I think I never actually came out and said “I know it all” and all of you are wrong. It’s rare in this field. I learn so much everyday. Socrates, a man of poor squatting but fine academic rigor, said this:

When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, “Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.” Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him – his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination – and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him….therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was.

I think I know what he means!