Archive April 2010

Big Double Win Today

My Boys and Girls Track and Field Teams beat a major rival today. It’s one of those odd things where we didn’t really want to make up this meet (snowed out last week) and they insisted. So, without as much as a “how do you do” from the other head coach, my little team went out and did great. Lindsay, my daughter, sent a new Personal Record in the discus as did most of my other athletes.

You know, it got me to thinking: just as I finally figured out how to be a Head Coach, my tenure is over. This was a well run meet with my assistant coaches doing a simply brilliant job keeping the whole thing moving forward. Just as I figure it out…over.

I’m thinking that this is a truism for most of life. I have been teaching Buddhism the last weeks and also using Dan Millman’s “Peaceful Warrior” materials for discussion. Buddha talks about suffering and Dan has some great insights on it, too. “Throw out the garbage” is certainly a nice way to look at things. The great ones all get to this point, as Joseph Campbell commented: “Follow your Bliss.” Just as head coaching is actually, well not exactly…but let me run with the point, blissful, I head off to another life.

I’m just guessing here, but I really think that when Dan Martin and the gang meet up with me on the beach in California to work Kettlebells, I think I might be blissful without five years of hard work. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying…

To be honest, I have a dreamlike vision of my future. I have come so far with my injuries that they are not even injuries any more. My career is exploding. So, I walk on. Sadly, I walk on just as I figure out what I’m doing in this career.

I’m sure there is an answer here, maybe a point. I have had this one of a kind adventure for five years teaching and coaching my daughters and their friends and having so many opportunities to meet and wander around with wonderful people. So, like I told my students today:

What time is it? Now.

Where am I? Here.

Enjoy it while you got it…

Trying to stay afloat

I’m not sure what is the most stressful thing in my life:

Moving.

Selling house.

Daughters (both!) are graduating.

Track Season.

I would say Track Season. I think after five years of being head coach that a few things make sense. It’s all Power Laws, first and foremost. I can bring 100 kids to a meet, but only a few score. And, those are also the kids that never miss practice, meetings, due dates and all the rest. Having  a dozen kids in the track program would be as invigorating as a hundred. And, easier on the mind. The more I coach, the more respect I have for myself as an athlete. It is amazing to think that years ago I was “in the dumps” from throwing in the 160s. I would every meet that I coach at now with my worst days “back in the day.” Not trying to go all Bruce Springsteen “Glory Days” on you all, but it is funny to think that mediocre stresses me out! I get a lot of joy out of watching a kid develop himself over a four year span. Practically every kid I know can make all-state in track in Utah in something. Seriously. It just takes the effort.

Ah, I’m just rambling. I think the point is important: success is an inside job. I can only do so much for you and you can only do so much for me. You gotta spend the hours alone mastering the craft. And then…people will tell you how “easy” you make it look.

It finally made sense to Tiff

So, a couple of months ago, Tiff and I were sitting at the bar here at the Piper Down, our favorite place in SLC. This short guy comes in and starts talking about being a “Navy Seal” and just came back from the Middle East “teaching the locals how to fight.”

Overhearing this, Tiff leans in and says: “Listen to this guy.” The more I listened, the more I wanted to kick his ass. In fact, I may have noted it out loud.

As many of you know, I am on the road a lot teaching people how to stay fit and sane in all kinds of situations. One of the keys, and there are terms for this for the top end guys, is that you shut up.

For the record, I’m sick of it. I get so tired of guys introducing themselves as “this or that” bad ass thing and then trying to sell some BS on top of it. I had a nice talk with a guy the other night with the Congressional Medal of Honor and he was still fired up because we don’t recognize the spouses enough. That’s the kind of guy I want to buy a beer for, not some guy full of crap at a SLC bar.

I guess it made more sense to Tiffini, too. We were in this situation where we had a nice meal for those of us who help out anyway we can. At the function, Gary Sinise, our own “Lieutenant Dan” from Forrest Gump came over to introduce himself to Tiff and Me and, to be honest, I was star struck as much as anybody. He was as kind and as generous and as modest as one can imagine.

He is also a much better actor than that jerk at the bar in SLC.

Well, there you go…

I am moving to California. It’s not easy leaving Utah after 35 or so years of collecting crap! It’s a lot of friends and a lot of family and a lot of stuff.

I’m in Burlingame right now and I was really wondering what the hell was going on. We drove past a place and I liked it, but I didn’t want to say much. We drove down a little farther and Tiff says “Hey, look shot putters.” So, I went out of my way to find the area and stopped by. The coach, Coach Lewis, used to coach at Oceana. I introduced myself and he says “I was just asking about you.”

So, that was my sign. I’m moving back to a place where throwers still throw and people love what I do. So, we celebrated at an Irish Pub with my new best friend, Declan, and I realized that maybe even if I have to leave my daughters, there is still some life in the Bay Area.

I would hate to say “I’m home,” but I certainly thought that this was a sign.

Two years already?

This “stuff” has been pouring through my head for over two years. We were getting ready for Easter in South Bend, Indiana. I had come out to be a sponsor for Seth Rosenberg and his dad, noted lifting enthusiast, Mike Rosenberg, was encouraging me to write about training scholastic athletes. Mike and I have had a series of adventures and he has been one of the major engines driving me to write articles from Slosh Pipes to One lift a day.

Mike had been telling me about his frustrations at a local gym where high school football players train with Bench Press, Lat Pulldowns and Curls. They read the muscle rags at the supermarket and pour creatine in their twenty-five soft drinks every day. More importantly, they don’t listen to old men who are twice or more stronger than them.  Mike’s great insight about these young men and their training is simple. They only listen to Farmer Ted.

“Yeah, but the thing is I’m kinda like the leader, y’know…kinda like the King of the Dipshits.”

It’s a quote from Anthony Michael Hall playing “Farmer Ted,” in the movie “Sixteen Candles.” Yes, I think the movie is great and well worth watching. For many of us, we would like to be the painfully sad rich kid with the hot girlfriend. Many of us know those who follow the Farmer Teds of this world. And, one day, we look around at our local spa and realize that we are Farmer Ted. The King of the Dipshits.

For the bulk of those in the gym and spa, they gleam their information from these dissected and sliced up bits of hearsay and heresy that someone selling us something made up about a bodybuildings champion’s training who also spend five figures a month in supplements you can’t get from the grocery store. The kids at Mike’s local gym cut out the routines of the “champs” and follow the workouts exactly as written…except for the leg day, the back day and the shoulder day because, and I quote, “I don’t want to get too big.” Don’t worry, I will call you the day before you look like Mr. Universe and remind you to back off.

The issue is something that has been crashing over me for the past four months. The point was best summed up at the Charlie Francis Seminar when he simply said: “Most people’s highs are too low and their lows are too high.” The vast majority of people who train tend to swim towards the middle: middle reps, middle sets, medium intensity, medium recovery.

In other words, most of us train like Farmer Ted. True success in training is realizing that your “highs” have to be very very high, and your lows just tend to be above walking the dog. Most of us, however, compromise the really hard days by making the easy day a little harder than necessary basically insuring that there will be a lessening of what should really be hard. This is the secret behind training sprinters like Charlie Francis. Honestly, when you study the training schedules of Charlie’s sprinters, they perhaps train only 1% or LESS of their total training day. Of course, he has sprinters who bench over 400 and squat over 600 (for six reps) and go one hundred meters in under ten seconds.

I listen to Charlie Francis. I also listen to Dave Tate. I loved his point about most people’s training programs that he noted at testfest. Basically, he said that any time he saw any workout with lifts over 90%, he stopped looking at it. For him, it might take months of training to sneak up to 90% and anybody who thinks you can do 90% weekly or for reps simply doesn’t’ understand how far they have to go. Dave’s famous four levels of training are “Shitty, Sucks, Good, and Great.” When Dave and his Westside powerlifters go heavy, they go very heavy. They go so heavy that I noted a few years ago that my 400 pound bench is shitty.

What?

Listen to the best. Listen hard. Do your best to keep humble. Have a great Easter!