That’s why we come here. No one loves lifting like we do. My wife could care less if I quit working out. Actually, she gives me a hard time about it all the time.
Those pictures of you on your home page are impressive.
Ditto what Eco says. My wife and friends all think the same way. Why do you want to go back to the gym and be strong… Your 48, its time for a pot belly and poor health. Fuck’em I’m going to get strong as hell again.
Screw the damn banks too. They aint nobody’s friend!
Keep digging Doc, there is a balding swamp rat up here in Kakilacky that is living part of his dream through you.
that’s why I have all my shit shipped to the office. my wife has never even seen the “uber knee sleeves” that I bought from EFS, nor does she see the protein and supps that I get. I keep it all at the office, and bring it home in single serving ziploc bags that I leave in the car.
everyone at the office thinks I’m weird, George Foremaning steak for lunch and drinking my oddly colored shakes, except for a couple other guys that are lifters. And they think I’m weird too.
I suppose that there are other people out there whose goals I can’t understand, trading integrity for shiny stuff and cheating on their wives. But here, I get it. And I think we are all pulling for you, Doc.
Fuck em and feed em fish heads. I don’t care what anybody thinks of old farts lifting heavy. I’m sore a lot of the time and they think I’m hurt, it’s not worth explaining anymore. Do this thing we do for you, at least we are not old softies.
Doc, go to the mirror and look at that guy. That guy needs to go train, heavy as possible.
A great week to all.
You guys are great, and yes Barry, that guy needed to train, as heavy as possible. Fuck OL for tonight, my last three DL sets were 3x440, 2x475, 1x500, and no hollering needed, just smiling and pissed as hell at the same time.
We get knocked down but we get up. The day I stop doing that I’ll go buy Maxi-pads for my wife. Doc
geez, all i can do with 500 lbs is look at it…
The uncommonness of an endeavor is what makes it special. Yes, we all want to be in shape, look great, fuck all night, and live forever. Do any of these things require the ability to lift 500 plus pounds? Of course not. I think if we’re all really honest with ourselves we’ll admit we really don’t want to be mainstream. A little support is nice but if I want to be just one of the guys I’ll ditch lifting and take up a different Scottish sport called golf. Never was much for being a lemming. I value the repect of those that understand what I do. That pretty much means you guys and those I compete against. The others, as a great philospher once said,“Fuck em and feed em fish heads”. I can’t help with the personal problems but I’ll sure be here to support you, and all on here, in our journey. The bard always said it best, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers…”.
[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
…am I just supposed to be a provider and work my ass off until I die or have a stroke, like my father?
This is what I was taught is the role of a man, and this is what my old school wife expects. Does anybody else feel like this? Sometimes I wonder if we are all a bit too self-indulgent on this forum trying to reach these meaningless lifting/bodybuilding goals and trying to maintain the sex life of a twenty year old.
Sorry for the sour philosophic commentary but that's what you get from an old shrink lifter. Doc [/quote]
My wife sees the improvements in my attitude, focus and overall performance in life and sees it as a fair trade for the small amount of time lifting takes. You need to dream and focus and achieve, otherwise you are already dead, not just buried.
Killing yourself with work is just killing yourself. I already tried that when I tried to eat myself to death.
I eventually failed at that and started to live again.
You can too Doc, you can too. That is the message of Iron.
[quote]Elaikases wrote:
My wife sees the improvements in my attitude, focus and overall performance in life and sees it as a fair trade for the small amount of time lifting takes. You need to dream and focus and achieve, otherwise you are already dead, not just buried.
Killing yourself with work is just killing yourself. I already tried that when I tried to eat myself to death.
I eventually failed at that and started to live again.
You can too Doc, you can too. That is the message of Iron.[/quote]
It is 4 am and I am wide awake due to being called all night from my hospital duties. Every 3rd or 4th weekend I have "call", in which I see about 80 suicidal or crazy patients on Saturday and Sunday and get called for orders off and on throughout the night. To be fair, this is the normal life of a young doctor, and I did this kind of thing easily then. But at this point in my life it is killing me, and how ironic I get this post from you, El.
I am very focused on certain things...the highest priority in my life is saving enough for my son to go to college, so for the next 19 months I need this current backbreaking but valuable job in which I have a 529 college fund which I put a maximum contribution in. The second priority is health insurance, without it I wouldnt be able to afford the medical bills (its already bad enough that they dont cover some of the "non-providers" I need. The third priority is maxing out my retirement account which I had to start from scratch when I came back from Costa Rica.
Beyond that...life is pretty much shit. The wife is a roller coaster of love and hate and periodically threatens divorce, which would make me more of a slave to make money than I already am right now.
Trust me, the Iron is my sanity, my best friend, my best coping skill. The OL dream is proving very difficult due to my savage inflexibility and weaknesses in leg strength and shoulder stability. But I will continue to push to see whst six months of focus on this will do...I really have no clue if I can overcome these weaknesses which are in large part based on post surgical and accident related physical damage to my body. I have already exceeded what every doctor said I could do, so I have no limiting belief in what is possible...its just that my body may simply not be able to be pushed to do what I want it to do.
I appreciate the ability to discuss these matters on this forum...but I feel things are actually clearer today than usual. I believe I will have options in 18 months, possibly involving drastic changes, creative solutions, and a totally different life than what I have now. Until then I probably need to shut up about my difficulties and just keep the thread centered on how my training is going.
I will lift today after work, I dont care how tired I will be or how late it will be, it will be the cure for the stress of the moment. As it has always been. Doc
Please neither read nor respond to the above post.
I did workout today, and did the tough stuff, front squats and overhead squats. Doc
front squats choke me because I never learned how to “rack” properly. I have never tried overhead squats, cuz I don’t lift drunk. that stuff looks hard…
anyway, I was just thinkin’, something that might help with your flexibility issues. there is a dvd out there called Magnificent Mobility. I understand that some of the warmup stuff that I do was taken from that, but I have never actually seen the DVD. you may want to check this out. I think its from Mike Robertson, but don’t recall for sure. it may be just what the doctor ordered, or should have…
[quote]mjnewland wrote:
there is a dvd out there called Magnificent Mobility. I understand that some of the warmup stuff that I do was taken from that, but I have never actually seen the DVD. you may want to check this out. I think its from Mike Robertson, but don’t recall for sure. it may be just what the doctor ordered, or should have…[/quote]
Yes, it’s a joint between Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson, and probably one of the best instructional videos I’ve ever used. It helped me overcome my ankle and hip flexibility issues that were hindering my squat form. Great suggestion, mj.
the MM dvd is the foundation of my “adult” training yeah Im younger by a little bit then some here,
but being a child/teen athelete takes its toll, the magnificent mobility is a must.
need to do it every training day , if not something every day for every session of big deads big squats etc
I have to balance it out with some work like this foam, ball and PVC rolling as well.
as for OH squats- they have helped me plenty…
ps we are all rooting for you
[quote]Yo Momma wrote:
mjnewland wrote:
there is a dvd out there called Magnificent Mobility. I understand that some of the warmup stuff that I do was taken from that, but I have never actually seen the DVD. you may want to check this out. I think its from Mike Robertson, but don’t recall for sure. it may be just what the doctor ordered, or should have…
Yes, it’s a joint between Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson, and probably one of the best instructional videos I’ve ever used. It helped me overcome my ankle and hip flexibility issues that were hindering my squat form. Great suggestion, mj.
[/quote]
Yo Momma! Still checking in on the crazy doc? Thanks. And yes, I remember hearing about this DVD last comeback and should have got it then. I’ll get in now, but I want them to wrap it in black or brown paper so that my wife thinks it is porno…when she finds out its just about training then she’ll be less pissed.
Maybe I need a secret P.O. box. 
Doc
Doc, I’d like to suggest two blog posts I wrote and a book:
There is a link to the book in the last essay, but if you drop me a PM with a mailing address, I’ll have Amazon.com drop ship you a copy.
Best.
[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
Yo Momma! Still checking in on the crazy doc? Thanks. And yes, I remember hearing about this DVD last comeback and should have got it then. I’ll get in now, but I want them to wrap it in black or brown paper so that my wife thinks it is porno…when she finds out its just about training then she’ll be less pissed.
Maybe I need a secret P.O. box. Doc
[/quote]
Yeah, I check in on all my “Over 35” homeboys, but usually don’t post unless you’re being bad, and need to be spanked.
And it comes in a plain brown wrapper.
Well I’m posting my OL workouts on the OL site here but I guess the young guys lost interest so I’ll keep them here. I did an interesting workout yesterday. My new weightlifting’savvy PT gave me a simple pre-workout regimen for my shoulder which I am supposed to do before OL lifts.
It involved a variety of stretches followed by three sets of ten of front, side and rear laterals plus three sets of lying rotator cuff abductions (elbow to side, lift db from chest away to 90 degrees) Following this I went to do powersnatches and found that the shoulder hurt less and I was able to get to a good full lockout much better.
Did nine sets of triples up to my last set which was a double with 175. Encouraging. Doc
Outstanding. I used to only do the shoulder prehab stuff on bench and military days, but my shoulders really started hurting for deadlifts. it would make sense that all the olympic lifts would be hard on the shoulder joint since that is how you attach the heavy stuff to the part that does the lifting. If you keep up the regime for 5 training sessions, I promise you will forget what it was like for your rotator cuff to hurt.
When talking to the young, remember, it’s all about them. Having never been on an Oly training regiment I’m not sure what a lot of volume is but 9 x 3 sounds pretty good. Doubling 175 is impressive, too.
[quote]hel320 wrote:
When talking to the young, remember, it’s all about them. Having never been on an Oly training regiment I’m not sure what a lot of volume is but 9 x 3 sounds pretty good. [/quote]
Well said about the younguns. Those children have plenty of time to play, so they can spend a couple of hours training and tally up pretty impressive “volume.” Plus, this is the standard of training volume well established by the masters of the sport, the Russians and Bulgarians. Of course, the lifters of those countries are basically professional athletes (admittedly not paid well) and have nothing else to do but train.
I have an hour and a half to train max based on my life responsibilities and with the stretching time needed this cuts my actual weight time to an hour. This is still plenty good enough to do what I need to do now, as I pretty much am spent after two major exercises/lifts. I imagine when my conditioning gets better I might be able to train with more intensity and get in more “volume” even in the same time.
Today, I actually only had time for one lift due to night call, but I got in front squats. I have never loved squats but one thing I love about them is that, like deads, you sometimes can go in the gym and just be twenty pounds stronger for no good reason. Such was the case today. After my usual multiple warm-up sets to get the knees lubed and the butt down to bottom, I hit a nice stretch:
5x185
5x225
3x245
3x265
2x285
1x305
I actually felt so strong (for me) that I thought I had that 305 for two but I buried myself on the second rep and didnt risk bouncing my way out. It sort of amazes me that I can do full OL squats at all at my age as I feel like I risk blowing out my knees on the higher weights. But my wrists hurt me and my knees don’t so I guess I’m safe. I don’t have an alternative anyway given this goal of mine except I did think maybe I should do some heavier half squats to help the thrust on the jerk.
Anyway, its been a good week so far on my OL plan. Doc