You probably don’t remember me but I’m the good looking guy, same height as you and I guess a little heavier. I hope your world is great. Training is good but my finances are turning poor. Won’t get into it. Give the family the best from the Missouri Mule. I’m pulling today so it’s a great day. I’m down to 273 which for me is almost speedo territory but I would never do that to the small children. Go eat some stone crabs for me; mustard sauce please.
Duke, there ARE hot psychiatrists, but few and far between. But anyway, it’s far better to look for and find a hot massage therapist!!!
Barry, I like your new avatar...is that number your lifetime lifting competition number...158 victories, 3 losses, and 26 disqualifications for beating up the judges for a red light? Doc
Hey, something interesting tonight. I drank a Red Bull on my way home from work…it prevented my night-time collapse, and I went to the little clubhouse gym. Nobody there…I liked this, it was like in college when I trained late at night with the key to a local top notch gym because the gym owner liked and respected me. I put on some seventies music and I had flashbacks to those days (It was Cliff’s Gym in Tallahassee, if youre out there Cliff…thanks).
I went crazy stacking that executive universal machine...and on the eight rep on the bench, there was this big SMACK!!! and all the resistance went away and I smashed the empty "bar" forward and heard two more crashing sounds. Basically, the pulley snapped, the stack flew down and cracked some plates, and I crashed the handles forward so hard I bent metal.
At first, I was pissed, cause it interrupted my workout and I could have got hurt, but I was fine and I had myself a good laugh by myself in there.
BTW, I bought myself an interesting supplement, NO2. It's supposed to increase pumps and maybe help ED (I'll try anything for the latter since HRT isnt exactly the cure I had hoped it would be.)
Well, I certainly had good pumps from my workout, but I'll be damned if I didnt have THREE vein sightings. And I'm far more out of shape than I was two months ago. This stuff really does pump blood into your muscles...whether that translates into increased muscle growth, we'll see, but I rarely see such a dramatic evidence from a supplement like this.
Anyway, I'm not posting as much because if there's nothing interesting to say, I'm not gonna write just to write, too busy for that. Kind of accepting life for what it is right now, far from perfect, but good enough. Doc
What did the gym owner say when you broke his equipment? Obviously it broke because it wasn’t maintained properly but I can imagine he would blame you for using too much weight.
I haven’t heard anything positive about NO2. I doubt it will translate into anything lasting.
Stu
Stu, looking good in your avatar, how do you stay so cut?
The country club gym would have to use CSI techniques to know it was me, there were no witnesses. However, they might figure it was me since I am the only strong guy in there, at least strong enough to bend the metal bench handles. Well, I’m sorry if I’m not worried, but if I stay in this town beyond next month, I have to move anyway and I’ll join World’s.
And yes, you’re right, I looked at the cable and it was frayed a bit and I also saw a lot of things poorly maintained…loose screws where the cable connects to the weight stack, stacks not leveled properly and so forth. I used to have a home gym, and I never broke anything. These older country club folks spend more time maintaining the TV they watch on the treadmill and making sure every drop of sweat is immediatly wiped up and sanitized.
On a totally different subject, I must say I am sick of seeing and hearing about Clemens and Bonds and the evils of steroids. I am NOT pro steroids, and only take HRT cause my nuts dont work, but I just got done with another day from my “zoo” at work. In my last two months, I have treated about 75 people whose lives have been ruined by drugs of one kind or another. How many of them were using steroids or HGH? ZERO. Here are the drugs that are bringing down people in droves:
- Alcohol (as always)
- Opiates (especially now Roxycontin, the replacement for harder to get Oxycontin) and Methadone abuse
- Cocaine and crack
- Polypharmacy from bad docs, including horrible eight drug “coctails”, always including some benzo’s and often many psych drugs which have drug-drug interactions
- Hallucinogens, including trendy fad drugs like “triple C’s” (Corricidin) as well as older mainstays like LSD
- Stimulants, including illegal (Meth) as well as legal ones like Adderall.
There is plenty of pot being used, but other than legal problems and laziness I rarely see it ruining lives.
I wish our government had a clue what is really destroying people and spend our tax dollars fixing that. Rant over. Doc
Damn, am I out of touch. I never heard of half that stuff. I guess as long as crawdads,tabassco,and coffe are legal I’m ok.
I’m so sick of hearing the roid crap. It’s all they talk about on the throwing pages. Who used, is using, will use, thought about using, about time they started busting other sports,etc… It’s one thing when the sports community argues about it but I agree it’s sheer stupity for Congress to be wasting all this time on it.
Anyway, hope you get back to a real gym soon. Don’t think the country club one can hold up much longer.
“Eh, What’s up, Doc?” I liked your assessment of the drug situation in the US. I wish you could come to NJ and be a guest speaker in one of the College Health classes I teach. You are so articulate & knowledgable and the way you present yourself commands immediate attention. I hope things are better, on the surface here in your posts, they seem to be, but they are but the tip of the iceberg, so I’m hoping they reflect what’s below as well!
QT, always appreciate your posts. My life is still a roller coaster, we just found out my wife has a mass in her breast and she gets a biopsy tomorrow…
On a positive note, I believe I have come up with plans to permanently escape my financial woes, it simply involves working my ass off for the next eight years! (plus ditching my house, buying one here in Florida on a "distress" sale similar to the one I am selling). Then bring my family back to the states.
I worked out at World's yesterday, strength is slipping. Pisses me off, but this is what happens to me when I am in full work mode (too much work mode). Lifting is sadly not a high priority right now, but I have got to find a way to change that. Would you believe it, at World's, I was doing my cardio and in walks one of my patients I am most proud of, a young hot girl who I helped get off a bunch of those drugs I wrote in the last post. She came up, smiling and surprised to see me there, and took up training right next to me.
Things like that help...I have GOT to stay in the gym, and a REAL gym at that. It is mostly an energy battle (as in I dont have enough of it), but also I get a little discouraged when I can't train regularly, and then retreat to more bodybuilding training instead of heavy barbell stuff.
I will say, to the plus, that I am benching now without shoulder pain, that left shoulder has just about recovered from surgery completely, just still weaker than the right. No matter how tired I am, I love to bench. Its just the BIG lifts that tend to drift away (squats, deads, even...dare I say it...power cleans?!?!)
What a ying yang life I
have, huh. Doc
I hope it all works out for the best Doc. Good luck to your wife.
This working your ass off all the time, do you see that continuing or should you be able to cut back and work like a normal person some day? That’s no kind of life.
Stu
[quote]stuward wrote:
I hope it all works out for the best Doc. Good luck to your wife.
This working your ass off all the time, do you see that continuing or should you be able to cut back and work like a normal person some day? That’s no kind of life.
Stu[/quote]
Stu, I appreciate the mere fact you care enough to ask this very relevant question. I just presented my wife with the “freedom” plan, our road to retirement bliss in eight years, and she gets all sorrowful that I have to work so hard now and wants a different answer. Well shit, if I could figure out an easier way, I would. It just seems the thing I’m best at is the thing most people can’t do because it’s too hard.
I guess Churchill was feeling something like this when he came up with that immortal quote..."a riddle inside a puzzle wrapped in an enigma." Doc
Just make sure you address your own needs first. You’re no good to your wife or your employer if burn out.
Burnout…been there, done that, that’s why I went to Costa Rica.
However, what I must do now, I did throughout my thirties. My accident, bad hormones and other factors contributed to my burnout just as much as the long hours and stress. So this gives me a clue, how to avoid it… I can’t be thirty again, but I can recreate some aspects of HOW I coped back then…
a. more sex
b. more laughs
c. more positive attitude
d. better nutrition
e. better hormone levels
f. more friends
g. more reading
h. more writing
i. though little sleep, better sleep
j. more confidence (I was pretty cocky back then!)
k. more concern about patient care and less concern about administrative politics and “system problems”
l. intense, frequent workouts but workouts that didnt leave me beat up
m. hopes and dreams how life was going to get better and better
n. living in the moment when the moments were good!
Stu, you helped me remember some key things that helped me survive over a decade of similar workload. I need to focus on what I CAN do to cope with my challenge and focus less on how "sad" it is that I have to do this at this stage of life. In my thirties, I did all of this, and during two separate years, I got up in the middle of the night and wrote two books which were published.
I may never return to that Olympic lifting glory I missed out on, but I can return to the man that handled a hell of a lot while not necessarily perceiving it as "hell" or "abnormal". I only saw it that way once I got into my forties and became humbled by life due to many reasons. Now while listening to thirty or more crazy or suicidal people every day is certainly NOT a normal way of life, it is simply what I do best. I wish I was a pro golfer, but the best I ever shot was a 73...just not meant to be.
Stu, you (and others) have challenged me to keep training, but even more now the challenge is to keep myself in some sort of balance while I face certainly the last great test of my life. Thanks for the push to think of this thing from many angles, I think I am getting into a better frame of mind about it. Worked out tonight too. Doc
How does that go, “Physician, heal thyself”?
Great post, Doc. You’ve given us all something to think about. I’m going to print this one off and read it a few times.
Stu
Applauding your resolve Doc - The “better frame of mind” is evident in your writing.
Lifts my spirits too.
I worked out four times this week, including tonight. Why, and how did I do this, considering my schedule, fatigue problems, etc.? It is called karma. You do good things, and good things come back to you. I have heard this Eastern philosophy in the past, but never totally bought into it. Until now.
I have worked out, every night this week except the night I was on call, because of my new workout partner. She is a twenty something VERY VERY HOT girl whose life I basically saved in the psychiatric hospital. She was near death from alcohol, drugs, and depression. I didnt even know she was pretty the first few weeks, as she was essentially in a coma, wrapped in sheets and blankets, and looked ashen and haggard.
I detoxed her, and then gradually helped her find hope, and then she worked with me on her demons. She then made rapid, dramatic progress over the course of a month. She is now radiant, and I am immensely proud of her. I happened to go to the gym Monday night, and she arrived five minutes later, and asked to train alongside me. What a gift. We meet now each night and train, mostly different routines, but we enjoy each others presence. It will go no further, and we both know this, but since I am not continuing her care she enjoys just my presence, and I hers.
I gain joy in both seeing her thrive as well as looking at her incredibly sexy body. She’ll catch me taking in a good glance at her curves, and just smiles at me, as if saying “Go ahead Doc, you earned it.” This, my friends, is good kharma.
She may tire of the workouts, or maybe I will, as I am absolutely toast at the end of this week, but I have long since learned not to dwell on the future. She sparked something in me, my pride and ego perhaps, and gave me the energy I have been totally lacking recently. Still need a Red Bull, but I drink it in the car ride home and change into gym clothes the minute I get home.
I don't know if you guys can relate, this is an odd thing for me, can't ever say it happened before. My workout parters, when I had some, were all a lot bigger, stronger, and looked a lot like Barry. But I'll ride this wave as long as it lasts, and as long as it stays pure. Doc
[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
Hi, Everyone. This is my first post. I’m a 50 year old psychiatrist who used to be a national caliber shot and disc thrower in my college days. However, I loved training and lifting more than track itself. In particular, I was a madman on the power clean.
I did 300 in high school (1975), 400 three years later, and was clean and jerking 420 my senior year of college. I really wanted to make it to the Olympics, in either track or lifting, but President Carter the Stupid boycotted the games.
That took the wind out of my sails, and I needed to pursue my second love, medicine. I subsequently worked as a doctor for the next thirty years, but never gave up lifting. However, age and life beat me down, especially five years ago when I was in a horrible car accident which seriously screwed up my back (herniated discs, radiculopathies, three surgeries.) I also had to have both shoulders surgically fixed, partly old tears from lifting.
So, I take a year off work, but just sit around getting fat and “relaxing.” I am not happy after this year. I find an “age management” doctor, who measures all my hormones, and I am overwhelmed to find I have clinical hypothyroidism, my Testosterone is pathetic (102) and GH very low as well.
I get put on HRT and within weeks, I am a new man. In three months, I go from 32 to 17% bodyfat, my back and shoulders barely hurt anymore, and I look and feel great. Most people would just be thrilled, keep on doing what I was doing (the usual cross-training, cardio and careful bodybuilding exercises.
However, I am not most people. My love of Olympic lifting, especially cleaning, came back, and I started doing cleans again, for the first time in DECADES. In very short order, I am back to 275 and climbing fast. I am stiff as a board, so I am stretching like crazy in order to do jerks and snatches soon. I can military 185, but it hurts a bit.
My doctors, my friends, my wife, everyone says I am crazy and that I will crush a disc or tear my sewn up rotators for sure if I keep it up. But it is like a disease, this need to lift heavy weights. It is one of the greatest rushes (for me) I have experienced in this life. I want to go as far as I can go, maybe get up in the high 300’s again.
I have been more impressed with the candor and personal stories on this site than all the others I looked into joining. I hope to share my experience as a shrink to anyone who needs it. But is this shrink crazy to do what he is doing in the gym??? [/quote]
No way, your at the right place. Enjoy life to the fullest 
Lift on!
[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
My workout parters, when I had some, were all a lot bigger, stronger, and looked a lot like Barry. Doc
[/quote]
Pretty well discribes my workout partners (Barry’s better looking, though). Glad your getting into a routine. We all find motivation in different things. I can think of a lot worse ones than a sweet young thing.
Hey Doc, just stumbled across your log. We seem to have a little more than weight lifting in common. I am an RN at a level 1 psychiatric facility. Just got done doing an involuntary admit on a psychotic lady. I feel your pain and occasionally share in some of your good kharmatic actions.
There are not a lot of psychiatrists left who actually talk to their patients. Sounds like you may be one that does and I think that’s a remarkable thing.
Keep on keepin on!
OK, I’m jealous as hell. Sounds like old Doc’s attitude is good and that makes me happy. Don’t be a stranger or any stranger than normal. Pretty clever??? My best to ya.
Hell no you’re not crazy. I’m 47 and my love for Powerlifting is the same. I can’t imagine just going to the gym and “working out”. I love to compete with myself and others. It keeps us young. Go for it!
Boz
[quote]Dr.PowerClean wrote:
Hi, Everyone. This is my first post. I’m a 50 year old psychiatrist who used to be a national caliber shot and disc thrower in my college days. However, I loved training and lifting more than track itself. In particular, I was a madman on the power clean.
I did 300 in high school (1975), 400 three years later, and was clean and jerking 420 my senior year of college. I really wanted to make it to the Olympics, in either track or lifting, but President Carter the Stupid boycotted the games.
That took the wind out of my sails, and I needed to pursue my second love, medicine. I subsequently worked as a doctor for the next thirty years, but never gave up lifting. However, age and life beat me down, especially five years ago when I was in a horrible car accident which seriously screwed up my back (herniated discs, radiculopathies, three surgeries.) I also had to have both shoulders surgically fixed, partly old tears from lifting.
So, I take a year off work, but just sit around getting fat and “relaxing.” I am not happy after this year. I find an “age management” doctor, who measures all my hormones, and I am overwhelmed to find I have clinical hypothyroidism, my Testosterone is pathetic (102) and GH very low as well.
I get put on HRT and within weeks, I am a new man. In three months, I go from 32 to 17% bodyfat, my back and shoulders barely hurt anymore, and I look and feel great. Most people would just be thrilled, keep on doing what I was doing (the usual cross-training, cardio and careful bodybuilding exercises.
However, I am not most people. My love of Olympic lifting, especially cleaning, came back, and I started doing cleans again, for the first time in DECADES. In very short order, I am back to 275 and climbing fast. I am stiff as a board, so I am stretching like crazy in order to do jerks and snatches soon. I can military 185, but it hurts a bit.
My doctors, my friends, my wife, everyone says I am crazy and that I will crush a disc or tear my sewn up rotators for sure if I keep it up. But it is like a disease, this need to lift heavy weights. It is one of the greatest rushes (for me) I have experienced in this life. I want to go as far as I can go, maybe get up in the high 300’s again.
I have been more impressed with the candor and personal stories on this site than all the others I looked into joining. I hope to share my experience as a shrink to anyone who needs it. But is this shrink crazy to do what he is doing in the gym??? [/quote]