Straight Talk from a Crooked Mouth
What’s your plan, Stan? Where you goin', Owen? Show me the way, Jay? Sideways, up or down, clown? Forward or back, Jack? You have no clue, Lou? What a mess, Jess. No excuse, Bruce. You make me crazy, Daisy.
I’ll bet you never realized I had so many friends and acquaintances.
One is not a loser if one doesn’t have a training plan for the winter. A loser is one who doesn’t plan on training for the winter. And, as you know, this less-than-balmy three-month season has a way of stretching into five months of grey and cold. Can you imagine the absence of barbells and dumbbells during November, December, January, February and March? Gives me the shivers.
And where the weights go, so goes the nutrition... into the recesses of forgotten, the deep crevices of neglect. Disciplines and good habits deteriorate, the midsection takes on new proportions and the muscles you built up slide to the down-most place... your bottom.
My, what a big backside you have, Grandma.
All the better to sit on, my child.
Come springtime, you resemble a beached walrus and exhibit its graceful movements. You bark when spoken to and flop when excited. Life is delightful. Someone equipped with a clipboard and pen steps to your side and nudges you with her foot. "Here’s another one," she yells routinely, "a fat-bellied wobbler, out of shape and hopeless. There’s an acute absence of exercise, no signs of sets or reps and a donut is lodged in its flipper. Send the wobble wagon."
You resent the assessment and look up at the intruder, your whiskers bristling, "Arf, arf!" No one wants to be loaded onto the wobble wagon and carted off to join the wobbling masses -- mindless, ordinary and dull.
I have a few buds -- crusty, dysfunctional muscleheads -- who think it’s a good idea to let the joints rest and repair for an extended length of time and bulk up before a spring training onslaught. They reference grizzly bears, as if they were a common denominator. "Grizzly bears do it, look at them," they say. You ever take a close look at a grizzly after a winter’s hibernation? Me neither. But from a distance you can see they are scrawny, missing patches of fur and grouchy. Growling is replaced by wheezing puffs of foul breath and they feed on wild berries and harmless insects till they get their acts together. Pathetic.
Hibernation’s for long-haired, long-toothed creatures, not sinewy captains, mighty bombers and swift-flying navigators. Listen up, crew: Between now and the spring, don’t lay off more than two times, or more than four days either time. Grizzlies do it and look at them.
I know, once again you’re flabbergasted by my acute perception and keen acumen. I snatch truth from the air. I extricate facts from beneath the earth’s surface.
My mission is to inform, guide and encourage you. And not wanting to boast or mislead you, I feel compelled to apprise you of the source of my vast knowledge. It is not gained from universities in the states or abroad. I have no degrees signified by a series of initials after my name. Certainly not. Though I am in awe of such striking acquirements, my insights and understandings are acquired from guesswork, dreams, cheating, hearsay, Doctor Seuss, my mother, Laree, trial and error, barbells, meditation, the stars, experience, logic, accidents and injuries, occasional reading and deep conversations with friends, pets, psychics, aliens and strangers.
Having put your minds at ease, hearts to rest and removing the burdens of doubt from your shoulders, let’s take a peak into the future.
November, typically, is not a month we snuggle up to. It’s a rootless span, an abandoned space, a banal stretch of time that happens while we’re looking the other way. November succeeds October, a month enchanted by Halloween and falling leaves, and precedes December, a fragmented month remembered in the western world for the holiday season, Christmas and the New Year. November, but for its turkey and stuffing, pleads to get out of the way.
Don’t be fooled, skyscrapers. November is a month for leapfrog gains in muscle and might. While some men and women drop their guards and back off (summer’s over, winter’s ahead), we stand upright with our feet well placed; we throw back our shoulders and tighten our midsections; we clench our fists and grin. The gym is ours, down on Main Street or down in the basement. November is a stable and non-intrusive month, providing the ideal conditions to grasp the weights and what they offer; a profusion of goodness for the body, mind and soul, a goodness that supports and bonds and flows one to the other.
November is a bonus month for the weight trainer, musclebuilder and responsible guardian of life. Welcome it as the forerunner to the grand seasons ahead.
It’s not uncommon for a bonus to be used extravagantly, wasted or poorly invested. It’s extra, after all. Right thinking for fools, wrong thinking for bombers. I’m not cheap and I enjoy a good time, but I hate waste and foolishness. Waste nothing today -- time, energy or resource -- and you won’t hustle, borrow or steal tomorrow. Throw your arms around November, the provider and stabilizer. Push and pull and feel the steel. You can release your grip, but don’t let go. Improvise, investigate and experiment in your workouts; engage, surrender and wallow in your training; regroup, reorder and restore your fitness.
A timely thought as the year shows its backside: Like you, I’m stacking the days on end and they’re beginning to look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I do something similar to a crawl to return to my vehicle after my workout four days a week. This is okay. I’ve come to value crawling -- it reminds me of my formative years. But lately I wonder if it’s wise, necessary, healthy or attractive. I’ve mentioned this predicament before and am yet to resolve it.
"Who knows?" is my response. There are few paths blazed for me to follow and they are mostly overgrown. Then there’s the small detail; I don’t follow paths very well. I wander. I stray. Curiosity leads me away.
I do know this: Cuz of accumulated injuries here and there -- none treacherous and disabling -- I am governed in my resistance-output (the weight I handle, the force I apply) and thus protected somewhat from excessively overloading my system, the muscles and their insertions. The limiting pain has a six-syllable name -- dirtyrottenlousy -- and I endure it as you do. It’s exhausting and frustrating, but sufficient max-muscle exertion is accomplished to support growth. This rambunctious effort under duress is central to my training achievement.
Pain is a tyrant and rules the growth of the muscular system; before the muscles are overloaded, the pain shuts down the system. A compromise is reached: Injury is spared and improvement is impeded. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been beaten adequately and fought back sufficiently for the muscles to get the message: Grow, or else.
"Grow" or "Growth" in the vernacular of some species of mankind means things like: Maintain as best you can, bucko, or Do or die, nutso, or Crawl forward, stumble back, or Here today, here tomorrow again, or I left the gym on both feet and conscious.
And then there’s this: Once a lifter withdraws from tough training, he or she compromises the efficiency of the muscular system. Oxygen absorption drops, rate of metabolism decreases, hormones are negatively affected, the neuro-muscular and central nervous systems become less sharp. Upon returning to action -- in itself a monumental struggle -- revitalization from the collective setback is difficult and frustrating. And the gravity of the circumstance increases with the age of the trainee.
Hello, November. Let’s fight the good fight, exhibit fine skills, fancy footwork, bobbing and weaving and no low blows. Stay sharp! Go to your corner when you must, lean on the ropes if you have to, but throw in the towel or go down for the count and the fight is over. You won’t see December coming or going. You won’t hear the bell at the end of the year or the beginning of the next. January becomes last month and February this. "Wow, time flies," you’ll say to the refrigerator door, as it shuts in your face, "Baseball season already? It’s Miller time!"
Dig out some old secondary exercises that thump nicely instead of thud mercilessly, mix high reps with low reps, recall the Slumpbusters, perfect your wide-grip bentover rows, work calves everyday, superset and multi-set, train bis and tris together, stick to steep dumbbell inclines for a month though they’re tough all over, substitute heavy weight for higher reps and quicker pace, or go heavier for lower reps and slower pace.
Invent something, improvise, seriously play, but don’t stray.
Take it as high as you want or as high as you can -- your choice or whichever comes first. Never leave your craft while in operation.
Don’t break nuttin'...
God’s speed... DD
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