MasterStrongman’s BodyBlog

(Eph 3:12) "In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.

The Holy Spirit gives us boldness and confidence after we have believed in Jesus Christ to be able to pray and make requests to God without fear. "
Okay, so what I learned this morning is that FEAR is the opposite of FAITH. FEAR is not from God.  I am not a strong man if I live with FEAR. 

A minister named Lisa Bevere, on a commercial for a conference, said one time, "When you face your fears, you become fearless.

 I have been afraid to be bold and to be strong and to speak out loud the desire of my heart to win this championship because of fear. 

 Lord, your word promises me that I can come to you boldly and without fear.  You know that I want to be an athlete that is respected and admired.  Help to me become that man of God who you can use for your purposes.  Amen.

I have gotten a lot of nice comments about my strongman prayer I wrote and that is really nice.

My rehab for my shoulder is going really well, but I am so impatient.  I had set aside the month of January to train, but to keep the weight purposely dialed back to allow the joint plenty of time for healing.  I am ten weeks post op today.  I have been training for a month now and I have had full ROM for about six weeks.  BUT, I stand in the gym and see these guys training heavy and I so want to jump in with them and do rack pulls or bench heavy or deadlift enough weight that when I sit it down it BANGS and startles all of the women in the kettlebell class.

As athletes, we push ourselves and we work ourselves.  We have higher thresholds of pain than the rest of the population and we purposely take ourselves to uncomfortable places.  I like it there.  But when we are injured all of these qualities threaten our healing and we have to force ourselves and focus on NOT giving in to these qualities.

I wrote a letter to a national magazine proposing an article about this subject; being mentally prepared for sports rehab.  I haven’t heard back, but then again all of the biggest magazines are really bad about responding to query letters.

If you have any positive rehab stories, share them with me!

Dearest Father God:

In your word, you promise me that a righteous man is granted the desires of his heart. I thank you for righteousness that was granted to me through Jesus’ precious blood, shed for me by grace.

A desire of my heart is to be physically and mentally powerful and strong, admired by men and women as an athlete.  Please provide for me today what I need and protect me from injury and disease. Father, release the Holy Spirit to guide my training and nutrition. Fill my muscles and body with supernatural life, health and power.  Provide me with rest, peace and joy which pass beyond understanding and let me be a blessing to those around me.

I dedicate my life and body to you and your kingdom. Lord, I praise your name for your power and control over my life.  Thank you for being faithful to your word and for your love for me.  I pray that as you increase my size, speed, strength and conditioning that you will use those combined gifts to open doors for your kingdom. Let me live life abundantly. In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

As I stated before, I quit training for any contests.  I decided to focus on rehabbing myself and giving my body a break from all of the years of heavy training.  I am so excited!  My strength took a HUGE dip, but it is coming back quickly.  And more importantly, I am more flexibile and better able to move dynamically.  I still have a long way to go, but I think I have hit on the key. 

No doubt, when you age, flexibility becomes more and more important.  I am also beginning to believe that the flexibility training I am doing is reducing my lift strengths.  But that is okay, I want to have hypertrophy right now and I am intuitively believing that my strength will grow with longer and more supple connective tissues.

I will keep you posted!  But the most important thing; I am haivng fun in the weightroom again!  I am not working and stressing about what to do.  I go to the gym, I tear it up, and make my training partners hate me (Come on! How about a set of 100!) and I leave feeling GREAT! 

Thank you Lord for showing me the path!

MS

I made a decision today; I am going to quit training at all.  None, nada.

You see, I have recently suffered a few setbacks, nothing major but some injuries and pains that are hampering my training.  I have really dedicated myself to working out for the past several months and these set-backs are throwing me for a loop.  I want to train, but my body seems to be rebelling against me!  I have been so frustrated and obssessed with my quest to get better and these speed bumps are more than a little bit aggravating.  Now, I am not injured, per se… it’s more like I have some nagging pains that will easily heal.  But they hurt, so there you have it.  What do I do about these?  I felt powerless and out of whack.

But today in church, it hit me.  The reason I feel out of balance with my training is because I am out of balance with my life.  I am a husband, a father to two, a business partner, a lawyer, a farmer, a community activist, a friend, a servant of the Lord and an athlete.  But lately, everything in my life has been taking a back seat to being an athlete.  My training is out of balance because my priorities are out of balance.  Training and competition should augment your life, not be the focus of your life. 

So I am quitting training, completely for one… whole… week.  Now this is not a "layoff", this is an athletic vacation.  I do not plan on posting on Bodyspace.  I do not plan on going to the gym, I will not do anything.  I will probably stretch at home and drive my elliptical training or treadmill around the basement, but I am going to renew my focus and priorities back to the things that matter.  Family, career, God.  My training is important to me; it is the only thing that I do that is fulfilling purely to me.  But it must take a backseat to the things that matter.  When I think about it, I think that I want to turn off my athletic career, keep it off for a week, and after that week is over, I will reboot.  Turn off, and reboot.

I have done this about three times in the past few years and every time I came back with more peace, with more joy and with a more healthy outlook. 

Have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day, I will see you guys in a week.

Over the past decades, I have a learned a thing or two about sports injuries.  Each of the following is true and, except for the current one from this morning, I have recovered fully from all of them.  Here are some of my favorite:

10.  When you train in the gym, if you wear only socks then your toes will break when you drop a 45 lb plate on them.

9. When you are benching, if you do not tuck your chin in you will leverage the weight with the crown of your head and strain your trapezius so that you cannot look from side to side while you drive.

8.  When deadlifting a car, or anything else for that matter, if you get cocky and start showboating by turning your head to the left or right under load to talk to someone while holding the heavy weight like it is nothing, you will bring your spine out of alignment and fall flat on your stomach writhing and screaming, "Oh, &#(#&!! Oh, *#(*@!!"  Bring on the degenerative disc disease!

7. On a DE squat day, if your hands are too wide you can smash your finger into the squat cage and be able to gross out all of the girls you know when your pinky fingernail falls off.

6. If you flip a tire dynamically and end the movement with a split stance, you may strain your plantar fasciitis and be unable to walk.  (This is the most recent!!)

5. Preacher curls that are too heavy will give you bone spurs in your elbow.  Now, as far as injuries go, this one was lame.  But, dear reader, there is it.

4. Biceps tendons are delicate and subject to tear. Except when they break off entirely. Then the doctor will give you some good Rx after the surgery. Hurray Flexeril!! Fat bars have no use in civilized society.  They are cruel devices of biceps torture.  I spit on them.

3. When running, make sure you are on a flat surface or else you will twist your ankle and fall down… in front of everyone… that you just met…. and who you are trying to impress.  (A codicil to this: when you wrap your ankle at night like they tell you, remember that it will swell in the middle of the night inside the bandage thereby causing you to scream for a handsaw so that you can just cut it off and be done with it. Also, this story happened on a boat in the Bahamas, so I was sunburned and overserved.  Sexy man!)

2. Excessive chain dragging leads to puking.  This isn’t an injury so much as a medical condition some of us are striving to achieve.

But the number one injury that I have ever had is….

1. The injury to my pride, to my resolve and to my psyche when my body won’t do what I want it to do.

We are all looking to increase our intensity for our training.  We all know that the level of effort we put into out workouts will dictate our rewards.

I have found a lot of intensity on Bodyspace.  Watch Layne Norton’s videos.  That boy has intensity! He can get his mind into his training!  That is only one of hundreds of examples I have found.

I know that I am training with a greater degree of urgency than I ever have had before.  I think it is because I know that on this website, everywhere I turn I run into a world class athlete.  I see that if I want to succeed, I have to pay my dues with sweat. 

I keep hearing in my head that at my next contest, someone may beat me, but they won’t work harder than me.

When you cruise around bodyspace, you see the incredible athletes that publish their efforts on their profile pages.  You read the blog and forum entries and comments of people sharing information and ideas.  You find people from all over the world.

But you don’t meet anybody. 

This is all inside of my computer and that introduces us to a whole new realm of lifestyle.  I have to remember that I really don’t know anyone.  I have tried to be brutally honest, and I really believe that others have to.  But there are some, like this goober who goes around and puts 1’s on everyones pictures, that are like creepy crawlly things under a rock.  There are others who comment or post from behind the wall of anonymity created by the internet.

Don’t get me wrong; I think that being a part of an online community has great benefits.  I am just not used to it.  It was really difficult for me to post my pics.  I am not really comfortable with that yet.  But I have had some really positive comments, and some negative comments as well.

I also have to remember that I lack the ability to see facial expressions , and to hear inflection. ROFL!  What may seem clear to me is less clear through the gauzy hazy of the hastily written word.  If I have offended anyone, just be patient with me.

The internet isn’t through with me yet!

I am the least photogenic guy I know. And nobody will ever mistake me for a bodybuilder. I look like a strength athlete and I am shaped like a strength athlete. Being able to do good mornings for reps with 400+ pounds is great for picking up big objects like rocks and cars and trees, but it makes one take the shape of a Oompah Loompah. Big hips, big glutes, big abs… i hate it.
So I took a big step today. I took pictures of myself and posted them on Bodyspace. Now, I know that I am stronger than the average guy, but I am humiliated at how I look! And I do not know how to fix it. I have been eating cleanly and I have dropped some BF%, but my camera phone says I have a long way to go.

Now add to that that I am of full-blooded English descent. While I tan easily when I can, I rarely have a tan. I have the complexion of, say, the inside of a raw oyster. Not really white… more like grey. That really brings out the striations!

You guys on this website have been gracious to me, the interloper, the non-bodybuilder. I have nothing but the love for my BB brethren. In fact, I would really like to train with a couple of you guys. But one thing is for sure: I will never stand next to any of you with my shirt off!

I guess folks like us are never satisfied. Whenever anyone asks me how much I bench, I like to answer, "More than I used to, but less than I want!" I know that I have gotten stronger. But really, for just once, I would like to look strong, too. I guess when I get there, I would be bummed because I wasn’t strong enough. And then when I was, I would be bummed out that I wasn’t lean enough. It is a never ending cycle that causes us to push beyond where other humans go. While it may be our greatest strength, it is also our greatest weakness.

It would be easier to sit on the sofa and watch American Idol.  Hamburger Helper is faster and more filling than another grilled chicken breast with brown rice and steamed broccoli.  Training on a cold saturday morning is not as satisfying as staying in bed.  But we here on Bodyspace do all of this.  Our peers call us, “fitness freaks” or “muscleheads” and they think they understand, but they really don’t do they?

Some of you train like this because you have always been an athlete.  Some of you train like this because you had never been an athlete.  The psychology of what pushes you guys to rise above ordinary humans to become super human is fascinating to me.

When I was growing up, I had very poor fine motor skills.  I was a klutz! I couldn’t throw or catch a ball worth a sh*t.  so when all of the other boys were playing ball, I felt out of place.  I therefore avoided playing ball and in the 1970’s and 1980’s, there wasn’t anything else.  As they played they got better and pulled farther and farther away from me.

“It doesn’t matter that you don’t LIKE sports, you are a smart.”  First of all, I didn’t even know if I liked sports because nobody showed me any sports without a damn ball. Second of all, I learned in college that there are plenty of dudes out there who are smart AND good at sports.  It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

Now my coaches and teachers didn’t know much about kinesiology.  Nobody did.  You see, even though I ”wasn’t athletic” I was the fastest kid in school in an all out sprint.  We now know that means I had muscle composition and slow twitch (or fast twitch, i cannot remember) muscle fibers.  I could generate power in my hamstrings. But I wasn’t “good at sports”.

When I got to college, three things happened: (1) as I mentioned, I met guys who were smart, athletic and fun.  (2) I discovered the weight room and found out that I could get big pretty fast and (3) I went snow skiing. 

Everyone told me in skiing that I would fall and that I shouldn’t get frustrated.  I was nervous, because, you know, I “wasn’t good at sports”.  When we were supposed to skiing, it got whited out and then started to rain.  We ended up skiing in a drizzle at night.  EVeryone apologized that my first ski trip was ruined.

Say…..WHAT?  I had never taken to something like that before.  Skiing came so naturally to me and felt so right!  I lived in South Carolina so there was no way to ski regularly, but a whole new world opened up for me!  I went looking for sports and found out that more sports didn’t have a ball than did have a ball!  My life was changed forever.

I never want anyone to think that I am bad at sports.  What motivates me is the idea that I can do things most men cannot.  What motivates me is thinking of the adults who gave up on me so easily.  Everyone says that kids are cruel, but that is bull; kids model the behavior of the adults around them.  Kids surrounded by kind adults become kind kids. 

My desire is that at any age, people will see me and say, “Look at him. Tha guy must be an athlete!” If that makes me vain, or a musclehead, or otherwise….

I guess you guys will just have to live with it.

What pushes you?

 MS