Close Encounters of the Third Kind with Powerlifting and Post-Modern Art
Six months ago I entered the gym where I train today for the first time. My motivation was having read a few articles here, at bb.com , about Westside Barbell approaches to training. The reason I looked closer at the WB article was that a good friend of mine told me he was going to take part in a Deadlift contest. I thought the workout design was unusual and I learned that it came from something called “powerlifting. Up to this point I was reasonably familiar with weight training in general concerning its physiological and biomechanical basis. Had the “basic library at home, consisting of Zatsiorsky, Fleck, Bompa, etc. For the first time I picked up Fleck and looked up the last chapter, with the “sports. Ahh: interesting: So: “powerlifting is not so much about power, but about strength, and weight lifting not so much about strength, but power (which I don’t quite agree)? Worth keeping an eye at. I started to apply a modified version of a workout plan to myself and really enjoyed the “lifts, or my own crooked version of them. However, I didn’t have enough grip to do the deadlift. I already mentioned my ancient hand injury that made me look at grip training techniques and discussing that with a friend of mine, whose nick in forums is “Grip master. So Vitz, this friend, taught me many helpful exercises and I was thrilled to observe that my grip was really improving.
At this point I was reading much more about powerlifting, discovered Metal Militia and other cool sites, but had no idea if this “thing was practiced in Brazil. I asked Vitz … he should know. Vitz introduced me to my coach, Gilson, whose team is the largest and most awarded in the country. He was very polite and invited me for a visit. It was like entering a new planet. It took some time for me to concentrate on the conversation: I was stunned with the Olympic bar fixed with what looked like car wheels hanging on a rack … came back later a took a picture of it. Then there was this beautiful set of disks, all with different bright colors … yellow, blue, red and green. And in the corner, an arrangement of smaller bars … all kinds. A sort of metal Ikebana. The racks and supports themselves were so creative, what with the funny (ornamental, for sure) rubber bands at the sides and the little red wheel with a screw. I walked about as if in Hirshhorn Museum … a big post-modern art exposition!
Cool, man! I like it here … I thought to myself. Well, I never left the place. That same week I learned the lifts and discovered that I could hold a properly knurled bar. THAT was a bar … not the stuff I’d been training with.
I love that place like home and its people like family. But sometimes I miss the sense of awe and wonder that Day One produced in me, and the uncontrollable excitement of being sure I had discovered something truly marvelous and irresistible.
