Strength sink
I woke up before the alarm rang, opened my eyes a little confused. The feeling was weird, as if I hadn’t slept at all, as if I’d been on a journey through dangerous tasks. Tired, uptight. Needed to have a nice breakfast and head for the gym – later, I had a meeting before the judge with the person my family and I are suing. He is an ex-partner in a business he misused our money and we had no choice but litigation. I hated the idea of meeting this person – there are too many things that look wrong in that picture apart from having cheated my family: an ethos of “anything goes” as far as taking advantage of any opportunity, no matter who he hurts; total lack of empathy towards other people’s needs; a disgusting political and social view and a sexist approach to women. Besides treating bodybuilding as a resource for ego trips and other, darker gains. I tried not to think of all that while preparing my stuff – wrist wraps, belt, gear, clothes – but involuntary thoughts and images kept floating before me like ghosts. Tired as I felt, it was even harder to push them away.
And then it happened: I tried to lift and… my muscles had no strength. It is hard to describe how it felt. It is hard to describe physical weakness, but this is exactly what it was: any weight was too much weight and it was like an empty tube of nothingness inside me drained whatever energy I had left to move. I got up from the bench feeling as though I had run 10 miles, or swam for two hours. Not like I had lifted heavy and fatigued my muscles: a different kind of weakness, a weakness from within. In spite of the growing lethargy, I tried to find an explanation for what was happening. Actually, I needed more than an explanation: I needed to understand what was going on.
No explanation: my strength had left me. The idea of losing the one thing I most treasure in myself expanded in the form of terror. If I still knew how to cry, I would have.
I am home now, still at loss as to what happened today.
August 31, 2007 at 7:59 am
You’ve actually have explained this below and in this very post. A lot of this sport of strength isn’t about the size or density of the muscles but of the mind and heart. If you can’t get all of it together then all of it fails. You are only as strong as your weakest link. If it is size, muscle, mind, or heart you have to work on what ever it is to make it all come together.