Lessons from a Stray Dog – 2: lock-out, finalization, sustaining work
So, the new gym was real cool, lot’s of heavy benchers. But they had never done any board training, no finalization work and… where is the cage? No cage! Basically, heavy BP training meant only shirt work with few reps. Far from good for my goals. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, then, that I lost my maxes. It took me time to understand that I hadn’t been doing that type of work for more than a month – actually two months. My brain had unlearned how to handle the heavier weights.
I have no idea if anything will do the trick NOW, so close to the meets, but I started trying last Monday: first, got two guys to help me with sustaining work. Did it arduously. Everything felt heavy. Then I created a post-modern sculpture on the floor consisting of an old rack, in the middle of which I inserted a bar, two chairs (because we didn’t trust the rack would hold too much weight and might break and possibly smash my head) and, to adjust the right angle for the elbow in the finalization work, a couple of big old disks and a small mattress over them. Bad part is that this way there is some extra abdominal work you do (because you are flat on the floor) and I farted on the circle of people that came to watch what I was trying to do. I couldn’t care less. I am not a corked bottle and I eat 3g/protein for kg of bodyweight, so I fart, ok? Don’t like it? Don’t stay around. Lesson to learn: there is always some way to improvise, even if there is no cage around.
Again: they can take anything from you, they can take your hopes, your blood, your love, your happiness (for a while), your faith in humankind, your food, your money, but they CANNOT TAKE POWERLIFTING FROM YOU unless they take along your life.
Marilia
