rawlife’s BodyBlog

  I have always felt as though my bodybuilding and health centered lifestyle has been a big hindrance to my sense of adventure.  This evening, as I was taking a walk around Hornstull, my little part of Stockholm, I was thinking about all the places that I would love to travel too.  I was thinking about how easily I could too, if I just didn’t have to come up with money for such large amounts of food, and raw food no less.  In addition to that, I got down because of how much it would cost me to workout on the road as well.  The whole self conversation really made me feel like this health and fitness stuff really isn’t all that it is cracked up to be.  And now as I write this very entry, I have become convinced that if your health and fitness lifestyle keeps you from doing the things you really and truly would love to do, the things you deeply desire and pine after…then it’s not a health and fitness lifestyle! 

    But here’s the problem…I/we really like something about this lifestyle.  That’s why we keep doing it.  When I think about running off to Africa for a while and just eating fresh fruits and small animals here and there and catching fish while I roam wherever I may, meeting whoever I may meet, and doing whatever I feel most inclined to do, I am both turned on and turned off.  On the one hand, it sounds like a damn great adventure, which in my mind just kind of equates to a great story to tell.  In addition to that, the idea of just letting of all this go appeals to me-just being free of my percieved confines of the bodybuilding lifestyle.  On the other hand, I want to keep going with what I’ve been doing, I want to pursue this path as far as I can take it-I know, logically, that the body is only as confining as it has been made, same with the mind.  Trouble is, I’ve made it very confining.  I’ve given myself a debilitating back injury; I’ve defined my happiness by my success or lack thereof in bodybuilding; and I’ve developed a fitness regime that is totally centered around lifting weights.  The last one is actually something I never thought I’d be able to really get around, but now I’m not so sure.  I don’t know that I’d ever be able to be a huge bber without real barbells and dumbells, but I’m pretty convinced now that I could develop or at least keep a pretty good physique doing a wide variety of bodyweight exercises as well as some weight bearing exercises using whatever I could find-rocks, buckets with water…whatever.  This opens up a whole new world to me.  This idea that you have to be in a gym to get a good workout is kind of goofy, now that I think about it.  What you have to have to get a good workout is a creative mind.  Food is another issue, but to be honest, I really feel like I am being taken care-that it’s going to be ok, that I just don’t need to worry so much about starving or not meeting all my goals.  In fact, I think that most of my problems in life can be traced back to me obcessing over meeting my goals or fufilling my physical needs-hunger, shelter…etc.  So anyway, I think I’m going to be a bit more open minded about these goals of mine and how I go about fufilling them.  I also think I’m going to be a bit more daring when it comes to any adventures I may take.  I realized that an adventure really isn’t as good if you’re not that daring.  I think my big adenventure goal right now is to go somewhere with little to no supplies-sleeping bag, tent, fishing pole, and just see what happens.  I wrote in my journal, a long time ago, before the big Svalbard trip, that as long as I make it back in one piece, the adventure was a success.  That’s the only requirement!-that I don’t die or end up paralyzed.  If I can really infuse that thought in my mind, I think I’ll soon R-E-A-Lize that I really have a ton of le-way in regards to the adventures I can have.  And if I’m willing to temporarily lose some muscle, then I can really do pretty much anything!  Awesoooome!

    Moving on, flexibility=not my strong suit.  I was checking out pictures of some yogis online with my on again/off again girlfriend Kristina, the other day, and i have to say, I was impressed.  I’ve never been impressed by that before, but now I am.  I think I’d like to be able to do some of the stuff that they do.  I’d really really like to be a lot more flexible than I am now, which is not at all.  And that would also open up a whole new world when it comes to exercises as well: I could have a literal BONANZA of new bodyweight exercises right at my fingertips-that I could do anytime and anywhere!  Awesoooooome!  This is going to become a new goal of mine. 

   How about this: what I’d really like to do is to be able to make a living just being me.  Just having adventures and living raw and healthy.  That’s my dream.  This sounds so weird, but I don’t want to have to do anything outside of my regular lifestyle to make money.  Now, there are times when my life demands that I go out and teach and help people: then I might want to train a few clients or hold a seminar or something, but other than that, I’d like to just make money being me.  And for some reason, I feel like it’s the direction I’m going in.  It’s a thought I just can’t shake, I’ve had it for several years now.  Most people, and definitely everyone in my family, would say it’s a lazy, kind of silly idea.  I guess I don’t care so much.

   This blog has really become a detox for me.  I’m very thankful to have started it, I’m thankful to my friend Robin for suggesting it.  It’s great to see the hits increase everyday, thanks so much for reading-I hope you get something out of it as well.  Much love/Paul.

   My leg workouts have never been this sissy.  The back isn’t allowing me to do pretty much anything right now, so when it comes to legs I am doing lots of isolation movements and lots of high rep body-weight compound movements-ball squats, lunges and lateral lunges…etc.  I get a great pump, but I am sceptical about how much of that is actually converted into muscle growth.  I always used to have the idea of ‘growing to the pump’ in mind during my workouts.  The bigger the pump, the more I would grow, I decided.  I know that idea sounds kind of goofy, but it’s what kept me motivated.  And of course, there is something very attractive about a skin busting, muscle cramping pump-one of those that literally keeps you from bending your arm, one that is actually painful to flex even hours after the workout-those are the good ones. 

    Now that I’m done complaining about my back, I want to report good news in reference to it.  I have seen my napprapat for the second time now and it’s very najs!  I’ve been to chiropractors before and had work done, but something feels better about it now.  I feel like I am developing a plan for the future rather than just adjusting and trying to negate old problems now.

   The pec is still tender, or at least I think it’s still tender(that’s a good sign, right?!).  As much as that irritated me in the beginning, I am pretty ok with it now.  I know that in the past I’ve focused far too much on the immediate discomfort of not being able to train for the few weeks it would take to heal a minor injury than on the much more devasting reality of not being able to train at all in the future or needing surgery because of ignorance and always trying to find a way to ‘train around’ the injury.  I’m going to try to ‘train around’ as little as possible now.  I’m just going to let the chest/bench suffer and when it heals, it will come back.  I’d like to say that’s ok with me, but it’s more like just slightly not ok with me-which is actually pretty good considering, in my past life, it would have been devestatingly not ok.  This is a good thing anyway; I’ve really noticed my shoulder impingement symptoms flaring up much more than usual(they’re always with me to a small extent) since I started doing heavy flats again and I think I’ll take this time to take care of that before it becomes a bigger problem.  You know, when it comes to long term intense exercise, I have a hard time thinking that anyone is going to remain injury free.  Everything hinges on balance, balance of the physique.  Everything’s about levers and if one is pulling ever so lightly more on it’s counterpart than it should be, then it has a never ending chain of effects-which, even it’s just a small imbalance, will eventually cause something to happen.  And if it’s not that, then you’ve got simple over use or over stress of your connective tissues.  If you’re not feeding yourself exactly what you need all the time(you’re training ALL the time, afterall) and you’re not resting as much as you need, again all the time because you’re training almost never stops, then it’s hard to imagine a person not running into trouble at some point along the way.  I mean, a person would have to get everything right almost all the time to not end up with some kind of injury, whether caused from a single incident or from cumulative stress.  And I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the end goal really isn’t the end goal.  We all have interests in life so we can learn from those interests.  It’s the learning, it’s the curiousity that keeps us going.  I think, at some point, most of us come to understand that we are not going to be Mr. Olympia or even make it to the stage…but when we say that, and acknowledge it, it’s funny how few of us actually just up and quit-basically no one does…we still weightlift; because it hasn’t really ever been about the end goal, it’s been about liking it right now.  It’s about enjoying the small improvements and figuring out how to get more and everything that comes along with that day to day ’struggle.’-I’m almost hesitant to use that word because it makes the whole thing sound negative when it’s definitely not.  I think we all like it right now, right this instant; and I think that it would behov many of us, definitely myself, to become more aware of that.

  The bulging disc was really bothering me for a while.  Worse than usual.  Then, as life would have it, a napprapat(a kind of mini-chiropractor I guess) came into my life. She fixed me up good.  Real good.  I’m feeling it a bit today, but it’s not that bad really.  She took care of me for free the other day, but I think people should get paid for their work-even if it’s done on collegues, so I think I’ll buy a few sessions with her and get this situation under control and help her, rightfully so, make some money doing what she’s paid to do.  This back thing, though, really get’s me down sometimes.  I think this is life telling me not to worship my body, not to put the flesh before the spirit.  I’ve been living this bodybuilding lifestyle for so long that it’s really hard to not just automatically attach my happiness to my success, or lack thereof, in it- to my progress in the gym.  On the one hand, I know that this body isn’t it; I know that there’s a whole lot more to life.  On the other, I feel like I have some real unfinished business to take care of here-I’m feeling actually pretty inspired by some of the physiques and lifters our there(although different ones from when I first got started).  I just have to make sure I take care of my business in the right order now; or in other words, I have to prioritize what’s most important while still taking care of what I feel I need to. 

    In other news, the not so titanic triceps are pretty sore today.  All I did was some machine extensions, and I did them two days ago, but they are good and tender.  And speaking of tender, the pec is still tender, but I think one more week off is all that it will need.  This is a pretty whiny blog, but that is a bit upsetting as well because I have been really bent on getting my bench press back to where it was.  I miss the power.  The real heavy bar, moving up slow and steady.  Deadlifts and shoulder presses are really the ones I miss most though.  These are the exercises I almost need back.  They appeal to me, deeply so.  I have never in my life found them as appealing as I do now.  I mean, I can really get tears in my eyes, and do, from watching powerlifting, olympic lifting, and strongman.  Not out of sadness, of course, but because of the impression they have on me.  The feeling those heavy lifts illicit.  The DRIIIIIVE(I can hear it and feel it in my throat).  As I write, I am literally getting INTO them.  It’s hard to explain, but I’m getting INTO them, feeling the lift itself.  Impressive lifts of pretty much any sort gives me goose bumps(I just wrote ‘goose Pumps’), they honestly make me stamp my feet and sometimes jump up and down, and defintely yell at whatever screen I am looking at.  I’ve really become more emotional as I’ve gotten older.  I’ve noticed that a lot in the last few years, I get tears in my eyes very often-from a whole slew of different things.  I like to say though, that I’m really not that fragile, but I’ve become more sensitive.  Sensitive to how people feel…somehow I can feel as they feel, sometimes just for a moment.  It’s the same with the heavy lifts and lifters.  I may be living vicariously through them, maybe that’s what’s happening, but I can definitely feel them.   

    In other news, my relationship with my on again/off again girlfriend went wayyyy into the off again zone last night.  Funny how life works.  I have actually been waiting for this to happen, I’ve been expecting this.  I had it coming.  Now some might say that is a negative, defeatist way of looking at life, but some should first accept that they don’t know the back story, the lead up.  I know I had it coming because it played out exactly as I knew it would- exactly like it did when I was her and my ex was me two years ago.  So strikingly similar that I’m afraid I actually know what is going to happen next and then after that.  The only thing keeping me from believing that whole heartedly is that there seems to be some real differences between this relationship and the last.  The main one being that the last one was doomed before it began with a real sense of understanding that it wasn’t right-not so with this one.  Although, I have a fear…or a doubt or something telling me that this relationship is the sacrificial lamb, the lesson, the debt.  Maybe it is and we’ll still end up together, maybe not.  The strangest thing, the thing that’s really hard for me to wrap my head around, is that I will have to forget everything I just wrote to really get the most out of the lesson, and if she reads this-so will she.  It’s like I have to play or act as if I don’t know what’s going to happen when I really do.  Who knows, maybe I’ll get surprised…

   I had a bit of an incident with a medicine ball catch the other day and felt my lower back bulge a little bit.  In response to that, I did a machine and bodyweight exercise leg workout two days later rather than a regular weight workout.  The quads really didn’t get so much work, despite the heavy leg extensions with drop sets, but the hamstrings are literally destroyed.  It’s been 3 days and I’m still limping.  Call me a girl, call me whatever you want, but I also really like the inner thigh machine(adductor).  Well, I like the effects, of which I see many.  You know what else I like the effects of?  Green juice.  I’m doing brocoli and cucumber everyday now.  In the states, I had a top of the line juicer which cost me just under $500; here in Sweden I have an absolute bottom of the line juicer, manually operated, that cost me something like $60 and actually gives me a higher quality juicer-because of the slower grinding process.  And to be honest, the manual crank is actually kind of therapeautic.  It’s like chopping wood or carrying water, if you know what I am referring to. 

    I went out with work last night and slept pretty damn poorly, so I am a tired little pojke right now; gonna go on a walk with my on again, off again girlfriend Kristina to see if I can wake up a bit.  Talk to you later!

1.8lbs(.8kg) of organic raw ground beef, mixed with 5 egg yolks, a big dollup of un-heated honey, and quite a few cloves of garlic.  Great Success! 

     In other news, as promised, I took the weekend off from working out and just ate and slept and hung out with some buddies instead.  I have noticed that I have become a real party pooper.  I don’t drink at all. I go home at 10.  And I wear clothes that get us rejected at the door of even cheap bars/clubs.  Awesooooooome!  As terrible as this sounds, the only reason I ever drank was to get up the guts to talk to girls(that never really happened).  Now that I don’t really care about meeting any new girls(at least right now), I have even less of an interest in drinking(which was never that much in the first place) or even staying out much later than the time I would normally go to bed.  Seems like I have really grown up, in that regard.  It feels strange to think of myself as a 25 year old.  To me, that sounds like I am getting on in years.  To some, it sounds like a dream to be 25 again, and to others still, it actually does sound old.  I remember telling one of my cousins that I graduated highschool in 2000 and she was almost shocked!  LOL.  I think that age though, my dear Watson, comes secondary to experience, and actually doesn’t have to indicate physical aging as we know it today.  I think that physical aging, done healthfully, should look a bit more like spiritual maturation-which, if we could see it, would probably look VERY appealing, very regal, and very attractive.  What people are doing now is not what I call aging; I think it’s closer to what I would call decomposing.  Maybe I’m setting myself up for some serious decomposing in my own future by saying that, but it’s best to be honest in both thought and word, yes?  I just want to scream from the rooftops: You don’t have to get sick! You don’t have to get cancer; you don’t have to die of cancer!  You don’t have to look awful when you get older!  —-I want to scream all of these things…but only those who are at the point in their own personal evolution which would allow them to understand, will, and those that are at that point don’t need it screamed to them, they just need to hear it once…or maybe twice.

   I am really looking forward to weightlifting again tomorrow.  I have definitely experienced a new found interest in this even though I am still somewhat convinced that my head will be too small for my body.  That still does not still well with me at all, but alas, I shall persevere and I shall thus overcome. 

….still no soreness today.  This bothers me.  Today, I was looking forward to the soreness.  Next time will have to be even more of a bludgeoning.  But on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being a severe bludgeoning, yesterday’s workout was still around an 8.  Should have left me pretty sore.  My back issues are really killing my legs and their workouts though.  I simply need to get this taken care of even faster than it is being taken care of.  Although, it feels very sensitive at the moment, for some reason, I am strangely optimistic when it comes to my back right now.  Even stranger, I feel like I actually bulged another disc when helping my brother move 2 weeks ago, and because of that,I am feeling even more optimistic.  It seems like the worse things get, the better I feel about the outcome.  This is very similar to how I feel about people. The harder they have had it in their lives, the more attracted I am to them.  I feel, and have definitely noticed, that the people who have had it real tough in life, who have been faced with real challenges that have beat them down on a number of occasions are the ones that have the most potential for growth…the ones that are most likely to become or be people that I can really, dramatically benefit from-I’m very attracted to that.  In fact, it’s one of my biggest and most important criteria when I meet a new girl-how much can I grow with this girl?  How is she going to help me evolve as a person?  I guess my problem, as I have most recently noticed, is that I have sacrificed love and good times for personal growth.  Of course, what I hadn’t realized, was that personal growth sometimes happens most quickly when you are with someone that you truly love and enjoy.  I have been very guilty of surrounding myself with people and situations that are uncomfortable, that I don’t particularly like, just to learn the lessons.  The enjoyment came after the fact, the enjoyment came in the form of a notch on the belt, a lesson learned. Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that, per se, but it’s time for me to start enjoying the lessons and the relationships while I am actually in them-not after when I see and feel the personal development that resulted from them. 

   As far as training goes, I’m taking the weekend off.  I always take saturdays off, but I’m taking sunday as well this time around.  My pec is still a bit tender and I have been doing a heck of a lot of working out lately anyway.  Time for a break.  I think I’ll lay off at least my first chest workout next week and maybe the second.  That’s a bit disappointing because I really want to improve my flat bench press, but my shoulders and tris could use the priority anyway-they are two of my worst bodyparts.  Who knows, the bench might go up as a result. 

    Anyway, time for some more raw lamb, egg yolks, honey, and garlic.  Just downed some un-pasteurized cheese; Comte is my favorite at the moment.  It was smooth.

   It’s great, it’s fattier than beef and probably a bit more sustainably raised, even though I buy both organic.  I buy it ground, about a half kilo or a little more, throw in two eggs yolks or three, then some honey, then chop up some garlic and then crush! I’ve also been consuming Kombucha in mass quantities lately.  I feel like that is very good for me right now.  Funny, when it comes to doing things that ‘feel’ right, I think we often still do the ‘wrong’ things.  Our feelings are based very heavily on our past experiences and our associations and belief systems regarding them; so I always question people very heavily when they say they do anything ‘instinctively.’…and yet I do it myself.  I think it’s important to remember, though, that these ‘instinctive’ feelings that we think can’t be wrong are actually our body, spirit, and mind’s way of perfecting it’s own instinctive feelings.  Everytime they are wrong, they get more right.  I think the best way to do most things is to try and make your actions a reflection of your innermost, some might call ‘instinctive,’ feelings, as well as your logical thought.  Get those two working together and you’ll be doing pretty well.   

   In other news, I felt a little twinge in my right pec the other day at the end of a set of bench presses.  For some reason, after reading about Layne Norton’s torn pec, I have been more than bothered by it; I felt almost a slight sense of foreboding-if there is such a thing as slight foreboding.  My pec is a bit tender today, not bruised, definitely not torn, but definitely tender.  I remember, in the old days, reading the Arnold book, him talking about doing different rep schemes for every workout. This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for quite some time, and I think the time is now.  I have been training heavy(6 reps or less) to failure for basically my entire weightlifting ‘career.’  I think my body is making it pretty clear to me that I can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again or I’ll keep getting the same thing out of it over and over again-less and less results, plus injury.  It’s funny how easy it is to point that out in somebody else’s training, but when it comes to my own, it’s taken me forever to even become moderately aware of it-and then even longer to actually do something about it with any regularity-which has yet to happen; we’ll see if it does. 

  So, how are you?

                 love, Paul

  So I’m going to be honest about it when I am and hopefully, before long, I will see the error in my ways.  I was looking through a popular muscle magazine the other day and I seriously almost laughed out loud when I saw the characters in it.  It’s funny how everyone talks about how they want to popularize bodybuilding and bring it into the mainstream, and yet, they use the exact same techniques to do so that they used back in the 80s-fake grimaces, fake weights, fake workouts, strange clothes, and an almost comically primped and pruned face.  All of it, fake.  Including the bodies.  Now I’m going to be totally honest but I’m going to use a disclaimer before I do so: I did feel bad about saying this, even though I just said it to myself.  Here’s the honesty: I looked at one guy in particular who shall remain nameless and for the first time in I don’t even know how long, I uttered an outright insult.  I said to myself, ‘I’ve honestly almost never come across a bigger tool in my life.’  That’s how goofy this guy looked and how goofy most of them look.  The time of the shaved and tanned, primped and pruned all year around bodybuilder has long since past, in my eyes.  I can’t connect with him.  And I don’t think I’m the only one.  Want to sell magazines?  Want to popularize the sport?  Give the public someone or something they can connect to.  Someone to look up to, but someone who shares enough in common with them that they don’t feel like they are looking at an alien.  I shouldn’t even have to say this, but to look up to someone, the reader has to be able to first respect the person.  I looked through this particular magazine and felt like I was looking at pictures of the mentally handicapped-people who let their own evolution come to a grinding halt looong ago.  I understand that the magazine asks certain things of them, but they are ultimately responsible for their own actions and their own actions look real goofy to me.  It’s becoming more and more clear to me that there is a real problem with a group of people who try to protray a hyper male image by building excessively muscular bodies all the while voluntarily separating themselves from everything that actually makes them male-body hair, testicles, a deep voice…etc.  Strange how that is….hyper male physique, hypo male everything else. 

   I flipped through a few more pages and saw a picture of a great strongman pulling a heavy deadlift.  That got me going.  Right then I wanted to go crush it in the gym.   The grimace on his face was real.  The weights were damn heavy.  His body, although assisted, still had enough of it’s natural/innate qualities for me to connect with and most importantly…the energy came through in the picture, it was brutal, every last ounce of it.  How about more photoshoots of actual workouts.  Think that people don’t notice when a bber is making a face versus actually grimacing from the pain?  I do.

   So, I just came back from my weekend road trip, feeling tired and full of food.  Cheated quite a bit this weekend, first bite of cooked food in a month and a half or so, maybe a week less.  The big highlight of the trip was seeing my whole Swedish family and re-connecting with everyone.  That was great, but short lived.  Just one afternoon and everyone was off to wherever it is they go again.  Funny, at the time you really think that’s a shame, but looking back on it, I think life is making it so we keep enjoying our little family get togethers in the future.  We probably don’t have tons in common and probably don’t have hours worth of stuff to talk about…but for a little while, it’s a lot of fun.  Any more, though, and we might start not getting along as well and then have a kind of nuetral or bad feeling attached to those get togethers, which would ruin them for the future. 

   The other highlight of the trip was going to this old bathhouse called Ribbersporg.  This was a place my dad took me as a little kid.  Basically it’s just a glorified dock with two saunas inside.  The thing was, in my memories, I really pictured this place as bright and alive really…good looking and physically appealing somehow.  When I went back to it, that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.  It was pretty drab, to be honest.  Very old paint, strange color, beaten up floor boards…you get the picture.  It wasn’t until about 45 minutes into the experience that I started to understand.  It was the energy that I remembered.  It was the memory of the energy that gave it that bright appearence in my mind.  This place was full of life and character.  The people were all talkative and nice, everyone was laughing, the mood was upbeat.  Haha, in the States, I think you will rarely come across a sauna that is so jam packed with men, literally person to person, but still with no homosexual conduct occuring.  In fact, I would venture to say that most of those men, in the summertime(shoot, maybe even in the winter), swim on over to the women’s side and check out the scenery after they get out of the sauna at least once or twice a year.  I remember my dad telling me a story about his brother renting a boat and speeding back and forth behind the women’s side, seeing what he could see one summer when they were younger.   Don’t know how much of that is actually true though.   Anyway, back on topic…the moral of this story seems to be that places and old things just don’t seem to carry memories like I and so many people once thought…or still do think.  I think that energy does.  I love going back and seeing my old house, the one I spent the first five years of my life in.  But now that I think about it, maybe what I love is the energy of the whole place, not just the house.  It’s the whole area, it’s vibrating just right and makes me feel good.  I don’t know, just an idea.

   Honestly, I think it’s a little goofy how many people out there think they are going to do well on a low carb and low fat diet.  If you take out one source of energy, you have to put another in.  Even goofier is the fact that people think throwing in some fish oil capsules and 2 egg yolks in their omelate instead of just one is going HIGH fat. HAHA, they would puke on my diet.  Today I had two avocados, plenty of cold pressed extra virgin coconut butter, somewhere around 17 egg yolks, and then when I was crushing my raw chicken, I stripped as much fat as I could off of it, ate that first, and then went for a bit of muscle meat.  Then I did the same thing this evening-cut as much fat as I could off the back of the chicken(there’s a hug slab there if you buy the right chickens), ate that plus some other fat, and then ate a bit of the muscle meat-in this case, raw chicken wings(my favorite!).   The point isn’t to lose weight, the point is to lose fat-or, in my case, to rid me of a sugar addiction.  I’m leaner now than I’ve been in quite some time, weighing in at about 190lbs.  That’s a far cry from what I was when I was cooked, but I’m getting more and more ok with that.  We can’t get stuck on the symptoms of the goal.  The goal itself is what’s important-and, of course, the journey to the goal(that’s actually what I think is most important).  But the symptoms…the symptoms are still just symptoms.  There are plenty of very musclular, well developed bbers out there who don’t weigh a lot at all.  In fact, they are often the best ones.  Something about that really appeals to my sense of efficiency-stacked, yet not taking up a ton of space.  I’ve also noticed how much happier I’ve become since I’ve just accepted that I don’t need to fight to keep weight on any longer; that, in fact, I never did.  The real point is, and always has been, to put on muscle, to get stronger, to feel better.  Now, having said that, my back is making me feel like an old old man right now, but even that really isn’t getting me down.  On the one hand, I have to be very careful right now-that move I did last week for my brother really messed me up a bit.  On the other though, I almost feel like I was meant to get messed up a bit there.  Whereas before, I was always in excessive extension to keep from buldging, now that’s causing me a new kind of pain and I am forced to neither go too far into extension nor flexion-meaning, I have to stand straight up and tighten my abs to feel good.  This really isn’t such a bad thing afterall.  Everyone always complimented me on my posture before, but to be honest, I was really just leaning back most of the time.  Now I am actually standing straight up.  It would be really nice, though, to have absolutely no back pain again.  To be able to deadlift again.  To be able to bent over rows again.  That would be real nice.  I almost drool over that.  The pleasure you get from the challenge of those exercises is something you really can’t appreciate until you’ve lost it.  Man, I would love that.  I would do them all day and revel in the pain the next day.  It would make me feel so good, I would laugh at it.  That would be a back pain that I would beg for.