My Grandfather’s Alzheimer’s has taken a turn for the worse. That’s the nature of the disease. It is a non-stop downward spiral, one bad turn after the next. There is no stopping it. There is no reprieve. All you can do is slowly watch the person you love fade away into those final black shadows of death.
Last week he was up and about causing havoc, leaving tea pots on, sneaking food, and otherwise making his caretakers (my Grandmother and Aunt) crazy. Today, as if out of nowhere, he’s bedridden and inaudible. They miss the crazy. We all do.
It is likely that he will get a little better for a while, get out of bed and be back to making the women around him pull their hair out. Diseases like Alzheimer’s have a periodic quality.
I’ve always liked to say that your progress in weightlifting (in all strength training) is like a Sine Wave that is tilting upward. You’ll go through up phases and down phases. But, the important point is that eventually, your down periods will be higher than your previous up periods.
Alzheimer’s is the opposite. It is a Sine Wave that points Downward. The up phases are ever progressing toward the abyss. And there isn’t a damned thing anyone can do about it.
The Times They Are A Changing
My wife, Leslie, and I went over to my Grandparents place to celebrate an early Christmas yesterday with the extended family. These types of Holiday Bashes used to be larger affairs when we were all younger. It used to be that Christmas day was always reserved for going to our Grandmothers place. All other obligations were fit around that.
My cousins, my siblings, and I tried to keep that tradition going throughout our 20′s, but now that we’re all past 30 (save for my two younger sisters), that’s becoming harder to manage. With many of us married (or the modern equivalent!), with kids, living in far off places, all having divorced parents (multiple times over, in some cases), and our own ever-growing extended families, the practicality of coalescing as a unit on any day – let alone Christmas Day – is tough. So, we moved it to a week earlier so that at least a few of us could make it.
As I’ve discussed in other articles, my Grandmother and I were (still are) very close. We’re a lot alike in some important ways that seem to increase the older I get. Growing up, I always looked forward to Christmas with her over any other event of the season. We talk politics (not football), books, writing, and philosophy. And we did so while laughing and not taking it all too seriously. The fact that my parents decided to keep us nearby (both emotionally and geographically) to at least one of my sets of Grandparents was probably one the best parenting decisions they ever made.
The members of my generation in the family are many. There are a lot of cousins. Given the constraints of our modern world, I count myself as lucky to have been able to grow up with all of them, to have spent so many holidays causing a ruckus, and have had the luxury of keeping that going throughout my twenties.
But, it is getting harder. I don’t see nearly any of my cousins very often anymore. My sisters both live in different states. And my brother, who only lives about 5 minutes from me I see very rarely.
The Nirvana Generation
My cousins, siblings, and I are all in that phase of life where being busy is an understatement. But, like most people of my generation, that phase started later than it did for our parents.
Most of the members of the Baby Boomer generation had finished college by the time they hit 25. They’d already started down the path of their career. And, many of them had children, were married, and maybe even had bought a house by the time they were 30.
I’m the youngest of the Generation X’ers (President Obama is the oldest), a generation of people born (roughly) between the mid 1960′s and early 1980′s. More than any generation before, we’ve really struggled with the notion of what it means to be an “Adult”. The Boomers talked a good game about being forever young. Gen X turned that concept into an art. We weren’t called the “Slacker” generation for nothing!
We got married later, if at all. We had kids later, if at all. We “settled” on a career later, or never. We quit college the first time and had to go back later, and changed our majors many times in the process never settling on “the thing” we’re “supposed” to do.
We did everything later. We put everything off. And, we never really gave a damn.
Boomers fought back against what they believed to be corrupt authority. They had causes and ideals. Gen X checked out completely. “What’s the point?” was our biggest mantra. The ultimate Nihilist generation.
No generation has more atheists than ours. There is, of course, the small minority in any generation that is culturally the precise opposite of the rule – but they are the exceptions that prove it. Gen X has some of the most rabid Neoconservative Cristian Fundamentalists, but they make up a tiny minority of us. Most people of faith in our Generation are borderline agnostics. A defining answer to all questions metaphysical has always been, “I don’t know,” followed closely by, “I don’t care.”
I think it is telling that the music band most associated with the Baby Boomers was The Beatles, and the band most associated with us was Nirvana. Hell, even the name was ironic.
And yet, for all of that … one of us is now The President!
My siblings, my cousins, my entire generation and I are finally embracing something like adulthood. We have careers, families of our own, and the White House. We’re fast becoming the new rulers of the world.
Move over Hippies, the Slackers are taking over.
How uncharacteristic is that? We’ve gone from not caring about anything, believing the world was too messed up to save, to being more heavily invested in it than anyone else on earth. It took us longer than most, but we got there.
Unfortunately, we got there by paying a price.
We are all now so damned busy, we can’t even get over to Grandmothers house on Christmas day. I know I’m one of the worst offenders. And as much as I’d like to pretend that that’s going to change, it likely won’t.
The Meaning of Life is NOT 42
The upside of the Slacker mentality of my generation is that we naturally did those things everyone else says is important but never does: we took time to live life. REAL life, not our business-life.
We spent more time with family and friends at the expense of making money. We’d skip doing homework in favor of going out with people we love. We’d take a crappy job, with low pay and no benefits so that we could have more TIME, the one thing you’ll never get back. And we spent that time well.
We didn’t “slack” for a cause – like our parents did. We did it for ourselves.
Sadly, we’re losing that. And there’s no way around it.
One day, we all woke up in our 30′s and 40′s and realized that we wanted more. Call it greed, ambition, or guilt … but, something awakened in us and we became a new generation of Entrepreneurs, Politicians, and Leaders. And we found that we are quite good at it.
Having a visceral distrust in “the system” has worked to our advantage. When a person truly believes that there is no system in place to help them to solve their problems they have only two possible reactions available to them.
The first is the one we took to in the beginning, complete nihilism. Nothing in life matters, there is nothing sacred, and working hard toward some goal is so pointless as to become a joke. It was RESPECTED to be a slacker.
The second response is the one we have recently settled into, and it is a bit more nuanced: All the meaning in your life is self-made. If you want something, you have to do it yourself. If you want to see change in the world, you have to change it. No one will save you. There are no hero’s of the Smallville variety.
But … that doesn’t mean life is meaningless. Quite the opposite. It can mean anything you want. You have full control.
Putting it all together
Our new problem is balance. There is nothing new here. It’s something every adult faces. But, I think there is a unique problem facing Generation X. More than any generation before us, we were raised to believe in nothing. Not on purpose, mind you, it was an unforeseen byproduct of the failed revolutions of our parents.
For all the great successes of the Baby Boomer generation – most notably, Civil Rights – their vision of the world never came to be. They were the ultimate Idealists. They had FAITH. They Believed. They thought that if they just fought hard enough, then they could completely change the world and create for themselves a Utopia.
You can see remnants of this faith being resurrected in the new generation of 20-somethings. It skipped Gen X completely.
We were never, and will never be Idealists. Our ability to have faith in anything other than ourselves is nearly impossible – certainly not in “ideas”.
And yet, our faith in ourselves is our greatest strength. Only an idealist can ever be dissolutioned. Generation X has been inoculated against dissolutionment. If you can’t be dissolutioned, you won’t ever give up.
As I watched my Grandfather struggling to do something as simple as breath, while a smaller than normal collection of family members was downstairs a week before Christmas, I felt unusually calm.
Things change. People change. Generations change.
Sometimes that change is good, sometimes heartbreaking. But, we rarely have any control over it.
Place your faith in yourself and in your ability to affect those things you CAN change. Learn to accept those things you cannot change. And slowly, you’ll come to find a balance that we might call happiness.
[This is the first of 3 articles on Oscar Wilde. Here's part 1, The importance of being Ernest; and part 2, The Gay, The Straight, and The Funkadelic]
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” – Oscar Wilde
Before I get into the quotes and how those can be applied to weightlifting, I want to quickly discuss Wilde’s views on Aestheticism, as in many ways they help to frame the rest.
Weightlifting as Aestheticism
“The play’s the thing” – William Shakespeare
Wilde believed that all art was to be done (and enjoyed) for its own sake. There is not supposed to be a hidden “moral” or “point” to a play or painting. It just is. And you should enjoy it as is.
This point of view is sometimes called Aestheticism. And I completely agree with it. There is nothing worse than some dude with dreads strumming an out-of-tune guitar singing off-key about how important it is to save the whales. If you have a deep philosophical or political point to make, write a logical well thought out persuasive essay – not a play.
That isn’t to say that art is meaningless. Quite the opposite. It is meaningFUL in the truest sense of the word. It is simply not utilitarian.
A kiss has meaning, though it rarely pays the bills.
Art is about emotions and the acute. It has singular characters living singular lives. It is NOT general. We relate to characters in good novels not because they are written so generally as to be relatable to everyone, but precisely because they are writing so specifically that we can see honest similarities between the details of their personalities and our own. We gloss over the parts that don’t relate to us, and hone in on the parts that do.
All works of art are like Rorschach tests. What you think it is “about” says more about you than it does about the work of art itself.
You should approach weightlifting in the same way. It should be done for its own sake. You go to the gym to lift because it is its own reward. Distant goals are great, you need them. But, they are NOT the point. They are like icing on the cake.
In some sense, Wilde over emphasized the hedonic qualities of this philosophy of Aestheticism – that is the tendency to value the search for joy. The philosophy has been applied to all of life, and was a rather popular trend during his time.
To the pure Aesthete there is no morality, proper. There are only those acts which increase or decrease ones happiness.
Oscar Wilde didn’t believe in that. (Though, in practice, he often leaned in that direction.) Nor do I.
In his novel A Picture of Dorian Gray, he presents a cautionary tale of someone who took the principles of Aestheticism too far. The character, Dorian, spends his life hunting down personal gratification at all costs – and he pays the price. His behavior eventually catches up with him, kills him, and he dies alone and miserable.
At this point, a discerning reader may be justified in asking me whether I’ve falling into the trap of contradicting myself. After all, I did just say that Art was supposed to be quite devoid of philosophical “points” or “lessons”, and followed that by telling you that his novel has a lesson.
I’m going to defend myself by saying that it only seems like a contradiction on the surface. Art should be created and enjoyed in the way that we enjoy other people. That doesn’t preclude the secondary ability to learn from others mistakes or successes, or use their lives as examples – Art is no different.
What matters here, though, is the principle that your time in the gym isn’t to be done primarily with end goals in mind.
The pure hedonists have a point. If you were going to die tomorrow, and you knew it, would you still go to the gym today? If the answer is no, then you’re working out for the wrong reasons.
Now, on to the quotes …
Oscar Wilde Quotes on Weightlifting
“I’m not young enough to know everything”
You can always tell when someone is new to weightlifting by the amount of “knowledge” they constantly spew out of their mouths about it. They are SURE that this thing is right and that thing is wrong. They overemphasize the details of little importance because they appear complex and interesting. And they underemphasize the details of great importance because these are simple and basic.
By contrast, experienced lifters – and coaches – come across as humble, and say the words, “I don’t know” quite a lot.
The lesson here is to humble thy self. You don’t know everything. You never will. It is impossible.
Become the life-long student and you will never stop growing.
“Be yourself, everyone else is already taken”
Every routine and program written on paper is false. No one on this green (and increasingly brown) earth has ever performed it exactly as it appears to be on paper. This is a dirty little secret we coaches rarely talk about.
We are all individuals who live real lives that will greatly affect the execution of the plan. The greatest workouts, routines, protocols, programs ALWAYS take real life into account. A good coach KNOWS and EXPECTS you to not follow it exactly. That isn’t the goal.
The goal is to find a way to individualize everything in your life to suit your own needs. The programs and exercises you use in the gym are no different.
While it is true that we’re all human (well … most of us), and the similarities between us are far greater than our differences, ignoring the differences and attempting to become one of the Homogenized is not going to help you. We share about 50%+ of our genes with Banana’s … does that mean we should have half of our training resemble the workout routines of bananas? (… Banana Zumba?)
A 25 year old Russian kid who has spent the last 10 years training for weightlifting is not the same as a 55 year old American Lawyer who’s also spent the last 10 years training for weightlifting.
Find a good plan, but don’t freak out if you need to adapt it a bit to fit you and your situation.
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all”
I like to say that my athletes are my co-coaches … of themselves. This is taking the principle from the last quote further.
If you know that you need to individualize a bit, how do you do it?
By using that cantaloupe atop your shoulders!
NO one can know you as well as you know yourself in every detail. The job of the external coach is to see the things you can’t see because of your inherent subjectivity with respect to yourself. But, objectivity has its downsides.
I can’t know, for instance, when an athlete tells me they are feeling back pain whether that is a serious or minor issue. I can’t gauge their pain levels. Asking someone to rate their pain on a scale from 1 to 10 is totally arbitrary. One person’s 7 is another’s 3.
They have to decide for themselves whether continuing with the workout is going to help or hurt them.
I have a deeply “Libertarian” view of coaching. I provide that which only I can provide. I set the tone and create the environment in which proper learning can occur. I offer help when asked. And, I point out problems and flaws when I believe they are major and habitual.
All the rest is up to the athlete, and it is best if I step out of the way. Being an overbearing dictator in the gym is like being an overbearing parent of a teenager. The teen never learns anything substantial and they’ll often end up resenting you in the process.
The greatest learning can only occur when you take over both the control and the responsibility for yourself. The coach is there to help where they can, but your progress is up to you.
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination”
Weightlifting is no place for moderation. You spend a ton of time at very light weights to dial in technique and form – make it as subconscious as you possibly can. But, after that, you have to go heavy … a lot.
There are basically two type of people that come into weightlifting: Pearls and Dragons. (Read my article series Zen Mind, Big Snatch for a full account of this phenomenon.)
Pearls are the easiest to coach in the beginning. They are mindful of practicing technique at light weights in order to get things just right. They will look beautiful with an empty bar. But, they are quite timid at the higher weights.
Pearls will often spend MONTHS working with the same weights on the snatch, cleans, squats, etc trying to get it perfect without ever stretching their boundaries and forcing themselves to attack the bigger weights. One failure at the next weight up, and they immediately drop the weight down again.
Dragons are a pain at first. They want to go heavy NOW. They have no fear of the weight and are willing to put themselves in harms way at a moments notice. I have to spend all of my time reigning them back in. But, in the long run, they take the most attempts with heavy weights and will make the greatest progress over the long haul – provided they learned to tone it down enough to get the technique right.
I often say that I’d rather work with a monster than a mouse. The reason is that as a coach, I CAN teach technique.
I can’t teach attitude.
Only the athlete themselves can decide to work at becoming more aggressive when needed. Only the athlete can get over their own fears of failure. Only the athlete can bite the bullet.
In weightlifting, you must learn to live “outside your means”, push the weights and go for it. I spend a ton of time hammering the importance of going through a serious 3 to 6 month learning phase on the Oly lifts (like in my book Samurai Strength). But at some point, mediocre ain’t gonna cut it.
Try Harder. Go Beyond. Live Outside Your Means
“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes”
If you aren’t failing, you aren’t trying. This point takes off from the last. Once you are fully into that early-intermediate stage of learning on the Oly lifts (different that what that means for your general strength), you’ll need to start pushing the weights up and going for heavy lifts more often.
But what do I mean by that? I mean that you need to miss more often.
The beauty of the Front squat, snatch, and clean is that they can all be missed rather safely. YES, you can hurt yourself if you aren’t careful, and accidents happen. But, if you decide that you want to really push your Olympic lifting numbers, you have little choice but to learn HOW to miss, how to max out, and how to lift a heavy weight over your head.
It is an interesting fact that snatching 80% of your max with perfect form tells me very little about whether you’ll be able to make 90%+ of your snatch today. I’ll notice that you have the form down. But, I won’t know if you’ll USE that form when the weights get heavy and your fear kicks in.
Snatching really heavy weights is scary – objectively so. But, heh, that’s the game! So, if you want to do it … you have to do it.
The only way to get over your fear of anything is to face that fear on a regular basis.
Every lifter has a breaking point. They’ll be lifting and looking great, adding no more than 5 to 10 pounds per round. Then, they’ll add weight and BOOM … it all goes to hell.
Unlike with a squat where 5 pounds can be the difference between a grinder that you make and one that you miss; Or a lift that you made with effort but it looks good, and a lift that you had to grind out for half an hour but made; In snatching, that extra 5 pounds didn’t cause you to miss because you aren’t strong enough, but because it caused you to freak out.
The instant you BELIEVE that the weight is heavy, you will throw your form out the window and start lifting like a fool.
A mistake is lowering the weight back down immediately. I want you to attempt it a few more times. THIS is the weight that scares you, not the one below it. I encourage my own lifters to miss between 3 and 6 times on a snatch, and up to 3 times on a clean before dropping the weight. (Again, this is only for lifters who’ve gone through my beginners progressions and have proven to me they are ready for it!)
The weight that causes you to break form is the weight you should attempt the most often. Yep, you’re gonna fail a lot, but we’ll just chock that up to experience.
“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow”
Lord knows I’m not the kind of guy who takes life too seriously. The laughing you hear in the background of this video is mine … and it is in almost every video on our Youtube page!
Our American Puritan roots have set upon us a plague of shallow seriousness. We’ve been conned into believing that if you laugh, have a playful attitude, or otherwise act relaxed about important things then you aren’t doing your best. The opposite is the truth.
Being overly serious is bad for you, and it makes you worse at your job, life, and workouts.
Laughter has been cited over and again as a genuine aid in lowering your risk of an entire host of diseases. It wakes up the mind and makes rational thought more possible (I’m working on an article on this topic … stay tuned). And, it helps the people around you feel safe and comfortable enough to trust you.
While it is true that most of the so-called problems we deal with during the day are not something we’d see as problems 10 years from now; and it’s great to use a sense of relativity to help you decide whether the thing bringing you down is even worth it; that isn’t the point.
The point is that even IF the problem facing you is real and “serious” you are better off not getting emotional about it. Negative emotions blunt your brains ability to think rationally and clearly – they allow fear to creep in and create a feedback loop that will spiral you down into the pits of weakness.
In technical sports like weightlifting, sprinting, the martial arts, or golf, negative emotion is a brutal killer. Anger, sadness, insecurity, and fear will destroy you.
There is no better medicine than laughter. It even works when you fake it! So … fake it till you make it.
Laugh your way to a new PR.
“The aim of life is self-development. To realize ones nature perfectly – that is what each of us is here for”
I have nothing else to say on that. It applies to everything, not just weightlifting.
Make your gym life a part of your whole life – and live a WHOLE life.
Read Part 1 on Oscar Wilde here
I promised to explain the ways in which I’ve felt some level of connection with Oscar Wilde before I get into the weightlifting bit, so I’ll do that now.
Oscar Wilde was a complex, brilliant, and highly flawed man. At the end of this article I go over some of the reasons one wouldn’t want to model themselves after him completely. But, ever since I first encountered the guy, a part of me felt rather drawn to him – or more accurately, I was drawn to the persona that we all think of AS him.
I’d like to first focus on the good stuff; we can deal with the rest later.
A Portrait of an Odd Kid: Nick
When I was a kid growing up, I was not like other dudes in a whole host of ways. Not the least of which was that I found it way more fun to play dress up and wear make-up than hang out in the garage working on cars or building things. Most of my best friends were girls (a trend that hasn’t changed much – I have many guy friends, I’ve just always felt more naturally comfortable around women). And I had no idea that this was not normal.
At five years old you’re rather clueless about what your peers think or what society at large thinks is acceptable. You live in a bubble created by your parents. This fact turned out to be great for me.
My Mom and Dad were awesome in this respect. They never made me question that my love of what the rest of the world sees as girly shit made me any less of a guy. It never came up. So, I never thought twice about it until I got to middle school and started adolescence.
To this day I’m notoriously flamboyant and my love of jewelry is a bit over the top. I’m writing this on a pink iPad, and I have a pink iPhone cover. Five year old kids don’t know that pink is a “girl” color unless they’re told. While I know how the world feels about this now, I just don’t give a shit.
Case Study: Prince the Alpha Male
Something people confuse quite a bit is the difference between someone who is actually trying to look like the opposite sex on purpose and someone who just likes the style and feels totally comfortable in their own (born into) gender.
Prince is the classic example here from our modern era. He ain’t gay … he’s actually the opposite. He’s a dog, a full-on chauvinist who’s in many respects is more classically manly than most men will ever be. But … his sense of style is confusing to people who can’t see past the surface.
He wears purple incessantly, he wears make up, he puts glitter on his face, and he sings in falsetto. In his mind, this stuff makes him MORE manly, not less manly. In his mind, he looks good (I agree). In his mind, chicks are gonna dig it (they do).
He’s the opposite of a “metro-sexual”, someone who is truly more classically feminine than masculine (I don’t want to get needlessly PC here, but I’m talking about colloquial notions of masculine/feminine roles, not anything sociologically precise).
Prince is a dictatorial, aggressive, gorilla-like alpha male in behavior. Any androgyny we attribute to him is superimposed by our current social standards of masculinity. Deep down he doesn’t feel feminine in the least!
Men throughout many parts of history have worn make up because they thought it made them MORE manly, not less manly. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson didn’t have long hair because they wanted to look like women. That’s moronic. It was simply the style of the time.
Sometimes, dudes are out of touch with the style of the time … But that doesn’t make them ladies or gay.
Gay or Not, You’ll Still Get Your Ass Kicked
Now, Oscar Wilde actually WAS gay. Prince and I are not. But, because of how the world around me has treated me I’ve always felt a kind of affinity for gay people that most straight people (especially straight men) can’t understand.
By the time I was in high school, it had become rather clear to me that my natural love of things others see as chick-like didn’t make me seem like a woman in their eyes … but a “faggot”.
Other kids, other adults, nearly everyone questioned whether I was gay or straight. That, in and of itself isn’t a big deal. But, it didn’t stop there.
To this day, when I see large groups of young white males, I get a bit nervous. Especially if those males aren’t from the city.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been attacked, threatened, and beat up because some group of idiot white dudes (they’re always white) thought I was a “fag”.While it wasn’t the primary reason, this fact played a big role in me picking up my first barbell. I figured that if I got all buff, then the bullshit would stop.
I was largely right. At this point in my life, most guys are more afraid of me than I am of them. (By the way, I also took a lot of shit in High School because my girlfriend was black … but that insane story will have to wait for another time!)
After defending yourself against morons starts to become the norm, your outlook on life starts to shift a bit – and you begin looking around for role models.
I’m sure my love of Oscar Wilde’s work, Prince, Francis Bacon (the Painter, not the Scientist/Writer), David Bowie, and Woody Allen is due, in part, to their being people the world outside saw as more than a bit strange, and yet they pushed through and became the best at what they did. They didn’t let the world dictate to them who they were supposed to be.
I like that. Be yourself at all costs. Screw what others think. (Bowie might be a bad example, I don’t even think HE knows who he is.)
Unfortunately, in practice that turns out to be rather hard. But, the goal is the same. Strive to be yourself, no matter the price.
I love that Oscar Wilde was so flamboyant and wore outfits that would look appropriate on Snoop Dog. He purposely pushed the buttons of the stuffy upper class of the time. His writing makes a joke of all of those things they held dear, but shouldn’t have.
I find that kind of thing important.
Doing something strictly for shock value (think Marilyn Manson) can be fun, but it is generally naive, and at worst needlessly disrespectful. But, forcing others to deal with you as you really are is noble as it paves the way forward so that others like you aren’t forced to deal with the same shit you had to deal with.
It is Never OK for someone to engage in violence because they think who you are is somehow “wrong”.
I’ve had to feel the brunt of that far too often in my life. Others have had it worse. And we all know that millions upon millions have been killed for less.
I respect people who stand up for the cause of “being yourself” by simply being themselves.
The Downsides of Oscar Wilde
I wouldn’t want to be Oscar Wilde’s friend. Sadly, that turns out to be true of a great many of my favorite writers, musicians, painters, political figures, activists, and athletes, etc. Far too often, people who do or create great things are fatally flawed in their personal lives.
We should NOT try to emulate these people in totality. We have to pick out the good from the bad.
We MUST separate not only the art from the artist, but the persona from the person. Each public figure is at once a real person and a myth. The persona is not the person. It is incumbent upon us to split those two entities apart.
Sometimes the mythic creation that the rest of the world sees is more hedonic than the real version – Hunter Thompson is a good example. He wasn’t nearly as crazy as his creations of himself were in his books like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Sure, he was wild, but nothing like the characters he wrote.
Sadly, others are the opposite.
Their public figure is inspiring and powerful in ways that move people to be better versions of themselves … and yet, their own private lives are in shambles. The number of examples here are far too great to get into. And yet, it is these persona’s that are the most helpful to us. Martin Luther King wasn’t perfect (cheating on his wife, for instance), but we’d be fools not to use the best of his person and persona to help guide our lives in a positive direction.
Wilde was, in many ways, a character out of a Shakespearian tragedy. He had such greatness in him, and yet he sowed the seeds of his own downfall. His life-long (idiotic) belief that one should embrace their vices finally did catch up with him.
He did himself in.
NOTE:Let me be clear here, I am only going to say this once: His being Gay was NOT one of his vices. There is nothing wrong with being gay, and I won’t pretend to think differently on that subject in order to curry favor with others. Given what I wrote above, you won’t be shocked to know that I’d rather lose readers than betray my very strong moral feelings on this issue.
I have a Zero Tolerance policy toward homophobia.
However … Wilde DID have some serious vices and flaws, some of which are damned hard to deal with as an audience member. Not the least of which where his tendency to engage in sex with teenaged prostitutes and his near total emotional abandonment of his wife.
The fact that he never tried to overcome his vices is something I strongly abhor. My entire moral philosophy rests on the idea that one should go out of their way to work towards becoming a better version of themselves today than they were yesterday – everyday. Not just for yourself, but for others.
He didn’t do that. And he ended up hurting a lot of people around him.
I love the words he wrote. I love his outlandish and flamboyant personality. I relate very strongly to a great many of his better attributes, and have worked hard to emulate those things in him that I believe were wonderful. But, I have no grand “hero” illusions.
There are no hero’s in this world. There are only human beings: The good, the bad, and the hideous.
Next Time …
Well, hell, this part turned out longer than I expected! So, I’ll post the final piece tomorrow and finally delve into how Oscar Wilde’s ideas and writing have a pretty clear connection to weightlifting and living a better life. It’s just too bad he didn’t always follow his own advice!
Also …
I know it is always interesting to engage in gossipy discussions, but I don’t want that here. The Iron Samurai is a place I try to keep as positive as possible.
So … if you have a comment related to weightlifting or Wilde or yourself and your own experiences then go ahead and post them. I’d love to hear it.
Otherwise, be considerate and save the negative stuff about Wilde for another time. Discussing that stuff here misses the point entirely.
This is the last of a 3-part series on how to snatch – more specifically on how to move from one position to the next during the snatch. (See part 1 here, and part 2 here.)
Todays lesson has you moving from the Floor/Start Position to the Knee Position.
This movement is probably the easiest for most people, but it still can present a problem, particularly if you’re not all that flexible yet.
You’ll begin at the Start Position:
- Bar starts at the base of the toe (toe joint, where the shoelaces start)
- Shoulders are back behind the bar
- Your weight is on your heels or as close to it as you can get them!
What this means in practice is that your hips will be no higher than your knees. This is why what I’m describing is sometimes referred to as the “low hip start” position. If the only thing you get right at first is keeping your hips lower than your knees (like the bottom of a front squat), then you’ll automatically get all of the above things right most of the time.
Set up your lower body as though you are at the bottom of a deep squat: hips below the knees, knees far forward, weight on the heels. Grab the bar and voila! You’re doing pretty well.
And you’ll end at the Knee Position, which (again) requires that your …
- Knees are back far enough that your shins are perpendicular to the platform (get your butt up high!)
- Shoulders are forward over the bar
- Weight is HARD on your heels!
Throughout all of this, your lats should be tight as all hell. Squeeze your lats and stick you chest up like you’re showing off at the beach.
As you begin to move, think of shifting your hips from being low at the Start to high at the Knee.
Have an Olympic Weightlifting Question? Leave it below in the comments section and I’ll make a video answering it!
“We should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere and studied triviality.” – Oscar Wilde
Whenever you want to ask someone who their favorite play writer is, make sure you add the caveat that they can’t choose Shakespeare. That’s cheating. Claiming Shakespeare as your favorite writer of plays is like choosing Jesus or Gandhi as your favorite moral philosopher, or Einstein as your favorite scientist.
Everyone likes these people, and claiming them as your favorite tells the person who asked you the question in the first place absolutely nothing about you as a person. You sound generic and trite.
I’m going to follow my own advice, skip Shakespeare, and tell you that my favorite playwright is Oscar Wilde. It isn’t just his work that impresses me. It is that in some strange ways, I feel as though I can really relate to the guy. (More on that in Part 2 where I will outline the main ways that you can apply his ideas to lifting more weight.)
A Polaroid Picture of Oscar Wilde
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you” – Oscar Wilde
Wilde was born on October 16th, 1854, and only lived until he was 46 years old. While he was born into the upper classes, and ended up quite successful at the height of his career, he died broke and alone.
His most successful play, and probably the one that best represents his work is The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. It’s first production marked the zenith of his success. It also marked his downfall.
You see … Wilde was a gay man in a time when that kind of thing could get you prison time.
At the first production of The Importance of Being Earnest, The Marquess of Queensberry (father to Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglass) threatened to disrupt the show. Wilde heard about it, and was able to prevent the man from getting in. But, in a trial some time soon after, where Wilde was attempting to sue the Marquess, his homosexuality came out and he was quickly there after arrested, sentenced, and sent to a hard labor camp.
In prison, Oscar Wilde’s health took a severe beating, and a short time after, he died.
The Play That Killed Him
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde
The play that heralded his downfall, The Importance of Being Earnest may seem an odd creation coming from a man who lived through what he did. On the surface, it is a silly comedy that makes a lot of silly jokes about everything.
But, that’s only on the surface.
I don’t want to spoil it for you if you’ve never read it or seen it performed. But, I’ll run down the basic plot for you in a few sentences …
Spoiler!
The plot is ridiculous. But that’s the point.
- We’ve got two dudes, Jack and Algernon (Algy) who’ve been living double lives. They created alter egos in order to be able to live their stuffy real lives in the country and yet still have fun in the city without consequence.
- Jack’s alter ego is named Ernest. He pretends that Ernest is his poor brother in the city who needs him to visit on a regular basis.
- Algy only knows Jack AS Ernest – they’re city buddies.
- Jack tells Algy that he can’t marry his beloved, Gwendolyn, because Jack is an orphan. No parents, no lovin. (This is by the order of Lady Bracknell, the hardnosed lady of the play.)
- Gwendolyn is from the City and believes that Jack is Ernest.
- Algy, finds out about a pretty girl named Cecily, of whom Jack is the legal guardian and decides to go to Jack’s place AS Ernest … unbeknownst to Jack, of course.
- Jack tells everyone at home that his poor brother is dead. But, Algy is already there as his poor brother. This doesn’t go over well. Jack is mad.
- Algy’s wooing of Cecily works, in part because she likes the name Ernest THAT much.
- Gwendolyn arrives in the country and makes things messy. Now both ladies believe they are marrying Ernest.
- A fight breaks out afterwhich the boys confess.
- Ladies are mad, especially since the names Jack and Algy just as “musical” sounding as Ernest. They won’t marry them.
- Soon, they forgive them both because the guys were lying out of love.
- But, they STILL can’t get married because Jack’s an orphan. Algy can’t get married because Jack doesn’t want him marrying Cecily. Jack is Cecily’s guardian … until she turns 35 – Seriously!
- TWIST: Because of a mistake with a book, a baby, and a stroller, we discover that Jack is actually Algy’s brother. He’s NOT an orphan after all.
- And, even better, his original name was … Ernest.
- Now everyone can be married and live happily ever after … clearly.
Getting Serious for a Second
Underlying the jokes and crazy plot is a very real examination of the effect living in a society like Victorian England’s could have had on a persons soul. Particularly the level of hypocrisy that was rampant there. Plays (or movies, or books) on topics like that are usually a bore at best, and drudging naivety at worst – think of the myriad “teen angst” songs with similar themes.
But, Wilde treats all of the serious things he actually cares about with a total triviality that somehow brings home the points all that much more. Great comedians are often able to tackle larger and more important concerns than their more “serious” artistic counterparts and do so in a more natural way – Lenny Bruce comes to mind. They understand that the more serious the topic, the more people care about it, the funnier the jokes will be.
Wilde places an enormous emphasis on a persons name, how they dress, and where they were raised in the play.
Applications to US
The modern first world, and especially the United States suffers from many of the same underlying issues that Victorian England did. We have a hyper-emphasis on looks and form over functionality, quick and easy solutions and soundbites to complicated problems – EVERYONE has A.D.D. – all wrapped up in a Winner Take All atmosphere of aggressive competitiveness that drowns out so much of what is truly important in our short lives.
The Importance of Being Earnest rings remarkably true today.
Don’t get me wrong. In MOST ways, our modern world is far better than that of Victorian England – modern healthcare is enough. (I’d take what we have over any other time in history.) But, we aren’t perfect, and we’ve flat-out regressed in certain ways that make our lives less fulfilling. I think Americans specifically – and all 1st worldians in general – are in a state of psychological crisis.
Americans have the highest rates of depression in the first world, and it is even higher than in many third world countries. (Though, in India it is getting ridiculous.) High income, better education, all the trappings of modern life don’t make depression less likely. In many ways they make it MORE likely.
And while most people aren’t truly depressed in any clinical sense, their sense of life fulfillment rates very poorly. While it is true that there is a good correlation between wealth and happiness rates, a more comprehensive look reveals that health, time with friends and family, and enough money to cover your basic needs are the real issues at play. (The worst off 3rd world countries still rate as being the least happy for obvious reasons. What makes 1st World people so weird is that they often have a lot of what is supposed to make you happy, but they still aren’t.)
I believe it is these reasons that are behind the CrossFit movement, the new Weightlifting Renaissance, and other “hardcore” fitness trends. We’re all looking for more meaning in our lives. Communities of like-minded people engaging in really hard shit helps to foster that.
For those of us who are enthralled by his wit and insightful writing, we can’t help but wonder where Oscar Wilde’s talent could have gone had he lived. Sadly, we’ll never know that.
Next Time … I’ll explain more fully how and why I’ve always felt close to Oscar Wilde. And of course, I’ll wrap this up and show you how all of this relates to weightlifting – I swear it does!
This is the second of three episodes of Samurai Strength on How To Snatch. Today, I’m covering how to go from the Knee Position to the Hip Position.
You’ll be doing an exercise that is very similar to a Romanian Deadlift (RDL), but just a touch different. So … I’ve given it a new name: The Romanian Snatch Deadlift (RSDL). They start out the same, but the way that you end the new one ain’t the same.
Instead of just standing up straight as you would in a Normal RDL, in the RSDL you will shift back into the Hip Position.
The main points are this:
- Start at the CORRECT Knee Position (shins perpendicular to the ground, shoulders over the bar, weight on the heels, lats tight, hips up)
- End at the CORRECT Hip Position (shoulders behind the bar, weight on heels, legs in quarter-squat, bar in the hip)
- Move your hips from being HIGH to being LOW as the bar slides up your thigh.
**Leave a Comment Below: Have a Question? I’ll make a video about it!**
[Video below]
This is the first of three episodes of Samurai Strength on how to snatch. See Part 2 here.
The way I teach the snatch is by using what you could call the “key frames” concept.
In computer animation, you don’t bother drawing out every single frame. You draw only the most important frames, the ones that represent the movement of your characters the most.
I wrote an article over at Breaking Muscle a while ago on How to Power Clean using this concept and wrote the following:
I used to have a lot of fun messing around with computer animation programs. In those programs you can quickly create a moving image by only drawing 2 or 3 frames. In animation they call these “key frames”. You tell the computer the most important positions you want your character to be in during your “movie” and the program will do the work of drawing all the intermediate steps for you.
Key Frame Bias
If you pick the WRONG keyframes then you end up with the wrong story, or at the very least movements that look weirdly unnatural. For instance, look again at those two frames of the Garfield comic above. If all you saw was those, then your impression would likely be that Garfield is just up to his usual “no good”.
But, take a look at the full comic below. In this one it becomes clear that Garfield was just having fun, licking his pop, and got stuck. His owner gave him a rather smug look, and Garfield was simply responding the way a cat would.
The point is that picking the right keyframes DEFINES your story – and your snatch.
So, you’d better pick the right ones!
In the book, Samurai Strength, and in many articles around the web I’ve outlined what those Keyframes are. But, today you’re going to go to Step Two. You are now going to become the animation program and fill in the blanks between the keyframes.
Episode 7 Summary
In this first of three episodes teaching you how to move from one position (keyframe) to the next in the snatch we’re going to focus on the most important one: going from the Hip Position to the Catch Position.
The most important thing to be sure of is that you start and end in the right positions! That may seem obvious, but it isn’t for your body. Start out in the perfect Hip Position (shoulders behind the bar, weight on the heels, legs in quarter squat position, chest up nice and high, etc), and end in the right Catch Position (legs right back in a quarter squat, arms locked, head forward, shrug up, etc).
To get the bar above your head you’ve GOT to use your legs NOT your arms. Again, this might seem obvious, but nearly everyone screws this up at first.
Whenever I teach someone to snatch the very first thing I have them do after practicing holding the position at the hip is to “jump” the bar over their head … inevitably they curl the bar over their head. To be fair, it’s not a bar, it’s a PVC pipe. But, we adults find it hard at first to honestly use the legs and hips as our prime movers for almost anything, let alone for something this complicated.
To get this point across I default quite a bit to the old snatch lie and tell them to jump. An Olympic lift is NOT a jump. But, it is closer to being a jump than a curl!
The last point in the video is a big one, as it is essentially what makes this a drill.
On every lift, I want you to “Catch it and Ride it Down”. What I mean by that is that you are going to catch the bar in a (roughly) quarter squat position (remember, we’re using light weights here – even just a stick), STOP exactly where you are, and then squat down fully.
Do NOT catch it at the quarter squat, stand, adjust yourself, THEN squat down. That is wrong.
- Catch it
- STOP
- Ride it Down
OK … enough blabbing. Here’s the video (where I do more blabbing!)
(Hat Tip: Jack Cheng)
Vasily Alexeev (or Alekseyev) was a member of that elite club of people who can honestly be called “One of the greatest weightlifters of all time”. We live in a culture where the overuse of words like “genius” and “classic” and “legend” is ubiquitous. Something is not a classic just because it is five years old.
Alexeev is a legend.
He died yesterday at the age of 69 in Germany.
Alexeev broke over 80 World Records during his career and won two gold medals in 1972 and 1976. So, I ain’t gonna list all of them (see the Wikipedia list). But, one of them that he will certainly be remembered for was being the first ever person to Clean and Jerk over 500 pounds.
Best Ever Lifts
HIs best ever snatch was 190k.
His best ever Clean and Jerk was 256k.
His best ever Clean and Press (they did that still in the early part of his career) was 236.5k!
Below are a bunch of videos of him. There are even more out there, but this is a pretty good sampling.
Documentaries of Alexeev
A documentary showing him in and out of competition:
Documentary from France – Part 1:
France Documentary – Part 2:
If you speak Russian then maybe you can translate the important bits of this 45 minute documentary here for the rest of us:
Alexeev in Competition
The first ever 500 pound clean and jerk:
507 pound clean and press:
At the Olympic Games along with another favorite, David Rigert (There are some serious monsters in this video!):
Clean and Jerks at the 1975 World Weightlifting Championships
The Press
Alexeev Chillin’
On Waterskis:
This is the second of a 2-part “How to Jerk” series, make sure you watch my first Jerk Technique Video before you watch this one. What I teach you there is more important, and comes first. The stuff I’m going over today will often happen naturally so long as you’ve gotten all of that first stuff down cold already. But … not always. So, assuming you’re doing everything else right, and the jerk is still wonky, watch on …
The Jerk is a leg exercise, not an arm exercise. So getting your footwork down is an issue. It’s like a dance you are doing with the bar – an aggressive, technical, and loud dance!
What I go over in the video below is all about your feet. The key points I touch on are:
- How far out should your feet move – and what happens to the torso when you do such a thing.
- Which foot should land on the platform first: front or back.
- How to stand back up once you’ve caught the bar – no easy task!
- Bonus: A sneaky way to find out if you are a right-legged or left-legged jerker
Here’s the video:
To recap:
- Torso should not move forward or back. It should only move up and down.
- Back foot lands first!
- When standing back up (called the “recovery”), you’re front leg comes back first, then back leg, and work your way up slowly.
- Have someone push you around!
Make sure you leave your questions below and I’ll be sure to make new videos that answer them.
The following is an advocacy article for Chocolate Milk as a recovery aid for athletes. It’s a guest piece by my friend and colleague Peter Curcio, a registered dietitian, trainer, and Olympic weightlifter. I really like that he isn’t just another dietitian. Because he also competes in the sport of weightlifting (lucky for me, as a member of my team) his ideas stem from both a place of research AND practical experience.
It is nearly impossible to arrive at conclusions that are both useful and nuanced without experience in both. If only research, then you lose sight of what is important on the platform, field, court, etc – too many researches have no clue at all. However, if you have only “real-world” experience, then you develop a profound blindness to subtly. (See my article on Coaches as Scientists to get a broader view of what I’m talking about.)
Peter’s got both sides … that and a powerful appetite for chocolate chip protein pancakes! (Seriously, it’s unreal.)
Make sure that you leave a comment and I’ll get him to answer any questions you’ve got.
For Strength Athletes, Milk Mustaches Are More Than Just Cool
By: Peter Curcio, RD, USAW
For every athlete (and, let’s face it, we’re all athletes in one form or another), strength is all about recovery. Literally. After an intense workout or training session, muscles need to be replenished with nutrients to help them not only refuel but grow bigger and stronger. Chocolate milk is a great way to facilitate this process.
For several years, scientists have looked at chocolate milk in the context of endurance athletes (e.g. cyclists, long-distance runners) undergoing varying intensities of training to see what effect chocolate milk has on increasing the rate of glycogen repletion following the workout.
Glycogen is your body’s fuel, sort of like gasoline in a car. More specifically, it’s the storageform of glucose (most commonly called “sugar” or “carbohydrate”), and it’s found predominantly in muscles and the liver. When you exercise, your body breaks down glycogen like a madman, freeing up glucose to be used by your muscles. When the gas tank in your muscles starts to get low, more glucose is pulled in from the bloodstream.
This would be all fine and dandy, except that if muscles started monopolizing the glucose in the bloodstream, you could experience some potential lightheadedness and the shakes. You might even get a little crabby (I know I sometimes do, according to my lovely girlfriend). That’s called low blood sugar (or hypoglycemia). Fortunately, your liver immediately kicks into gear, breaking down its own glycogen to keep blood sugar relatively stable.
In other words, your body uses glucose for energy, and its stored in the form of glycogen primarily in muscle and the liver. When your muscles start to use up all their glucose and begin to siphon it from the blood, the liver uses its own glucose to maintain equilibrium.
At the end of an intense workout, glycogen levels (i.e. the “gas tank”) can be very low. For optimal recovery, athletes need to get more glucose! The easiest way is through a beverage, which is substantial enough to give the body what it needs without leaving behind any uncomfortable “full” feeling that might occur after eating a full meal.
Simple, Yet Effective
At this point, many of you may be asking yourself, “Why chocolate milk? Why not just regular milk?” It all comes down to sugar. A cup of chocolate milk has about 28 grams of sugar compared to 13 grams in regular milk. The extra sugar is a plus in this context (i.e. post-workout) since it can easily be used by the body to replenish both muscle and liver glycogen.
Now, many of you reading this prefer to get down with the heavy stuff, and you may be wondering why I’m going on and on about endurance athletes. It turns out that although it may not be as significant, glycogen depletion happens when you’re lifting weights, too.
Think of it this way: your muscles (and your brain!) have to work hard to lift heavy weights up and then put them down again. They’re tearing through glucose like it’s going out of style. Train hard enough and for a long enough time and you’ll definitely feel your fuel gauge go from “Full” to “Half-Full” or even lower. Given that, getting a form of carbohydrate into your system soon after working out is important to kick start the biological equivalent of refilling your gas tank.
Save The Best For Last: Protein
Milk contains two types of protein, casein and whey. You may recognize these as the primary components in a variety of protein powders. They are both considered to be complete proteins, containing in the proper proportions all the essential amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) that the body cannot make and must get from food. They are also very highly bioavailable,making them easy for the body to digest and absorb.
Whey is considered a fast protein. In other words, it just about flies through your stomach and into your intestines where it can be digested, absorbed, and shuttled off to the muscles that need it. Casein, on the other hand, is a slower-acting protein. It tends to clump up and hang out in the acidic environment of the stomach, making its transit time to the intestine a bit longer when compared to whey.
Fortunately, the combination of a fast and a slow protein allows for more efficient utilization (i.e. more protein is accessible by your body for a longer period of time). In fact, this seems to be another shining feature of milk. Since the proteins in milk are not broken down into their constituent amino acids ahead of time like you see in some protein powders (e.g. whey hydrolysate), the body actually has to spend some time doing the work of digesting them.
This is actually a good thing, despite being contrary to what many of you have read. It’s generally been thought that delivering hydrolyzed protein – a technical name for protein that has been broken down into its individual amino acids – directly after training would garner the greatest increase in muscle recovery and growth, since it’s easier for the body to absorb. While this is true – amino acids and small protein fragments called peptides do in fact get absorbed more quickly than a “whole” milk protein – they are also processed just as rapidly. In other words, muscles have only a brief amount of time to receive the influx of amino acids from the bloodstream before they are broken down further and whisked away to the kidneys to be excreted.
To sum up, milk supplies not only a high-quality protein but one that is in its whole form, which the body can utilize – and reap the maximum benefit from – over a longer period of time.
Some Other Considerations
The fat content in milk also seems to help extend this window of opportunity. Generally speaking, fat, like casein protein, is more slowly released from the stomach and into the intestines. That’s why a meal higher in fat seems to sit in your stomach for a long time. Fat and protein both help to slow down the rate of digestion. In fact, many dietitians recommend mixed meals (containing a little bit each of carbohydrate, protein, and fat) for exactly this reason. In the context of post-training recovery, having a little bit of fat in your chocolate milk may actually help give the body that extra bit of time it needs to utilize as much protein as possible.
In fact, one research study by Elliot and colleagues showed that between two isocaloric servings – meaning they both had the same calories – of fat-free and whole milk, the extra fat in whole milk resulted in more protein being retained by the body. This was despite the fact that there was less protein in the whole milk!
As you can see, the value of chocolate milk lies in the properties of its inherent macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) as well as its practical applications. It’s relatively affordable, tastes pretty darn good, and is a convenient post-workout recovery beverage that won’t leave a heavy feeling in your stomach. If you have problems with lactose, there are even lactose-free varieties of chocolate milk out there, and even enzymes that are available to help break up lactose and make it easier on your digestive system.
Although it may not be for everyone, chocolate milk works. And, for many, it’s an alternative worth checking out.
References
- Aragon A. An Objective Comparison of Chocolate Milk and Surge Recovery [Internet]. [cited 2011 Sep 8];Available from: http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/an-objective-comparison-of-chocolate-milk-and-surge-recovery.html
- Boirie Y, Dangin M, Gachon P, Vasson MP, Maubois JL, Beaufrère B. Slow and fast dietary proteins differently modulate postprandial protein accretion. [Internet]. 1997 Dec; http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=25140&tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract
- Elliot T a, Cree MG, Sanford AP, Wolfe RR, Tipton KD. Milk ingestion stimulates net muscle protein synthesis following resistance exercise. Medicine and science in sports and exercise. 2006 Apr;38(4):667–74.
- Farnfield MM, Trenerry C, Carey K a, Cameron-Smith D. Plasma amino acid response after ingestion of different whey protein fractions. International journal of food sciences and nutrition. 2008 May;60(September):1–11.
- Karp JR, Johnston JD, Tecklenburg S, Mickleborough TD, Fly AD, Stager JM. Chocolate milk as a post-exercise recovery aid. International journal of sport nutrition and exercise metabolism. 2006 Feb;16(1):78–91.
- Lacroix M, Bos C, Léonil J, Airinei G, Luengo C, Daré S, et al. Compared with casein or total milk protein, digestion of milk soluble proteins is too rapid to sustain the anabolic postprandial amino acid requirement. The American journal of clinical nutrition. 2006 Nov;84(5):1070–9.
- Roy BD. Milk: the new sports drink? A Review. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2008 Jan;5(Table 1):15. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=25140&tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract
