The Beginning, The End, The Center of Things
Iron On My Mind—Dave's favorite columns in book form
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Exercising for health is simple, easy and wise. It's bright, breezy and liberating. The grim fact that people don't regularly engage in the invigorating activity is deplorable, an alarming display of ignorance and apathy.
Exercising to improve one's ability in sports or recreation is hardy and challenging. The athlete, sportsmen and outdoorsman is motivated and inspired. He or she loves life, is energetic and enduring and seeks expression through movement, strength and endurance.
Exercising to exceed in the sport of weightlifting, bodybuilding or powerlifting is particularly grueling. The means and the end are united, the act and the purpose joined at the hip. In time they, the training and the goal, become entwined, enmeshed, an indivisible blend. The two become inseparable, wedded. They become one.
You don't lift weights to achieve mass, power and speed one month and start scrimmage the next -- tackles, touchdowns and cheerleaders. After a winter with the iron, it's not batting practice in the spring with mitts and bats and balls and beers. The benefits of improved strength and endurance gained from the tough hours in the weight room are not enjoyed while you test your talents and develop your skills on the rings and high bar or the track and field.
You don't lift weights for a season. You lift weights now, then, again and again, once more, another time, every time, today, tomorrow and for good. Between workouts, while you rest and repair, you think of working out, hoping, planning and scrutinizing and planning and hoping. Then it's back to the iron and steel, sets and reps, perseverance and persistence, discipline and patience and pain and doubt. Sameness and repetitiveness, oh my.
When alone, hoping and doubting and resting, you don’t crank open a beer and chomp on a dog: You pop the top on a can of tuna and slug some water. Your spare time and menu are dedicated to supporting your input and output in the weight room. In my sparkling experience, tuna ’n water is the choice of champions. Water is that clear revitalizing tonic from heaven and tuna fish are, of course, finned angels.
Weight training doesn't end with straining on the gym floor. It continues at the feasting table, abstaining, restraining and containing what you eat, how much, when and why, consisting of multiple, carefully-placed high-protein, low-carbohydrate meals daily: no Italian pizza, no Danish pastry, no French fries, no Mexican beans, no Chinese rice, no Japanese sake, no German beer, no Russian vodka.
Now you know why musclebuilding isn’t the crown sport of the world. It's a political disaster, discriminatory and intolerant, slightly hysterical and not a lot of laughs. Who can contain themselves, measure up, muscle up, tone up and shape up?
Other sports are playful. You throw a ball and someone swings at it with a bat, or you toss the bouncy round object to a giant who jumps and dumps it in a hoop, or you bullet-pass the sphere to a gorilla who grabs it out of thin air and dives headfirst into the dirt to the delight of screaming fans and cheering cuties with flailing pompoms.
“I'll have a hotdog and a Bud Lite.”
Not exactly!
Make that a pair of 50-pound dumbbells and an incline bench.
In the unyielding and echoing weight room you crawl under a bar loaded with cold and convincingly immovable iron plates that clank unsympathetically. (Show me an adverb and I’ll use it.) Concealing a groan, you proceed to lift the revolting mass up and down for a fistful of repetitions, more or less, if your joints, muscles, tendons and oxygen and pigheadedness hold out. Then, without a soul looking or caring, you replace the mess with a crash, sit up and, like a fool, add more weight to the sagging the bar. Time to kill, you sit on the edge of the bench and focus on the next exhilarating expenditure of energy and strength, knowing all too well strain and pain amplify with increased load.
Oh, swell.
Five sets of this muscle-building exercise and you can move on to another and another and another. There's the one where you bend over and lift, and the one where you stand up and push, not to mention the one where you sit down and pull. How about the one in which you load the big dumb bar on your back and go up and down with your wobbly legs 'till you want to die. That's always good, high-fives all around. Let's add a few more plates -- nickels, dimes and quarters -- like they’re money and we’re rich. Spot me, man; I'm going for a single. If I don't make it, Tell Laura I Love Her (Ricky Valance, 1960).
I have more to say, but I don’t have time to say it and you don’t have time to listen.
Lo, the iron waiteth not for mortal man.
On your mark… get set… go... going… gone…
Godspeed… Dave
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