Windy Skies Lift Us Higher and Higher
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I bore a hole in the rains raking the highway en-route to the iron mines. Why would I go to the gym on a day when the roads are flooded and the skies are black? Because it’s there, that’s why. And, of course, I can’t stand the guilt when I miss a workout... I’m insecure... I don’t have another life... I could lose my pump... I’d waste away... I’d miss the self-inflicted pain and sacrifice, abuse and hardship. My nose would grow.
Take me to the rack.
I wasn’t alone upon entering the back door. The usual faces, a tad dour in expression, were there to greet me. Actually, they didn’t greet me; they barely noticed another madman had crossed the threshold. Just one more shadow was I, emitting a groan and in whose blue-grey wake plates of iron clanged. Mondays have a quality all their own.
Here we go again.
The world is a circle of many sharp corners, beyond which are prizes and surprises amid a few choices. What’ll it be today, Draper: chest and back, and enough gut to keep the pouch away? Sounds familiar... didn’t I just do that stunning combination? What’s today? Oh, yeah, Monday... how could I forget?
Monday, Monday. Look at all the happy faces.
Shoulders and arms have a more appealing ring... some front presses supersetted with sidearm lateral raises. Not! The shoulders feel less like cannonballs and more like golf balls this soggy, sunless day. Maybe arm training only is the solution: biceps, triceps and forearms, and hanging leg raises just to be sociable.
Any alert bomber has noticed legs are not mentioned in the repertoire of possible muscle groups to attack. Mondays and legs no longer go together, a recently established rule... or condition. One does not attack legs; legs are an attack. Think Tuesday, when the troops are entrenched; or Wednesday, when reinforcements have arrived; or Thursday, when there’s possible air support; or Friday, maybe there’ll be a truce. Saturdays are, naturally, for recreation, don’t forget. Sundays are for rest.
Arms -- arm workouts -- are tough and mean, but they are not exhausting. They are precise, interesting, oddly enjoyable and not ponderous. They are demanding, but not foreboding. They are a relatively small muscle group -- nothing personal -- requiring less oxygen and demand less blood flow. Good pump, nice burn, small fatigue footprint.
Arms it is.
Unloading my gym bag of necessary gear (no small task), I sit near the glass exit doors and peer at the rain mixed with hail pelting the car tops. Hypnotic. The shelter that is the gym feels welcome and comfortable. Let it pour, I say with relief and conviction, we need it. I’ll hoist the iron and build more muscle.
My mind wandered, ever on a journey to seek, discover, uncover and surpass (delay, procrastinate, daydream and hallucinate).
Hmm... I postulated: When do you, a bodybuilder, know when you’ve achieved your maximum muscular bodyweight?
“Never, never, never,” was my immediate reaction, “Never, I tell you! Never!”
My first response was when they roll you into the gym, oxygen mask affixed to your face and an IV delivering life-sustaining fluids, when you can’t distinguish a barbell from a dumbbell.
A second thought, vaguely related to the first was when the crashing sound you hear overhead is dirt piling upon your coffin. That’s admittedly kinda grim... a little dark.
The answers kept rolling in: when, at five foot, nine inches and 290 veiny pounds, you can’t tie your sneakers cuz your abdominals bundle against your striated quadriceps, preventing you from reaching their laces. Don’t you hate that?
Finally (promise), when in a pool, should you stop swimming, you sink to the bottom with such swiftness and force as to shatter the tile, poke a hole in the earth’s surface and cause the water to gush out.
Thinking is getting me nowhere, a fact I’ve accepted long ago. I’m stalling, it’s obvious. I’ve already drunk half my post-workout Bomber Blend and I’ve yet to lift a weight. That’s why God devised wrist curls. You can do them using a bar left on a bench with no added plates while you sit with minimum movement and you can call it warming up. They set the course, start the motion, initiate the blood flow, produce a pump, excite a burn, exact focus and engender profound thought -- one, two, three, four... er... five... um... seven... ate.
Grasp, release, extend fingers, stretch, hold briefly, roll up, contract, hold briefly, release, extend hunky bar and you are on your way down the tarmac and picking up speed. The sky is before you, altitude unknown. One rep, one set, one day at a time, as they say at AA (Altitude Achievers) meeting in hangars across the countryside.
First set completed, you’re invested and purpose is defined. Familiarity takes over and the weights are added systematically. The next set is tougher (good) and meaner (loving it). During the third set, the urge to superset is roused as you pull steadily upon the throttle. The power no longer comes from local sources only, but from biceps, shoulder and back muscles and distant places -- the temples, the teeth and bottoms of the feet. The body shudders with strain and need and urgency.
You’re training. Iron and might fuse, sound fades, time ceases, the day falls away. That’s the way it works, bombers. Trust it. When confronted with trouble, grasp the bar, grip the steel, and push and pull with growing might. The offender -- disinterest -- vanishes like heartache when one’s true love returns.
“Get the hook,” as Zabo would say right about now from the third row of a Muscle Beach contest, “he’s revolting.”
Has anyone noticed? The real answer to the very real question -- when do you, a bodybuilder, know when you’ve achieved your maximum muscular bodyweight? -- is yet unanswered and worth recalling.
Perhaps, the answer is after an intense year (or 10) of worthy and devoted training and eating right. How’s that for specific and scientific and conclusive? We here at the Huge Ripped Raw Muscle Clinic do not submit truths without thorough research and understanding.
Another answer, less glib and about as accurate, is when you’re mature in your assessments, have read and applied every solid principle gleaned from IronOnline over a two-year period and your progress has come to an apparent halt. Note: Apparent halts have nothing to do with real halts. Halts in system- and muscle-building do not exist if one is consistent in his bomber weightlifting.
Progress is forever.
In our healthiest and most productive musclebuilding years we do have a set-weight that we reach, a bodyweight at which we no longer build muscle according to our structure and chemistry, genetics and metabolism. Who knows what this BW is? We push hard, yet we stop proceeding. That’s that. That’s it. That’s all she wrote.
Or is it? The authentic musclehead pushes harder, longer, smarter, more, and again. He ekes out muscle like water from the great stones in the deserts of Moses. Unparalleled faith and hope, courage and patience hath he.
Little things are happening all the time, a small improvement here, a minor alteration there, something lost, yet something gained; time goes by, maturity reaps muscle hardness and increased delineation, age is acquired, yet under-worked muscles respond to renewed and deliberate action. Bodyweight is difficult to maintain, up or down; energy and muscle endurance come and go, but musclebuilding wisdom rises.
At 100 we’ll still be seeking improvement and observing the positive chaos hither and thither in our wild dreams. Looky here, a new vein emerging across my lower right intercostal.
It’s no dream I fly with the wind. You know that. We share the same sky; it’s written on our wings.
Quack, Quack, Swoosh... DD
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