Weight heaven

It has been about 2 weeks since I last posted, and the reason for the delay: My bumper plates arrived! Precious, precious weight. I have been pushing around the pounds and lovin' every minute of it. Heavy squats, presses, deadlifts, cleans, and snatches are all now at my finger tips. What was my first workout with the new Olympic set? Breathing squats. 20 reps of muscle building, mind blowing "man makers." It was awesome, and it was in my back yard.

The best part of having my own complete Olympic weight set is that I am now on my own schedule and in an environment that allows me to completely focus on my lifts with very few distractions. My last heavy workout was in the local gym. Like most gyms, this one is full of "pumpers" and "toners." These guys are too busy looking at themselves in the mirror to actually lift weights. When they do pick up a weight, it's a 20 lb dumbbell for concentration curls. They sit on the leg extension machine, the cable cross-over, and the wonderful dumbbell fly area. All of them pretending to work hard without actually pushing their bodies at all. They are 175 lbs of ripped weakness, made of mirror muscle that has absolutely no functional strength. If they tried to do a squat with their own body weight on the bar they would probably kill themselves. But hey, who needs strength when you can can do 12 reps of slow bicep curls? Besides, heavy weight is too much effort and doesn't allow you to ogle the gym bunny with the short shorts and sports bra.

Obviously, my heavy workouts in that gym were as much a challenge to my concentration as they were to my muscles. It's hard to focus on a PR lift when you have 4 guys standing a couple feet away talking about the latest supplements, while a snot nosed "personal trainer" is trying to convince you that squats are the devil and that fitness experts say that the smith machine is far better than free weights. My response is usually to throw the weight on my shoulders and growl...the trainer usually walks away and goes back to advising his 45 year old client on how to fit back into a size 8 doing nothing but yoga ball crunches. Ahh, modern fitness trends.

But that world is behind me now. My yard is now my arena. My weights my opponent. No mirrors, no distractions, no weak ass trainers. Just me and the bar.