Author: expatpowerlifter

Random musings about strength training and culture at large.

Powerlifting, skateboarding and why keeping it real is so much fun.

On By expatpowerlifterIn bodybuilding, Danger, fitness, Motivation, powerlifting, skateboarding, strength training, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’m a middle-aged man who, in his lifetime, has had some modest athletic gifts that have allowed him to compete in Karate, Boxing, Kick-boxing, Baseball, Cross-country, Track and Field (high jump), various semi-marathons and, most recently, Powerlifting.  Try as I might, I can’t do “fitness”, it bores me to tears.  The idea of working out for working out’s sake makes me want to eat a bullet. Honestly, the concept of hitting muscles 8 different ways with machines and submaximal weights whilst tracking calories to a T makes me want to sit on the couch with Netflix and a big plate of chocolate chips cookies.  I need to be viscerally interested in what I do, and nothing focuses one quite as effectively as fear.

If I am honest with myself, most of my athletic success has been in those sports that have certain component of risk and/or fear.  To whit, I was probably best at baseball, vtournament Karate sparring, kick-boxing and most recently powerlifting.  Without going into too much detail, all of those sports require you to master your fear.  I am not what you’d call a macho person.  The idea of bungee-jumping makes me light-headed.  I once agreed to go sky-diving and then spent the worst afternoon of my life as I waited for my scheduled “drop plane” to take off.  The flight was cancelled due to weather and I literally the happiest person on the planet Earth that day ( Roughly 1998, in suburban Frankfurt).  I was very drawn to combat sports but personally I do not like to fight.  I have been in some street fights from pure necessity.  I know that football hooligans find a real high from pure aggression but I find that aberrant.

Powerlifting is probably the least “risky” sport of those I’ve just cited.   Really heavy weight in squat or bench press does not elicit the same fear and/or nervousness as walking into a ring with a real badass or facing down a fastball pitcher with control issues.  Nevertheless, it is scary.  I find that I’m only really motivated when I put some “serious” weight on the bar and think, “holy %$#@, how am I going to move this”.   This afternoon I was at the powerlifting club to train “safety bar” squats, as I still cannot lowbar squat without pain.  Safety-bar squats are the “ego” killer, you will suffer at weights you think are ridiculously low.  I did my programmed sets, and then my assistance work, but honestly it left me a bit depressed.  I needed a bit more.  Safety squats suck because there doesn’t seem to be a technically clean way of doing them.  You can’t work the leverages as you can with a good technical low-bar squat so you are forced to lift much lighter weights.  At the same time, your core works extremely hard which is really the hidden pearl of this exercise.  In any event, I did heavy singles, purely for motivation.  Full transparency, my heavy single in a safety squat bar is a good 50kg less than in a low-bar squats.  You get the weight down to the hole, but then how you get it up is less obvious.  Brace like a mofo and push, basically.

While I was squatting my son was skateboarding in the parking lot of the powerlifting club.   My son, as I’ve described on previous posts, is obsessed with skateboarding.   He is a chip off the old block.  He’s not a hell for leather let’s ollie 15 stairs sort of skateboarder.  He’s extremely technical, and he works many, many hours on “finesse’ moves.  In short, he’s not reckless but he takes risks for sport he loves, and he consequently gets hurt quite a lot.  For those of you aren’t familiar with skateboarding, it’s not possible to progress in the sport and not hurt yourself and/or face your fear on a daily basis.  My son is actually quite good for his age at skateboarding and partly it’s because he’s able to able to master a risk/benefit analysis.  He is driven to keep trying, to land a trick cleanly…and sometimes that means you hurt yourself.  Also, you need to have the drive to try the same technique thousands of times until you master it.  There is nothing so hard as making a skateboarding trick look easy.  He is such a careful little dude but at the same time he’ll try seemingly crazy tricks because he knows he’s analyzed it and should be able.

So at the same time I can’t just do 5×10@80kg safety bar squats.  It’s awesome and it works the lower body but it’s not sustainable.  It’s boring, I won’t do it because I’m not hchallenged.  Let me push the envelope and I’ll be happy.

 

 

 

Return of the prodigal Hamburger

On By expatpowerlifterIn Cultural differences, Food, Germany, humor, powerlifting, travelLeave a comment

People with German ancestry are the single largest ethnic group in US.  Yet, it’s a testament to their ubiquity that it’s often not understood by Americans themselves just how subtly German popular culture has influenced their own.  My mother’s family are typical German-Americans as they live in Midwest in a semi-rural setting. German-americans largely live in “fly over” country, not the coasts.  My great grand-parents immigrated to the US shortly before World War 1 and made a bee-line to Midwest and it’s promise of relatively cheap farm land.  My Grandmother spoke a dialect of German (similar to Luxembourgish or Blatt in Alsace) with her parents and 14 brothers and sisters.  While she continued to speak German with her sisters into old age it was very much a private, behind closed doors activity.  The last thing she would have ever considered was teaching her own children to speak German.  World War 2 comprehensively denatured a whole generation of Germanic Americans.

In the Americas (aka the New World), the word “European” is used almost as a snobby superlative.  There is common delusion, for example,  that all Frenchmen are chain-smoking philsophes with 3 mistresses and a fine wine cellar.  Germans are coldly efficient techocrats, and so forth.  OK, there is some truth to stereotypes, but most “culture” is low-brow, and Europeans are no exception.  I put forth to you that much of Midwestern US “redneck” culture is German popular culture, crudely grafted to a new location.

The most obvious vestige of this German heritage is food.  Much of what we think of as generic “American” food is German; Hamburgers, sausages (including the ubiquitous hot dog), inordinate fondness for bread, dill pickles, potato pancakes, fried fish and beer to name a few.  If you’ve eaten at a State fair in the US and then attended a similar event in Germany, the parallels are obvious.  Home style baking in the US is largely influenced by German, not British or French, tastes.  The German fondness for big portions arrived in America and immediately took steroids.  The apfel doesn’t fall from the tree, y’all.

In my last post I mentioned that I took part in a 2018 German Powerlifting Championships for my federation last weekend  https://wordpress.com/post/expatpowerlifter.com/1438.  The competition took place is a smallish town in a beautiful semi-rural setting to the north-east of Cologne.  In short, it was the German equivalent of the community that my mother’s family hails from in the US.  And, yes, it was a powerlifting meet, not post-doctorate symposium on String Theory.  It was a perfect setting to observe German popular culture in action.

First, however, a quick word about me and the German language.  I’ve never failed so completely to learn a language.  Experience has shown that give me a Romance or creole/pidgen language and I’m off to the races…so I’m not a language dunce.  It was therefore with quite a bit of hubris that I began my study of German…and failed spectacularly.  My kids speak (amongst other languages) German and my daughter has a special fondness for it, maybe because it confounds her parents.

Nevertheless, when I arrived in the parking lot of the facility that was hosting the competition, I couldn’t help but feel at home.  There was just a very familiar red-necky vibe…if I squinted a bit I might have been in Michigan or Wisconsin.  Literally,  as in some of them looked like cousins of mine, dark hair, stocky compact builds.  Beer, check, fried food, check, baked goods, check.  Talk about sports, check, talk about cars, check, crude jokes, check.  “Unique” grooming and vestimentary choices, check.  The attitudes, the facial expressions were uncannily like a backyard BBQ in Michigan.  Good people, for the most part, but with a pronounced insular streak, just like back home.  The event was only in German so good luck to the non-Germanophones.  I was the only non-European at the event and people couldn’t have cared less except for a few odd grumbles about my lack of German.   Again, just like you know where.  (The ironic part is that I am 1m80, fair-skinned with blond hair and blue eyes.  So I while look the part in a central casting sort of way, the reality is most Germans don’t seem to fit the blond hair/blue eyes mold.  In my experience, it’s much more common in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.)

I wish I could describe this feeling better.  I feel more comfortable in a similar situation in the UK or France, Belgium, etc because I speak the languages.  Yet, in spite of my profound ignorance of the language, this felt more “familiar”.  It felt like home.  Take that as you will.  Home is often far from perfect, but it undeniably informs who you are.

Germany Competition Recap – stuff happens.

On By expatpowerlifterIn fitness, Gym, health, powerlifting, strength training, Uncategorized1 Comment

So last weekend I competed in the stand-alone bench press event in the 2018 German Powerlifting Championships for my federation.  It was an interesting weekend in many ways, I learned a lot about what I should, and should not, do for my next competition, how I feel about “stand-alone” events vs. the traditional 3 event powerlifting.  In a subsequent post I’ll post my impression/observations about the powerlifting sub-culture in deep, semi-rural Germany.  Half of my family are semi-rural Midwesterners of relatively recent German descent so suffice it to say it was strangely familiar at times, whilst completely foreign at others.

I was off my visibly off my game on Sunday (more about that later) so I didn’t do as well as I should have.  I improved my competition bench-press PR by 2.5 kgs, but given that I trained and planned to increase it by an ambitious 10kgs, I’m disappointed.  I made a number of mistakes that are linked, I think, to the fact that I only had one event, not 3, to worry about.  I warmed up too early and lifted weights close to my “opener”.  Big mistake, of course, but after a week of laying off the weights I always start to doubt myself.  In addition, I was had very little sleep and was fairly burnt-out on powerlifting after having stayed with my team as they competed until 2AM the same morning.  Finally, (and, yes, more about this later) I understood next to nothing most of the time as my German is very poor, and the “competition plate” phenomenon only heightens this.  (Basically, it’s very easy to do “plate” math in the gym so you always tell how much somebody is lifting.  Even with color coding of the plates, the fact that they are slimmer (denser) and bar collars themselves weigh a combined 5kgs throws me off at first.  Also, the most used plate in competitions in a red 25kg plate.  In the gym 180kg on the bar would have a cool four 20kg plates on each side.  The same 180kg much less impressive looking in competition.)  So I got white-lights for my opener but is looked far uglier than it should have.  With such a poor showing, my coach was OK with only increasing the next lift by 2.5kg instead of 5.  I made the next lift too.  It looked good, nice and smooth, but I knew that I wasn’t at my best.  My coach told me to add 5kgs for my final lift, instead of the 7.5kgs we were planning on.

Even though my 2nd lift looked nice and smooth, I felt that I could only handanother 2.5kgs for the 3rd lift.  Some people can grind out a bench-press but I am not one of those people.  When the weight gets really heavy on a lift – i.e. heavier than your previous 1RM (one rep maximum) it’s crucial that your form and technique is impeccable.  I might have been able to have done another 5kgs on that day, but my concentration was not what it should have been.  As the bar reached my chest, my bracing wasn’t what it should have been so I wasn’t able to explode out of the hole after the pause.  I missed my third lift.

In the powerlifting gym I belong to there is a white-board where the team members can list their PRs in the different lifts(provided that lifts are relatively heavy for a given lift) and, in most cases, only competition lifts are accepted.   So I had done, more than once,  a legal competition bench-press in the gym (pause on the chest, wait for the “press”command, press up in a controlled manner(feet on the ground, butt on the bench) and then wait for the “rack”command) at the weight I had just failed in the competition.  Powerlifting competitions are weird in that I don’t really get nervous because of the competition or lifting in front of a fair amount of spectators and peers.  Rather, the pressure I feel is all about not reaching my goals, of not making the months of hard work pay off for me personally.  I failed that last lift because I felt my goal was in jeopardy and I wasn’t mentally strong enough on that day to keep my focus.  This is what makes a succesful lift in competition the gold standard for lifters.  Gym lifts don’t count, bro.

In the end, I came in 2nd in my age/weight class.  The guy who came in first was 10kgs better than my best lift. Even though I should have done 5kgs better, there is no chance in hell that I could have lifted more than him.  Kudos to him, it was a sight to see.  One of the best things about power-lifting competitions is that you’re excited to see big lifts, period.  I fully appreciate what this competitor did at his age and weight so it’s not like “he’s kicking my butt” but more like “respect, dude”.  I did better than some others, ok, but that’s neither here nor there.  The missed lift is what sticks in my craw.  Had I done the lift, I’d still be in 2nd place, but I’d have felt really good about it.

I learned a few things about the “stand-alone” events, which I had never participated in or even seen before.  This is because typically the 3 event Powerlifting competitions are typically on Friday/Saturday, and the 1 event competitions are on Sunday.  Firstly, wow, the stand-alone bench event is popular.  In this competition, at least, there were many more competitors in my age/weight category than in the traditional 3 event competition.  Not surprisingly, some of these guys were straight up bench-press specialists.  While it was a fun, educational experience, I don’t think that I will do it again simply because I miss the “long game” aspect of the 3 event powerlifting.  A bench-press competition goes by very quickly, 3 lifts and you’re done.  And while my bench is pretty good, I don’t think it’ll ever be “stand-out” in a field of bench press specialists.

The bench-press: It’s not just for meatheads any more…

On By expatpowerlifterIn fitness, Gym, powerlifting, strength training, UncategorizedLeave a comment

In honor of Monday (aka International Chest Day) and my upcoming competition this weekend, this post will examine why the bench-press is so misunderstood, why you should do it and some surprising tips I’ve learned over the years that have helped me improve my bench-press.

As I sit here alternating between sips of black coffee and apple cider vinegar/cinnamon/lemon juice/cayenne pepper detox drink, I contemplate my upcoming Powerlifting meet this weekend in Germany.  I will only compete  in the stand alone Bench-Press as my jacked -up left biceps/shoulder area preclude me from the traditional 3 lift powerlifting competition.  I haven’t been able to low-bar squat for a few months now and have only been able to seriously train the deadlift recently.  For this competition there is a pretty deep field of competitors for the Bench event in my weight/age category,  much more so than in the 3 lift event.  I think this might be testament to the popularity of the bench-press and also that a number of my “older gent” competitors might have injuries like me.

Bench-pressing is, in some ways, a victim of its own popularity.  Most people think that since it’s so popular amongst “gym bro” meatheads that it’s to be avoided like dodgy sushi in an all you can eat buffet.  Never fear; the first thing to know about the bench-press is that performing the exercise will not lower your IQ or give you a man-bun.  If you had told me, my friends or my family 10 years ago that I’d one day I’d compete in a bench-press competition you’d have been met with a healthy dose of skepticism if not outright hilarity.  I would have thought, above all, that I was absolutely incapable of seriously competing (albeit in a very amateur federation) and, besides, I wasn’t macho and hairy-chested enough.  Wrong on both counts, it seems.  Even if you never compete, here’s why I think you should do this exercise – and some tips to do it better.

  • The bench-press is the single best compound movement for the upper body.  If you do it correctly you’ll give your chest, shoulders, arms and, to some extent, your back an excellent work-out.  Pair it with overhead presses and you have a very comprehensive upper body training regimen.
  • The bench-press is not macho:  Really, trust me on this.  It’s an exercise like any other and should be treated as such.  For dudes – don’t treat it as a test of your manhood…that’s just plain silly.  Besides, I’ve found that the vast majority of guys that brag about how much they can bench are, how shall I put it, “mistaken”.  A real 1 rep max of a bench-press involves controlled descent of the bar until it lightly touches the chest, a slight pause (i.e. no bounce off the chest), pressing the bar back up and then re-racking.  This is harder than sloppy YOLO bounce off the chest,  spotter helping you on the ascent style of bench press so you need to completely check your ego.  Therefore, train intelligently using weights that you can do with good form.  Always respect the weight – if possible do all of your bench-press training in a squat rack or bench that has “safeties” to catch failed lifts.  DO NOT intentionally train to failure with the bench-press.

A blog post is too short a format to discuss all the finer points of bench-press and, besides, here is one of the most comprehensive how-to videos I’ve seen on the subject:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FWDde2IEPg

Excellent though that video is, I feel I can add some additional hard-won tips/cues:

  • For the first half of the bench-press, treat it like a pull-up:  Above all, retract your scapulae.  This will recruit your lats, give you a strong base and put your arms/shoulders in correct position to push-off, utilizing your triceps, shoulders, lats and, yes, your pecs.  Retracting your scapulae is fundamental to all of powerlifting, squats and deadlifts included.
  • Tuck your elbows in as much as possible:  This cue is also known as “bend the bar”.  I like to imagine that I am trapped on the ground with a heavy object on top of me.  Flaring my elbows just won’t do the trick.
  • A spotter is not a training tool:  The very best lifters don’t fail a lot of lifts in training because they train methodically.  They train to peak exactly at the time of their competition.  They may be doing a lot of heavy triples and doubles but rarely wildly attempt new PRs.  For one, failing too many heavy lifts, especially in the bench-press,  trains your brain to equate really heavy weight with a “panic” response.  So I don’t wildly attempt unrealistic PRs even when I’m benching in squat rack with the safety bars correctly set up.  Secondly, an excellent spotter is a very rare thing, capable of judging when to grab the bar, neither too early nor too late.  Finally, I’ve seen far too many bad spots, including some that almost resulted in accidents, to think that one should rely on spotters.  The only spotters I somewhat trust are the two spotters you get in competitions – and that’s only because there are two of them and, in case they screw up, the competition bench has safeties.
  • Assistance exercises that have worked best for me:  I use a fairly wide grip for my competition bench.  During training, however, I like to vary the widths I use to recruit muscles differently as well as avoid over-use injuries.  Floor presses, I feel, help to improve that crucial sticking point i.e. pressing off of your chest from a dead stop.  For me the bench-press relies heavily on the triceps so I do a lot of additional triceps training.  Finally, pulling exercises such as pull-ups and Pendlay rows help develop the back musculature which is crucial to balance out the shoulders, pecs and triceps development.

Anyway, wish me luck.  Hopefully this time next week I’ll be posting with some good news such as I made the podium.  Either that, or the silence will be deafening.  Just kidding, if things don’t go as planned, I’ll try to honestly analyze why they didn’t.  My opening lift will be my previous competition PR.  This weight is now my “any day, any time” weight so provided I make that lift and a subsequent heavier lift I should at least have a new competition PR at the very least.

 

 

Why some blog posts work and others don’t: an analysis

On By expatpowerlifterIn Blogging, Uncategorized, Writing6 Comments

 

As a blogger, have you ever taken to the time to examine your readership statistics to discern what seems to garner the most attention…and what doesn’t?  I’ve been blogging for a year now and have published dozens of posts.  During that time, I’ve had some spectacular failures as well as a few relative successes.  Using the data available I will attempt to identify what worked, what didn’t  and pass an honest judgement as to why.  In the second part of this assessment I’ll identify what, as a reader, draws my interest to a blog post.

First, let’s set the parameters.  I feel that a “view” is the most important data point.  You can “like” a post and even “follow” the blog but only the “view” reliably indicates that you drew the reader’s interest.  “Follow” statistics are somewhat useful, especially if you see a spike after a blog that garnered a decent number of views.  This indicates that some people a) read your post and b) decided to follow your blog as a result.  Of course, you can follow a blog or like a post without reading it and this seems to happen to some extent.  “Likes” are therefore nice to have, but not a reliable indicator as to the “market value” of the post.

A quick analysis of my posts:  As a blogger my stated interests, as laid out in my “about” page are varied but include strength training, literature, travel and sundry other topics.  Below, in descending order, are blog topics that generated the most interest:

  • Writing/blogging  – This had a comfortable, but not overwhelming lead, over other topics.  Not surprising, really, as we’re all blogging because we love to write so it’s a shared interest in the broadest sense.
  • Literature – Books are my lifeline, as they probably are for you so it’s not surprising that in the blogosphere there is a widespread appreciation for reading/literature.
  • Travel/Living in other countries – Well, again, not surprising, it’s part of the title of this blog.  Other cultures, and by extension travelling are also a universal interest.
  • Strength training:  A slight majority of my posts are about strength training, powerlifting or gym going in general.  You’ll notice it’s 4th on the list. Primarily, strength training, and especially powerlifting, is a niche activity.   If you factor in how many readers in the blogosphere would be interested in those activities, it’s probably not surprising those posts are not my most read.  That being said, they are some of the most loyal readers.
  • Cooking/Cuisine/Recipes: I’ve done a just a few of these posts.  They were unique, I feel, and garnered some interest but were no doubt handicapped by poor “marketing’.
  • Life Lessons/Motivation:  Dead last.  A few views but really no interest.  I think there were a number of reasons why this happened (bad titles, dense prose, etc) but basically I wouldn’t read this sort of post from somebody I didn’t know either.  It’s that simple.

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What helped success – and what caused failure:

  • Clear, concise titles:  The biggest take-away from this analysis is that cryptic titles for your post just don’t work.  It can be brilliantly written and categorized/tagged correctly, but it’ll never work  you can’t tell in 2 seconds what the post is about.  I wouldn’t read such post, so why I expected my readers to is an embarrassing mystery.
  • Good layout/well written:  How many times have you, against your better judgment, clicked on a poorly titled blog post (hoping against hope that the title was not indicative of the writing quality) and immediately regretted your decision?  Exactly.  You don’t like reading somebody’s BS “This is what I did today, guys!” post so don’t inflict that on your readers.  Stream of consciousness, laundry list types of posts are boring and you’ll lose credibility.
  • Add value:  We all have a unique voice and viewpoint that, if correctly targeted, can generate interest.  The first step is to find your voice and identify the areas where you truly add value.  Blogging is part of this first step for many of us.  The “market” will decide where it thinks you add the most value and, in some cases,  it might not be what you suspect.

What works for me as a reader:  At it’s best, reading blogs exposes me to a myriad different viewpoints.  It’s a direct line to access some quality writing from bloggers around the world.  There is quite a bit of cra*, though.  If you filter out all the commercial blogs, there remains quite a bit a poorly written, poorly conceived dreck. Hey, I’ve written some of those and chances are you might have as well.  The posts that resonate the most with me are those who have clear title, have a strong sense of what it is they want to communicate and are well written.  What this means is different for every writer and subject.  For example, I follow one young writer who writes seemingly stream of consciousness “slice of life” stories that, on the surface, shouldn’t be worth the time.  Still, she has a strong, unique voice and an innate sense for storytelling that make all of her posts quite worth reading.  And, yes, in her own inimitable way, the title of her posts always gives you an indication of what you are in for.

As a blogger, what were your most widely read posts?  Were they the posts you expected or did you have surprises?  Please comment below.

The dark side of the Gym

On By expatpowerlifterIn fitness, Gym, health, Mental Health, Motivation, Narcissism, Uncategorized1 Comment

 

 

This blog is about to get real.  This morning I read an excellent post from Awkward Brown Guy (https://theawkwardbrownguy.wordpress.com/ – I highly recommend his blog) in which he describes his motivation for going to the gym, and how it’s changed over the years.  It got me thinking about how we all like to post about the myriad benefits of going to the gym, but we very rarely touch on the less than salubrious aspects.  It’s not all unicorns and rainbows, folks, so let’s have an honest discussion about some of the more disturbing trends in gym going behavior.

  • Balance is the key:  Nature seeks equilibrium; too much or too little of anything is not good.  Physical activity is required for one’s physical and mental hygiene. The question that many people struggle with is “how much?”.  Some people see some of the less than healthy behavior of some “fitness” trends and use it as an excuse to avoid exercise.  Still other seemingly think that engaging in physical exercise will solve all of your problems.  I think all of us are somewhere on this spectrum, and where we are at any given time depends on external factors.  Personally speaking, I’ve had couch potato periods, somewhat exaggerated periods of heavy training and more common work/life balance “trying to find time to train” periods.
  • Motivation vs. Pathology:  The modern fitness world is addicted to motivational stories to an unhealthy extent.  It’s very simple, if you don’t train and then start training, you will notice many improvements.  Better mood, sleep, weight loss and/or muscle gain, reduction of anxiety, the list goes on.  And I think it’s great this engenders a feeling of empowerment in people.  I don’t think, however, that pushing stories of how people have seemingly conquered all of life’s ills by physical training is a positive trend.  We all know a few 1 dimensional “gym is life” types and, admit it, it’s a bit sad.  Sadly, many of us have a seen a few pathological cases which literally make you wince.  At the Globo gyms I go to, for example, there is  one guy who is so hyper-ripped that his muscles actually interfere with his mobility.  He waddles from machine to machine and occasionally the dumbbell rack.  It’s kind of disturbing.  There is also this extremely anorexic woman I’ve seen at gyms around town for years now.  It always makes me nervous to be in the gym with her because I honestly expect her to keel over at any moment.  She’s literally a walking skeleton and all she ever does is cardio.  I have a family member who struggled with this disease, I know it’s a desperate attempt to exert control over one’s life,  so I don’t take this lightly.  The gym is the last place she should be and nobody should be enabling her to burn any more precious calories.
  • Performance Enhancing Drugs:  I used to be very naive and thought steroid use was rare.  10 years ago I might have even thought that the behemoth I described above was a “natural”.  The reality is that most of the shredded guys and gals at your local gym are on “gear”.  Most of us don’t have the genetics  it takes to resemble a Comic Book hero, so, surprise, surprise, many people resort drugs.  I understand if a professional athlete or movie star does it because the risk may be worth the monetary reward.  It’s pathological, however, for  your average gym goer or amateur competitor take the same hormonal health risks.
  • Body Dysmorphia:   Sure, body dysmorphia exists outside a gym environment.  It’s also true that physical training is conducive to developing a limited degree of body dysmorphia in most people.  What I find most interesting is how the condition manifests itself depends on what type of training you are doing.  This is logical because depending on your chosen activity you’ll spend a certain amount of time around phenotypes best suited to that activity.  For example, when I ran semi-marathons I used to think I was too bulky at 66 Kgs for 1m79. I now weigh 30KGs more after years of strength training.  Honestly, some of that is fat, but a lot of it isn’t.  It’s not an abnormal body type to find in a powerlifting gym but I am sometimes reminded, by people’s reactions, how outside the norm it is.  The interesting thing is that in my mind’s eye I’m “normal” size and I don’t really dig the “getting bigger” aspect.  It’s a side effect of the sport, not the raison d’être.

The point is that we need to apply the same critical regard to physical training as we do to other parts of our lives.  I often liken it to stages of “culture shock”.  When you first arrive in a country you often “love” (or detest) everything about it for a period of time.  Then, abruptly, that feeling completely changes to its polar opposite.  So now you loathe every stupid aspect of said country/culture.  Within a few months, however, you’ll reach a more reasonable mindset and begin to see the culture for what it is, neither perfect nor horrible.  Physical training is, for me, an essential part of life.  Sadly, it doesn’t provide an answer for all of my problems.  Sometimes, it even causes a few problems such as my recent injury or getting bulkier than I’d like.   At my age, though, I’m not motivated by vanity.  I like how it makes me feel and I get a kick out of achieving goals and getting stronger.   Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.

YouTubular – The best videos of the week

On By expatpowerlifterIn health, Motivation, strength training, Youtube

I watch a lot of YouTube.  I have “cable” TV, Netflix and Amazon Prime but I only tend to browse through the choices/channels on the weekends and, typically, give up and pick up a book instead.  Youtube, however, is addictive.   There is a lot of bad content so the trick is having a “nose” for a good content creator and/or finding a particularly good clip.  If I find a particularly useful clip, I often share it to Whatsapp (friends and family) or Facebook Messanger (Powerlifting team) groups.  The following clips are the most useful clips I’ve found recently on their respective subjects.  If the subject of one of these video interests you, I promise you it’ll be worth your time.  So, without further ado, here are the clips:

 

This clips explains, in a very cogent manner, why growth occurs only when you are challenged and how find that “sweet spot” that engenders growth.  The title of this video is uber-cheesy, but don’t let that put you off.  It’s a very, very useful video for absolutely everyone.  I’ve shared it with my kids, friends and as well as with the team I manage at work.

Dr. Axe is an excellent content provider for all things related to nutrition and health.  I purchased a slow cooker a few months ago – I wish this video had been around before I made my purchase.  As it turns out, I think I made a good purchase but it would have been useful to have been armed with this knowledge.  I love my slow cooker, it really makes meal prep for the week a whole lot easier.  Dr Axe videos, of which there are 100s, are uniformly excellent.  If you find video on a subject of interest, you can’t go wrong.

Juggernaut Training Systems are undeniably one of the best strength training channels on YouTube.  They recently put out a series of “5 Pillars for Great Technique” for Bench Press, Squat and Deadlift.  This is a really excellent, well produced series for all lifters, from novice to advanced.  I’ve shared these videos with a number of “lifting buddies”.

This video was published the day before yesterday by the Barbell Medicine crew.  This is probably the best single video on the subject of the Bench Press that I’ve ever seen.  So much so that I shared it with my Powerlifting coach  – and I’m not in the habit of wasting his time.  He dug the video and if the bench press interests you, I guaranty that you will dig it too.  As an aside, the Barbell Medicine team recently and very publicly divorced themselves from the Starting Strength organization.  Smart move, these guys are going places.