When life don’t give you squat, squat gives you life.

Greeting, everyone. Yes, I know the title of today’s post sounds like a “cringey” catchphrase from a t-shirt (hmm, note to self…) but it came to me a few hours ago when I was training at the brand spanking-new premises of the powerlifting club. I don’t think I’ve made it a secret in my past […]

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

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 […]

Return of the prodigal Hamburger

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 […]

The dark side of the Gym

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 reasons that absolutely nobody should be intimidated by strength training

We’ve all been there. Most of us mere mortals have been in lousy physical shape at least once in our lives. At some point we think “hmm, I should really go to the gym” but we hesitate. A quick perusal of social media, YouTube videos and blog posts reveals that a big reason many people […]

Been down so long looks like up to me

To those of you who started reading this post because you are fans of Richard Farina – my apologies. This post will not discuss his seminal novel of the same name/title (see above). For some reason when I sat down to ponder reverse culture shock this phrase/title literally popped into my head. Score one for […]

Aging, self-image and weight-training

How old do you feel? How old do you look? If you’re past the age of 40, in your minds-eye, what version of you is your self-image based on? Maybe this is a purely masculine thing, but if I was honest my “mental avatar” is me, albeit circa 29 years old. I mean that is […]

Do you even lift, bro?

“Do you even lift, bro?” was the cliched, but very real, sarcastic put-down of a heavily Italo-american US East Coast bodybuilding subculture that thrived from the early 80s until roughly 5 years ago. The pathos in this phrase is self-evident (to everyone except the person asking it) and Broscience Life is the brilliant comedic Youtube […]

Obstacle or opportunity?

This post has been ruminating for some time now and has been inspired by conversations with my kids, some great feedback I received a few weeks ago from a fellow blogger and, believe it or not, the latest Chris Rock special on Netflix. Chris has this riff about how bullies provide an essential part of […]

Coming to America…and then leaving.

In the mid-80s I was finishing my somewhat checkered high-school career in a 3rd, no, scratch that, 4th world country somewhere in Latin America. I lived with my mother who is a highly educated, brilliant woman who, nevertheless, was not paid very much at that point in her career. Anybody familiar with 3rd world countries […]