Back to the Barbell
“I have found the iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go, but two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”
-Henry Rollins
As I mentioned in my last post, I spent 2019 really focusing on kettlebell training. My workouts primarily consisted of tons of kettlebell swings, presses, snatches, cleans, goblet and double front squats, get-ups, and loaded carries. Kettlebells are an amazing training tool that will be a cornerstone of my training for the rest of my life, but lately I’ve been falling in love with the barbell all over again. Just before the holidays, I was down in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for a couple weeks for work. I found a great gym downtown, SportsBarn, and got in some awesome training sessions. For the first time in a very long time, I trained squats, deadlifts, and overhead press with a barbell, and it felt great to get a barbell on my back and in my hands again. On the plane ride home from Chattanooga, I stumbled across a book on my Kindle that I had purchased a while back and then totally forgot about. The book, StrongFirst Reload, establishes a basic linear progression barbell program built around squat, bench, deadlift, and overhead press. I got pretty fired up reading the book while stuffed into my window seat on a cramped plane, and I decided that it was time to get back to the barbell. I’m two weeks into the first eight-week cycle and I am having a blast. I know exactly where I stand in all of the lifts. There is no lying or fooling myself into thinking I could do a certain weight for so many reps. The barbell is completely objective. It doesn’t care about my feelings or if I had a good day or slept well the night before. The barbell is like an old reliable friend who always tells me the truth, whether I want to hear it or not. I’ve seen longer versions of the above Henry Rollins quote that say something about how the iron always dishes you the real deal. I could not agree more. During the first week of my cycle, the barbell really kicked my ass and made me feel like I had fallen really far behind. Now that I just finished my second week, everything is back to feeling as it should as my coordination and familiarity with the bar have come roaring back. I’m not moving any kind of impressive weights, but I’m feeling barbell strong again.
I was listening to one of Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength Radio podcasts recently, and he was talking about how he has always put his disappointments, failures, and other emotions into the barbell. During some very challenging times in my life, I have always been able to find solace in the gym. When I left my family and familiar small town in Michigan to start my first teaching job in Phoenix, one of the first things I did when I got to town was find a gym. This was an anxious time in my life, as it is for most people when they finally enter the real world. It was a new city that was literally 850 times bigger than my hometown and completely foreign to me. Hell, Phoenix has more than one stoplight, so that alone was an adjustment. Training was always there for me, and no matter how nervous or homesick or broke I was, I could go lift weights and feel better about my spot in life.
Cali and I just signed up for a push-pull meet on February 8. It’s a fundraiser for a charitable cause, and not sanctioned by any federation or anything like that, but I’m sure it will be fun to step on the platform a few times to see what I can do. This will also be my first ever meet that is not a full power meet. It’ll be weird to start benching without squatting first.
You know you have a gym dog when he follows you downstairs at 4:50 AM and snuggles up next to a collar on the floor just so he can keep you company.