Monday, May 28 2012:
Deadlift 3×2 @ 355# + 6x depth jumps
Then:
Deadlift 3×5 @ 305#
Then:
Track bike, 6x :15/:15
Sunday, May 27 2012:
Sprint drills with Matt Owen
Saturday, May 26 2012:
Track bike intervals at Penrose
8x half-lap, max effort (1.5 lap spin recovery)
4x full lap, max effort (2 lap spin recovery)
2x 2-lap, hard effort (3 lap spin recovery)
Friday, May 25 2012:
Deadlift 5×2 @ 341# + 5x depth jump
Monday, May 21 2012:
Track bike
road riding, 18 miles, 75min. Acclimating to the 50/15 gearing.
Later:
Deadlift 5×2 @ 345#
Sunday, May 20 2012:
Track bike, Penrose
steady state for 40min, a few max effort laps. 28.3 and 27.6 best efforts. Not great.
Saturday, May 19 2012
Track bike
Riding through Tower Grove. Whatever. 45min.
I’m fortunate to know numerous people whom I’m rather vehement that everyone should meet. Matt Owen is certainly one, as is Chuck Schagrin (worthy of his own essay) for his unadorned demonstration of dedication, Brent Benjamin because he takes the concept of appreciation to an extraordinary level (seeing what others cannot so much as dream of), and my friend Tom Pallesen because he’s ruthlessly objective about everything while seemingly having no interest in it.
That’s not supposed to make sense.
Tom will chastise me when I’m feeling lost or unsure with a familiar refrain: “you’re in a state of becoming instead of a state of being when you talk like this.” His point is that when we’re in those transitional phases, we often forget to embrace the reality of that particular step and instead hope or think or errantly believe that we’ll eventually get there, and that the “eventual” means something, and then we can really get started. He’ll then simplify by saying, “bring your definition with you, don’t wait for it from someone or something else.” HTFU stated a bit more clumsily, perhaps.
Own every step without being attached to it, I suppose.
I’ve never liked it when someone advises that you do this or that so you can achieve balance in your life (listen to me now and hear me forever, yoga cultists), because well, first off, I think it sounds stupid, and secondly, it’s not much different than endlessly juggling things or making constant adjustments on a scale to make it just so. There’s something lamely neurotic about that while being ludicrously self-satisfied. And plus, why should balance be a goal? Why should being normal or acceptable or correct or “feeling fine” or “doing great” be goals? Furthermore, why should being ripped or huge be goals, just in and of themselves? Why do we secretly value the envy of others so much? What the fuck does any of that mean? For fuck’s sake! Instead, I increasingly find myself applying Gordon Hamilton’s ideas on stability in the single scull to life in general. Gordon’s whole point is that the water and boat shouldn’t control you, that rather, you should connect to the boat, and forget about the water and just fucking move. It didn’t take long to notice that rowing was the seed, and not the beanstalk.
Alas, stability isn’t sexy. It doesn’t come with some cheap rush of endorphins, fueled either by the resounding realization that hey, fuck yeah I’ve got it now, or the admiration of women and MTV. You don’t win groupies by being the most stable guy out there, but in a world where “having” is assumed to be at the core of all motivations and desires, it’s tough to resist the temptation to accumulate.
But what then of my frequent assertion that being mentally sound is a detriment to performance? Well, I guess I should elaborate on the language a little more for I’m being a tad disingenuous—suffice to say, I don’t buy that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, because I’ve seen far too many people succeed by moving in circles ad infinitum so that they can eventually move in a straight line faster. I think insanity is renting yourself—your mind, your heart, your spirit—to something else, rather than filling it your goddamn self. Big difference. I don’t see anything “crazy” about driving yourself into oblivion, working to the point of hypoxic collapse, lifting so heavy so often that you exhaust your serotonin, and so on. I find that the height of sanity (when well applied) but it’s far more alluring to talk about how insane and crazy you are. Even if the work done starts of as the equivalent of a silly temper tantrum, maybe it’ll lead elsewhere. The path from “sucks” to “great” is long and filled with many inglorious stops we assume aren’t worth talking about, but you have to master the arithmetic before you grasp the algebra and later the calculus.
But doing the insane and crazy workouts you get big delts and a six pack and thus a free blowjob from…oh holy fucking hell, seriously, people think like this? Candidly, yeah, I started lifting weights because I went through a bad breakup and thought if I got “ripped” maybe I’d find a hotter replacement girlfriend, which didn’t happen at first, and by the time it actually did, I cared about other things way more.
When we set known standards, I think we’re essentially saying, “…and then you get a cookie.” I don’t know if it applies to everyone, but I’ve heard from enough former high-level special forces guys that one of the most stressful aspects of the selection process is the “unknown performance standard.” Out of the many deplorable aspects of the AIS Cycling selection camp, the worst to me was the steady diet of blank stares after any and all efforts. Good on them for recognizing the effect of such behavior; it’s tough to eliminate the carrot and the stick and encourage forward progress.
It might be considered by others arrogant or conceited to assume that you can change someone, but I think it’s absolutely necessary to believe that you can alter the chemical composition, and by extension, the neural wiring and function, of anyone you come into contact with. Especially when they claim to seek change. I find that those with tremendous self-definition, earned through years of BEING, are inveterate optimists in this regard. And thank whatever higher power exists for that.
But the bottom line is this: when you light a fire under someone’s ass, if they are at their core a piece of kindling wood, they will burn up and at best light the way for others. If the person is on the other hand forged from iron, they will harden and sharpen. It’s not our job to figure out who’s what, it’s simply to do the latter. Certain people are a complete waste of your fucking time, because no matter how much of the spirit of Midas you channel, they will not transform into gold.
And if some of those people realize that they are not just expendable but worse, replaceable…perhaps then they’ll change. But at that point? It’s on them. Or maybe I’m too much a hammer these days and constantly looking for nails.
Letter written to a rower I worked with on the Dad Vails 1x event, who elected to leave the sport.
“The hardest thing for me with rowing is that so much of it starts to feel like a shackle around my neck. The 5am wake-up, 23-mile drive to the boathouse, the shitty-ass cold weather that dominates the majority of the workouts, being a slave to wind and water conditions…never mind the complete lack of extrinsic reward, and in my own case, the paucity of competitive outlet. The rest I can deal with as long as there’s an opportunity to scrap with other similarly-minded people. Hell, at this point? I can’t identify with people who won’t kill themselves in the pursuit of victory, perfection, or just attaining some “higher level” of consciousness. The practical reality wears on my psyche, but the need to pursue perfection is greater. It’s an ongoing battle among many other ongoing internal battles.
I dig that spiritual component. The fact I can know a man simply because he rows is invaluable, too. It can be a solitary pursuit but it is not lonely. Any man who’s held an oar, particularly two, and particularly on his own, is on some level my brother. I don’t row against an opponent; while I’m more than happy to run the fuck over whatever gets between me and crossing that line first, when it comes to my rivals, we row together to discover just who and what we can become, and that is more important than any podium position or shiny object. It’s a remarkable connection.
You’re not a quitter. That’s not the issue. You’re just trying to prioritize, and given where you are in life, figuring out the hierarchy of your day-to-day existence counts for a lot. Rowing in the long run looks expendable, at least relative to other stuff.
So, let’s break it down to some basic numbers. We’ll lead off with time, because you can’t control how much there is or how quickly it passes—but you can control what you do with it.
168. The hours in the week.
You need to sleep 8 hours a day. That’s 56 hours.
We’re still over 100. 112, to be exact.
Class time: 18 hours a week, roughly?
Home work: Let’s guess an hour for each hour in class. Another 18.
We’re down to 76.
Let’s figure another 2 hours per day for all the ancillary stuff regarding getting out to the boathouse 6 days a week.
64 hours remain.
That’s about 9 hours per day with which you can do as you please. Eating. Napping. Hanging out with friends. Fuck the TV and fuck more than 20min on Facebook per day; the bandwidth of the world far exceeds any of that.
Internationally competitive rowers do about 15 hours a week. You (technically) have 64 available to you. If you do put in 12-15 hours a week into this for the next 2.5 years, I guarantee you that you will represent the United States in international competition eventually. That may or may not be of interest.
A few years ago, I read a poem by Mary Oliver. In it, she asks “so tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Think about that. Wild. Precious. And one expanse of consciousness to indulge, pursue, imagine, and create. Don’t rent your mental space to anything or anyone else. Don’t serve the brass ring or the gold stars.
I don’t think I need to sell you on the value of private glory. In fact, anyone who rows probably takes deep pride in the fact that most people—an easy 99% of them—simply can’t understand it. Fuck ‘em. As a young man, there’s plenty of reason to separate yourself from the herd for no other reason than being separate. You’ll develop your own reasons and ideas over the years…relish that process. Right now, you’re at the beginning. You’ve taken that first step on a legitimately different path, not only by rowing, but by seriously considering the single. You can see where it goes, and you can listen to the stories of others who’ve done the same thing, and take their guidance for your own purposes. The journey you wind up taking, however, is yours alone and you can’t imagine what it’s like until you go. For me, rowing has been an extension of a decision I made long ago, but it’s been critical in making my life what it is.
I discovered rowing at the age of 30. Single, bored. Kind of lost. Came from a boxing background, knew the erg, wanted something brutal and technical in my life that didn’t feature head injuries. I connected with the stroke and the boat immediately, kept doing it, and now find myself wondering what could have been had I not spent my 20s smoking and drinking and carousing, had I found the sport in college if not high school? Squarely nothing in my life has been as rewarding, fulfilling, or valuable as the lessons I’ve learned pitched in a furious, oft-futile battle waged between myself and the water, between me and others waging similarly private wars. Within themselves perhaps, or against something larger, something more formless.
But there’s your back injury. The pain there.
It’s not insurmountable, but it is a reality and we have to face it and its consequences.
Two years ago during a set of 8x deadlift @ 325#, I felt my back wrench and I collapsed to the ground and didn’t walk for another two days. It took a week before I was normal again. I almost wrecked it again last year, and sidelined myself for about a day. As I understand, you hurt yours doing a similar thing. I’ve also tweaked my back on 135# deads, too. So yeah. I get it.
There’s no set approach for fixing a back injury, but I do believe building up strength there goes a long way. Heavy squats, heavy deads, perhaps some power cleans are crucial to that—and while those movements can cause injury, they are also your best weapons against it. I can work with you, along with my friend Matt Owen at Project Deliverance, on correcting these issues if you like. Or we can give you some pointers on what to do on your own; give it a shot, take your time, see how you feel.
And now to the last thing: classes, work, student commitments.
5 years from now, 20 for sure, and most definitely 30, you won’t remember the classes or the homework. You’ll remember those furious pieces at 6am, the heat of a tight race, the thrill of lying spent and exhausted across the gunnels knowing that you gave it everything. People talk about “going all out” but they have no idea. They’ve never done 5x8min/5 @ 32spm. They’ve never felt the desperation of losing with 500m left and fighting to get back into it. They’ve never done a fucking 2K. The world is filled with millions of people who tried CrossFit a couple of times, ran a 5K that one morning, did the boot camp workout for a week or so thinking that they gave everything.
They have no idea. No conception. It is an experience that exists, literally, beyond the grasp of their neural wiring, outside of their dreams and imagination. By rowing, you make certain experiences available to you that you’d never conceive otherwise; you develop the capacity for the inconceivable. This pays off, by the way, in more than a material fashion later in life. You do more than push your limits. You forget what “limit” means and you draw your own outlines and create a definition of yourself that’s yours alone. Think it won’t translate to engineering? Of course it does. With this most grueling and taxing of all sports—and it’s more than a sport, it’s a way of being, a condition, a war—you will develop an approach to it, a strategy for conquering the pain and overcoming the odds that bleeds over into everything you do. You will speak deeply and loudly without a movement of your lips. It’s in the eyes. It’s in the stillness of your body, and the sleek control of your movement. Others may not be able to articulate what they see, but they’ll know what they feel. Let them stick feathers up their asses and believe they are chickens. Or think that wearing a TapOut t-shirt makes them a hardass, or that those Rage Against the Machine tracks they listen to once in awhile mean they’re rebels. You exist in a reality of your own creation, one forged from sweat, pain, suffering, and tears.
I know, I know—without the good grades, you say, you can’t get the right job or into the right school. Well, you’ll figure it out. Reference the above numbers. The time is there to make it work. Make sure you schedule time for homework. Give it your absolute, utter commitment. Put the time into the extracurriculars. Use all of these things as an outlet and an expression for what you build on the water and in the bowels of the AC on that goddamn stationary inanimate machine.”
Tuesday, May 15 2012:
2x, stroke seat
5x5min/5
spm: 28-30
Great. Felt like a dead brick yesterday morning, which was surprising because while the racing was tough on Sunday, it shouldn’t have slaughtered me. Either I erred in my recovery, or I dealt with some residual “adrenaline dump” issues from the nerves brought on by the competition. Who knows. I don’t like taking rest days, necessary as they may be.
Later:
Track bike
We all immediately got flats at Penrose.
After that:
front squat 10×10 @ 145#
