http://greyskullarticles.blogspot.com/2009/10/recently-ive-received-lot-of-emails.html.
Now fast forward a few months I'm introduced to Sheaffer's Grey skull Progression through his Strength Villain website. Now I start seeing words thrown about..Starting Strength..Mark Rippetoe...Bill Starr..Squat 'til you puke yada yada. You get the picture. I basically reverse engineered it. Went back and wore out the Google button.( That sounded VERY gay). Now without nut swinging too much I came across Jim Wendler and Elite FTS. I bought 5-3-1 right before I deployed to Afghanistan. As I said. It worked like gangbusters. In the span of about eight months My lifts went up as follows:
Bench. Aug 2011-205 lbs / Apr 2012- 315 X 3.
Deadlift. Aug 2011-225 lbs / May 2012- 425
Squat. Aug 2011- 225 lbs / May 2012-425
Press. Aug 2011- 135 lbs / May 2012- 225
And now for the rest of the story...
I've always been a fat kid. Since about middle school. I played no sports and was what you could say without a doubt lethargic (ask my Dad). This carried over into High School. NO sports..lots of Black Sabbath.
Now before this turns into an Oprah moment. I blame no one but myself. I was a lazy kid. I would rather have sat and played Nintendo than toss a ball around. My folks tried. My Dad took me to the gym on the Navy Base near where I grew up but I wasn't having it. Summer breaks I would sit around the house and shovel food in my mouth and play Nintendo and or listen to Music. Fast forward through four years of glorious Carb-back-loading MINUS the training and I Joined the Army.
I weighed in at the Baltimore MEPS station at 297 1/2 Lbs. Pay attention to that number because you will see it again. One Broken leg and 9 months later I graduated Basic/AIT from Ft Leonard wood Missouri at 199 lbs. Over the next 5 years between Basic and my first duty station Ft Polk my weight usually hovered between 230 and 215. I lifted weights intermittently played whatever sports were going on, and got pretty heavily involved in Boxing. Did I reach greatness? shit no. My first fight I got put horizontal in less than a minute. Good times. But I loved the training. loved the Heavy Bag work, Jump rope even the running.
Fast forward again I PCS to Belgium. I meet my future Wife and my stepdaughter.Life is good. A couple years of deployments and wear and tear deal me my first injury. Patelofemoral something or other. Army Doctors in all their 'D+ Med student' glory diagnose me with a Torn meniscus..then its not..then it is..then its 'runners knee'. You get the picture. Point being I'm out of the fight for about 8 months. I'd love to sit here and tell you for those 8 months I ate 6 times a day, supplemented with shakes and did what I could to stay thin. FUCK NO. I ate and drank like I was a Soldier stationed in Europe. Good Belgian Beer, Good Belgian food. Yeah. Carb- Back-loading like a Motherfucker. What was that Magic number again at the beginning of the story? 297. That's right Two hundred and ninety seven fucking pounds. My absolute heaviest. Back to square one.
All mellow drama aside about 6 months later I was back to running everyday and my weight down to about 240. Yay.
WHY I LIFT.
Pay attention Folks because I don't justify this to many. There are three Primary reasons I train. Many people that I work with have heard me say the phrase "I know the answers to the test". This is the meaning behind that phrase.
August 2004. Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan.
One afternoon My Platoon Sergeant SFC Keith Lewis, my Team Leader SSG George Cyrus and I were conducting PT. We went for a run around the inner perimeter of the Airfield. It was about 150 degrees out midday so there were not a lot of people outside. We were trucking along, all was well. Slowly SFC lewis slowed down and stopped and bent forward. He stood back up and fell completely backwards. Flat on his back.
Heart attack.
My team leader and I performed immediate care to figure out what was wrong. All I remember was screaming MEDIC at the top of my lungs.On the Airbase. And NO ONE was around. No one? How the fuck does that happen? Finally a Humvee rounded a corner about 150 meters up the street and we both screamed for them to stop. By the grace of god it stopped. Next came the part that will live with me for the rest of my life. STRUGGLING to pick him up. SFC Lewis was easily 255 lbs SOLID. I remember pulling him up. Lifeless. 255 lbs of dead weight. And I couldn't do it. SSG Cyrus and I both got him up and Buddy carried him to the Humvee. The longest 100 meters of my life. With the help of the two Airman who were driving the truck, we got SFC Lewis in the truck and over to Charlie Med (What is now the Canadian run NATO hospital) This incident haunts me to this day. Ya my run time was fantastic, my APFT score was great but at the end of the day I WAS NOT STRONG ENOUGH to get my fallen PSG off the fucking ground. And this was in the confines of a secure Airfield. This was in PT's and running shoes, I wasn't under-fire and I wasn't wearing body armor.
Chievres Airbase, Chievres Belgium. 2009
Stationed in Belgium, I had recently lost a shit ton of weight and had lowered my APFT run time. The MP station that I worked at liked to schedule quarterly "training exercises" between the Military Police, Local Belgian Police and the Air force Firefighters. Usually these excercises are leaked 24 hrs out to make the supporting elements 'look sexy' so someones OER or NCOER looks good. Its more usually to impress someone than to actually reinforce standards and training. Very Political right? More on that later.
This aforementioned 'Training exercise was leaked appropriately 24hrs out. We were briefed at the MP station that it was to be whats called a "Mass Casualty' exercise Basically your worst possible scenario. A fire, a plane crash, something that induces death on a massive scale. Now is it the right answer that we know about said exercise beforehand? Absolutely not. The right answer would be proper training, weekly rehearsal drills etc. Again more on the Politics of the Army later. All Patrols that morning were briefed on what was going to go down. There would be a call over the radio to all patrols when said incident was going to go down and where. Now before I go into details, I have to let you the reader know that these exercises have been SO RIDICULOUS in the past that when word gets out about said training exercise comes around some guys will actually drug deal with other Soldiers TO SWITCH SHIFTS! just so they don't have to participate. Lol...Have I done it? I plead the 5th. Today I was not so Lucky. I was Senior guy on the road. So we get our Brief, I go over it with some of the other guys on Patrol, good to go. I grab my coffee, hop in my Explorer and off I go. Here's a gem for you. Ill let AFN tell the story. And yes that is yours truly...
I hate this fucking video with a passion but Im posting it to prove A. I'm not full of shit. B. That if I look back on it the harder I work. So lets get to the point of the video.
I get the call, chemical explosion in the building ass blood and guts everywhere...I show up and there are non-ambulatory casualties EVERYWHERE. And where are my other patrols? probably at the food court. So I do what I'm trained to do. Evaluate the casualties. I start working on em one by one. Theres a "fire" in the building that has chemicals and whatnot. So one by one I start moving the casualties behind my Patrol Vehicle. A VERY familiar dread creeps over me, theres roughly half a dozen casualties outside the hangar alone- I'm on number fucking three and I'm SPENT. Inside Im panicking because I realize again for the second time in my career IM NOT STRONG ENOUGH. I literally repeated this to myself in the midst of the smoke, fake blood, fire. And this time I was in Full gear- Second chance vest, duty belt weapon etc. You can see at some point in the video my sloppy- ass fireman's carry. A second chance vest doesnt weigh much at all nor does a fully loaded duty belt but try getting bodies off the ground at a rapid pace repeatedly. The gear gets cumbersome and hot. It sucks. eventually the "graders", "OC's", "CT's" whatever you want to call them called Index (Army speak for GAME OVER). I was inside the Hangar working on moving what felt like the 50th body and I didn't know INDEX had been called. I hefted the casualty over my shoulder in another piss-poor excuse of a fireman's carry and started for the Hangar door. My Legs at that point were on fire going on numb. I reached the Hangar door and told several people (whom I did not know were high ranking observers) to "get the fuck out of my way" with zest and was told game over. What the camera did NOT capture was me literally collapsing to the ground unable to stand on my own two legs.
The take away from this is that although it was a "Training Exercise" (which was deemed a success...for whom I do not know) For the second time in my Army Career I felt I had failed. Failed the "casualties" I had to help and had Failed myself for not fucking learning the first time..
Which Leads me to WHY I Train.
For the Army Push ups, Sit ups and a sweet Two mile run time are the triumvirate of "Physical Fitness". Yes lately the term "Functional fitness" has permeated the Military world. Crossfit, Insanity, P90-X. These are usually the most popular. Im going to digress a moment and say for the record the Army's Physical training Manual is SEVERELY lacking at best and Pathetic at worst. To sum it up for the most part we "train for the test" and not for 'downrange'- worst case scenarios. I have deployed four times and NOT ONCE did I or anyone I know get in a "pushup contest", "sit up contest" or "2 mile run race" with the enemy. Never happened. I purchased a copy of the Official U.S Navy SEAL PT Training manual and its the size of a Modern Encyclopedia. The U.S Army's? the size of Reader's Digest.
Take the Pepsi Challenge yourself.
http://www.usuhs.mil/mem/hpl/NavySEALFitnessGuide.pdf
http://www.enlisted.info/field-manuals/fm-21-20-physical-fitness-training.shtml
Ill step off the soapbox now. I train the way I do because of what I said earlier "I know the answers to the test". Arrogant as it may seem or strange its true. Both instances in which I was "tested" I had a great run time according to the Army but I was weak as shit physically. After my "youtube" incident. I swore to myself that I would NOT make that mistake a third time. And I hold myself to that promise to this day. There have been ups and downs. I've made the mistake of believing that Lifting alone could take the place of any type of endurance training. That is indeed false and I've learned it the hard way. I've also learned the hard way the value of eating right. Not so much for the aesthetic value but for literally "feeding the Machine", eating to grow the right way.
I have NO desire to be a Power-lifter. NONE. Zero. Zilch. I have no desire to be a bodybuilder either. But I have learned that there are principles from both camps that work like gangbusters towards getting stronger and leaner. I've also learned that 15-20 min of sled drags, tire flips or farmers walks at a high rate of speed are infinitely better for conditioning and fatloss than 45 on an elliptical machine. And notice I did not ONCE mention crossfit in that last sentence.
\
To Paraphrase Dave Tate and a few others from EliteFTS. I train because its therapeutic. Some people build models, some people play basketball. I like to pickup Heavy ass shit and put it back down. Plain and simple. The only other thing that even comes close is Music. I could have a shit day at work, shit day at home. Nothings going right- But to put 400+ lbs on my shoulders, feel my legs WANT to buckle and my lungs scream and CONTROL it. SQUAT and move it back up and rack it. That's living. I train for my own sanity and well being. The older I get for some reason the more people in general piss me off. I'd rather spend 3-5 years in a squat rack dealing with my anger than 3-5 in prison for caving someones face in. No trying to sound tough. Its just the truth. For some Lifting is just something done on deployments or 'Chest Mondays'
this is something I decided a long time ago would be a part of my life until I can no longer Physically do it. A Lifer you could say. The most important thing I've taken away as of late is to always continue to learn. Theres a METRIC SHIT-TON of Information out there. The best part of it? 90% of it is nothing new. Just shit that works. Barbell-centric training has been around for close to a Century. Why? it goddamn works.
I am by no means perfect. My numbers under the bar SUCK. I need to drop like 20 lbs off my waist and my lower back screams at me everyday. But I wont quit. Why? Fuck you that's why. I love proving people wrong. I love proving myself wrong.
THAT IS WHY I TRAIN.
G.I.F.D
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