My lifting experience
8/2/06
How lifting maintains my sanity
My day started off on the wrong beat. I woke up too late to go my class in Boston and couldn’t make breakfast. Sounds tragic doesn’t it. Get to my class get a test back that I failed. Find a parking fine on my car. Then I m driving through the city and a bus cuts me off twice almost hitting me. Someone passes me almost taking off the side door. Then I hit traffic on the express way. I screamed in frustration. Did that make me feel better. No it did not.
My father then comes home shortly after I arrived and finds that ripped up parking ticket. Flips out and lectured to me that I have to pay the ticket or else he could lose his license because he has the title of the car. I was full of rage but i knew I should not direct it at him. I knew there was a way that I could filter out my anger.
After this whole ordeal came to a close, I decided to go to the physical therapy/ fitness center I volunteer at. I lift with my buddy Ron their after we treat patients. I was pulling in the place and hoping we could just lift because I had a stressful day. I saw no one on the treatment beds and then I saw a sign on the door that said no physical therapy tonight. I then walk in and see Ron on bench press and he yelled to me “Finally you’re here” I yell back, “ You didn’t wait for me Ron,. .. I’ll be right out I gotta change”. I went into the locker room never changed into my Under Armour gear so fast and I sucked down my Gatorade that had NO-Xplode in it. Ron was sitting on the bench and yelling to his boys, “ I am a soldier” “ They can write that on my grave” “ No even better, they can put a dumbbell on my tombstone”. I then said to Ron, “ if you’re a soldier, lets go to WAR on these weights!!
I then hit bench press. Ron spots me at my one set at 285 4x and 3 sets of 295 3x. These weights are arbitrary but they were increases and it felt great tossing the bar around. Ron then hit the smith machine for squats. I hit one set in just for the heck of it although I wasn’t working legs. We then hit deadlift high pulls. We both bang out 135 and 155. I said to Ron that I was adding a quarter to each side to make it 185. He replied back, “ I don’t know about that Nick, but I’ll do just sumo deads and no pull.” Then he declared, “ If you do it and I can’t do it, I can’t live with myself. I would jump off a building and kill myself”. I then laughed and said to him that it is a pleasure to compete with you. I love that stuff. I couldn’t ask for a better lifting partner.
Ron and I do four more exercises after that. Then while I was walking to my car in the parking lot I yell to Ron “Hey that was good stuff tonight. You’re a soldier!”
On my ride home I asked myself a question. Why do I love tossing around weights so much? Isn’t it pointless? The answer to that question was not just the fact that I am a power lifter training for competition.
My belief is that we were made to do manual labor. This society which makes us softer and the typical job is personified as sitting in an office, eating donuts and getting fat. This is not going to be my life. I ‘m going to make a living off fitness somehow.
Why does it matter if you have a high executive job and have a lot of money but are fat? In the end the money will go and we will be left with just our bodies. This will not be my fate.
I feel like I am fulfilling my natural instincts of performing manual labor. Lifting is also therapeutic for me. I go to a psychologist and even though I think he is the best counselor, I never get out the frustration during our sessions like I do hitting the weights.
I have accepted the fact that if it weren’t for lifting, I would be in jail or in a mental hospital. This is my lifestyle. This is what keeps me going. It keeps me sane.
By: Nicholas Keough
email:
Nicholas.Keough@quinnipiac.edu Geography: Massachusetts
Weight lifting goals: Gain strength, Gain size.
Career ambitions: in the process of getting athletic training degree. Want to become certified in strength and conditioning, personal training, and olympic lifting.
<message edited by gunshowkeough on Tuesday, October 31, 2006 4:56 PM>