So, this past weekend we made a trip to the wonderful vacation destination of Syracuse, NY for my sister’s graduation party extravaganza. My sister, much like my father is a runner. If any of you follow me on social media, you’ll know how I feel about the whole running cult.
With that said, I should say that I do actually like to do sprints following a workout as nothing will make you feel like you’ve accomplished something more. Not run for 9 miles because gross. So if you do see me outside running then you should probably run in the same direction really quickly as I’m probably being chased by Sharknado, a lion, or Dunkin’ Donuts advocates.
I was lifting a large cooler out of the car by myself when my father told me to stop because I may hurt myself. Checking my ego I said, “nah it’s not that heavy, I pull over 400 pounds off the floor”. When in my habitat, that statement is usually met with some grunts followed by how much others pull. To people who don’t lift heavy weights often that is a meaningless piece of information. So he asked, why?
I’m generally pretty quick to fire back at my dad, the only person on the planet who has mastered the ability to find every single one of my buttons of irritation–and press them over and over again for the pure amusement. This time I still fired back because I like a challenge. But I stewed over this for a couple of days.
Part of me wanted to say, why do you run? That’s a silly thing to do. You can certainly develop your cardiovascular system in many other ways. Nothing in your life requires you to be good at running. But, this is more a look at why I like to lift things (don’t make that cliche statement from that stupid commercial about lifting things please!).
A couple of years ago I set a goal to bench over 315, squat and deadlift over 405, clean 275. None of this is necessary in my day-to-day requirements, however, when demonstrating to my athletes it was important that I could lift a semi respectable amount of weight. Otherwise they would think that I’m a phony (their words not mine). Plus, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results was some smart guy’s (Einstein) definition of insanity. And I know with my education in physiology that I need to continue to push the status quo in order to achieve adaptation.
School threw my aggressive training routine into the toilet. Basically, life happens. Now I’m finally hitting those goals and striving for different ones.
So now I understand why my parents always told me to think before I spoke. Not only does lifting my goal coddle the ego a little, make sure that the high schoolers don’t chirp, but mostly I lift it because I like to. The feeling of accomplishing your goals is awesome albeit short lived. Runner’s want to run for 4 days straight–go ahead. If you’re goal was to do that and live, then awesome. If I want to lift a 20 pound cooler out of the trunk of the car without hurting myself, then don’t bend and twist.