The Road Not Taken

Olympic lifting often provides a perfect metaphor for life.

Many beginner lifters find that the hardest part of learning the clean/snatch is not the technique, but having the balls to drop under the bar- especially when it gets heavy. We spend our whole lives conditioning ourselves to watch out for heavy falling things, therefore it goes against everything your mind knows to propel your body under a heavy moving object. In order to be any good at the sport, that is exactly what you must do though. This requires you to shut out fear, and to boldly and ferociously pull yourself under- to take the drop of faith, faith that your body will be able to hold up what you have just caught. Like I say, olympic lifting distinguishes what kind of man you are- are you the kind that only power cleans/snatches because you are afraid to drop, or are you the kind that rips the  head off of freaking lions (to quote the great Donny Shankle).

Life can be very similar. We spend our whole lives taking the path of least resistance, the road most traveled, the easy way. It goes agains everything we know to go agains the grain and do what is more difficult. One of my favorite poems is by Robert Frost, and it speaks of this phenomenon:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry i could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then, took the other as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

It takes real gumption and a repression of fear to voyage into the unknown, to take the road less traveled. This hits home to me lately, because I have been offered a job in Beijing, China. One of the main reasons that I am struggling to accept it is because of pure fear; fear of the unknown, fear of the known, fear in the fact that all my safety nets (parents, friends, comforts) will be out from under me, and that the tight rope of life will be to thin and wobbly for me to stay on. I have a choice; to let that fear dominate me, or to sack up and take the road less traveled. It would be easy for me to stay here in Houston. It would be easy for me to not take the step of faith. But that is precisely the reason I must go, because it is not easy- it is very, very hard indeed. Part of what makes a man a man is his ability to go through seasons of forging. It is in the trials and fires of life that he truly discovers what kind of man he is.

In the end, there are still a lot of things that have to work out just right before I move to the other side of the planet- contractual stuff, not getting another strength position that I have been interviewing for, things with my family. But if the stars align and the decision comes down to if I want it or not, I will take it.

Be great. Rip the head off lions. Drop under the bar. Go down the road not taken.

Blessings.

"Ender through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it."

-Jesus, Matthew 7:13-14

Intensity

This guy is quickly becoming one of my favorite olympic lifters. The intensity with which he lifts is truly inspiring, and makes me want to attack the bar in the same way. Olympic lifting is a sport that requires not just efficiency, technique, and accuracy, but also a ferocity. You cannot simply hope to coax the bar above your head- you have to dominate it, to own it. Milko seems to not only understand this, but to fully embody and embrace this concept. Another man who has a firm grasp of this that I deeply respect is Jon North. Check this out:

Be tenacious, be ferocious, be aggressive, crush weight

Smolov

This motivated me to never get stuck in the hole again. To solve this problem, I have started
smolov.  After week one of the base mesocycle, I am officially fried. Upper back, lower back, hips, quads, brain. Two more weeks to go, then we shall see about these claimed "huge gains"

Go under the bar

Sometimes, you just gotta get under the bar.

Life can get stressful- believe me, I'm there. So many things fluctuate on a day-to-day basis, and so many questions remain unanswered: where will I live next semester? what job will I be doing? will my current relationship work out, or is it going to fold (lookin' like a folder at this point...)? These are all things that are (unfortunately) out of my control. What I do have control over, is how I respond to those stressors.

I could let them dominate me and drive me into a dark hole of fear, anxiety, and depression. Instead, I choose joy. Joy is an internal state of well-being that is independent of one's external circumstances. Happiness is an emotion, therefore it fluctuates. Joy is a choice- not an emotion. That is why the apostle Paul can exhort his readers to "be joyful always" (1 Thessalonians 5:16).

One thing that brings me a lot of joy is weightlifting. Not working out, but training. If you don't know the difference, then it's probably because you have never trained. Anyways, I digress. There is something very fundamental and primitive about lifting. From ancient times, men have lifted heavy stuff, sometimes for survival, sometimes for sport. When I go under the bar, it's almost as if I am going back and reconnecting to something woven deeply into my soul. The feel of the bar against my body; the strain of my sinews yanking on tendons and bones; the voice in my head telling me to give up, and the other one telling that voice to shut up- these are things that make me feel alive, that in some small way connect me to men who have come before me all the way back to early man. When I am under the bar, my world stops spinning. No longer am I thinking about life and its many uncertainties. All that is on my mind is "move the weight".

Our society is all about quick fixes and shortcuts, and in weightlifting there just aren't any of those (minus the whole steroid thing, but thats another topic for another day). You have to wake up every day and decide to be strong, to be better than you were the day before. That goes not just for weightlifting, but for life. The bar is a great litmus test for what kind of man you are because he is unbiased and unforgiving. He wont BS you. He does not care if you are rich or poor, sick or tired, happy or sad, smart or dumb, handsome or ugly, cool or geeky. He does not care if you just got promoted or fired, married or dumped, all A's or all F's. All he cares about is if you have the gumption to get under him and move him. One thing is for certain: you find out what kind of man you are when you enter the world of weightlifting. There are days where you will love it. There are plenty of days you will hate it. The bar does not distinguish between those days- only you do. That is why, regardless of your circumstances, you just have to get under the bar.

Make the choice to be great. Find your bar, and get under it.